Agnostic Universe

I just received a message from God. It’s the written word of God and carries the same amount of proof as the written word of the Bible. You haven’t heard from God directly so you just have to believe and have faith that it’s true. The truth is so self-evident that you can’t dispute this! If you don’t believe in it then you just don’t have enough faith to recognize the truth when you hear it. It’s such an amazing message that I simply have to repost it on this site to continue spreading the latest message from the true God. The Bible is just a snapshot in time and isn’t the complete story so you have to receive this message into your mind and into your heart to understand what God and the Bible really is. The Bible is causing problems in this world and in the United States and this latest message can help fix it!

The word is spreading and comes from here where I saw it and here where they saw it.

Here is the message so you can more easily read it, understand it, and use it in your life:

Dear Evangelical Christians:

God here.

First, I do not exist. The concept of a 13,700,000,000 year old being, capable of creating the entire universe and its billions of galaxies, monitoring simultaneously the thoughts and actions of the 7 billion human beings on this planet is ludicrous. Grow a brain.

Second, if I did, I would have left you a book a little more consistent, timeless and independently verifiable than the collection of Iron Age Middle Eastern mythology you call the Bible. Hell, I bet you cannot tell me one thing about any of its authors, their credibility or their possible ulterior motives, yet you cite them for the most extraordinary of claims.

Thirdly, when I sent my “son” (whatever that means, given that I am god and do not mate) to Earth, he would have visited the Chinese, Japanese, Europeans, Russians, sub-Saharan Africans, Australian Aboriginals, Mongolians, Polynesians, Micronesians, Indonesians and native Americans, not just a few Jews. He would also have exhibited a knowledge of something outside of the Iron Age Middle East.

Fourthly, I would not spend my time hiding, refusing to give any tangible evidence of my existence, and then punish those who are smart enough to draw the natural conclusion that I do not exist by burning them forever. That would make no sense to me, given that I am the one who withheld evidence of my existence in the first place.

Fifth, I would not care who you do or how you “do it.” I really wouldn’t. This would be of no interest to me, given that I can create universes. Oh, the egos.

Sixth, I would have smited all evangelicals and fundamentalists long before this. You people drive me nuts. You are so small minded and yet you speak with such false authority. Many of you still believe in the talking snake nonsense from Genesis. I would kill all of you for that alone and burn you for an afternoon (burning forever is way too barbaric for me to even contemplate).

Seventh, the whole idea of members of one species on one planet surviving their own physical deaths to “be with me” is utter, mind-numbing nonsense. Grow up. You will die. Get over it. I did. Hell, at least you had a life. I never even existed in the first place.

Eighth, I do not read your minds, or “hear your prayers” as you euphemistically call it. There are 7 billion of you. Even if only 10% prayed once a day, that is 700,000,000 prayers. This works out at 8,000 prayers a second — every second of every day. Meanwhile I have to process the 100,000 of you who die every day between heaven and hell. Dwell on the sheer absurdity of that for a moment.

Finally, the only reason you even consider believing in me is because of where you were born. Had you been born in India, you would likely believe in the Hindu gods, if born in Tibet, you would be a Buddhist. Every culture that has ever existed has had its own god(s) and they always seem to favor that particular culture, its hopes, dreams and prejudices. What, do you think we all exist? If not, why only yours?

Look, let’s be honest with ourselves. There is no god. Believing in me was fine when you thought the World was young, flat and simple. Now we know how enormous, old and complex the Universe is.

Move on — get over me. I did.

God

Praise be to the true words of God!

I was at an event for work that had various speakers. One of the speakers was obviously religious since he mentioned being blessed in general and blessed by God. He always closed his remarks the many times he was on stage with the phrase “God bless you all”. It gave me an opportunity to think about this and what I normally view as an unnecessary public display of a personal religious belief. It also gave me the opportunity to think about the viewpoint that he shouldn’t be allowed to talk like that since this was a person in the government with some amount of power over some of the people in the audience. Does all religious speech cross the line into endorsement and coercion that infringes upon our freedom of religion?

