#agnoticism

6/29/23

When I was a christian, one of the ever-present narratives passed around every church I attended was this idea that christians are being persecuted. The examples were numerous: family values were being eroded by liberals and gay people; atheists didn't want the ten commandments on government buildings; prayer wasn't allowed in schools anymore; teachers weren't allowed to express their faith in the classroom; people weren’t voting for pro-christian legislation; secular music was bringing demons into people's houses straight through the radio waves; profanity scribbled onto playgrounds was corrupting the minds of children... I could go on. And most of these are pretty innocuous things talked about in front of me, a child.

As I grew older, I was let in on the secrets of how sex perverts holy minds and how divorce was a sign a couple had allowed satan into their marriage and how using swear words gave demons a foothold on your mind. I learned that christians must stand tall and resilient to resist the temptations of the flesh, because the government, schools, and pretty much everyone who didn't attend the same church as us (and maybe even some people who did! *gasp*) were dripping with satanic influence.

It sounds like hyperbole when I write it out, but I'm dead serious.

It's been over ten years since my Exit. I thought when I quit christianity that my life would suddenly be filled with "secularism." I thought I'd run into people who actively weren't christian anytime I went to a bar or an event or work. I thought it would take me no time at all to find spaces to exist in that didn't involve christianity. Because, after all, christianity was being eroded, right? It was being attacked from all sides! We had donned the armor of god and were ready to do battle in the lord's name! The enemy was everywhere!

If atheists = the enemy, and then enemy was everywhere, therefore, atheists must be everywhere. Right? 

And now that I had defected, I wanted to find the enemy and ask them to be friends. 

But I couldn't fucking find the enemy.

Because, as it turns out, atheists aren't everywhere, but christianity is.

You can't fucking escape it. You can't avoid it. It. is. ubiquitous. Way worse than dandelions.

There are christians in the office at work. christians at mcdonalds. christians in bars, getting wasted and sexually harassing people. There are christians in your neighborhood. There are christians at the doctor's office. There are christians who hunt and christians who play sports and christians who go to college and christians who mow lawns and pave your driveway and install sump pumps.

There are even corporations who are explicitly christian. Hobby Lobby. Chick-fil-A. Forever 21. Whataburger. Not to mention all those small-town businesses who are closed on sundays, which is annoying af.

There are 2300 people in my small USA town. Guess how many churches. FOURTEEN. In like, a five-square-mile radius. And if I expand to a twenty-mile radius? Over a hundred churches. I got tired of counting, so it could be more. I tried figuring out how many are in my county, but all I got was that there were 72 towns. Multiply that by 14 churches/town? Over a thousand.

If life were a Where's Waldo book, I'd be Waldo and everyone else would be a christian.

All the churches have signs too, just in case you forgot they were a church. One near me says "jesus is risen and nothing can change that." My husband likes to say, "Pontius Pilot would beg to differ," lol. Another one says, "It's not about guilt, it's about being free." Sure. Gaslighting 101, right there.

It's not just churches who have signs either. My neighbor still has up an easter flag that reads "jesus is risen" (this flag replaced the "trump: right to bear arms" flag with two pistols on it). There are a bunch of farms around who put bible versus on signs, too. One nearby says, "He knows every hidden thought," which is super creepy. It doesn't make it less creepy knowing it's a bible verse. And tons of people have christian shit on their cars—bible verses, jesus fish, crosses. Not to mention bibles in hotel rooms (I throw those away when I find them) and christian billboards (I flip those off when I see them).

I even have christian clients and I have to edit their books! Even my therapist is a christian.

christianity is everywhere.

You can't escape it.

Every time I meet a new person who is christian, or remember that someone I know and like is still christian, I experience a surge of disappointment. 

Not you too.

On my worst days, when I am triggered and anxious and full of rage at the ideology that caused me so much pain, I can't even leave the house, because doing so would require me to drive down a road named after the church located on it.

christianity is like hydra. You can run. You can chop off a head or two or three. But it always grows another.

birth is a curse, and christianity is a prison.

