Wednesday, September 27, 2006
God. A concept.
So, I don't believe in God, in fact in any Gods.
Am I an atheist? Sort of. I say that logically we can't rule out all Gods, and certainly not that 'God' (used in a loose sense of merely being something beyond our comprehension, and perhaps beyond nature) created everything. I would say I veer between atheism and agnosticism for that reason.
It is funny that all these thousands of years of history have passed and we don't seem to have shaken off the need for a personal God that we can relate to, though. People don't just want to say that as we don't know how we got here God may be an answer; instead, they posit all the rules he gave us and lessons left behind by his spokesmen. That's crazy stuff, without any foundation in reality. And that's where the trouble begins. Because inevitably one man's crazy stuff is held to be absolute, and so is another's - as they can't agree without losing face, or admitting they don't have cast iron certainty, anger and hostility ensue.
But we know all this. Where is this heading?
My take is that, a slow process though it may appear to be, that we are leaving God behind. Within the last 250 years or so, more or less since the Enlightenment took shape, we are shedding faith like a snake and its skin. Atheism was entirely anti-social by the early 19th C when Shelley got expelled for his 'Necessity of Atheism', but now is more or less acceptable in most of the world. There are millions and millions of self-professed agnostics, atheists and non believers, and for every one of them there are several other non-religious types who still keep the framework of faith they inherited but jettison almost every aspect of it. Though the UK is still nominally a Christian country it is truly speaking a secular one, with only about 2% attending church regularly. Fishing is more widespread, or playing the lottery. (And more likely to pay off than Pascal's famous Wager!)
Sure, there are pockets of ardent faith still - the US bible belt, Islamic states, the occasional Catholic nation - but the general trend is easily towards ditching religion and living life here and now instead of waiting for our friend in the sky to lift us up to salvation.
I may not get there with you, but I believe that we as a people have seen the promised land...
Am I an atheist? Sort of. I say that logically we can't rule out all Gods, and certainly not that 'God' (used in a loose sense of merely being something beyond our comprehension, and perhaps beyond nature) created everything. I would say I veer between atheism and agnosticism for that reason.
It is funny that all these thousands of years of history have passed and we don't seem to have shaken off the need for a personal God that we can relate to, though. People don't just want to say that as we don't know how we got here God may be an answer; instead, they posit all the rules he gave us and lessons left behind by his spokesmen. That's crazy stuff, without any foundation in reality. And that's where the trouble begins. Because inevitably one man's crazy stuff is held to be absolute, and so is another's - as they can't agree without losing face, or admitting they don't have cast iron certainty, anger and hostility ensue.
But we know all this. Where is this heading?
My take is that, a slow process though it may appear to be, that we are leaving God behind. Within the last 250 years or so, more or less since the Enlightenment took shape, we are shedding faith like a snake and its skin. Atheism was entirely anti-social by the early 19th C when Shelley got expelled for his 'Necessity of Atheism', but now is more or less acceptable in most of the world. There are millions and millions of self-professed agnostics, atheists and non believers, and for every one of them there are several other non-religious types who still keep the framework of faith they inherited but jettison almost every aspect of it. Though the UK is still nominally a Christian country it is truly speaking a secular one, with only about 2% attending church regularly. Fishing is more widespread, or playing the lottery. (And more likely to pay off than Pascal's famous Wager!)
Sure, there are pockets of ardent faith still - the US bible belt, Islamic states, the occasional Catholic nation - but the general trend is easily towards ditching religion and living life here and now instead of waiting for our friend in the sky to lift us up to salvation.
I may not get there with you, but I believe that we as a people have seen the promised land...
# posted by Cobardon @ 6:27 AM 
