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Why there is something better then religion or atheism I dislike religious people and I always have. Nothing in history has caused so much grief, pain and violence than man's belief in a higher power that watches over him and is responsible for all creation. Just look at the news for a second and you'll notice that there are 5 or 6 major religious conflicts going on at any given time, the biggest one still being the ongoing drama that is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Why do we do it? Why claim that one religion is superior to another and why oppress, tyrannize and murder each other over it? As Richard Dawkins said it: “Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.” Right now you must think that I'm a convinced atheist I suppose. Everyone who dislikes religion automatically becomes an atheist in this society. This is mostly because people think very black-and-white or are to dumb to realize that there is something else out there. I think that the Atheists are just as wrong as all the religions. Don't get me wrong, I like people like Richard Dawkins who feel that religion are a blockade in living our lives to the fullest but what bothers me is that they seem so certain that they got it right. Why do I feel they're both wrong? Read and understand. Proof of God? First, the arguments for the existence of God. There are in fact quite a few as people have been thinking them up since Christianity became dominant. The first traditional argument is this the design one. We still have fallout from this as so-called 'creationists' are trying to get this argument accepted as official science, rather then a religious theory. 1) The argument from Design.If you found a clock and examined the mechanism within it, you would probably think that this intricate mechanism was not the outcome of mere chance, that it had been designed. Now look at the universe; is it possible that such an intricate mechanism, from the orbits of planets round the sun to the cells in your fingernails could all have happened by chance? Surely, this enormously complex mechanism has been designed, and the being that designed it must be God. This is quite a convincing one actually. Just take a look at a natural history documentary and you have to admit that nature seem pretty damn perfect. All things live in harmony and balance and its only us who seem capable of disrupting this balance. That's also where the argument goes awry. If we are capable if disrupting the perfect balance that God has apparently created then why aren't we stopped? Doesn't our destructive behavior in the face of God and his creation make a mockery of his godhood itself? 2) The ontological argument God is the perfect being. As He is most perfect, He must have all perfections. If God lacked existence He would not be perfect, as He is perfect he must exist. This is rubbish. It starts with the assumption that he exists and so it ceases to be an argument for his existence. Its like claiming you know when a show starts on TV because you have already watched it. Utter nonsense. 3) The cosmological argument (God as "First cause")Everything that exists has a cause. However, there must at some time have been a cause prior to all other causes. This 'prime mover' or first cause is necessary to explain existence. This first cause is God. This could well be convincing back in the 17th century but now we have scientific existence of the forming of the universe and this planet, which took many thousands of years. God was either the most patient deity who ever existed or this argument is completely outdated.
There is other philosophical evidence put forward by various famous philosophers. Immanuel Kant attempted to show how philosophy could prove the existence of God. Unfortunately, for him his previous work showed that we could not know reality directly as thing-in-itself. What is real in itself is beyond our experience. Even if God exists, we can not know God as he really is. In this matter, he could do little but contradict himself. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel thought that the God of religion was an intuition of Absolute Spirit or Geist. Hegel's Geist is not like the transcendent (outside of our consciousness) God of traditional Christianity. This appealed to me for a moment because its a lot like the idea of the ascended ancient beings from Stargate. However, then I remembered that was just a science fiction show and I shouldn't let that influence anything. The main problem with Hegel's geist theory is that there is no way it can ever be proven. The idea of God has also been dismissed quite a few times. Marx and Feuerbach for instance saw God as nothing more but a projection of the human mind. In other words, God is an invention of man. Marx even went as far to say that God was a way of the upper class to make the oppressed accept their lot in life. "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of men, is a demand for their real happiness. The call to abandon their illusions about their condition is a call to abandon a condition which requires illusions." -Karl Marx- Probably the most outrageous theory was created by the sometimes mentally unstable Friedrich Nietzsche. "Have you not heard the madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place and cried incessantly, 'I seek God!, I seek God!' ... Why, did he get lost? Said one. Did he lose his way like a child? Said another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? Or emigrated?... The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his glances. "'Whither is God'? He cried. 'I shall tell you. We have killed him - you and I. All of us are his murderers...'" "...the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they to were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke and went out. 'I came too early,' he said then; 'my time has not come yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering -it has not yet reached the ears of man." Nietzsche is not being a all out atheist here. He is saying that there might once indeed have been a God but that that God only existed as long as we remained un aware that he was in fact our own creation. Once we realized that, he ceased to exist. We, in essence, killed him. There are also quite a lot less serious arguments, some of which are quite funny and others which make no sense at all. For a complete list of God-evidence with a humoristic twist go here: http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/GodProof.htm Whether God was the creation of man or we were the creation of him, most philosophers seem to think at some point he did exist, being manifested in the 'world spirit' or as a way to oppress the masses. The existence of God has been a certainty for so long that we should wonder, how much did we NEED him to exist? The idea of Atheism The idea of Atheism is that there are either strong doubts about the existence of God or being absolutely positive that God doesn't exist, this depends on whether you're a weak or strong atheist. Their evidence comes from the simply idea that there is simply no more evidence for Jehovah than there is for Zeus. Christians find no reason to believe that Zeus exists, so they do not believe in him. For the same reason, atheists do not believe in Jehova. God himself is more than welcome to share an honest conversation with us. Until he does, atheists have no reason to trust that anyone is a reliable spokesman for any god. Atheists also believe there is no such thing as heaven or hell for that matter. Life is what you make of it and it is silly to believe that this life is just a period to test if we are worthy to enter heaven. The funny thing about Atheism is that they don't offer true evidence as the religious believers have done. They are content in simply offering their theory and explain their views to all who are interested. There is no philosophical or empirical evidence at all. They don't feel they need it.
Why everybody is wrong. My main gripe with both atheism and religion is that it apparently creates an awful lot of certainty. Both parties are certain they got it right and that leads to both arrogance and a loss of honesty. It leads to excesses like the CNN debate about atheism with nothing but religious fanatics and to the ridiculous statistic that atheists are considered the most dangerous citizens of the United states. Being certain about your beliefs can be dangerous, whether these beliefs are in a God or in the lack of one. I think its much healthier to have a good dose of skepticism and doubts. The theory of agnosticism is one based on those things. Depending on whether you're a weak or a strong agnostic you have doubts about a lot of things in the world. I think this is a much fairer theory that either atheism or religion as it openly admits that we don't know whether or not there is a God. It can go either way. As you could read in the God proof section, we probably have had need for God to exist, especially in the dark times of history. That being said, right now I think we can use a good portion of humility and admit that its possible that we may simply not know. That's why I became a strong believer in agnosticism as opposed to becoming an atheist. I'm only human and I simply don't know the secrets of the universe and I can't pretend to know everything. Finally, I'd like to put forward something called the Pascal wager. The French mathematician Blaise Pascal (1623-62) put forward an argument that would appeal to agnostics. (An agnostic is someone who believes that it is impossible to prove God's existence.) His argument goes something like this: God either exists or he does not. If we believe in God and he exists, we will be rewarded with eternal bliss in heaven. If we believe in God and he does not exist then at worst all we have forgone is a few sinful pleasures. If we do not believe in God and he does exist we may enjoy a few sinful pleasures, but we may face eternal damnation. If we do not believe in God and he does not exist then our sins will not be punished. Would any rational gambler think that the experience of a few sinful pleasures is worth the risk of eternal damnation? And that's the reason I still go to church once a year, at Christmas.
Agnosticism rules!
Sources: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mathew/intro.html http://www.philosopher.org.uk/god.htm
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