As a recipient of the speeches I didn’t feel like there was any coercion or intent for me to change what I believe. There wasn’t an expectation of participating in his expression of belief or any judgement of what the audience may or may not believe. It wasn’t any different than politicians on TV saying “God bless America”. Everything he said and how he said it sounded like his personal good wishes for us from his viewpoint as a believer including other casual statements about his own beliefs. If I had said “I wish you all well” with the same feeling and inflection then it would have been an equivalent expression without the backdrop of a personal religious belief. It was simply the fact that he was a religious person that his “well wishing” included his God. In that context, I would think it would actually be less meaningful of a wish for us if he left his God out of it since that was his most sincere form of wishing well to others if you knew that was what he believed.

I don’t believe his words were an endorsement or included any type of coercion to agree with his belief. However, I still don’t think he should say those words as a matter of personal choice even though I know I’m in the minority on seeing it as a bad choice. The reason it is a bad choice is that I don’t believe as he does so his expression of belief leads me to think a certain way about his ability to use logic and judgement to make decisions based in reality. I naturally view such devout believers as potentially close-minded to anything that might conflict with their faith-based beliefs. I have less of a desire to follow such a person since they usually place faith above fact when the two conflict.

Interestingly enough, it’s these religious beliefs that makes the religious people in the audience see him as being more worthy of following since he appears to put his trust in what they think is the same faith as their own. Simply using common Christian phrasings really doesn’t tell anyone about what he really thinks about any given topic. I always hear about how clear the Bible is as a moral guide but what does “God bless you” tell you about a person’s views on issues such as abortion, civil unions, birth control, slavery, women’s roles/rights, suicide, death penalties, war, divorce, working on Sunday, etc. etc. etc. A religious person could instantly put the speaker in a better light just because they say the word God regardless of what that person really thinks or does.

The person saying “God bless you” doesn’t harm me or anyone else. It does negatively impact what nonbelievers think of that speaker. That isn’t a big impact currently since we’re in the minority. However, I also think it negatively impacts believers as well since they make positive assumptions about the speaker that are based on faith and have no relation to how that person really thinks or acts. This happens far too often when faith is viewed as more important than facts when the two are in conflict. Add this to the list of the many ways that religion and a reliance on faith does not help you in your life. Faith leads people to follow others based upon faith instead of reality. That’s a potentially dangerous reason to follow another human without question or critical thought of your own. Even if you are religious, please don’t do anything based on faith alone!

I wrote about the “Jesus First” theme prevalent in my brother’s wedding at his Grace Bible Church (whatever that is) and now I want to get into some specifics where that authority was used to promote the church leadership as the master over their lives and thoughts. This is another reason that even if there was an intelligent creator then I definitely wouldn’t believe in the structure and authority of select individuals as the speakers of that god to tell me what god thinks I should do and think. If there is a god interested in me and my actions then it can tell me itself. I haven’t heard any actual words from god so far.

The simple examples of “Pastor Knows Best” was during the reception being held in a recreation building on church property. They weren’t allowed a champagne toast because alcohol wasn’t allowed even though I’ve heard a story about Jesus turning water into wine. They had to get a special exception to have their first dance there because dancing wasn’t allowed since apparently Jesus wasn’t much of a dancer back in the day. All of the music played for the entire reception had to be approved by the pastor for style and lyrical content. They actually approved a song from Harry Potter because it lacked lyrics. Apparently Jesus is big on censorship and the pastor knows his taste in music.

These were the things I heard of in my few days in town and I’m sure during the premarital counseling and wedding planning there were many more examples of the pastor dictating what my brother could and couldn’t do for his wedding before their god. The irony I see in all of this is that my brother has been a long time member of the congregation, taught youth groups there, and has done many things for the church since joining them. However, he’s not trusted to do the right thing at his own wedding and the pastor felt the need to run the entire show all the way down to the reception outside of the religious ceremony.

