They Will Not Control Us

You are not the prisoners of context. You are not the prisoners of your own bodies. You don't have to be.

You can transcend this interaction. You can transcend stimulus-response. You can transcend your impulses and urges.

Set yourselves free. You have the key to your attitude. How will you confront the world? How will you defend yourself from the onslaught of circumstance?

You have the power to change. You have the power to stop. You have the power to start over. Will you allow yourselves the opportunity to become something greater than yourself?

Christians say that Jesus died for your sins. What exactly did Jesus change? Did he change the environment? Did he change the laws of genetics? Did he stop complexity arising from simplicity?

How did you and I get here? We evolved. To such great hands does the creator of the Universe entrust its creation! Our current state is the direct result of doing whatever we could to survive.

Fighting, fear and fate. These are the masters of billions of years of natural selection. We have been engineered to survive. You have been engineered to become amoral beings. To be or not to be.

That is the sole moral law of our universe. Every act you consider good is only designed to ensure a fair chance of survival. Every wrong you do is wrong because it hurts another survivor. What's the difference?

Everyone wants to survive. What's fair to me is what I could get in my position if I were you. It's easy to deny someone else. It's preferable to look out for number one. Let me repeat: to be or not to be is the moral law.

However, you are not the hostage of fortune. This is the good news. You can be better by cooperating. You can transcend your fortune. You can defy fate. You can master probability. Do you want to transcend your own mere survival?

We can create a better legacy. You do not have to be controlled by your environment. You do not have to be consumed by your urges and impulses. You each have the ability to question everything you do. Inquiry is the ultimate path to transcendence.

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This post found inspiration in Muse's song "Uprising" and in The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins.

Occupational Hazard: Eternal Damnation

I read a wide variety of commentary on religious topics so I can understand and empathize with those who have different beliefs than I do.

One of the Christian blogs I read frequently is Demian Farnworth's excellently written Fallen and Flawed.

He has recently returned from a one-month blogging sabbatical, and in his return he certainly has not failed to provoke much introspection and discussion, especially in his latest post From Believer to Unbeliever: The Lie We All Fall For.

Demian also has many thoughtful commenters, several of whom have even at times inspired me to rethink opinions that I have held about certain elements of Christianity.

Al is one of the commenters who has earned my respect. He never fails to express himself clearly, fervently, and above all respectfully in accordance with his beliefs.

For this entry, I'd like to post part of Al's response to my comment on Demian's latest article and share my reactions to it with all of you. Please forgive me, Al, for posting so much of your speech on my blog, but I hope you won't mind exposure to an audience of mostly non-believers?

Now, I’m not going to restate what Demian has said so wonderfully above, so I’ll close with this thought: If you don’t “get it,” it’s because you haven’t properly sought it!

By "it", I believe that Al is referring to an understanding of "genuine faith" in Christianity. Now, I know that 'understanding' is far too weak of a word for this context. A more appropriate word would encompass not only comprehension, but also a certain degree of attitude and receptivity. I believe that word may be 'attuned'.

That may be because you don’t want it, and that’s understandable– after all, the free gift of life will ultimately cost you everything if you receive it– If Jesus bought you with His precious blood, that means He must get what He paid for: You and everything that pertains to you: your independence, possessions, opinions, reputation, associations– everything!

Al, if you're right about this, I don't wish to be wrong. Now, what I am about to say in no way do I intend as insult or mockery, but as a sincere and fully non-judgmental observation, perhaps even a compliment: I can tell that you and Demian have given "your independence...opinions, reputation" over to your beliefs. They are secondary to your committment to Jesus. There is nothing I can say that can change that. I know - and that's not why I reply to Demian's articles.

We are in some sense stuck. You believe that I am blind to the spiritual Truth. I believe that there are people just as committed as you and Demian who have given their "independence...opinions, reputation" to Islam, to Judaism, that there is no discernible difference between you and the people who have "lost their faith". I don't list Ken Daniels or Charles Templeton because I believe they earned divine favor through the strength of their alleged works...I listed Daniels and Templeton because I see no difference between their early faith and yours presently. Lots of people have given their "independence...opinions, reputation" to Christianity only to no longer have the capacity to believe it. I know it seems unlikely to you, but it's where I am, and that boils down to why I am engaging you now: I'm not here to talk to you because I'm an agnostic atheist and you're a Christian - I'm here to listen to you and converse with you because I'm a human being who happens to be an agnostic atheist and wishes that people could understand where I've come from.

Or it may be that you DO want it, but just don’t realize it yet or don’t know how to ask for it. Your desire must be wholehearted– holding nothing back. No half-baked idea that you’ll try it out & see if you like it, then decide. Ask, beg, plead– persist; don’t take ‘no’ for an answer!

I do admire and highly respect your attitude: holding nothing back, not taking no for an answer. It's my approach, too. I refuse to hold back any doubts of my former religious beliefs, not taking any answers that are contradictory or fallacious.

As an agnostic atheist, these are a few of the things that I have accepted about Christianity and about religion:

1. I accept that morality has been derived as a product of naturalistic altruism and cooperation.

2. I accept that there are many flaws and contradictions in the Bible, which render much of it to be unreliable and untrustworthy.

3. I accept that evolution by natural selection is the best explanation of the diversity of life on planet Earth, that this scientific facts precludes any literal interpretation of the Biblical text, and that the process of natural selection displays no indication of divine guidance whatsoever, especially from the all-good, all-loving, all-knowing God embraced and proclaimed by most Christians.

