Reflections on Religion

I'm fairly sure the following will offend devout believers of any category, so I strongly suggest that such readers pick something else to read.

In the strictest sense of the term, I am an athiest. I don't believe in the existence of gods, as people commonly understand the word. This sometimes causes confusion, since I am not what you would call a strict materialist, and the popular concept of an athiest is someone who doesn't believe in any metaphysical, supernatural stuff at all.

I do believe that it's possible to call fire out of air, to heal without knives and chemicals (or herbs, if you prefer, it's all the same thing in the bloodstream), to move an object without touching it with one's hands (or feet, or arms, etc.). Not common or easy, mind you, but possible. I believe fairly firmly that it is possible to affect the operation of the world with one's will.

I am, to be sure, sufficiently materialist to also think these possibilities are probably arrived at by means of the forces and particles physics is so fond of studying: electricity, chemistry, magnetics, exchange of pheromones and vibrating particles and whatnot. I am also sufficiently skeptical to immediately doubt anyone who claims to be able to do anything I cited in the paragraph above. I believe it's possible, but I want proof.

The reason for this jaunt into theoretical physics, in a discussion of religion, is to explain why I think what I do about gods. You see, I think that what people call gods are simply the ways we delineate our own potential.

Think about what gods are supposed to be able to do. Create matter, frequently out of themselves (sounds like energy-matter conversion to me), meddle egregiously in people's lives, judge rightly, protect or smite depending on what side you're on, really live it up, have complete serenity. Are these not things we do ourselves? Most scholars of mythology would agree, and say that the only difference is one of degree. Gods do these things all the time, which humans can't.

But I think that we can.

My view is that gods do not exist. We exist. We live. What people call gods are simply a collective boundary, marking the edge of what we think is possible. As we develop as a species, that boundary will likely change. Indeed, it has been changing constantly for millenia. The catch is that most people don't believe that edge is something we can actually reach. No, they attribute it to some greater being. One with the power, or the wisdom depending on the flavor of god, to actually accomplish what poor, limited humans can't.

What a cop out.

I've spent a fair amount of time trying to come up with a reason I could believe to explain why people refuse to belive that we do have the power and wisdom to reach those edges reserved for gods. In the end, I think it comes down to fear. Fear of responsibility seems most likely, to me. After all, it is a huge responsibility to have power to create and destroy, to judge, to interfere. Personally, I suspect the realization of this responsibility was one of the main reasons why people developed a concept of an abstract and distant god (in Western Christianity, at any rate). We finally grasped the concept of repercussions, and it no longer made sense for a benign god to casually meddle in people's lives. I doubt it's coincidence that this shift accompanied an abrupt increase in humankind's abilitly to manipulate the material world. We got scared by ourselves.

Not enough, in some cases, but nevertheless.

I've seen the phenomenon in a lot of college students. I was one of them. It's what causes Crush On A Prof Syndrome. The professor in question is never really such a paragon as the student thinks, in fact they're usually a mere icon to which the student attaches all those virtues she wishes she had herself. The trick is that she usually does have them, if only in embryo. That's precisely why she wants them! She just can't believe it. Not yet. If everyone is very lucky, she will come to believe it. Sometimes she never does, and that is a genuine tragedy because she will go through her life constantly looking for some external agency to do for her what she could so easily do herself if she only realized it. Watching the awakening or its failure are two of the very few things in my job that, for completely opposite reasons, can make me cry.

That is exactly what I think people do with gods. It's even handier with gods, because there's nothing actually there to try and convince them that the potential belongs to the beholder.

It disturbs me horribly when I hear people claim to talk to their gods, though not because I think they're talking to themselves. I do that all the time, and consider it perfectly natural. No, it's because they would never consider that the source of comfort and peace they're touching is really inside of them and not outside.

Why do people think they're so small inside?

I suppose a lot of my attitude toward gods comes down to my perceptions of identity. Most people can't seem to handle the concept of being more than "I", more than a single conciousness in one self. And isn't that what omniscience would require? To set the boundaries of self at the edge of the world, to percieve everything inside them. One way this is framed, in those philosophies that advocate human ability to reach such a condition, is the loss of self. That is not how I would put it. Call it a multiplication of self.

Though I can see where it's easy to lose the way back to a limited consciousness, once multiplied.

I understand why this could be a...startling idea to anyone who isn't accustomed to it. But it shouldn't be alarming. Honest, it shouldn't.

Denying our potential, and our responsibility, won't make either thing go away. Trying to slough them off onto ideas that we created ourselves, that are ourselves, is not, in my opinion, a very good answer.

So, you see, that's why I don't believe in gods. And I don't believe in them very strongly.

Last modified: 08/23/08
First Posted: 8/2/2001