Thoughts on Atheism

The fervour behind belief in a God has never been about proving anything; it was never about being right or wrong. Some philosophers confuse faith with a position where we as Christians take against the rest of the world. We as Christians never antagonized the world, instead we are taught to Love against reason: that when an enemy strikes us we should offer him the other cheek, to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. That is what the grace of God has taught us; that the world deserves more than what our justification and reasoning can offer. By accepting the grace of God and the application of the dynamics behind the love of God, we go beyond the reason itself or the burden of responsibility of acting on Logic or Reason.

On Prayer

By praying, we do not try to evade from responsibility, but rather we recognize that there is a choice, and by choosing Love over what our urges as human beings are to react through reason, we transcend ourselves. Most atheists do not understand prayer; it is not a plea for rescue, but rather it is an attitude of spirituality wherein one is in tune with something greater than himself; an idea of perfection that we all aspire to achieve. Self transcendence is what believing in a supreme order is all about. If you would study all the religions in the world, we all learn that they have one similar factor: we all learn to be someone other than what our nature dictates us to be. What then would happen if reason would dictate to act violently against another, would it be evading responsibility to choose not to follow our nature? Would it be laziness to choose not to confront him because we are taught to love our neighbours as ourselves?


God as Irrelevant

Pertaining to the proposition that God cannot exist in such a contemporary time is baseless because what God has taught us is something pertaining to our souls or our inner consciousness. The bible never spoke about solving problems about population growth rather it teaches us that we are accountable to whatever we do in this world, which holds true now and forever. Principles about love, relationships, respecting our elders, about how we live our lives in general are all universal and everlasting. How different would love have been 2000 years ago, to today? If a person comes to me and states that the human need for affection and care is totally different now from before, then I would reconsider my position. But since the bible does not teach about science, sociology, operations management, in all general fields in the world, there is no point into saying that it is not applicable today, because it still is.

The downfall here is that people of today have learned to ignore the principles of the bible; realizing that they do not need to apply it to survive,  which is supposed to be true! We do not need to pray to be able to breathe, nor to consult our spiritual leaders on matters of quantitative methods in management. Rather what my pastors would say concerning those problems are to dig my head into those books and study; to do my part. They would never tell me to fast for 40 days; they would tell me to do what is necessary. Most people confuse religion as being an illusion of comfort; but it is a foolish thing to do nothing but pray. Moses prayed a lot during his time, but without the practical decisions and doing actions himself, he would have gotten nowhere, so with Christ, so with Muhammad, so with all the rest. Faith without action is dead, so says the Gospel of James. To believe in something good is different from doing everything we can to make it real. I refuse to believe that good things come to us effortlessly; we also must do our part to make it possible. So far, miracles for me are the author’s way of magnifying what faith can do. With all reality, faith can only do so much. But to do anything without it, it denies the devotion that we owe to God, that although He can make things possible for us, He chooses not to. The real miracle happens when we do things in accordance to God’s will, and then everything just unfolds because of it.


God and Apathy

Why does God do nothing in these times of great tribulations? Although it is a valid inquiry, the real question underlying everything is this: why would He lift his finger to do anything anyway? A child falls into a ditch, does he sit inside that hole and whine and cry out to his parents for help? No; he does everything in his power to get out of that hole. God comes when we have exhausted every possible action that we can take. God is not a god of small things; he is the God of everything. He does not maintain order; he simply is order, even in chaos. Now I ask all the atheists this: have we exhausted every resource, every possibility, in solving the problems of the world? Have we done EVERY possibility? Have we found the right solutions? As long as man still finds himself in a conundrum, God is there; alive and necessary.

What can we do?

To question the existence of God is a conundrum in itself, because it is really impossible to know whether he exists or not with the rise of scientific knowledge conflicting the historical and sometimes contemporary evidences of a divine power. There are so many things that forces man to naturally deny God. Belief and knowing that it is real are two totally different things, but not necessarily opposite. What atheism does is to disregard that question in itself, and strangely so does all theism.  To dwell on that question could make a person either medically irrational, or severely arrogant, depending on which side you're on. But it is in our nature to drive ourselves crazy with questions we can never answer, right?

I would like to close with a simple proposition: live life the way we ourselves want to. Do not be taken into religion without understanding why it is there in the first place. Do not pray meaningless prayers; and support your faith with action. Job would be the perfect example for us Christians. Unlike others, Job was a man who was disgraced and was allowed a suffering far greater than any man can ever experience. And yet, he never blamed God for his suffering, for in his wisdom he knew that God was not one to intervene when something goes wrong. He just lets it define who we really are, in our hearts, in every aspect in our lives. How else would He know who we really are as persons if he didn’t break us? How else would a man see what’s inside an egg if he didn’t break it open?


If God

I know that God never wanted us to blindly follow him anyway; it is our doubts that give strength to our faith; that when we do great things, it is our attitudes that are put to the test on where we place credit to. It is the things we can never prove that gives believing in God its great value; the greatest challenge of accepting even if we can never know until the very end. Our humanity has so many flaws, and it is those flaws that give light to God’s reality. Karl Marx said it wrong that religion is an illusion that holds us back from being the best that we can be; rather the best that we can be is the illusion. Being perfect is not the goal of humanity rather it is to survive; and only to survive. We do not need to be perfect to survive. Some flawed people go through life so well!

With or without God, we all have the urge to live. And it is up to us where we give the meaning of our existence to: whether we commit it to doing everything ourselves, or to do everything because of God. It is our choice; it is entirely up to us.

(February 20, 2010)