Look, atheists don’t exist

Surprising, huh?

Well – lots more (surprises, I mean) await you herein.

But first things first: 

What, exactly, is a-theism?

Now, unlike the impressions many happen to habour – atheism is not a form of faith.

Is it denialist? Perhaps. Escapist? ... Who knows! But whatever else it may be; atheism is simply and unapologetically, not a belief system. 

It is, essentially, a way of unbelief.

To be ‘an atheist’ is not – not to believe, it is – to not believe.

The first proposition, not to believe – more popular and yet misguided – implies unbelief: the latter, to not believe – less democratic, yet more accurate – denotes disbelief.

To be a disbeliever, also – is not to be a pagan or heathen. 

It is to be a skeptic.

Pagan and heathen are nothing more than dismissive, exclusive (and often offensive) labels reserved for all those who don’t believe as you do.

In this case, any Christian, however devout – is a pagan and heathen in the eyes of every Muslim.

The only theologically consistent response the Christian could give to his Islam-induced paganism is to paganise the Muslims in return (or is it in revenge?).

In this sense therefore – to be an atheist, is really to be a pagan Muslim, and a pagan Christian at the same time, which would make some sense if you were also not simultaneously a pagan all-the-other-superstitions in the world.

To the Muslim, you the Christian – on account of your infidelity, are an atheist.

To the Christian, you the Muslim – on account of your paganism, are an atheist.

How then, does an entity belong to both groups and yet none, contemporaneously?

It can only mean that this entity, in this case the atheist, belongs to no group, is part of both, or to begin with – has been misnamed.

***

If one were to conceptualize religious-faith as comprising a multicultural spectrum of alternative beliefs, mapped onto the band of human spiritual thought – then it’s easy to see that your average believer conceives of atheism as existing outside of said continuum.

What this believer forgets however, is that most (if not all) religions, in both teaching and praxis, disregard the very existence of this spectrum in the first place – preferring instead to view spiritual truth as singular and limited to only their interpretation.

Sikhs, as an illustrative case, regard Christianity (whichever of the 39,000 denominations) as being situated outside the spectrum – in much the same way that Hindus consider the world’s 1.6 billion Mohammedans, as occupying some wilderness of ignorance and damnation beyond the spectrum’s truth, which in this case the Hindus lay claim to inhabiting in isolation.

We thus see that each distinct religion, quite selfishly though understandably, thinks of itself as the sole occupant of our spectrum above – while every other of its competitors (for souls, offertory, social ascendancy and political power) is conveniently dismissed into the deserts of non-belonging and invalidity.

But what, really, does atheism have to say about this spectrum:

Atheism says – not only that does all religious-faith not belong on the spectrum, but also (and more revealingly) that there isn’t a spectrum to belong on, in the first place.

***

One is not converted or recruited into atheism (or in my case, anti-theism) – they are simply unconverted or de-converted from what they previously believed to be absolutely true.

What one becomes after this de-conversion: what they hold to be valuable and meaningful in life, which causes they choose to devote their lives to, which secular institutions they choose to ally with or not – ethnicity, nation, race or racial category, gender – is all up to them and their individual circumstances.

Atheism, as world view, isn’t necessarily a verifier – it is a falsifier.

It does not claim to tell you what is necessarily or absolutely true; but it sets out to point to you what is evidently not true.

To paraphrase an infamous character, Elijah Mohammed of the Nation of Islam, as he counseled the young Malcolm X on ‘fishing’ for converts – To change a man’s mind, don’t insist on how clear your own glass of water is: simply place it beside his own cloudy one, and he’ll tell the difference himself.

No atheist in his right mind will or should ever walk up to you and say: Look brother, this is the right thing to believe. This is the absolute nature of reality.

What they will ask of you as an ex-devotee, rather – is that you thoroughly examine your present belief in a particular religious faith, and attempt to falsify it: that you attempt to understand and accept how inconsistent your faith is – in many cases with itself, with other competing and exclusive faiths, and with what the scientific and philosophical methods now tell us about the verifiable nature of reality.

Now, science and philosophy should not be interpreted to be alternatives to religious faith. At least, they are not the atheist’s alternative.

Science and philosophy, in their genuine forms – are essentially methods. They are ways to establish ever imprecise truths about the workings of our world and universe.

***

Science doesn’t have a Holy Bible or Quran, and neither does philosophy.