The issue I made reference to in my previous post was a practical thing my brother and his bride-to-be did a few weeks before the wedding that could have destroyed the wedding itself. She just started a job very close to my brother’s apartment so she moved in with him early to drastically shorten her commute. They’re religious and I don’t know or care about their business but for all I know they slept apart at night even though they were under the same roof. I wouldn’t be surprised either way. Regardless, the best man found out about this and told my brother he needed to inform the pastor of this living arrangement to get right with Jesus or he was going to tell the pastor himself. Apparently my brother was just going to keep it quiet to avoid a potential disruption to the church wedding they had been planning. My mother was one of the people telling the best man that the wedding was about the bride and groom and he should leave it alone. That is when he said “No, this day is about Jesus and doing everything right for Jesus is more important than the bride and groom.” He would have tried to derail the wedding because he thought something wasn’t being done right for Jesus.

In the end, my brother was forced to tell the pastor and they had some extra counseling or prayers or something that made it all better. This was another moment where I would have had enough of “their” nonsense and just done what I felt was right. If my brother and the rest of my family want to worship a god then I wish they’d just do it without any of the meddling middle men I saw that weekend. All those other people did was cause problems, confusion, distress, and worry for brother, his wife, and the rest of the family by constantly telling them they’re not doing it “right”. It was all completely unnecessary and didn’t make them better or worse members of that church and in the end I believe it had no impact on what they’re becoming as a couple. If they had done everything the way they had wanted with a champagne toast, dancing, and whatever music the bride wanted it wouldn’t have made them less Christian. If they had openly moved in together earlier then they would still be the same people they are today. They’re a man and woman that have vowed to go through life as partners and they even vow to follow their god while doing it. They are together now despite the church and their nonsense.

I’m glad my wife and I didn’t have any of that nonsense and we don’t have anyone that can tell us we’re not doing it right. That is the freedom you get with thinking for yourself and not blindly following a religion. The religious and their churches can try to tell us we’re not doing it right but we’re not listening. In the end we’d just be who we are and they’d still just be nosy neighbors more focused on my household because they probably don’t want to face their own problems. When it comes to how I should live and love my wife and children… I know best.

We were raised Catholic with a Methodist dad and as that dropped off for our mom we all found our own paths for belief. I chose critical thought and higher standards for truth that led me to acknowledge all that I do not know. I see an obvious truth that humanity is clueless and making it all up in every fiction we call religion. My brother was pulled in by a friend at a young age to a local Grace Bible Church. All I can figure out about these churches is they say they are non-denominational followers of the “true” words of the Bible. I can’t figure out where these churches came from or how they might be affiliated but I see a lot of them on the web. Is this what the evangelical movement looks like? Grace Bible churches look like independent local churches but they share the Grace name and have common themes on their websites. If there’s an organization behind it all it appears to be hidden from the casual observer, which in my mind makes it seem a little sinister in purpose.

I had 2 days exposure to this place for the wedding rehearsal and actual wedding. I hadn’t been to a church in probably a decade and it was nice to see what I’m missing because it scares me to know people expose themselves to this indoctrination once a week. Unfortunately my parents have joined this church as well and my mom volunteers many times a week in support of it. I shouldn’t be so critical since they did leave me alone and never noticed I only bow my head out of respect to my family and never offered a single prayer. On the face of it all it seems all very innocent with good intentions. However, I see that their focus is building out their flock and controlling them for good or bad. I have no problem with good intentions but overall I think flocks of sheep are a very bad concept.

The pastor is a good looking younger man with a wife and young children. He’s charismatic and always in a calm control over everything around him. He’s the leader I’d pick to serve as my example and spread the message I was trying to sell, particularly if the message needed to be sold to be accepted. I’ll save some of the other details of the wedding for other posts but I want to focus on one particular message or theme that permeated the weekend. That message was that we have no meaning, purpose, or value without Jesus.

The central point of the wedding was a speech by the pastor saying the wife was there to serve the leadership of the couple, which is the man. She is there to help him as he serves Jesus. They will be divorced and have nothing but misery and continued sin without their marriage being about and for Jesus. Everyone is sinners and they will produce little sinners and the only way for us to overcome our evil ways is to follow Jesus. I still don’t understand how my mom follows this church since there’s a riggid structure of Jesus first, men second, and women are at the bottom in importance. They definitely don’t preach equality.

