An Inward-Turned Eye

It has been nearly four years since I first began identifying myself as an atheist. Of course, this self-proclaiming was never a constant; I wavered, time and again, between Atheism ( capital “a”) and progressive mysticism and non-literal spirituality. But autumn of 2008 remains for me the season in which I made a decisive break with faith. It was and is a turning point in this meandering, shiftless quest for Darwin-knows-what. (That bit is a joke, intended for those imbeciles who suggest atheism to be the worship of Charles Darwin).

Before all this, though, I was often accused of being deeply introspective. I spent hours agonizing over the internal nature of my mind. My heart. Every action was met with analysis, every whim with self-conscious rumination. Knowing myself was, to me, kind of the point of this whole exercise. Of faith and of life, to know myself was the goal.

Indeed, it was this quest inward which broke the pillars of my faith. Certainly, the critical, unflinching scholarly study of religion and Christianity brought desolation upon my honest faith; but my inward-looking nature shared in the blame. It led me to the realization that, in order to remain true to my ideals–of knowledge, reason, and integrity–I had to abandon God. There was no place for me, even in progressive-liberal Christianity. I could be honest with myself, or I could be religious. I chose honesty, and have spent the past few years tumbling down the stony slope of Mount Faith.

The tumultuous internal and external changes of the past four years, which have ushered me into the life I now lead, had a curious, though perhaps not unexpected, effect on my temperament. It struck me, as I sat listening to Justin Townes Earle sing, in his wounded drawl:

So I’m learning, learning to be a better man.
I’m not certain but I think I can now.
Ah, but if I fall short just know
I’ve done all I can do to change.

I thought back to my days in seminary, seemingly a full lifetime past now. i thought back to the way I was, always with one eye on the heart, actively considering things like character. And always worrying over the man I was becoming. I’ll admit, it was with some sense of loss, looking at myself now, that I realized: I am not trying to be better.

I am not trying to be anything.

I do what comes naturally to me. I have spent a lifetime creating habits, and I live by those habit, by repetition. Perhaps the introspection is not totally lost to me, for immediately i was gripped by a searching mind. Questions flooded through me, and continued to haunt me day-after-day. What kind of person am I? What kind of person will I become, living without an inward-turned eye? Not the person I dreamed I would be. But how will I know, now, whether my dreams are worthy of my character? What is my character these days?

Am I cruel? Am I truthful? Am I loyal? Or are the actions I take merely reflexes, the learned reactions of a person that is accustomed to acting kind, honest, honorable? (The last one probably reveals that I’ve been watching too much “Game of Thrones,” seven take you! But, god damn if Sean Bean isn’t the most attractive man alive.)

I once valued introspection and critical self-analysis above all other attributes. It pushed me to excel, to treat others well, and to look at myself honestly and unflinchingly. I could look at myself in the mirror then and know that, if nothing else, I was trying to become better. All of it was spurred on by fear of God, and done for the sake of God at the time, of course. And so when I abandoned religion, my introspection and “character-keeping” went with it.

I would like to think that I have it in me to reclaim that reflective thoughtfulness, that will to know myself and better myself, without reference to deities and fiery punishments and palaces of pearl. Do I really need, have I ever really needed, God to make me a remarkable person? Was it ever God who made me kind or honest?

No. I do not need religion to be a better person. A lie, no matter how pretty or convincing, is never a solid foundation for building character. To know myself, for the betterment of myself, is a worthy enough pursuit.

You Know What Today Is…

Pat Condell, British writer, comedian, and atheist, once said that freedom of speech was, to him, the most sacred value of all. As sacred to him as any god ever was to any believer. So sacred, in fact, that Condell even supports the right of religious fundamentalist nut jobs to spew their caustic dogma freely. In other words, free speech should not be compromised; it is indispensable (even when it causes offense or annoyance).[1]

Being that today is Blasphemy Day International, I felt that Condell’s message of free speech was particularly appropriate. Yes, Blasphemy Day International is a real thing. And, though most of what you’ll see regarding this “event” is a lot of denigrating, mocking, satirizing, and criticizing of religion, it would be a shame if that became the whole of your understanding of what Blasphemy Day International is all about. Certainly, I celebrate along with my fellow irreligious the right to blaspheme an imaginary god. But I fear the message may be lost in the midst of the irreverence.