This is another critical departure between the two world views – religious and irreligious: 

While the one relies on the impeccability of its revealed scripture (to the exclusion of other competing revelations) – the other pivots around experimentally or logically derived truths.

These latter truths, unlike the former, aren’t absolute and unalterable – as indeed the Bible and Quran are claimed to be despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary (much tampering having gone into their preparation and priming for their subsequent political and economic deployments) – but are subject to constant and likely unending improvement, refinement and amelioration.

There may be, and are, truths held universal in scientific thought: such as the law of gravitation or principle of linear momentum – but it ought to be understood that these are not absolute truths – so that even their framers allowed for specific conditions in which these laws or theories could work, or couldn’t.

And these conditions have been experimented-upon by countless scientists – professional and amateur – and found to be true or consistent, which is why they enjoy a universal consensus today.

If you, as a curious scientist set out to disprove the law of gravity and found it to be void, experimentally – then your new theory, once peer reviewed, would become the acceptable scientific consensus.

Newton would fade into the oblivion of the annals of failed experiment – and in you would stride, not as a demigod or holy-man of science, but as human hero who’s made a very human contribution to human knowledge.

In the future, another ambitious young seeker might successfully challenge your theorizations – and you would quickly join Isaac Newton.

Philosophy, as a method of logic, happens to function the same way.

While it may be almost impossible to arrive at an absolute and precise philosophical truth – it is very possible (and often quite easy), to identify a philosophical (or un-philosophical) untruth.

What enables philosophers to do this is what have been termed fallacies of reasoning or logic – elaborate numbers and kinds of which have been enumerated throughout the centuries since men first grew skeptical over (and perhaps mildly irritated by) the sweeping, ungrounded claims of superstition.

In most cases, in order for philosophers to arrive at some form of truth, which is only ever an approximation – the path of least resistance they opt for is to first get the bad reasoning, as manifested in fallacies, out of the way.

Once the obvious obstacles and speed-bumps are cleared – then the highway to truth becomes much more navigable, even when its destination (absolute truth) may remain eternally unreachable.

To consider a case in point: While it may not be possible for one to say for sure what justice or love or kindness are; it is very possible, much easier, and beyond any reasonable doubt – to say what those three concepts are not.

Atheism works in very much the way, and operates along a comparable pattern – for whereas atheists don’t necessarily assert what is or ought to be (let alone claiming the ability to do so); they are very unequivocal on both what demonstrably is not, as well as what, obviously or arguably, ought not to be.

These refuted states of unreality (what isn’t and oughtn’t be) – are in atheism’s reckoning best illustrated-by and manifested in superstition and religious-faith; beyond any other conceivable human mis-endeavor.

Our inability to reach truth, however,  isn’t carte blanche for us to be unrealistic about it.

***

This unreachability is attributable to, among a host of other factors – our unenviable status as a clumsy primate species, only recently emerged from the barbarism and unculture of a crude and untempered natural selection.

Perhaps it’s because we don’t envy these ugly truths about ourselves: our disgusting biological nature, our embarrassing political and cultural record – that we’d often rather conjure up some superstitious alternative to this history and place ourselves at the very centre of the world in what we’ve selfishly (but understandably) claimed is an anthropomorphic universe.

There is no doubt that if the reptiles had, for some uncanny evolutionary reason (and there could have been numerous possibilities) beat us in the race to develop a larger brain – then the world would have a reptilian god, and be reptalianthropic.

Such grand posturing and the very narcissistic emergence of a man-like God or manly god (as opposed to God-like man or godly man) are very understandable in the context of our biological vulnerability and resultant ego-tripping.

It is no crime for a homely damsel to embellish her countenance with mascara, stick her lips, shadow her eyes or otherwise make-up in order to heighten her own esteem – but if she deliberately uses this literally false face to entrap an unsuspecting lad into a life-long marriage commitment, then the least the casual observer ought to do is to write a poem about the fiasco.

Atheists, are only writing this poem.

***

The comfort many persons feel with their faith – be that faith of birth, socialization, economic opportunism or social convenience – is not unlike the comfort we feel with our languages.

This is especially true of our mother tongues. 

If I’ve spoken one major language for all the conscious years of my life, say Runyakitara – have learnt to love, laugh, dream, hate and fight in this language – then Runyakitara becomes so embedded in my subconscious that it becomes indissolubly part of my psychological and behavioral constitution. 

Anyone attempting to tell me how rich English or French are, and how vast is the intellectual and literary wealth closed to me on account of my Anglo or Franco illiteracy – will appear a right lunatic in my sight. 