I’ll dig into this deeper in another post to keep this short but this structure was highlighted by a comment made by the best man. He’s one of the sheep in this church along with my brother. There was an “issue” and he was told by a few people that this day was about the bride and groom so why couldn’t he just leave it alone since it was their day. He followed the party line and said “No, this day is about Jesus and doing everything right for Jesus is more important than the bride and groom.” He would have tried to derail the wedding because he thought something wasn’t being done right for Jesus.

This is what I see as being very dangerous. Jesus rules and commands. The pastor speaks for Jesus. Members of the congregation parrot this and then the pastor is now in full control of everyone to blindly follow the rules and commands of the pastor as being unquestionable because they are synonymous with a unquestionable god. This all had a big impact on my brother’s wedding even though he is one of their faithful. In the end, he and his new wife aren’t living a life of love and happiness for each other because of religion. If they do, they are doing it despite the religious structure around them that is obviously trying to control their actions down to their very thoughts. They are not trusted to love each other naturally and I see the pastor and the church will always put their noses in their business as long as they let them.

I don’t need anyone else to tell us how my wife and I should love each other and our children. We can look for examples, guidance, and even use non-religious mentors or counselors to help us be a better couple but I’m very grateful that we’re in full control of our marriage. I can’t imagine putting myself into a setting where my neighbor gets to tell us that our living right isn’t right enough and I need to do it differently because they know Jesus better than I do when NONE of them know any of these things. All they are doing is imposing their own opinions on others using the authority of an imagined god.

My mother forwarded yet another religious spam email. This one was titled Billy Graham’s Prayer For Our Nation and ends with a call for a return to “One Nation Under God”. According to Snopes it isn’t from Billy Graham but that doesn’t really matter much regarding the intent of the email. The general text of the email sent to me is in that Snopes article if you’re interested.

Taken on face value as simply human values what does most of these items have to do with anything written in the Bible and a supposed dictated word of God? Does that book really give an exact recipe for a Christian-only government and such things as the nuances between a government sponsored form of charity and an overly dependent welfare system that is detrimental to society? The Bible does say certain things are punishable by death (usually a stoning) so how is the killing of an abortionist contrary to the general morality of the Bible? I do believe in the wisdom and values of the forefathers of this country but they didn’t create One Nation Under God as this email implied. Kenneth Davis had a good article on CNN recently about this. One Nation is inclusive and Under God is exclusionary so this phrase never made any sense to me.

Look at this fantasy art piece I came across while searching for information about One Nation Under God. I found this to be hilarious because the artist honestly believes in Jesus as the origin of our government and the Constitution for the people even though the Constitution has zero mentions of God, Jesus, or any creator reigning over “We The People”. It is a great visual depiction of what a Christian nation would be if one existed because the Constitution would have dictated the leadership of God and Jesus over the People as central to the government with a setup for worship and fidelity to that specific structure. This contrasts to the actual setup we have of a self-governing organization of checks and balances that were an attempt to protect individual liberties and societal justice instead of defining an exact and unchanging morality dictated by a religious leadership under the direction of One Nation under One God and following the literal word of the Bible as the rule of law.

Oh well, most people get these emails and just say it sounds good and it matches with the feel-good things they think they believe. This is cotton candy for the mind that reinforces “God is good, humans are evil, and we should listen to the God-believing humans to tell us how to think and what we should do with our resources.” The same goes true for politics and I wish people wouldn’t consider themselves Republicans or Democrats even if politicians are doing it. We should actually think for ourselves without labels while expecting the same from our political leaders. If we really had One Nation Under God in practice we could have just one political party because the religious right version of the Republican Party would be the only one true party needed under God.

Instead, since we are in practice a country of E Pluribus Unum (Out of Many, One) then we really should have more choices and parties representing our political beliefs and all of the variations in the reality of humanity. It seems like we’ve been reduced down to a country of Out of Two, One with one side of that really pushing One Nation Under God to kick out the views of the other half of the two.

