Faith

Richad Dawkins and Jerry Fallwell are very sad little men.

I have come to the realization that I am not an atheist. There is a problem I have with atheists, even when I agree with most of what they are saying. The problem is that they have absolute faith in the fact that they are right. It almost seems that the collective atheists of the world have developed an anti-church. There are firm tenants in which they will not yield. They will mock and ridicule those that have a divinity based faith. Any attempt to suggest that maybe there was some sort of "higher power" is immediately called out as stupid. They get passionately angry with the "idiots/sheep" that believe in a god.  I really don't know if this is true of all atheists, but the ones that I talked to and read about, seemed to say the same things. Like most people I would like to just sit back and take the prescription that the atheist are giving and be an anti-divine, religious hating person/sheep, but I run from them as much as I ran from the firmly regulated protestant background I came from.
 
  (Remember these are my opinions, few of the statements in this blog come from anything I can prove)

I find having faith in a book that was written over several hundred years, a couple of thousand years ago, translated from many different languages/versions, and edited to suit very difficult. (I bet it was even hard to read that last one)  I can't believe that the entire earth flooded for 40 days sparing only one family and two of each kind of animal on a boat. I read once that the "flood story" is an adaptation from the tale of Gilgamesh from Samaria that outdated the earliest bible by over 200years. I don't know if that is true, but aren't there other stories that the bible has borrowed from other older religions. There is also evidence that the virgin birth, which Christians place allot of significance on as a miracle, was actually an ancient typo. Virgin didn't mean never fucked. It meant young unmarried girl.

Ok so I just brought up a couple of examples of why I find the bible, on its own, to be hard to swallow. I don't really have much the time or energy to keep going with that stuff. However I do want to mention that that Jesus guy had some pretty cool stuff to say. When I read the bible I like to try to stick to the red words.

Sometimes when I look at the world around me, I get amazed at all the things that we do not know. I think about the things that we thought we knew, and now know to be false. This world is always changing. Our knowledge is always changing with it. We are an adaptable species. Most of the world’s religions come from early mans quest to explain the phenomenon that surrounded them. It makes perfect sense to think that those things were from a "god" or spirits. I was fortunate to be able to travel the world when I was young and I discovered that the followers of every religion I came across believed in their faith as much as I had in mind as a child. They felt the same sense of reverence and awe when communing with their god or gods. This had a profound impact on me, and caused me to question the beliefs that I held so strongly. Was the uplifted feeling I got some sort of mass evolutionary psychological response? All I know is that I still have that feeling from time to time, even when I was an "atheist" not believing in a divine being.

Today I am an agnostic. I try to question everything that I'm exposed to. I want to find out the truth in everything that I see, and I have come to the realization that I don't know anything. That is what agnosticism means, without knowledge. It means that I don't particularly believe that there is a god, nor do I believe there isn't. I only know I cannot attain this knowledge this day and time. There are times in my life that I know beyond a doubt that there is something greater than me controlling the world. Two of those times were the birth of my daughters. Others are the times I'm with myself outdoors being marveled by the intensity of nature. This is an amazing world that I find hard to be an accident. The sheer size of the universe goes to prove that it is beyond anything we can comprehend at this stage of our evolution. So again we are without knowledge and will remain so for the foreseeable future of man.

This is why I discovered that admitting I was an agnostic has freed me. I am no longer tied to the "moral" constraints of an evangelical protestant rule book, nor am I filled with hate for those that are. I make it a point to not judge people of faith, as I believe it would make me a hypocrite. Hypocrisy is one thing I can't stand. Everyone in this world has a right to believe what they feel will help them get through life. I cannot fault someone for praying for guidance. I at times will surrender my fate to something greater than myself. Those times are liberating to me. All religious dogma aside, Jesus final commandment to his disciples was to love one another, and Bill and Ted's was "Be excellent to each other". Who could argue with that? Today I am free to admit I know nothing. I don't hold out hope of gaining knowledge either, because after all I am insignificant in this massively giant and ancient universe. All I can do is love the ones around me, and tolerate the ones that believe. Who knows they all could be right.

Forever ignorant,
Tommy