THE IMPOSSIBLE GOD? Part Four.
The Hardships of Religion and Atheism: Nothing is Easy.
There is a statement many have heard because many have used it. It goes something like this:
“Your beliefs are a crutch- you believe what you do because it makes your life easy”.
The religious say this of Atheists, and vice versa. But this is far from the truth. Both are a belief system which has advantages and disadvantages, but the danger as always is to retreat behind dogma and refuse to think. The thinkers do not find it easy either.
Religions have their own sets of rules which the religious must aspire to live by. These rules can be quite testing as they are mostly fairly self-sacrificial, and they are laid down by an organisation over a period of hundreds of years; mostly to the advantage of the men at the head of the aforesaid organisation. Historically these organisations have destroyed any literature that questions their philosophies, and killed those who deny them as “absolute truths”.
People who subscribe to these religions have a tendency even in these modern times to retreat behind dogma when asked questions which defy the logic of their belief systems, or just get angry and shout. They have the advantage of being able to fall back on arguments which have been refined over centuries.
Just the same however, is the Atheist standpoint. There is dogma to be found here too, based upon logic, but with an understanding that there are still some things that science cannot explain. Atheists tend to share the belief that they are right, as do the religious. But the standpoint of the Atheist is not an easy one either.
There is some comfort to be had in the idea of Heaven; an afterlife; that hardship is part of some Grand Plan, just as there is fear that one is accountable for ones Earthly actions in life. This comfort does not exist for the Atheist. The Atheist tends to believe that you have one life and that’s it. That bad happens purely because of bad people, or the random and chaotic nature of the Universe. Caught in a Tsunami? Then you just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time- either by choice or by chance. It has to happen to somebody- so let us develop a science that can predict it, and lessen the cost of the disaster.
Of course most of the religious understand the random nature of the Universe, but see it as the Creation of a deity with a plan. The Atheist sees the Cosmos as physics, and we; the Human race, have an utterly insignificant place in it. Here is one of the main differences though, for the religious think that we are important.
With this philosophy, the Atheist has something that the religious do not. The Atheist does not regard himself beholden or answerable to a god, but to his fellow man and his or her conscience. There is no fear that he faces divine judgement. Instead, he knows he has to make the best of it in life- for that’s the sum total of his existence. There is no reward for self-sacrifice, for charity and noble acts other than a sense of moral correctness. A duty to others.
Of course, that’s not to say that religious people only do good things for fear of defying God or to gain reward after death. And this shows that your average Human will act for good because they want to.
There is no doubt that for some, Faith and Religion are a crutch. And so is Atheism. The simple fact is, that adhering to any system of belief is a crutch. That is the very nature of belief systems. The hardest thing is to keep an open mind and always be questioning.
“Question with boldness the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.” Thomas Jefferson.