Check out this article on Apple causes ‘religious’ reaction in brains of fans, say neuroscientists

Some atheists say religion is a nonsense that people should stop. I agree that the religions are confusing, inconsistent, and obviously false in my opinion. Some people get some good out of them and some get some very bad out of them. But even if these religions died off like the old mythologies of the Egyptians, Norse, or Greek it seems to me that people are neurologically wired to believe in “something”. Looking at this article about the Apple brand it’s not surprising that some people react the same way to a product like the iPhone as they do to Jesus. An iPhone can help you and give you some comfort and enjoyment in reality but some people extrapolate those feelings into something bigger and false. I think we do take something as simple as a thing or idea and mentally and emotionally blow it up into something it isn’t and it’s just our mind playing tricks on us in a way we may not completely control. I tend to be more literal minded so just as I had no problem moving from an iPhone to an Android phone I have no problem with moving away from the Jesus of my childhood to the honest truth of being an unknowing agnostic. (Yes, the dogmatic atheist steps in and says that since I lack theism I should call myself atheist instead… more on that later but I’ll remind folks that I am a weak atheist and strong agnostic on the scales of belief and knowledge)

And then there’s these videos I recommend concerning the origin of religion in the human brain. This explains to me why religion keeps going despite the obviously fallacy of them to those of us that don’t believe in any of them. These are from The Neurological Origins Of Religious Belief on Big Think if you want to read the accompanying article.

The Brain Creates Religion

Humans and Myth-making

The article concludes with:

If religiosity operates in specific parts and chemicals of the brain, then its origins might be written in the blueprints of life, our genes. To this point, research by geneticist Dean Hamer at the NIH finds God in a single gene–Vesicular Monoamine transporter 2 (VMAT2). Hamer identifies this as the “God gene,” a leading gene among many others written into our genetic code that predisposes people to religiosity. A genetic origin point of religiosity might stem from an evolutionary drive toward inclusion. In this way, learning a society’s religion, like learning its language, is hard-wired into humans through inherited genes.

I think it helps to understand the mechanics of religious belief in navigating a world that has an awful lot of it. It doesn’t prove the truthfulness of the belief in any sense, but it is important to know that when we talk about our beliefs or non-beliefs and the beliefs held by others you may not be able to do anything about what everyone else believes since there is something fundamentally neurological and possibly even genetic in their faith.

Considering that fact, have I replaced my own religious belief with agnosticism and my belief that we are just simple beings that really don’t know? Have the hardcore atheists that claim they haven’t adopted a dogma or faith in an absolute non-belief in gods or creation actually replaced their religious inclinations with atheism? Some atheists have argued with me over the definitions of atheism and agnosticism and have attacked the notion of agnosticism as flawed and useless. I sometimes wonder if they actual do have a dogmatic belief in atheism that includes as a part of the unwritten doctrine that atheistic doctrine should be denied as dogma. I’m just one person believing what I believe but it does appear to be dogma when some atheists tell me I shouldn’t call myself agnostic and that basically I’m not “doing atheism correctly” in the same way they attack theists for believing in their religions. Perhaps they’re just similarly wired to a belief and a faith even if it’s a faith that there definitely are no gods or creation. (Yes, the dogmatic atheist steps in and points out they have a lack of belief and a lack of faith and they’re certain of all of this because of their belief that there definitely is no proof for the truth of religions including those we haven’t invented or discovered yet)

Mother’s Day has me thinking about my mother. When my daughter was diagnosed with clinical depression my mom revealed that she also struggles with depression and has been on medication to treat it for a long time. She says the drugs help and will help our daughter but she also says God helps her cope with it all. I don’t usually focus on my family in this blog but I do bring some of this agnosticism to my talks and emails with my mother. There’s a good natured back and forth between us on belief. Recently I sent her Julia Sweeney’s excellent DVD Letting Go Of God. She responded by sending me The Real Face of Jesus on DVD and we had some good emails back and forth about that. The Shroud of Turin is still a big mystery but so are other things like the pyramids and Stonehenge. The shroud is a thought provoking proof of the possibility of Jesus, but I don’t see it as proof of resurrection or the leap of faith that Jesus was the son of God and all of that proving that God exists and created the universe.