Blasphemy Day International is a day that recognizes that human beings should have the right to express themselves freely. Freedom of thought, freedom of identity, and freedom of speech. It is not, and should not be, the role of the government to criminalize verbal dissent. People should be free to speak their opinions without fear of state-sanctioned punishment.

Unfortunately, we live in a world where those who seek to impose religion are more than willing to do so violently. In their zeal for their god, some would trample underfoot the rights of everyone around them. In some countries, they already have.

In Egypt, the Sunni majority uses the country’s “blasphemy laws” to persecute any dissenters–religious or nonreligious.

In Greece and Germany, public blasphemy can lead to incarceration.[2]

In Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan punishment up to and including execution is prescribed for blasphemers.

In numerous other countries, such as Finland, Israel, Denmark, and Brazil, blasphemous speech or criticism of religion are punishable offenses. In other countries, such as Yemen, Pakistan, and Nigeria, those accused of blasphemy are harassed, defamed, and often killed either by the government agencies or vigilantes.[3]

Freedom of speech, something so foundational to a free society, is not guaranteed. Many countries already suppress dissent (particularly religious dissent). And, unfortunately, even those of us from countries that are built on freedom seem all-too-willing to capitulate to the demands of the enemies of free expression. Even now, a struggle is being fought among world leaders (great job UN) over whether or not to criminalize, globally, the “defamation of religion.” Governments around the world are seriously considering compromising free speech in order to appease those who reject basic human rights.

That is what Blasphemy Day International is about. It is not really about blasphemy at all; it is about the right to disagree openly, to dissent publicly. It is about the struggle to ensure that each of us has the right to believe what we choose, and to express those beliefs publicly without fear of reprisal.

It is a firm affirmation that you have the right to speak freely about your god, and so do I. So, here’s to Blasphemy Day International. A day that reminds us that the freedoms we enjoy should be extended to others as well (even if we don’t like what they have to say). A day that tells those who would deny others the right to free speech, “We will not be cowed.”

Let’s build a better world, based on freedom.
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[1] Here is a link to Condell’s witty, scathing, inspiring (for an atheist like me, anyway) video, “Free speech is sacred.”

[2] Some of the information on blasphemy laws can be found in this fantastic video, made by the members of the UNIFI.

[3] Wikipedia has a concise summation of many of the blasphemy laws around the world. (Don’t judge me; if college kids can use Wikipedia as a source, so can I).

Proof of God

Today, my brother asked me a hypothetical, religiously-oriented question that made me hesitate a moment before offering an answer. He asked, “If we knew that God existed, with the same certainty with which we know gravity exists, and we also knew, with that same certainty, that this God really was good (i.e. really did work all evil for good and all that jazz), would you then follow God?” It was not an evangelistic tactic; just a question searching for the reasons we do not believe in God.

As I said, I had to hesitate a moment, because the notion of that kind of certainty over something like “God” was just too far beyond my current reality of experience to allow for a quick answer. But then, eventually, i said, “If I knew that God was real (i.e. had overwhelming, critically examined evidence) and knew that this God was actually good and loving, then I suppose I would follow this being. I would have no real reason not to.” (Of course, knowing with that kind of certainty that someone is “good” is a bit tricky. The old problem of evil and suffering in the world simply will not leave God alone!)

This was not really about discussing what kind of evidence would prove God; that was not the point. It was about what makes us (at least some of us) atheists. And, for me, my disbelief originated in the inconsistency of the biblical narrative, both with itself and with actual human history, and culminated in the conclusion that there really is no convincing evidence for belief in a god, much less in the Judeo-Christian God. There was bitterness and anger involved in the deconversion, but my primary reasons for deconversion were simply that there was not enough evidence to convince me to choose belief over disbelief.

But, supposing that such evidence were discovered, if scientific and critical examination of the universe screamed, “God is real!” then of course I would believe. If this God was proven to be good as well, then even more than believing, I would follow. I would have no hesitation giving up my label of “atheist” because, for myself (and I think most of my atheist peers), the accusation that atheism is “just another religion” is a false one. There are exceptions (folks who have internalized the atheist ideology and identification so deeply that they are literally devoted to it), but my atheism is not and has never been about devoting myself to this particular ideology as opposed to that. I am an atheist simply because I doubt the reality of God’s existence, not because I am drawn to some messianic organization known as Atheism (capital “A”) that will save us all and deliver us to personal and professional fulfillment. Atheism has never seemed to belong in the same mental category that Christianity once inhabited for me.

