the id, the ego, & the single misfiring brain cell

In response to my most recent contribution to The Atheist Files in which I related the story of my journey to atheism, Mila asked the following questions in the comments:

"So, your journey is done? I mean, atheism was your destination, and you've reached it?"

You'd think this would be a fairly straightforward and simple question to answer, huh? Not really.

I understand the compulsion to interpret someone's story that way, of course. I'm at a point in my religious understanding that looks like an ending. Even without that, I've written my story from "beginning" to "end." The end is arbitrary, of course. A friend asked me my story at this point in time and I wrote it down. But it feels complete, you know? It has a good, clean beginning and ending.

Of course, real life is not a board game, nor would we want it to be. What would you do when you "won" but still had several years left? I think people who win the lottery or retire have this realization eventually. I had this epiphany relatively early. Through most of my 20's, I was a kept woman, given anything I wanted with no requirement to work. I experienced "retirement" early. I figured out, after a while, that it didn't bring me happiness (seriously? all the money you want and all the time in the world to spend it? seriously). Too many people think that's all they need until they have it (if they ever get it), then they quickly figure out that they need more.

No one's journey is finished until they die. My atheism is, in a sense, only a beginning for me, sort of like a black belt. Students of the martial arts work so hard to earn that black belt, but when they get it, they learn that they've literally only just begun to learn. Atheism is the same way. I am at peace, finally, with the basis for my beliefs. I never was comfortable making assertions I couldn't support. It just took me a long time to figure out what beginning point of knowledge made sense to me, and to make peace with it.

But now that I've "decided" there is no God (I imagine people asking), where do I go from here?

I phrase it like that, because I've literally been asked the question in that form several times. The notion of "deciding" such a thing strikes me as laughable, as if I have a choice in my belief (one of the great lies of religion). The notion of "choosing" belief or nonbelief is like "choosing" to love someone or not. You don't have that power. You can only choose to go through the motions and hope to be surprised by love at some point, but you can't just choose to love and then voila, love. You either love or you don't, and you believe or you don't.

But where do I go from here?

I try to leave the door open for belief, but I honestly can't give you any specific thing that would provoke me to walk through it. I've thought about this for years, and I can't think of anything that could happen that I would feel compelled to explain by appealing to something equally (or more) unknowable. We don't know how the universe began, for example, and we can't. We can make educated guesses, which only continue their education as scientists find new evidence and form new theories. But...we can't know. The same is true for God.

Believers say they "know" God exists, but they're doing a combination of things with the word in this case. First (in my experience), they commonly confuse knowledge and belief. These are not binary conditions. We don't ultimately know how gravity works or why, let alone whether it always will. This is because our knowledge is limited by our evidence and our capacity for reason. In antiquity, people knew the earth was flat (of course it is! Just look at it!) because they lacked the scientific instruments and capacity for reason to determine its true shape. We also once knew that devils caused madness, and swamp miasma caused malaria.

This condition hasn't changed, of course. I can't say exactly that what we know now is based upon poor evidence and/or faulty reasoning, but it's only reasonable to assume there are things we think we know that people will laugh about in a 100 years.

I view belief as separate from knowledge.* Knowledge is something we have through evidence and reason. Knowledge can be empirically tested. It provides predictability. I know, for example, that trees burn. I have evidence of this phenomenon, and chemists can provide in-depth explanations of exactly what occurs in this reaction; they can predict, based on those explanations, how long a certain type and size of wood will burn and how much energy it will release in the process--then we can test that prediction.

* Yes, we believe the things we know, but belief in such cases is not a necessary part of the equation. So let's keep it simple and discuss belief as a different phenomenon.

Belief, on the other hand, is a gut feeling. It cannot be tested. I believe, for example, that men and women are ultimately the same in their emotional makeup. I believe you'll find the same percentage of men who are "emotional" as women. We generally react differently, however, because of our culture's expectations (and culture has a way of enforcing its expectations with most people). I feel sorry for men who need someone to just give them a hug but they can't ask another man for it and it's inappropriate to ask a woman, at least in Western cultures. I think they act out in often unacceptable ways when all they really need is a friend to hold them and tell them it'll be ok. I can't test this, though. It does not qualify as a theory, and thus cannot qualify as knowledge. It's a belief, based upon my observations of and interactions with men over the years.

No one has knowledge of God. You only have belief--hence the ultimate requirement for faith. (And no...believing really hard won't tip the scales, either. It's still belief. Changing what you call it doesn't alter the fact.)

Aaaaaand back from my tangent: I've read where many atheists say they leave open the possibility that God exists, and for a long time, I thought I did too. I tried. Then I got to thinking about it, and eventually had to admit that I honestly don't know how. The very notion of a god is at odds with any measure of demonstrable reality we yet have. Thus, I no longer say I'm "leaving my mind open" to the possibility of a god, because I can't even say I know what that means.

Based on my understanding of the world and what we can know, I can safely say this: If God himself appeared to me and told me he existed, I'd have myself committed to an asylum. I'm quite serious. Only one reasonable explanation for such an event springs to mind: that is, that I have lost my mind. (This is easier for people to see when it happens to other people, admittedly.)

So where does that leave me? I'm an atheist and I'll probably remain atheist. Where do I go from here?

I still try to find ways to open that door. I don't know everything--none of us does. Do I do this because I want to believe? No. The desire to believe is reason to doubt. I just want the truth, whatever it is.

I also look for better ways to live. I find that making others feel good about themselves makes me happy, for example. I'm working on learning to live in the now, and this is a work in progress, particularly for one heeled in the Western culture.

There's a zen story about a couple of monks who come upon a woman trying cross a stream but not strong enough to get through the current. The monks have sworn to never touch a woman, but one picks her up, carries her across, deposits her on the other side, and walks on. After quite a while, the other can't stand it any more. He says, "You picked up a woman! You've sworn to never touch a woman!" The other monk replies, "I put her down on the other side of the stream. Why are you still carrying her?"

Think about the implications.

I wish I could have a reasonable discussion with my family about what I believe and why, but they won't go there. This may be because for many years, I walked away when they tried to discuss their concerns with me or when that didn't work, I attacked them. I understand that they probably don't see this from my perspective. All they really know is that I "cannot be reasoned with," more than likely. We have very different notions of what "reason" means. I just wish we could have this conversation like we were all adults. I don't think that'll happen, though; they have too much to lose.

A conclusion is where you got tired of thinking. I never get tired of thinking.

d