Thursday, January 12, 2012

THE HEATHEN POINT OF VIEW

Am I an Atheist? Call me whatever you like, though I intensely disdain labels applied to me of any sort. I don't fit into any boxes designed to separate people from one another for handy reference. I'll say this about that: Many people are raised Episcopalian or Methodist or Catholic or Buddhist or Republican or civic-minded or, essentially, encouraged to believe whatever their ancestors lived by. In that context my parents didn't actually "raise" me to believe anything. They allowed me to grow up. They exposed me to a world of possibilities and, basically, said, "What do you make of all that?"

In all I have seen, heard and thought during my life the only reason I have ever uncovered to think there is some presence in the Universe which intentionally created Man and is monitoring or mindful of his activity is the stories dreamed up by human beings going back thousands of years -- human beings who knew only a fraction of what I know about the dynamics of matter and the Universe at large. I never believe ANYTHING on the basis of what other people think. I have to examine the possibilities from scratch and make a determination about what I believe is most likely to be true. In so doing, I find no cause to think there might be a god such as superstitious people use to explain reality.

I have written thousands of words on this subject and am not at all bashful about full frontal confrontation over the matter such as I once had in a hallway with Jerry Falwell when I lived in Colorado Springs where Focus on the Family is headquartered.

Further to the subject...About 75% of the women near my age who live within dating distance of me have something in their profile about "loving the Lord" or "a good Christian man," which prevents them from knowing me. They will be happier people for never having made my acquaintance. I do not wish to bring misery into anyone's life and the primary reason belief in God is so embraceable is that it facilitates happiness. The TRUTH is ugly, scary, intimidating and oppressive. That is why the beautiful lie persists.

Someone asked me just last week how I thought so many millions of people could believe something that is a lie. I told them about the weathered billboard on the outskirts of Cordele, Georgia, sponsored by a consortium of religeous organizatons, which reads: A WORLD AT PRAYER IS A WORLD AT PEACE. It has been sitting there without controversy for decades. The TRUTH is that the world has been praying since the dawn of civilization. The TRUTH is that the world has been at war for the entire length of time it has been praying, and the vast preponderance of wars have been inspired and nurtured by the issue of whose god is greater, including the one we are fighting with Muslims right now. The TRUTH is that A WORLD AT PRAYER IS A WORLD AT WAR! But you will never see the TRUTH on a billboard, because, like the women who are looking for a "good Christian man"...nobody wants to hear the truth -- their opinions are shaped by what is required to bring them peace and how they's raised.

For good or bad -- I am a seeker of TRUTH. I do not care where it leads me. I do not care what brands and labels are used to minimize me by people whose opinions are based on primitive rituals, dancing around campfires and chanting slogans. This species has an important challenge before it -- survival! It cannot be accomplished in the same fashion that it was begun. TRUTH must guide it now as TRUTH has dragged it out of the dark ages and the Crusades despite the best efforts of the faithful to cling to notions of ghosts and godly folk.

TRUTH is under no obligation to correspond with what is required for you to "survive". In other words, just because you can only make it through difficulty by believing a particular thing, does not make that particular thing TRUE. The NEED to believe is not a good enough reason for me to believe ANYTHING. I am fascinated by the ugly truth that makes the beautiful lie necessary. I am determined to deal with reality while the world around me has its head buried in the sand and is petrified to look up for fear it will not be able to face the terror of THE TRUTH.

The TRUTH need not be so dark. It can be used to make the future a beautiful thing. If the religeous zealots will desist from interference long enough for science to complete its work on stem cell and DNA research, people will no longer be required to die natural deaths or age. There will be no need for an imaginary hereafter. I do not know where the preachers and the pastors and the parsons and the preists will find jobs when that happens, but the first order of organisms will finally have been achieved -- SURVIVAL and that trumps whatever they are holding in their hand.

Humanity is on a forced march of sorts. Superstition sustained us in our infancy as a species, but now that we have achieved civilization and populated the planet, it's time to get off it or die with it, and in this next chapter of humanity we will require a different fulcrum upon which to balance our beliefs -- we must look for, conscript to our purpose and employ TRUTH about reality...AND WE WILL. Bilbical prophecy about the rapture and Armageddon are only in the cards for us if we insist upon acting out the predictions of Biblical prophecy in order to validate what we wish to believe. But we are NOT required to do so.

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