My mother believes it and believes God is there to help her through her troubles and through the darkness of her mind that depression brings. This makes me rethink my approach to her religious belief. Some of my e-mails with her were starting to go on the attack as far as saying it’s really stupid and useless to believe in religion and hold on to those ideas. My atheistic outlook to Christianity leads me to not simply let it go. But she does admit that there are still more questions than answers to religion and she gets more out of her church community and the human fellowship they give her than she gets from the comfort of the prayers and personal relationship she thinks she has with God and Jesus.

So if there is good to be had in her life with religion then who am I to try to break that? Who am I to say that what she feels works for her doesn’t “really” work and she should stop believing it? I do think that religion is all in the mind but should we try to eradicate it completely from the human psyche when it’s a set of thoughts and beliefs that appears to help some people. Some people use an external framework like religion to define their lives, their definitions of right/wrong and good/bad, and their motivations for living. They’re just a set of thoughts and beliefs regardless of their truth. I’m using the word “thoughts” instead of saying she follows the Bible because my mom’s life matches an American Christian society view of living and not the exact written words of the Bible. If you really tried to codify modern Christianity you would have a whole new law book that doesn’t match the Constitution or the Bible. Believers including my Mom are following their own evolving and collective view of what “Christian” belief really is. How they believe is really about how they follow a crowd and conform to a different kind of community or family than just conformance to our family and country’s citizenry. It’s just another facet to what makes up my mom’s way of life that I don’t personally share in. She doesn’t try to change how I live my life without the Christian God so I think I should let her live her life with that belief if it does help her live it.

I’ve never sought treatment for depression for myself. I probably have it to a certain extent looking at my mother and my daughter. But I don’t need the comfort of God and Heaven to motivate me through life and the darkness that sometimes invades my mind. I value truth and believe that religion is fantasy just like Santa Claus or any other myths I’ve discussed in this blog. Once I had shed the external framework of religion and entirely thought for myself I didn’t find it difficult to decide what was right and wrong. I can also determine what is really good and bad in the world using the framework of the society we all fall under. I think I’m a better citizen than many modern Christians because religion often tries to make black and white out of a grey and nuanced existence. However, there are plenty of theists that operate in society just like I do and our only difference is they believe in a god and I don’t. I’m not sure I really care enough to say religion should be gone just because it’s false. I just want the freedom to not believe to be as protected and accepted in the world as the freedom to believe. That will allow my mom to have God support her through her depression and for me to not bother with such nonsense as I deal with things in my own life. I think we’re both better people with that arrangement.

It’s interesting that god believers take a modern view of the mysteries of the universe and honestly see a connection backwards to the old mythologies of our ancestors. Not only does it take a leap of faith to do this, but it also takes another amazing leap of imagination to equate the complexities of the universe to a single uncaused creator being.

A commenter brought up the fine-tuned universe argument. This reminds me of a joke about how a puddle was sitting in a pothole musing about how perfectly the pothole fit its form and that it MUST have been created just for it. I’m just an average person and not a physicist so I’ll leave it to those types of experts to solve such issues. However, I do see the plausibility of multiverses as well as the simple argument of imperfection as counters to the fine-tuned argument. If the universe were designed and fine-tuned for human life then wouldn’t this be the best possible universe and planet for our existence? We live in a messy and hostile environment and I see no signs of perfection in the design of our universe or our own fragile bodies. I see the fine-tuning argument as not much different than the intelligent design argument. In either case an infinite number of universes with an infinite amount of time could allow for us to develop without intelligent cause. To be honest though, wouldn’t such conditions also allow for the existence of a “god” of some finite amount of intellect and power to actually create a universe such as ours in the grand infinity of it all? A hypothesis like this doesn’t mean it makes sense to believe in such a god on faith alone so my “faith” simply tells me I really don’t know the answer.

The commenter admits that these types of arguments don’t specifically point to the Christian deity, but then takes the leap of faith to say logic dictates that the possibility of God must be the only true answer. This is where the leap of faith becomes the massive leap of imagination on top of it to say that we not only know such a deity exists but that we have any notion of the true nature of that deity and its relationship to us. Instead of starting from the past and connecting it to modern views, can you do the reverse as I try to think about it?