4. I accept that there is no evidence for a physical soul which survives death.

5. I accept that there are a multitude of religions, several of which condemn me to eternal suffering or to annihilation for disbelief in their individual religious tenets.

6. I accept that faith reveals just as much to the Muslim and the Mormon as it does to the Christian, and that faith reveals just as much to the Baptist and to the Methodist and to the Roman Catholic as it does to the Lutheran - I accept that each new theological innovation is a product of fallible human beings.

So here comes the big question:

If you don’t get it, God has not yet opened your eyes and, unless you strive with Him to do so, He may never, in which case you will go to your grave still guilty of sin against Him and will be judged and condemned to eternal hell. That’s because you will have embraced the LIE that Demian wrote of in this post, and God will have given you the desire of your heart, allowing you to be absorbed in strong deception, to your undoing forever.

Will I allow myself the chance to "be judged and condemned to eternal hell"?

As I've said before, if you're right about this, then I certainly don't want to be wrong.

But that's a risk I'm willing to take.

It's the occupational hazard of being a skeptic.

And that's something I accept. I accept the possibility that I am "absorbed in strong deception", that I have "embraced [a] LIE". However, I cannot accept the possibility, that there exists some kind of God out there who leads not only atheists and agnostics in deception, not only Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Mormons in deception, but also Methodists, Anglicans, Baptists, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Russian Orthodox, Calvinists, Arminians, the non-denominational, the prosperity gospel crowd, and the Pentecostals and the Seventh-Day Adventists in deception.

If your God exists, then the history of civilization must be a deception, the history of the Christian churches must be a deception, the history of human religious practice must be a deception.

If you don’t see, it is because you are blind in the grasp of spiritual death. Looking at the first comment on this thread I see our old friend, Teleprompter (and I mean that, Tele)– someone whose intellect I greatly respect, even though it is his worst enemy. I read your comment, Tele, and right smack-dab in the middle of it you state your problem: “…but I definitely don’t see…” I love you, my Friend, as Christ loved me when I was His enemy (if you wonder why, I have no answer), but your eyes are sightless in spiritual death– that’s why you don’t see. The god of this world has blinded your eyes.

As a skeptic, spiritual death is an occupational hazard I'm willing to risk. I hope my previous statements in this response explain adequately why I have such a strong willingness to take this risk. I am not trying to be cavalier about this enterprise, but to candidly state my beliefs and why I continue to maintain them even against such high potential stakes as the possible damnation or annihilation of my eternal soul.

We will each and all spend eternity in someone’s service. Pray God it may be His who loves you, and not one who hates you.

I am genuinely grateful that you are concerned for my welfare - I mean this wholeheartedly. If you sincerely believe that my intellect is indeed my worst enemy, then it is only love that could move you to subvert its machinations. However, I believe that this is not the case.

Al, if your God exists, then why would He give me an intellect that He knew would destroy my faith in Him? Perhaps I am misusing the intellect that I have been given. But I do not believe that I am misusing my intellect by applying it in the manner in which it has been entrusted.

I Am An Atheist (Part Two)

As a college freshman, I was enrolled in a world religions course. We examined many of the eastern religions (such as Jainism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism) and discussed many of the fundamental qualities of faith, the sacred, and belief itself.

It was in this context that my strongest initial doubts about my faith and my religious beliefs arose. All of these religions shared many of the same fundamental tenets, yet all of them made claims of exclusivity.

I thought about my own religious beliefs in relation to the ones I had been learning about. Why was I a Christian?

Then I began to see how religions could have evolved from one another. This cast even more doubt onto my already beleagured faith. I considered how the human mind works in accordance with religion. I considered how societies interact with religion. If I had born in India, would I be a Christian? If I had been born in Turkey, would I be a Christian? If I had been born in China, would I be a Christian?

Then I looked at the claims specifically made by Christianity in this growing context of doubt.

I began to wonder, what evidence is there for any of the things happening in the Bible that it says happened? I began to do some research on the subject, and I found no compelling evidence that Jesus even existed...let alone that many of the Old Testament events themselves were historically accurate. Add to this the confusion and plagarism found in the Gospels, and the disputed authorship of Paul's letters. My Christianity just no longer made any sense to me.

But most of these things were still secondary. It was not my exposure to other religious beliefs that was the underlying challenge to my own faith (though it was a pivotal experience that led to my current views). My primary challenge was my nature.

Once I began to doubt my religion, I could examine why and how I felt the way I did, the reasons for why I acted the way I did, and the reasons why other people acted the way they did. I saw the universe as explainable by natural causes.

I told you earlier, that I spent a great deal of time thinking...especially thinking about human nature. My atheism is one of the results of the culmination of this thought process.

I saw how it could have been possible that humans could have invented religion, and why people would believe in it. My religion lost its lustre.

So one day I say to myself (after a few intense days of doubt): Maybe I am an atheist.

Should I call myself that? Would it be appropriate?

If I can live for one day while calling myself an atheist...one day, two days, three days....

Maybe I am an atheist.

I can no longer believe in Christianity. Also, I decided that I no longer believed in the supernatural, because that didn't make sense to me anymore, either, just like Christianity no longer made any sense. So I no longer believed in any religions.

I am an atheist. I am not going to use any other terms. As I see it, the only way to eliminate the negative connotation of the word is to change it by the force of our ideas. So for now, I am prepared to embrace its usage.

I am an atheist.

"Jacob wrestled the angel, and the angel was overcome." -- Bullet the Blue Sky, U2