Atheism is a religion(?) [View All]

[toddaa]

At least, that's what some theists charge. The problem is the word faith. Faith means to believe in something without proof. And so we often hear the argument that atheists have just as much faith as theists because they believe there is no god, despite presenting no evidence to support their belief.

There's just one problem with that argument.

I do not believe in a God, but I also do not believe there is no God. If you think that makes me an agnostic, then you'd be wrong. Agnosticism's position is that if there is a God, He is unknowable. I don't believe this either. Maybe I'm dense, but anything unknowable isn't really worth wasting my time on.

So, what am I?*

Well, that's a hard question to answer. The Judeo-Christian-Islamic concept of an all knowing God is incomprehensible to me. I've never adequately understood what this thing is that I supposedly have put my fervent faith in its nonexistance.

I used to believe in this thing that Christians pray to. I prayed night and day to it. I'm even pretty sure that at one time I devoutly believed in it. But the more I prayed to it, the less I comprehended it. Then one day I stopped praying. Nothing happened. In fact, I came to realize that whether I prayed or didn't pray had very little to do with my life. It occurred to me that maybe I was praying to the wrong thing. I tried to find another thing to pray to, but they were all very silly things. Being raised to pray to a particular thing, I was taught all the horribly silly problems with the competing things. That's when it occurred to me, maybe that thing I had been praying to all my life was just as phony. The most stunning revelation of my life was when I realized that my religious beliefs were largely due to the geographical location of my upbringing.

That's when I stopped believing. Thankfully, I have found that spirituality does not require a belief in a supernatural, all powerful, all mysterious, utterly incomprehensible deity.

(* - I used to call myself an atheist, but I prefer the term Taoist Pantheist. I'd rather define what I am, rather than what I am not. Still don't get the God thing.)