I put up “What’s Going On” there at the top. It’s sort of an assessment of where I am right now as well as a set of links to all the important posts I’ve made since I’ve started. If you’re a new reader, it’s a place to catch up.

I am tired of people trying to convince me that I can logically and rationally come to the conclusion that Christianity (or any other religion) is true. So, quit it.

1. Religion is ultimately a matter of faith. If your religion could be rationally proven, everyone would just join it.  Trying to prove your religion to me means that either you don’t know what, or you think I don’t know that.

2. Most any rational argument for religion has an equally compelling counterargument.

3. I have not decided against religion because I found it illogical or irrational.  I have decided against it because I lacked the spiritual impetus.  I read the Bible, I went to church, I read some apologetics, but I never felt that there was anyone on the other line.  I never felt the presence of God.  Because of that, I felt like I was kiding myself, and if I kept it up, I’d be lying to myself, and I might even convince myself.  I’m not okay with that.

Experience has made it something of a trusim to say that you can neither prove your religion nor can I disprove your religion (no matter what argument I put forth, even if I logically prove the existence of God to be an impossible paradox, you can always say God is the supreme being, so he can be a paradox if he wants to).  So don’t even try.

I’m willing to swallow the logic of the apologetics and believe even when I don’t have all the answers, but I need something spiritual to base that on.  Why does that seem to be so hard to explain to people?  All I’m asking for is a spiritual foundation to build my beliefs on, because that’s really the only possible foundation.  Otherwise, I have a tower built on nothing but self-delusion.

You want to convince me of your religion?  Bring me something genuinely spiritual.

As I’ve said before, I do not deny the existence of God, but there are some things that I do deny. Many of them actually assume that God exists, so what I mean then is that “if there is a God, I deny that he is like x.”

Anyway.

I deny the existence of hell. That an even marginally good god would damn people to eternal punishment and torture for finite sins committed in virtual ignorance is absolutely preposterous. That some people do believe this makes my mind boggle.

I deny the infallibility of the Bible (or any other religious text), of human religious leaders, of religions, and of philosophies. The claim of infallibility is unbelievably arrogant, and reality usually shows the truth.

I deny the existence of Fossil-Hiding God. What I mean by that is that I deny that God would create a world that looked like he didn’t create it as some kind of test of faith. I deny that God would say x, and then purposely hide all evidence of x and in fact plant all kinds of counterevidence against x. “Test us,” my eye.

I deny the existence of any one “chosen people.” I deny an ethnocentric God.

I deny that morality is based on God’s decree. I deny that the only line between moral and immoral is the whim of deity. I deny a moral system that is ultimately based on “because I said so.” That’s elementary school morality. God is certainly better than that, if he indeed exists. And we have the potential to be better than that, and I hardly believe that God simply wants us to behave according to the lowest common denominator. At the very least, it would make God an arbitrary and capricious God, and that takes me to two sub-denials:

I deny arbitrary commandments, i.e., things that are not inherently, intuitively immoral. This is of course a subset of the above denial, because the only thing that makes homosexuality immoral, for example, is “God said so.” Or tea and coffee in Mormonism. Being harmful to people doesn’t naturally equal immoral (otherwise getting in a car would be immoral), and the only thing that would make the Word of Wisdom a moral issue would be the fact that God said do. And I deny that God ever said such a thing.

I deny an arbitrary God. If God exists, he certainly doesn’t predestine some people for heaven and some for hell. That’s cruel capriciousness. Being the supreme being doesn’t mean he can just do whatever he wants, and if it does, then I deny the existence of a God who would just do whatever he wanted even if he could.

That’s all I can think of. There are more nit-picky things I deny, but those are specific religious doctrines that I reject, as opposed to these kinds of overarching universal denials.

Just because I have decided that I am an atheist doesn’t mean I believe in nothing.  It doesn’t mean I am a fanatical devotee of the temple of Science, or that I am some kind of Nihilist.

Atheism isn’t a set of beliefs.  It’s not a positive affirmation of anything. All “atheism” says is that I don’t believe in God.  But I do believe in other things.