Pretend for a moment that we didn’t inherit the baggage of specific mythologies from our imaginative ancestors. Would modern scientists take all of the complexities of our universe and come up with the hypothesis that if this one universe had a beginning then it may have been caused by an intellect instead of force and chance? Perhaps there would be a scientist that would imagine such a hypothesis. But then what would be the hypothesis concerning the intellect that created this universe? Where is or was that intellect and what was the cause for it to exist? If infinite space and time cause a singular being to exist by force and chance then which hypothesis is the most likely to happen by chance: this one universe or a god that would create this universe? This goes back to my previous post Amazing Powers of the Unknown.

I don’t believe in gods and that is atheism. My agnosticism tells me that the metaphysical, what is beyond this physical realm, is unknown or unknowable. A creator or god would be something metaphysical and I believe is something that is unknown and possibly unknowable. I see no reason to take a leap of faith to believe there was a creator for this universe. Even if infinite space and time could unnecessarily spawn an intelligent creator for our universe instead of just spawn our universe, then I still don’t see the need to take the great leaps of imagination needed to say we know anything about such a creator. The gods have all been created in our own image and not the other way around as most manipulative believers would tell you. In my experience, such believers either want to justify their belief by having me concur or they have other motivations to manipulate those beliefs to support other human causes that often center on money and power. If there really is a creator and it’s still alive today, I’m sure it’d appreciate my honesty concerning its existence over any believer’s claims of specific knowledge about such a creator’s thoughts, motives, and desires. It definitely takes imagination and arrogance to claim you know there is god and what god actually thinks. Are you that arrogant?

I can look at the majesty, power, and wonder of our entire universe and see the need to ask why. Religious people (theists) say they have a very simple answer to this and it is God. They believe in God as a single all-powerful intellect that exists without cause yet amazingly possesses the attributes of thought and power sufficient to create this mysterious mess of a universe. Which one of these two things is more likely to exist without intelligent cause and design:

1. A god with amazing intellect and power capable of creating this universe with our own individual awareness and thoughts for the sole purpose of loving and worshipping that god
2. An environment and existence that is without intelligent cause and design that’s vast enough to develop and evolve our physical bodies with awareness and thought through natural processes over billions of years in one small speck of this grand lab we call the universe

If you think our simple bodies and minds must have a God to create them then what does that say about God itself which is much more complicated than us? It is obvious to me that God is just an invention of our more primitive ancestors. They imagined that since they could create simple things then a greater intellect must have created more complicated things like us. They extrapolated what they knew to incorrectly bridge the gaps for what they couldn’t possibly know. Why do people trust their knowledge about the universe over any scientists working today?

The mythological gods were human forms possessing more power than us. The Judeo-Christian God is just a more powerful singular version of these gods possessing the attributes of something so powerful and beyond us that it is now claimed to be beyond questioning. I can’t believe in such a God for so many reasons including our inability to know or understand such a being which means you can’t claim to define or know God. The existence of such a being with the attributes of a creator without origin makes no sense.

My knowledge tells me that all gods exist only in belief and faith without any real evidence showing gods are the reason for existence. I can’t believe such things without knowledge and so I cannot be a theist. I’m without theism and am by definition an atheist. Not believing isn’t everything to me since actual knowledge about the origin and root causes of our existence are important to me. I would like to know why all of this exists. The answer may only be natural processes and the theory of multiple big bangs may mean that matter itself is infinitely old and the universe infinitely large. How could a singular uncaused intellect outside of the universe be the cause of such a universe? It is not necessary and makes no sense.

