>Man can only see things as he is, and not as they are. <
If this is true, Emile, then we can never know the truth. And even the Bible is not as it is, but only as we see it. And the word of God, would not be the word of God, but only what man thought he was hearing as the word of God. And this is exactly what I believe. That nothing is really knowable, in the eternal irrefutable sense, and so it is just as well to sit on the fence with reverence and wonder and ponder the limitless mysteries of the universe. If there really is a God, and he is good, he will understand this. If there is no God, it doesn't matter much. And if God is evil he will be cruel to us no matter what, so why worship him?
And as for your treatise on professional help, the current psychologists and psychiatrist stand on the shoulders of those who went before. What has gone before is not discarded, usually, but reworked and fitted in to its proper place. It is natural to be enthralled with the new, and I think it is natural to give a new discovery a greater weight than it may, in the full passage of time, come to deserve, but that does not make any discovery meaningless. It merely means that to adequately assess worth sometimes time is needed.
Now I am not a Christian, nor do I adhere to any other major religion for three basic reasons. The first reason is simply that I cannot believe the doctrines of any religion I have so far come into contact with (although I keep meaning to try the Bahai). The second reason is that no religion, with whose dogma I am familiar, practice the tolerance which they preach. The third reason is the vindictiveness of Gods who dominate most religions.
The first reason is the most personal and thus the one least likely to convince anyone else. But take the tenets of Christianity paraphrased from the Bible by Shelly:
"That God made the earth in six days, and there planted a delightful garden, in which he placed the first pair of human beings. In the midst of the garden He planted a tree, whose fruit, although within their reach, they were forbidden to touch. That the Devil, in the shape of a snake, persuaded them to eat of the fruit; in consequence of which God condemned both of them and their posterity yet unborn to satisfy His justice by their eternal misery. That four thousand years later after these events (the human race in the meantime having gone unredeemed to perdition) God engendered with the betrothed wife of a carpenter in Judea (whose virginity was nevertheless uninjured), and begat a son, whose name was Jesus Christ; and who was crucified and died, in order that no more men might be devoted to heel-fire, He bearing the burthen of His Father's displeasure by proxy. The book states in addition, that the soul of whoever disbelieves this sacrifice will be burned with everlasting fire."
It is all too fantastic for me. Might as well tell me that to enter heaven I need to believe in Yggdrasill, Midgard Asgard and Niflheim. Religion is a comfortable way to deal with the finality of death and the strains of life, the propensity of evil in human beings, and the destruction wreaked by natural forces. I do not begrudge anyone their faith, for if it assuages fears it is beneficial even if it does tend to limit the desire for introspection and investigation.
My second reason I feel to be more important than the first. Most religions hold that it is good to "love your neighbor" but this phrase only seems to apply if the neighbor is the same denomination. And some religions (most at one time or another) have even countenanced wholesale slaughter on religious grounds. For this reason I personally think religions are dangerous myths which separate people instead of unifying them. I would never hinder religiosity in people, but I am afraid of it and would not be sorry if I woke up in a world without religion- provided people could find some way to be good without the stricture of religion. And since I am good without religion, and I do not consider myself unique, I must assume this is possible. The exclusiveness of religions is very appealing, and people thrive on feeling themselves right at the expense of others- especially others outside of a group- it is a very primitive thing, but in my opinion a thing which like our stone axes, we should leave behind.
But my second reason may not be all that convincing so that brings me to my favorite argument, and it ties into the idea that all religions are myths. The gods of whom I have read are for the most part cruel and vindictive. They are much too human for me to belive them anything more than human conceptualizations. So I think that human beings, as they graduated from worshipping trees and stones, advanced to a stage where they desired a deity like themselves, only omnipotent and omniscient, as all human beings have at one time imagined or wished their parents to be, and later wished to be themselves. But though man attributed the aforementioned perfections to his Gods, he also gave them his anger, his jealousy, his vindictiveness and prejudices; most imperfect emotions.
If I am wrong I will have plenty of time to contemplate the faults of my argument with intelligent company. I shall spend eternity roasting away with Camus, Russell Shelly, Nietzsche, Voltaire, Sartre, Einstein, and many many others. What conversations we will have. Of course I am not very worried about this because I think it is possible that when I die I will simply cease to exist anymore as the person I am now. My atoms will scatter and travel about the world, and whether they retain a trace of the person that I am now or whether they do not, I am not sure it matters very much. I find it hard to see an attraction in believing anything which condemns the rest of mankind to suffer everlasting torture simply because they do not believe the same as I. It is even harder to imagine a God who would commit his creatures to everlasting torment. For while man is imperfect, and can be forgiven for being malicious, there is no excuse for it in a God. |
