Tags
Atheisim, Atheists, Church, God, Meaning of God, What is religion
My problem with atheists is that they don’t know what religion is all about. They have a problem with the God concept because they can’t see a physical demonstration of God’s power to control events. They ask for simple demonstrations, such as were performed in the Bible, like making a dead person rise from the dead and live again. Or making a bush burn and writing out some new commandments that would seem more appropriate to today’s problems. Or even a simpler thing like making good people who behave well prosper and live longer, healthier lives than bad people who should clearly be suffering if moral justice was being enforced.
Most of the people I know who claim to be atheists say they were at one time devout believers in God, and were at that time getting benefits from all the usual social activities associated with being a member of a standard organized religious community. But, at some point, for some of these people in childhood but mostly in their teens, the obvious lack of physical proofs of the religious practitioners’ claims set them on a path toward atheism and the further they went down that path of verifiable proofs the greater their doubts became. Some of these atheists seek out organizations which support their doubts and introduce them to others who have gone down similar paths. When they reject religion their heroes become such renowned people as Dawkins, Hitchens, Darwin and the founding fathers of American Democracy like Jefferson and Franklin.
The usual quest of a young searcher after eternal truths begins with the basic existential questions. Where did I come from? Why am I here? What should I be doing with my life? Where do I go when I die? And many similar questions. There are an infinite number of answers to those types of questions but there is little to make any one of them stand out, without the help of a guide. Most people give up on the quest after a while and just accept what some authority figure tells them is the right answer and they should obey what they are told to do. Once they make the decision to do that their life becomes easier because these essentially unanswerable questions have clear and simple answers and they can move on to the mundane problems of everyday life.
Many of the atheists got caught up in these questions and their authority figures were not convincing enough in their presentations to have these people stay with the community. Or, perhaps they were for some reason marginalized in the community and departed for personal reasons in an attempt to find a community which was more accepting. When that happens they reject the whole belief system and throw the baby Jesus out with the holy bath water.
They have forgotten, or perhaps never knew, that religion isn’t really about answering those existential questions, it’s about binding a community of people together into a cohesive group which can defend itself against other cohesive groups. To be a successful religion it must carry on those functions over an extended period of time. The better able the religion is at binding a group together over generations of people the more reproductive it becomes. In this sense it is a Darwinian survival of the fittest, or stated another way, the survival of those who were successful at reproducing themselves. A good religion is one that brings new members into the group and the best new ones are the children of the existing members. Converts are great, but babies are better.
Most young religious people are not aware of the needs of their community but when they get older and have gotten over their existential quests it becomes apparent and they become what is called conservative. The atheists that came out of these traditional churches have given up their community to become individuals, but there is a down side to this process because these atheists can not become a community. There is no social glue to being an atheist other than the commonly held belief that there is no god, but for those people to bind together and cohere when a severe social problem presents itself is impossible. They will each seek out their own personal self interest, and that is inherently divisive. When times are good atheists can thrive because they are realistic and take responsibility for their behavior. They are honest and hard working people, but when times are bad they will have no one to turn to for social support.
Atheists are good time companions, theists are tough time friends.
