Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

I'm a freethinker on the subject of religion. I’m not a Bible thumper, I never attend church, and I don’t have much use for preachers. In fact, I just can’t see the logic in getting up early on Sunday morning and getting all dressed up just to go pay somebody to scream at me for two hours. I don’t see the logic in that, and I never did, even when I was forced to participate in the ritual as a kid. But I am a spiritual person, because logic, and the night sky, does inspire me to lean toward the belief that there is indeed a supreme force that governs the universe. After all, the universe didn’t just come from nothing. Some force had to caused the universe to spring into existence, and whatever that force was, I’ve chosen to call it God.
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Now, an atheist would undoubtedly tell me that I have no proof of the existence of God. The fact is, one told me that just today, and he was zealously insistent upon it. He dismissively suggested that by embracing the concept of God, it was tantamount to my embracing a belief in the "Flying Spaghetti Monster." That was clearly a dismissive assault on my intellect, but I recognized that for some reason, many atheists tend to take great pride in being arrogantly disdainful of the intellect of believers. So instead of vigorously objecting, I simply took note. I did point out, however, that his tone sound quite similar to that of a religious zealot, to which he responded, that religion required faith, and atheists have no use for faith. They deal in pure logic. So I thought I’d examine that contention.
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I pointed out to him that it takes more faith to be an atheist than it does to be a believer, because believers do have the existence of the universe to point to as a basis of support for their belief, while all an atheist has is his belief, or "faith" that God doesn’t exist. Thus, faith in the non-existence of God is an integral part of what we have now established is his religion.
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I then went on to point out that in order to maintain the atheist position that God doesn’t exist, he bears the burden of having to prove that something (the universe) came from nothing - or that an effect was "initiated" without a cause, and, from out of nowhere. And since it is my contention that whatever force is responsible for the universe, order, and existence meets the definition God, how can an atheist know with any degree of certainty that nature, and/or the universe itself, isn’t God? After all, is it not true that the universe is responsible for the existence of all living things? That defines God.
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Thus, the debate, I went on, is no longer one of whether or not God exists, but rather, the NATURE of God’s existence. And that, in turn, leaves an atheists with only his "faith" and/or "religious" conviction to support his claim that God doesn’t exist. Therefore - contrary to what atheists would have us believe, and in spite of their renowned disdain for the silliness of religious dogma - atheism itself is nothing but another religion, and their denial of the existence of God is merely another religious doctrine. That pretty much shut down the discussion.
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But that said, neither do I buy into the way God is portrayed by religious zealots of the opposite stripe. The mere thought that in a universe with over 800 billion galaxies - with each containing an average of 300 billion stars, and with each star separated by light years of space - that God would be fixated on the infestation of a mote in the ghetto of an insignificant galaxy is beyond belief. But then, most religious doctrine go even further than that. They suggest that God is so fixated on us that he's watching everything that each of us do, jumping through hoops, and performing magic tricks to get us to worship him (I'm using "him" to keep things simple). That takes us beyond delusional - it’s absolutely psychotic - the accompanying mood-setting music in the background notwithstanding.  It constitutes an absurd attempt by man to turn God into some kind of circus performer.
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The mere assumption that God is preoccupied with everything we do is merely a reflection of man's arrogance and exaggerated sense of self-importance, and the very idea of God being obsessed with trying to get man to worship him is patently ridiculous. That would be the direct equivalent of man spending every hour of every day trying to demand the respect of the germs under his toilet seat. That would be stupid, and while God may be many things, I doubt very seriously that stupid is among them. 
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Thus, since I view the foregoing perceptions of God as so grossly out of touch with reality, it should go without saying that I don't believe in Heaven or Hell. The entire concept just reeks of man’s tendency to threaten and/or bribe other men into subservience. And besides, if God was indeed watching and evaluating our behavior, he would have long since hit the delete button.
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So the fact is, we can only know God’s will by what he has done, and as I’ve said many times before, God made birds to fly, fish to swim, and man to think. He anticipated our needs when we were created, so he gave us the intellect to answer our own prayers, and the common sense to live the kind of life that would create our Heaven right here on Earth, if used properly; but if used improperly, we could also create our own Hell, which we have done. So we don’t require a Pat Robertson as God’s Special Envoy and Chief of Staff, nor do we need the Bible as a user’s guide to dictate how we should live our lives any more than fish need a swimming coach or birds need a compass to know which way is south, or a calendar to know when to head in that direction. Again, he blessed us with common sense to be our guide - at least, most of us.
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That leads me to the concept of good and evil. Actually, it’s quite simple. "Good" is to act with common sense, and what most people call "evil," is nothing more than ignorance. It’s as simple as that. Thus, the key to living a good life is to be an independent thinker, to use our intellectual capacity to explore what it actually means to live a fulfilling life, and to have the good sense to avoid the ignorant machinations of other men. I've boiled it down to one sentence - Never give anyone else's ability to think priority over your own.
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At this point I’m sure that many have come to the conclusion that I have a disdain for religion, but that’s not true - I have a disdain for the ignorant way in which it’s practiced. There’s nothing wrong with religion itself, if that’s what butters your bread. Some people find it comforting and inspirational to "fellowship" with others. But the problem is, man tends to completely ignore the primary point of religion - to inspire one to treat his fellow man with more caring, and to reinforce the idea of living a good and honorable life. He embraces dogma instead, those things that make his religion different from everyone else’s, and that’s not by accident.
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The bottom line is, while we pay it a lot of lip service, man doesn’t want to "love his neighbor." Due to his personal insecurity, and the resulting need to feel like he’s a part of a special breed that’s been anointed by God, he wants an excuse to hate, feel superior, and look down upon his neighbor, and religion gives him a "God-approved" pretext for doing just that. Man wants an excuse to say, "It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does." That’s why what we refer to as "The Bible Belt" also just happens to be the most bigoted and intolerant region in the entire country, and you’ll find the same to be true throughout the world - the more religious, the more bigoted, narrow-minded, and intolerant. Does that sound like the work of God? Personally, I don’t think so.
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So I look upon organized religion as a form of ignorance, and as I mentioned above, I equate ignorance with evil. You show me a man who believes in talking snakes, and I’ll show you a man who may be learned, but he’s not very bright, so he can be convinced of anything. So does organized religion have to be evil? No it doesn’t. But wherever you find hoards of insecure and unthinking people, you’re also going to find excess, hatred, subservience, and greed - or in short, evil.
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Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.com[email protected]
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.