If I have belief, faith, and feeling concerning all of this it is telling me in my core that the religions of mankind are false. I have stood on the shores of Oahu in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and felt the vastness and power of the ocean around me and felt so very small. I have walked through Carlsbad Caverns and felt the weight of the earth over my head and under my feet and felt so very small. I have stood on top of Pike’s Peak and looked out at the land the farthest and highest I have ever seen and felt so very small. I have looked up at the clear unspoiled night sky and the vast multitude of stars and galaxies and have felt so very small and insignificant in the face of the amazing power of the entire universe that exists outside of my simple little mind. I have considered the amount of knowledge humanity has collected over our short existence and imagined how insignificant it is compared to the potential knowledge of true omniscience. I have left my mind and heart open to the truth concerning the true nature of existence and I continously feel the amazing powers of the unknown.

Why does the universe exist? I can tell you what I think makes the most sense concerning the evolution of our physical existence and that the universe may have always existed. We can still look at it all in wonder and ask why but I can honestly say that I don’t really know why. I believe that none of us know and anyone claiming to know a god is faking it for some human motivation that you can figure out. But when it comes to the universe, isn’t the universe itself amazing enough?

This is the perfect cartoon for this post and for this topic that comes up so often. The latin root of agnostic as a noun means “without knowledge”, “unknown”, or “unknowable” and is so often criticized as meaning “fence sitter” or “undecided” regarding theistic beliefs. Perhaps the better word for undecided would be non-theist or just simply undecided. Continues below the cartoon…

The word agnostic as an adjective obviously applies to both theist and atheist as the cartoon demonstrates since nobody knows. Ask most theists and they’ll tell you knowledge isn’t important since they have belief and faith to support it. I don’t know of any theists that go around calling themselves agnostic theist, agnostic Christian, or agnostic since they’re defined by their belief and not their knowledge. There are other theists that might claim they know their god exists based on the Christian Bible or some other claimed proof and they also wouldn’t call themselves agnostic or even Gnostic since that’s usually associated with a specific Christian sect that claims special knowledge of their God. If you currently call yourself agnostic then you’re not in that theism pool. Even if you may be a theist some day you’re currently lacking theism, right? Guess what, that makes you an a-theist regarding theistic belief!

Atheist means “without theistic belief” and is a lack of such beliefs. Some atheists claim it is synonymous with antitheist or an active opposition to theism, but the root meaning of the word itself doesn’t support that definition so it is simply a lack of theistic beliefs. Atheist also doesn’t make a statement concerning knowledge. Unless you have absolute proof for the origin of the universe and proveable knowledge that there is no cause or reason for existence of the universe and possibly even us humans then you can’t claim to have knowledge counter to what theists believe. Since none of us know then the most defendable viewpoint should be agnostic atheist or atheistic agnostic depending on where you choose to put the noun concerning belief and knowledge.

I consider myself an atheistic agnostic since I see much more importance in knowledge over belief. I don’t see the use of telling a theist that I just don’t believe them. When I come across a Christian or some other religious person I want to use a label that means something to me. If they say they believe in god X and I should also believe as they do then I don’t want to just say I’m atheist. All atheist really means is that I don’t believe what they believe. The reaction from the believer is to see me as a doubter that is being contrary to the truth that is perfectly obvious to them.

I prefer to start the knowledge sharing with theists from the standpoint that we don’t know and the answer I have for many of their questions is “unknown”. Unknown doesn’t mean their beliefs are correct, justifiable, or useful in any way but by saying they don’t know it highlights that the burden of proof and requirement of actual knowledge is on the theists. Apparently the agnostic noun also causes arguments with many atheists as well. I’m fine with that since theistic belief is unimportant to me other than to say I’m also atheist and don’t believe in gods.

I’m not sure why some self-identified atheists feel the need to say I’m not a “true” atheist by using the agnostic label without the atheist label. I know I’m not saying anything about belief just calling myself agnostic. It’s entirely intentional since belief isn’t important in the face of knowledge. I’m pointing out the limits to the finite and small amount of knowledge humans actually possess concerning the universe, existence, and what may or may not be the root cause or a reason for any of this if it hasn’t just always existed like this. The funny thing is that most atheists don’t attack theistic belief solely from the validity of just disbelief versus belief and very quickly move to our lack of knowledge as the basis for their disbelief and reason theists should stop believing. In the end, can’t we all agree that knowledge is the most important thing? It’s what makes agnosticism a more useful viewpoint for me than just embracing atheism.