Religion and logic cannot run together

This is a matter of all kinds of possibilities… Now let’s come to reality. We consider the religion to be the best which we are born in and a person born in a Muslim religion feels that he is born in the ‘right’ religion while a person born in a Hindu religion feels that he is born in the ‘right’ religion and all other religions and their followers are wrong. The mentality of the people imprisoned in different enclosures starts with ‘Our own is superior’ and ends at the same. There is a large number of such people in the world and the funny thing is that due to their blind devotion and blind faith, they would easily accept all kinds of illogical arguments. Just think despite being equipped with all kinds of education they give their seal of acceptance to such irrational things.

How did humans start their journey on earth

Today, if we say anything irrational beyond the faith of a religious person, he applies a little mind and dismisses it. But if the other people around him say the same irrational thing, then pressure keeps on mounting him to accept that irrational thing and maybe at some point, he may give his acceptance to that irrational thing….This is a centuries-old pattern of all religions. When a child is born, his parents start feeding him with all kinds of irrational things related to religion. As he grows a little older rest of the people in the house, relatives say the same irrational things to him, he reaches school and college, then he finds the same people there who repeat all the same things and then he goes to the job, here too the people there are repeating the same things and he grasps those things even in his subconscious so much that he cannot deny those things even in his dreams.

It is not easy to get out of the religious morass in such a situation and if someone comes out of it then it is obvious that he somewhere decided on this whole pattern… the criterion of thinking, questioning, finding answers, reasoning every religious story… and this is the brainstorm that results in a person going beyond theism to reality.

As a Muslim, if you want to jump into this brainstorm, come with me and think, understand what can be true… Meditate in the things that are inherently complicated and question yourself, if not anyone else.

Is the Omnipresence of God proved by this story?

First of all, come on a story of ‘Soor e Bakra’ of the Quran… that tells how God created Adam and asked all the angels including the Iblees to prostrate him, but the Iblees refused and as a result, his recognition as a ‘devil’ took place- if we think of this story in a slightly symbolic way, it will become something like this…

 Where did religion come from and how logical from the point of view of science?

Suppose you are a celebrity of the types of Ambani – You have a mansion built in 100 acres, which has arrangements like a rest house for the guests, a park and a swimming pool. At the same time, you are also known as a religious teacher and you have claimed that you not only know what is on the people’s minds but what will happen in the future is also in your knowledge.

You have two sons – one day you call both sons in front of all the servants of the house and tell the eldest son and the servants to call ‘Papa’ to the younger son… Here, it may not be important for the elder son or servants to assume or say ‘Papa’, the obedience to your order is important—

But the elder son is not convinced to say ‘Papa’ to his own father’s son and his younger brother – while the rest of the servants consider the younger son to be ‘Papa’ without much hesitation, the elder son flatly refuses and you become upset and declare your eldest son a ‘Kuputra’ and decide a ‘Prison Punishment’ for him.

You have a computer, in which you have collected all the necessary information and you have told everyone at home that they may touch or use anything in the house use but do not disturb this computer. Now ‘Kuputra’ turned elder son instigated the younger that he opened the computer and saw what was inside.

On knowing this, you were filled with unlimited anger and you expelled both ‘Kuputra’ and ‘Suputra’ son out of the mansion saying they have to stay in the rest house outside the mansion from now-on — for a certain time and then they will get an entry back to the mansion.

what possibilities are there in the universe outside our planet

Since the younger son had apologized, you have assured him that all his children have to do certain things – for that not only will they get an entry back to the mansion, but they will also be awarded by nice gifts. Along that gave the elder son a chance that besides he will go to jail, he can seduce as many of his younger brother’s children — and take all of them to the jail with him.

Why does God always need to show beneficence?

Now they start living there, but you repeatedly impose gratitude by telling the younger son and his children that look, we built this house for you – this park, a pool full of water… this LCD, cable, Miniplex, arranged Veg and Non-veg dishes – gave items like Raymond, Reid & Taylor’s clothes, Roland Watches, Ray-ban glasses, Nike shoes.