I believe in a fundamental unity of the universe, that separateness is an illusion.  Physically, we’re all made of the same stuff anyway, and there’s a cycle as we rotate mater into, through, and ultimately out of our bodies.  Our atoms don’t have our names written on them.  The illusion of separateness may have its advantages, but in the end it is an illusion.  Furthermore, if mind and body are really the same thing, then our consciousness is really just a part of everything else the same way our body is.  And if there really is some kind of mind-body dualism, then mind is still part of everything else either by virtue of being connected to body in some way, or in the sense that the mind/soul is all the same as all other mind/soul the same way body is.

I believe in dicsovery, in learning, and true progress.  I believe in the importance of figuring out as much as we can about the world and about ourselves, through all of the fantastic means we have at our hands.

I believe that there is a lot more out there than we can even imagine, that our models of the universe, useful though they may be, don’t come near to explaining everything in an exhausive sense.  I believe in mystery, and in the unknown.  I believe that “there are more things in heaven and earth… than are dreamt of in [our] philosophy.”

I believe in treating other people the way I would like to be treated.  I believe in empathy and compassion.  Even without God, these are the things that make us human and give value to the human experience.  I believe that human beings are important, not because some arbitrary supreme being says so on a whim, but because we have incredible potential.

I believe in being happy, both on an individual and a collective level.  I believe that the pursuit of happiness, again balancing the individual’s happiness against humanity’s happiness, will take us great places.

I believe in making the world better- I believe in taking care of each other and taking care of the world we live in and leaving the place better for the next generation than it was left for us.   Because humanity is wonderful, and the earth is our home.

I believe that love is the most wonderful thing that there is.

That’s all I can think of right now.  I’m sure there is more.

Like I said in my last post, I’m open to the very real possibility that I am wrong about there being no God.  I even alluded to some criteria.  Maybe it’s arrogant of me to tell God the conditions upon which I am willing to believe in him, but I don’t see myself as doing that, really.  Instead, I am simply acknowledging what it would take for me to believe.  In other words, this isn’t about what God has to do- if God exists, I suppose he can do whatever he wants- it’s about me and what I know about the way I feel and the way I think.

I want to believe.  I would like to believe.  But I need something to help me take the first step.  I need something more than to just say “I want to believe in Jesus” and based on that, throw myself (or even tiptoe, really) into Christianity and/or discipleship.  I’ve given my reasons why that is, but in short, it’s because I know from experience that given time and energy I can convince myself to believe pretty much anything, and I am unwilling to do that at this point.

So I need something.  I don’t know what that something is- maybe something mystical, maybe something mundane.  I don’t know what form it would take, but I know how it would feel.  It would feel significant.  Weighty.  Important.  I would be so impressed by it that it would be nearly all I could think about.  It would make my hair stand on edge.

I’ve felt this before, with those dreams you have and then you wake up and feel like it was piercingly significant.  I’ve felt this beforeso I know what it feels like.

I’ll acknowledge that such a feeling wouldn’t be proof of anything, much less proof of God.  But it would be enough for me to help me take the first step.  I wouldn’t rest my entire faith on the one experience at all- on the contrary, I would go about seeking to actively build my faith.  Yes, I would actively work to cultivate religious feeling in myself, which is almost exactly what I’ve said I cannot do- but the difference is that I would feel like I was doing it based on something other than whim, cultural bias, or convincing argument.

I don’t need a pillar of light, directly above my head.  I just need something.  Something that makes me sit up and take notice.  I’m willing to do the rest from there.

But for now, such a thing seems to not be forthcoming.  If God exists and he wants me to know him, I don’t understand why he doesn’t help me out here.  So I conclude, tentatively, that either he doesn’t exist or he doesn’t want me to know him, which is as good as if he doesn’t exist.

