Questioning Atheism

I have a problem with Christians primarily for one reason: their unquestioning faith in whatever is verbally fed to them by their church. Faith, I think, is a good thing at times. Faith is not necessarily synonymous with "belief." Belief, as I have defined it for myself, is "asserting as truth without any significant evidence, proof, or logic to verify as truth." Faith, on the other hand, is simply a desire for something to become truth. For instance, I have faith that if I do well, work hard, and really try, I can make something of my life that I will be proud of. Someone else may have faith that their child will grow up to be brilliant and successful. Someone else may have faith that they will not get fired from a job.

So faith isn't necessarily a bad thing. Now, unquestioning faith, that is something else entirely. It can be dangerous, and is usually a sign the utmost ignorance, or, at least, someone who doesn't use their brain. What stems from my disgust towards many (not all) Christians, is that they never question their doctrine or scripture. How can one understand anything if they don't question it? For instance, God created the world in six days, then rested on the seventh. But God is, according to doctrine, omnipotent, that is all-powerful and can do anything. So why did God rest on the seventh day? Did he get tired or something? That may be blasphemy to most Christians, but as a mystic I find it a very important question to ask if anyone is to understand the uniquely Abrahamic idea of the God on Most High.

Or again in Genesis, "the face of God moved above the waters," and then God separated everything. The waters are the primordial waters of chaos, which holds all things in perfect state of war, conflict, and contradictions. That means that God could not have been the only thing, but existed simultaneously with chaos and matter. It also means God did not created anything. Chaos is only potential to become other things, so God separated the conflicting elements of chaos into an ordered state of water and chaos, light and dark, land and sea, night and day, animate and inanimate, et cetera. So why is God called the Creator, if He didn't create, but ordered? Can anything be created ex nobo? Or is all creation a form of ordering?

These questions and more are the foundations of many of the Western world's philosophies, and they get at an idea and desire of authenticity that is greater than the profane world we live in every day. If we ignore these questions we are just as lost as someone who never picked up a sacred text in their life.

To clarify my point here, I think most Christians, and many other devoutly religious people, have simply missed the point (again, this doesn't not mean all of them). But if Christians missed the point, then clearly atheists didn't know there was a point to begin with.

Atheists, really, are just as bad as Christians. Christians will skip over things in the Bible that don't fit their agenda, and Atheists will skip over things in the Bible that don't fit their agenda either. Atheists love to pull the comment: you don't need the Bible to have morality. And you know what, they're right; you don't need the Bible to find morality, at least not anymore. But ask any Atheist if there is anything moral in the Bible and most of them will pull out all the horrible things the Bible recommends to do, such as if a man rapes a woman, then they have to marry. They are clearly skipping over the moral parts of the Bible to fit their own agenda. (Again, not all atheists do this).

What astounds me the most about Atheists is their rejection of a desire for the authentic, the subliminal experience. There are always going to be a few moments in our lives where we simply don't have words, and we sense something much larger than ourselves. We may call this "something larger than ourselves" Deity, the Universe, the All, Nature, or whatever. We may experience this in viewing Venus, watching the sun set, seeing a child born, solving a math problem, growing a sugar crystal, or watching a snake eat a rat. It is a sense of wonder; it is ineffable; in it we feel small and lost in complexity and contradiction. We try to understand these experiences, and this is our desire for the authentic. Atheists may get excited about it, but then they like to pass it off to science to figure it out, whatever it is that needs to be figured out. That, or they find it silly to think there might be something higher than us just by watching water freeze.

I ultimately find it tragic that one side fights over a point that they missed, and the other fights over a point they didn't know was there. And I see this everyday, and both sides are only persecuting themselves. Christians say, "I won't apologize for being Christian!" "Those immoral, liberal atheists are trying to destroy our religion!" Then Atheists say, "The Christians are trying to destroy us!" "I won't apologize for being an Atheist!" Right, and while you're both putting yourselves up on your crosses, you self-fulfill your own persecution.

I just wish Christians would try to question and understand their own doctrines, and Atheists try to understand Christianity and Christians as two separate things. But above all, if I may quote Rodney King, "I wish we could all just get along."