Now some confusion arises here – the first question mark will be on your knowledge that you did not know, what would be the reaction of the elder son on your call, because if you knew, you would not say anything which is disregarded or you would not be so angry that you would declare your elder son a ‘Kuputra’ for disobeying you.

The second complication is that on your call, the denial of the elder son to call the younger son as ’Papa’ was a sudden incident, which could be avoided by the confession and a little bending of the elder son — that is why your show of beneficence to the younger son for the rest house and the facilities there, will be proved a lie … Suppose elder son would have called him ‘Papa’, these things were meaningless. Then this dialogue for the already made things, “we made it for you” — will automatically be rejected.

The third complication is that under one possibility, assume that you knew everything and whatever you did was done knowingly, then the title of ‘Kuputra’  to a son, to punish both the sons by expelling from the mansion and the jail sentence for Kuputra and the children of the younger son who came under seduction is too much for them.

Obviously, if you apply this story to yourself, then you will not digest this behaviour from yourself but in the name of religion, you accept this story very easily.

Now if you ask such questions to the likes of a religious person or Maulana etc., then the first possibility would be that you can be given the title of a Kafir, Munafik or Atheist which is the most common custom among Muslims, because there is no permission to think about or ask such questions in Islam. Well… let’s talk about this charge because this one word ‘Atheist’ too, creates a lot of confusion.

What should the meaning of an atheist?

There is a person who calls himself an atheist, whom you also categorize as an atheist… not only he keeps ridiculing the established God and the beliefs attached to them – but also keeps on humiliating those who believe in them, then he cannot be an atheist, because in order to ridicule he is accepting the very existence of God – If he is accepting the existence of God, then he is not fulfilling the first condition of being an atheist. An Atheist is the one who has no faith… And if there is no faith, how can one ridicule anything.

If God is there then how can it be from the point of view of science

Now, when such a person comes to the fore, the first thing believers expect from him to tell that how will he be married – how will he be cremated after death because the rites associated with them represent some religion.

It actually is a kind of foolishness that you are seeking rituals from someone who has no faith – means you are expecting him to decide on any ritual for marriage or funeral and the people with similar ideology should do everything according to them. Then even atheism will become a separate cult.

If the man decides the faith, then what is the meaning of being an atheist? Atheism is personal thinking, a personal lifestyle, not any cult. If I say that I am an atheist, there will never be a condition that my wife should also be an atheist or that my parents should also be atheists. I may not have faith in any rituals for marriage, but if my partner does have one then why should I have problems with her faith?

You do a ‘Nikah’, do marry by taking circles around the fire, do a court marriage – what difference does it make? The one, who has to maintain the relationship will maintain it without these rituals, as they used to do before the practice of marriage took place and those who don’t want to, will not even do it despite these religious rituals. Millions of divorces in the world are witness to this logic.

How to write a book in Microsoft word  

As far as rituals of the funeral after death are concerned, as soon as I stop breathing, my consciousness is over – what difference does it make to me whether I was burnt, buried, fed to eagles or given to medical students…

It matters to those who care about life after death. What difference does it make to those who don’t have faith in this thing? Here too, it matters to people around those who die that how will they perform the cremation according to their faith, then why should I mind to their faith?

The wife of an atheist can be a theist – her parents can be theists.

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I got in some hot water making this argument to my die-hard atheist friends over the years, so I won’t say it myself again. Here is Martin Amis saying the exact same thing, and I don’t even know the man. I also don’t know why there aren’t more of us out there. I really don’t.

From an interview for Prospect, Feb, 2010, as quoted in Wikipedia:

In 2006 Amis said that "agnostic is the only respectable position, simply because our ignorance of the universe is so vast" that atheism is "premature". Clearly, "there's not going to be any kind of anthropomorphic entity at all", but the universe is "so incredibly complicated", "so over our heads", that we cannot exclude the existence of "an intelligence" behind it.[53]