This isn’t set in stone.  People change, and that includes me.  It’s entirely possible that  down the road I’ll have different criteria, or noe at all- I may feel like I need God so badly that I don’t care anymore and I’m willing to take the first step on my own and act as if he exists even if he doesn’t.  If atheism leaves me sad, and a wreck of a human shell, then I’ll know I’m barking up the wrong tree (or more likely, failing to bark up a tree at all when I really should be).  But for now, this is where I am.

I have come to the realization that I do not believe in God.

I don’t deny that God exists.  He (she? it? they?) certainly might exist.  However, at the moment, I simply do not have enough to go on.  I see no gap in the universe so great that it needs a god to fill it, and I feel no personal relationship with any divine being.
I have very few reasons to believe in God at the moment.  I have the testimony of others, sure, but for most people that means a singularly unreliable, subjective kind of testimony.  And it is more than counterbalanced by my sense of skepticism.

By no means do I intend to paint all believers with one broad brush, or to disparage them all.  In fact, one major reason that I leave myself open to the possibility of God if the fact that my wife believes in God.  She seems to have a sweet, humble assurance of divine presence and a sense of relationship with the spirit that I do not have, but would never dare question.  In fact, people like my wife lead me to hope that I might be able to believe in God someday.

The authority of the Bible, like the auithority of any other religious book, is also highly unconvincing.  Again, it it second-hand testimony at best, and largely unsibstantiated.  Furthermore, all of the “Bibles” of the world conflict with each other, and contrary to the protestations of their respective adherents, none of the pack really stands out.

I am naturally inclined toward Christianity, sure.  But it is Christianity that I am inclined toward, not God.  You may think it odd that I would separate the two, but I’m doing it.  I find Christianity appealing and relevant, but I have no reason to think that it is for any other reason than because I grew up in a Christian family in a Christian culture.  So when I make my ad hoc adjustment for cultural bias, I find myself again at the zero mark.

Finally, I admit that I would like to believe, but for the moment at least, that is not enough.  I know how easy it is to manufacture something when you want it badly enough, because I grew up in the Mormon church.  For the time being, I simply refuse to make myself believe.  I’m not comfortable with that, and I would never be able to shake the skepticism that comes from the fact that I would know full well that I had purposely cultivated religious fervor.  That’s not the same thing as a relationship with God.  I know, because I did it for twenty-eight years.

In other words, I have already gone the route of pushing myself toward belief.  I’ve spent years cultivating faith on purpose, readin scripture, praying, testifying until I felt sure of myself.  Immersing myself in religion and spirituality until I convinced myself that it was all true and that it really was God.  Coming out of that, I’m hardly willing to just pick a different flavor of religion and try again.  I have no reason whatsoever to suspect that the ultimate result won’t be exactly the same.  Also, I am reviled by the idea that God is playing some kind of cosmic shell game.

I could change my mind.  I’m open to it.  Right now I have some vague criteria in mind that would do the trick, but they seem to not be forthcoming.  I’m not closed to the possibility that in the future at some point, either those criteria will be met, or I will change the criteria.  I’m hardly so arrogant as to assume that I’ve got the whole universe figured out right now, and I’m hardly so stubborn that I would be unwilling to change my mind about things.

I prayed this afternoon that God would tell me that he exists.  I didn’t get an answer.  I guess that’s all for now.  I don’t know what this means, or how long it will last, but here it is.

Finals are rapidly approaching, and God is going to have to wait a bit.  Anyway, I haven’t felt like posting much since my last round of rapid-fire posting.  I’m kind of in a rut, I guess.  I’m still reading this and that when I take breaks from outlining Property Law, but unless something new or revolutionary happens, I’m not planning on blogging for a bit.

Unless I change my mind.

I think I might not believe in God, and that makes me sad.

What then is consciousness? What is the “I,” the thing that is doing the observing when I think about my thoughts? Some people posit a soul. Ebon Muse proposes a construct along the lines of distributed intelligence. Scientists call it the “hard problem” of the study of consciousness.

