The birth of natural religion

There are many different religious traditions, and they all hold their beliefs regarding the universe, human creatures, the meaning of life, etc., to be more or less correct.

Many of these religious traditions are quite ancient. Even though they presume to be divinely guided, the recipients of revelation, witnesses of miracles, etc., the only evidence they have is the testimony of others, passed on from generation to generation, and anecdotal stories that seem to support their assumptions. 

What if starting today you choose to set aside the old traditions about deities and spirits, and look at the world with these beliefs bracketed or unassumed? Would the gods or God make an appearance at all? Without your former presuppositions, would you find even a hint of the old gods in the world around you? 

This is a challenge to those who have received their beliefs from others.  What do you see if you use your own eyes?

Meaning without God

As an atheist I've been asked how life can have ultimate meaning without God. This is quite a common question. For some of my nonfaith affiliated readers this will seem like a truly bizarre question. Does it suggest that people without faith lead meaningless lives, or at the very least, are simply fooling themselves about the things they find meaningful? The obvious answer is no, of course nonbelievers lead meaningful and fulfilling lives. Whether they're fooling themselves or not is really beside the point because you'd have to have a true ground of meaning outside the individual in order to compare.  The question secretly sneaks God back into the equation for that reason. The atheist believes we create and sustain our own meaning (or the cultural/social meaning we take as our own from our context or the contexts of others). This meaning is tested by experience and reason, shared and shaped by the vicissitudes of life and time.

If believers would take a moment to reflect they'd see they're in a similar situation. When they feel that God ultimately guarantees the meaning of life or whatever, they too are dealing with an idea (no less culturally/socially mediated in most cases). So when they say that God guarantees meaning, the hidden supplement (that indeed must remain hidden) is that the idea of God guarantees meaning. It must have this meaning because believers have no more access to this supposed ground than anyone else. Indeed they take it on faith. The difference between the believer and the unbeliever is that the believer insists his idea has the status of a real object-person whereas the unbeliever recognises her values for what they are, i.e idea(l)s, and may or may not choose to argue why such idea(l)s are reasonable considering X. The believer can also argue about the reasonableness of his position but he has already made the categorical error of confusing idea with object, potential with actual, when really he's in the same boat as the rest of us.

For this reason the question "How can you have ultimate meaning without God" is illegitimate. It's force is only felt by the one who has already made his idea a god.

Yeast Reflection

This is a rather silly reflection, but nevertheless one I found quite fun to entertain.  As I was making my famous home-made pizza dough, I took the yeast out of the refrigerator, as I've done dozens of times before, and sprinkled it over the warm water and sugar solution I had prepared.  It suddenly struck me how amazing this yeast was, having been transported to this home from our previous two houses, covering a period of roughly four years!  Yet it still becomes active under the conditions I prepare ahead of time.  What does this mean?  The yeast has been stored in its jar, completely inactive in the cold temperatures, as lifeless as the jar it was sitting in.  I've heard of much more simple viruses reviving after being frozen in time for 30,000 years.  The virus sat completely lifeless, frozen solid, a matrix of lipids and proteins until suddenly "animated" by being placed in the right conditions.  Doesn't this start to blur the line between the organic and inorganic?  This is precisely the problem some Creationists have with the earliest evolutionary accounts of life: how does life make the jump between inanimate molecules to animate organisms?  What if part of the answer lies within my pizza dough?  What if it's simply a matter of the proper conditions?

Now who wants a slice?  :)

On God

The starting point of our theological investigation is not whether there is a definitive proof for the existence of God (there can be no such empirical proof), but allowing that God exists, what can be definitively said about such a being.  We find, apart from the formal and thoroughly socialized subjective fantasies and wishful thinking of a great many people, that there isn't a hell of a lot.  We find the god of the churches almost undeniably does not exist.  This has been realized in the West for almost 300 years, and this by theologians themselves!  Where it hasn't been realized one continues to find the most powerful illusion at work, propagated by laypeople and theological upstarts, pastors and other parasitical people of "good intention" (at least initially), not to mention a programme of systemic indoctrination in the form of emotive collective music, sermons, and what amounts to religious self-help literature.

The strongest "proof" this God doesn't exist: He hasn't saved the Christians from Christianity.

Father God

The fundamental dogmas of Christianity are realised wishes of the heart; – the essence of Christianity is the essence of human feeling.  Feuerbach

 

I recently read something a friend wrote in which his experience of father was connected to his Christian understanding of God as Father.  This is a recurrent theme in Christian circles.  After a little reflection, however, it should be apparent how mistaken this is, or at least, how much wishful thinking goes into such comparisons.  God is perhaps the worst father that has ever lived.  It does more credit to my friend personally than to any neglectful, absentee father in heaven.  My friend may hold his son's hand when he is scared, but God is nowhere to be found when tragedy strikes.  The sense of God's "presence" that some Christians say they feel during troubling times is of course no more than wishful thinking or a heightened self-consciousness.. They attribute a divine quality to their own human feeling.  This kind of blasphemy from those who call themselves lovers of the truth never ceases to amaze and should have been stamped out with the paradigm shift inaugurated by Kant. 

 

Regarding justifications

When will the justifications not be enough?

It is the case that the answer to the question of innocent suffering is simultaneously the fulfillment of our need for an explanation.

For this reason the justifications will always be enough.  The dissonance thinking animals experience as a result is reinterpreted as faith, real, suffering faith.

This does no honour to the slain whatsoever, but rather reinforces individual ego.   The religion of apology and silent yet suffering fidelity is the religion of Ego justification.

The only proper response is not to justify the very One who supports and reinforces ego, but rather to reject this One as a prosthesis. 

There is no ultimate meaning here.  The suffering of innocents is the necessary consequence of our animal nature.  Looking for answers anywhere other than this sublime (and yes, monstrous) animal is an affront to human being and existence.