My lack of faith
I am an atheist.
And no, this is not me trying to be “cool” by assuming a label. It is me getting rid of what I believe to be an oppressive power structure, within myself. And writing about it allows me think better about it.
Before I go on any further, I would like to clarify that being an atheist means that I have a lack of belief. Most people assume that I strongly believe that there is no god and that makes atheism a belief system - they are mistaken. Just like being asymptomatic means not having symptoms, atheism means that I just don’t have any belief.
So, let me enumerate what this means, in a concrete terms for the things I don’t believe in:
- I don’t believe that the universe, the earth and we humans are created.
- I don’t believe in “a higher power” that oversees everything.
- I don’t feel the need to pray to god.
- I don’t live my life in fear of any god.
- I don’t believe in hell, or heaven.
- I don’t believe in a soul.
- I don’t believe in rebirth.
- I don’t believe that the ones who die, leaving us, are “looking down upon us”.
- I don’t believe in karma (the cycle of good begets good and bad begets bad).
- I don’t believe that my morals come from god.
It is also important to me, at this point that I do not look down or judge people who believe in any (or all) of the above. These are merely my thoughts about my lack of faith. I absolutely believe that at the end of the day we all must choose the things that give us the most peace. The fact that for some, it is god, is perfectly OK.
In fact, I actually feel that faith is quite a force multiplier and allows us to deal with the many many many many many uncertainties of life. It gives us a structure for our hope and a direction for our thoughts.
Fortunately or unfortunately, this faith is something I cannot get myself to invest in. It is simply put - not me.
I instead choose to live a life that is science & evidence based and see the world and its people with all the flaws and the complexities in place. I do not crave simplicity. Concretely, this means:
- I believe that we are all here because of billion years of evolution and the wonderfully complex processes of the universe (which need not have a creator)
- One of my favourite renditions of this is this by Neil DeGrasse Tyson: We are stardust. If you liked this, I recommend reading Cosmos by Carl Sagan who goes into great depth on this.
- I believe in the power of the human race. That when I am in trouble, my fellow humans are the ones that I can turn to, the ones that love me.
- If you ask me to accompany you to a place of worship, I will. But it is not because I believe in the god that exists there, but because I love you enough to do that.
- I believe that culture and religion are different things. Culture can should exist without religion.
- I believe that when I die, that there is nothing more to it. I will just cease to exist.
- Tangentially, my intention is to donate my body to science, to be picked apart and learnt from, for the future generations.
- I believe that good acts must be done for the sole purpose of the acts themselves, without any kind of a reciprocation.
- Just look around to see the amount of vile humans we share this earth with.
- I believe that my morals come from (1) the social need for humans to look out for each other and (2) common sense.
- I believe that at my core lies a very important value - freedom.
Further to this, I do believe that all organized religions are evil. They exist to establish and further oppressive power structures to keep a select few in power, at the cost of the vast majority. Any number of arguments can be made for what was intended but it doesn’t matter in light of what we see around us - communal hatred, supremacy, patriarchy, oppression.
“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.”
~ Steven Weinberg
At the same time, I will never ask anyone to stop believing in their faith. On the contrary, I will fight for them, if they are asked to do so, or if they are questioned about their choice. That’s how much I value freedom.
There is much more to write about atheism and about the faith that I was born with, the one that I have the most experience with. But that is for another time. This was just me, thinking aloud, and writing an important truth of my life:
I am an atheist.