If the consciousness, the watcher that is observing the mental processes and the metaphorical movie screen in your head, is a matter of distributed intelligence, then we can think as a unified consciousness the same way that swarms of bugs can act as a whole unit even though the decision-making isn’t happening at any one point in the swarm. Your brain is thus the hyper-complex neurological analogy to a swarm. Every mind is a hive mind.

If such a thing is possible on the small scale, then I find it entirely possible to imagine that it happens on the large scale, or even on the largest possible scale. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to think that the universe, the cosmos, has a kind of consciousness that is composed of distributed intelligence. It wouldn’t be a consciousness like ours- it would be so big and in such a different context that not only would it be so alien we could never interface with it, but the sheer difference in scale and the nature of consciousness means that it would be categorically impossible to wrap our minds around what it is.

Yes, we are part of it. Everything is part of it. If it exists, that is.

But if it isn’t conscious or intelligent in any way at all, it still exists. The cosmos unquestionably is. And to me it is equally unquestionable that separateness is not, in fact. Thus, the cosmos not only is, but it is us. We’re part of it when we rest in dreamless sleep, when your brain is not tricking you into believing that you’re separate from other things. We’re also part of it when we’re dead. Actually, we’re always part of it, but there are times when nothing is trying to trick us into believing that we aren’t, and that there’s a difference between me and you. But at those odd times, like when we meditate and lose track of our individual identities, our Self merges into the Whole.

What could be more fantastic?

In his article, A Ghost in the Machine, Ebon Muse discusses the superior parietal lobe. I’m not a neurobiologist and I don’t necessarily know anything about the brain, but Ebon Muse cites sources, and I have no reason to not believe what he says about what this part of the brain does.

Essentially, it’s the part of the brain that tells us where we are. It gives us a sense of location, which means it also gives us a sense of separateness, of being distinct from other things. When the superior parietal lobe’s functions are impaired or otherwise disabled, a person loses a sense of their own physical limits, i.e., where self ends and not-self begins. This can be accompanied by feelings of oneness with the universe or even religious and mystical experiences.

The more I think about this, the more it blows me away. Ebon Muse uses the function of the superior parietal lobe as evidence against mind-body dualism, but to me, this knowledge validates Maya.

Separateness is an illusion. In reality everything is the same as everything else- it’s all connected in one big system and the boundaries that we perceive are merely cognitive conveniences that enable us to simultaneously have consciousness and perform vital physical functions. The superior parietal lobe’s function is to produce a mental construct of physical (and mental/spiritual) distinctness. In other words, without the superior parietal lobe convincing us that we were separate individuals, we wouldn’t think we were. So the truth, before it’s chewed up by our brain and formed into a picture that we can comprehend, is that separateness is a myth. Everything is really the same.

Like I said, this is huge to me. I already believed in Maya, because it seemed like the most reasonable thing in the world when I read about it in books on Hinduism. I mean, we’re all made of the same basic atoms as everything else is, and the atoms that compose us don’t stay with us; they’ve not got our names written on them or anything. Our own bodies take in new matter and replace the old matter. If matter is really all just three different kinds of subatomic particles, how can I really say where “I” stop and “everything else” stops. Our mind tells us that we are finite and have borders, but our minds tell us lots of things that are not so.

Our very empirical experience of the world is not direct- it’s sensed indirectly by remote sensory organs, coded into nerve impulses which are sent to the brain, and then the brain sorts through it and composes a perceptive impression which it feeds to the consciousness. Along the way, mistakes get corrected, gaps get filled in, and all kinds of mental processes color and shade this sensory information. What I think I’m seeing is not necessarily the objects I think I’m seeing, or even the photons that bounce off them or the raw data that gets sent to the brain. It’s a processed mental construct. What we think we see is not necessarily what we see.

How is the sense of separateness different, particularly if it is only maintained by nervous activity in the superior parietal lobe? Without that, we would have no sense of independent existence, and to me that means that the sense of separateness is actually the artificial construct.

In other words, Maya is the product of our superior parietal lobe lying to the rest of the brain. It’s a functional, useful lie, to be sure, but it’s a lie. The real truth is that all is one, that everything is everything else, including you and me.