I suspect this is what the endeavors of nonbelievers manifest like to the faithful. 

*** 

Let me make a point on brands or severities of any given faith – because I’m aware that sometimes the spectrum alluded to earlier may be intra-faith as well as inter-faith.

This is where the dilemma of fundamentalism emerges.

We must acknowledge though, from the outset, that as long as there is religion, there will always be religious extremism.

In so far as we are willing to concede (even out of empathy or ‘tolerance’) that people can claim to speak to an invisible and imaginary being, a ghostly but intimate apparition of mind – minus this claim being challenged, then we, by default, have to surrender our capacity to mediate between hearer and speaker. 

This surrender of arbitrative prerogative is what lies at the heart of religious moderacy.

And yet, religious moderacy is but only the milder or stabler form of the latent virus that eventually metamorphoses into extremism. 

To put it another way – any philosophy that puts itself absolutely beyond censorship, also in the same breath puts itself out of reach of the hand of reason. 

No matter what we do, just as there can never be an end to war crimes until there is first an end to war – society can never stamp out religious unreason (as manifested by extremism) until first it puts an end to religion itself (even in its mildest form of moderacy). 

Consider the example of slavery:

Without doubt, there were places in the pre-emancipation American South where slaves were treated comparatively better than others – shallow oases of reprieve even in that inferno of bondage. 

I’m sure there were slave masters who whipped their slaves bloody, and others who didn’t (or perhaps drew less blood or flayed off just a little less skin); those who raped their female slaves and those who didn’t (or perhaps were more puritanical in observing anti-miscegenation doctrines); those who tortured and lynched, and those who didn’t (or perhaps kindly favored attempting escapees with a clean, quick death).

Now, with such a spectrum of slave-masters, it is only natural for a relativistic framework to have emerged in the slaves’ minds under such a dual regime – and thus for slaves to have began preferring the ‘kinder’ masters to the out-rightly harsh ones.

  

In that context, the kind masters even appeared magnanimous, if not revolutionary. 

Just like this good slave master – moderate religion appears harmless and preferable, until we realize that it’s only playing good-cop in an otherwise deliberate warping of reality, and shoring up of an ultimately regressive system of thought and social organization.

What we need to realize, is that apart from the good and bad slave master, a third and better option always exists – namely, having no slave master and putting an end to slavery. 

Until we put away the kindling, we will only be able to succeed at a temporary putting out of sporadic fires. 

*** 

It also merits mention, that the hypocrisy of moderate or liberal religiosity is embodied in its escapist ecumenical-ism.  

Those who adopt, not the plurality of a shared theology or generic god as is perhaps best fronted by the Baha’i faith – but who simply occupy the narrow space between exclusive denominational conviction in their religion, and a (contemptuous) tolerance for those who believe otherwise. 

What makes the hypocrisy worse is that those who play host to it are either unaware, dismissive or vehemently denialist of the fact. 

Someone who sincerely and honestly believes in the revealed truths of the Quran wouldn’t be at fault in declaring the Christian Greek scriptures a forgery – and would be within their (theological) right to stamp out any mutterings of faith in the latter. 

People who weave their lives around the Bible’s truths must by necessity also consider those who don’t to be doomed and damned – ultimately bound to suffer the worst possible misery for eternity. 

Anyone who rejects this state of affairs is either not a Muslim or Christian, or is simply intellectually dishonest. 

And yet, most people of faith today seem to be comfortable doing business with, voting into leadership, and falling in love with people who don’t subscribe to their religion – without even attempting to actively convert them. 

Perhaps they harbor a subtle desire and hope that their presence in each other’s lives will have the effect of changing the other’s mind? 

Since intentions are difficult to determine, so we may never truly be able to ascertain this – but then, what is patent to the casual observer is the visceral hypocrisy in such an attitude. 

Of course, I may need to add that I am in no way opposed to genuine, generic spirituality – but what is bothersome is the attempt to misrepresent this behind the false veneer of religious tolerance, while still cleaving onto mutually inimical theologies.

Consider the instance of a man actively wooing a female for whom he harbors nothing but sexual desire, with no long-term plans in the picture.

He may succeed at getting her into bed, after taking her out to dinner and spending countless hours winning her over emotionally. 

But we know that his ultimate intentions for her remain bleak. 

Alongside this unfortunate girl, the man may be pursuing another woman with the express purpose of marriage. 