But, even I will admit: it would take a lot of evidence to reconvert me.

Making Up God

When I was struggling through the last months of my faith, I turned to process theology and more liberal, less literalistic conceptions of God and religion. As I did so, I found myself in a strange intellectual and emotional world where the walls of orthodoxy and tradition seemed to vanish. Indeed, even the “floor” of my Christian faith seemed removed, leaving me in a state of suspension, in which I relied only upon my own experiences and thoughts, and the experiences and thoughts of other disenfranchised “believers” to guide me. At some point, I remarked to my pastor that my endeavors, without the crutch of strict doctrine, left me feeling like I was “making it all up.” I could not cling to the God-images of my tradition because they were (and continue to be) simply incompatible with my intellectual life. They were unbelievable, irrational, unconvincing. And so, with his encouragement, I began to ask myself, “Why shouldn’t I pursue these new images of God, even if their source is my own intuition and deep reflection?”

In the end, I abandoned all notions of God-as-literal-reality. But along the way, I came face to face with a thought that continues to scratch at the periphery of my spiritual life: If religion is created, and God-images are the explanatory projections of other human beings’ experiences of the “something-more” of life, then why are ancient myths treated as more valid than modern ones? Why should the modern skeptic (given that she has sufficient interest in the subject, and that she is dissatisfied with a purely secular ideology) not engage in crafting their own conceptions of what it might mean to say “God?”

I must admit that I am sometimes deeply dissatisfied with the answers that many modern atheists provide to questions of existence, meaning, and fulfillment. Some days, I hate being an atheist because it can be a painful and depressing concept to think that this is all there is–this being a purely biological and evolutionary existence in which there is no intrinsic meaning, no intrinsic hope. Only a brief and difficult journey that ends in nothing more than annihilation. It is a crippling thought, at least for me, to think that all that I am, and all that my loved ones are, will simply cease to be. That my wife Mackenzie, with all her personality and internal beauty and intellectual brilliance, will one day vanish into a sea of nonexistence, with no part of her carrying on into something else. It seems like such an unimaginable waste.

But, as I stand in that moment of emotional and existential uncertainty and consider turning back toward belief, again I am confronted with a problem: as much as I may feel unsatisfied with the outcome of a purely atheistic ideological system, I still cannot return to religion because there is simply too much superstitious and unbelievable baggage that accompanies the world of religious explanation. Heaven and hell, angels and demons, sinners and righteous separated out by an all-seeing, all-knowing God-figure–all of it rests totally beyond the realm of the acceptable for me. To believe again in these things would require a complete abandonment of my intellectual life. And that is something I am unwilling to do.

Perhaps the answer to my existential dilemma lies in the willingness to engage in imaginative rethinking of spiritual explanations. God, for me, is not (and very likely can never be again) a literal being, a personal force, or an internal coach which prompts and directs life toward some noble end. And the afterlife, similarly, cannot be reasonably conceived of as a literal place in which the souls of the dead, despite the total cessation of all processes that made them alive, mingle and carry on. Does this mean that God must mean nothing to me? That the afterlife must be conceived of only as a void? Must it be one or the other–accept wholesale either religion or atheism?

I do not think so. Maybe, if one finds the courage to entertain notions that the transcendence we experience as humans is more than psychological mind-tricks, one can find a sense of satisfaction in these difficult questions of existence. Maybe, if I am willing to “make God up” a bit, to look beyond the apparent and obvious and to welcome the sensation of mystery in the universe, I can find a creative outlet for the haunting sense that there must be something more. That life is not simply a terrifying tragedy which sees us wandering through events trying to find their meaning, developing as interesting and potentially beautiful human beings, only to meet our final and total end in eradication.

I do not think that God, as this figure has traditionally been explained, is the answer to our spiritual longing. I do not think that Heaven is the solution to the tragedy of death. But I am willing to entertain the idea that what is now apparent to us, in this scientific age, is not the ultimate answer. I do not think it is mandatory, given our current knowledge, to conclude that we are nothing but genetic machines. That life leads to death, and that beyond death there is nothing whatsoever.

Bruce Ledewitz posits that the biblical authors looked at their world, at their experiences, and labeled the something-more of life “God.” God was their answer to the questions that haunted them. For them as well as for us, “Maybe God just meant they did not know.”