Now, imagine that the man keeps fighting-off any possible males who may show an interest in the first, short-term girl – even when there’s a possibility that these other males may have her best interests at heart and intend to take her to wife. 

So clearly, the man’s selfishness prompts him to attempt to have his cake and eat it. 

Rounding the analogy in with the religious point –

The man in this case, is you, the believer. 

The first female is those of your acquaintances, workmates, classmates and countrymen who believe in other Gods – people alongside whom you live and laugh and cry, but who your religion convinces you are all going to burn in hell for ever. 

The second female, are your own coreligionists – people you expect to share the unmitigated bliss of paradise arm-in-arm with. 

And finally, the men who are trying to win over the first girl’s affections are people like myself – atheists who are telling her not to fret about your condemnations of her soul because no hell exists to burn her in, anyway. 

If you are interested in building a lifelong marriage with your second woman, however illusory she may be – the least kindness you may show to the first damsel is to let her try her luck elsewhere. 

We will only be too happy to oblige you – but her especially. 

*** 

To make a last point – it’s really easy to see how persons living in the earth’s poorer societies can become almost fanatical about an imaginary God.  

The reason is simple – we are talking about livelihoods. 

Faiths in God (for they are many) and the institutions built around them have become so much a source of economic sustenance for millions that they are fundamentally indistinguishable from any other job in any other sector of the economy. 

Imagine trying to talk a drug kingpin out of the narcotics business by appealing to logic or the unhealthiness of drugs to society.

You’ll likely never succeed. 

This is the same situation one is faced with when talking to a Pastor, Sheik or Rabbi about religion – the clerics feel that their own and their family’s livelihood is being threatened, before they even really think about God’s actual existence (or lack thereof). 

Indeed – telling a religious minister that God doesn’t exist is literally equivalent to taking the food from his children’s plates, or indeed, their very mouths. 

The best approach to handling this problem would be to ensure that religious work isn’t commercially lucrative – just as the best solution to a narcotics epidemic is to destroy the drug market, or provide alternative (and comparably profitable) cash flows for drug peddlers. 

Of course, one immediately runs into a stumbling block here.

Most religious leaders have spent so much time honing their faith in the imaginary, that they have hardly taken time to develop alternative skills or vocations. 

But this drawing of livelihood from religious faith goes beyond direct clerical vocation and extends to mere worshippers.

This is what I’d call the indirect livelihood argument.

Here, ordinary congregants in churches and mosques become trapped in the same livelihood mindset.

If you live in a country where 39 out of 40 university graduates don’t (and can’t) get jobs – it’s so easy to be convinced that only God’s supernatural grace is responsible for your job, and that if you so much as displease him, he’s likely to take your job from you and give it the next more pious jobseeker on the street. 

Eventually, as well as essentially – religion and God, become hostage-takers, holding believers in their clutches under the blackmail of economic sabotage. 

***

Faith and religion, at the end of discourse, are nothing more than man’s attempt to posit supernatural explanations for yet unknown natural causes of occurrences, or supernatural solutions to yet unsolved, though naturally explained phenomena.

Atheists not only set out to query the exiguous dearth of evidence for these supernatural explanations, but also to firmly and unequivocally challenge the unwarranted, unbridled and baseless power sundry  ‘men of God’ exercise over the lives of fellow human beings on account of their  breathtakingly arrogant claims to have the capacity to hear disembodied voices with omnipotent power. 

Said voices are widely assumed to betoken the creator of our universe. 

In the hands of these narcissistic (though sometimes pathological), scheming bi-pedal mammals of God – this is a power which, demonstrably, has often been put to wantonly despotic use when wielded unchecked. 

People you choose to label atheists are simply fellow humans who are checking, out of a genuine concern for your and my welfare, such pathetic and presumably godly excesses.


***

In fact, this begs the question – to what extent do we ascribe events to God?  

Answer: To the extent that we do not know the cause of these events. 

In short, God has become a synonym for both our personal and collective ignorance. 

The Church, its theology and leaders, derive their power over our lives from a continuation of our ignorance.

They readily claim a monopoly over knowledge, being that they are vouchsafed exclusive whispers by the ‘author’ of all things. 

Any attempt to find democratic, unconditional and universally accessible paths to knowledge becomes a threat to this lucrative (financial and power-wise) monopoly. 

Science and philosophy, and their resultant secularism, are merely the most successful of such attempts.

  

5^th/April/2017