Today is Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement. Last night, my mom and my sister went to services while I stayed at home with my dad. I've been think an awful lot about what it is to be an atheist today.
I have never believed in God. I suppose that if one starts going to religious services, be it at a church, mosque, or synagogue, or something else, at a young age, and is told about God as a child, they will believe. Actually, that's not true. As a little kid, I went to church and synagogue a lot, more than I do now, and I never believed, not for a minute. In contrast, my friend was not religious until the age of thirteen, when she started to read the Bible after finishing the Da Vinci Code and more or less became a born-again Christian. The point of those isn't to speculate how people become religious or atheist. It's to discuss an atheist's view on the world.
I fall in between the fine line of agnostic and atheist. I don't believe in God or any sort of deity. I don't think there's life after death. I don't think there's fate. I believe in evolution and mankind's ability to make its own destiny. However, that is not to say I'm not open to the possibility. If there was real, tangible proof, like, if say God or some other deity came down to Earth and spoke and more than one or two atheists/agnostics, aka me and my sister, heard him, I might believe. But I would not become religious.
Some people use God to explain the world. I use science and reasoning. Some people don't believe that humans can control their own destiny and therefore God must run everything, or started everything and left. I disagree. I say we have the scientific evidence for the Big Bang, for evolution, for it all. Why argue with real tangible proof? Some people say that mankind is damned as soon as their born. I say everyone is born a fresh slate and must write their own destiny.
I do not hate religion. I just have some problems with the corruptions that go hand-in-hand with religion. That is not to say I believe all or some religions are corrupt. All religions have good intentions, to a degree. The Torah, Bible, and Koran all of very positive passages about peace and helping the poor. Hinduism and Buddhism are also more or less peaceful, I think. I've never read much about either, so my focus will be on the Abrahamic religions. While there is some good in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, there is also some bad. I'm talking about a good chunk of the Leviticus, like the selling-your-daughters-into-slavery and stoning-the-adulterers sections, mistranslations like turning foreign practice into abomination, and the inability to change with the centuries. Maybe if religion was more flexible, more welcoming, I'd like it more.
I know you cannot make grand generalizations about religion, like all Muslims are terrorists and all Christians are like the KKK or the National Organization for Marriage. However, these groups are so strong, so powerful, and command so much media attention it's hard not to.
As an atheist, I've had my own awkward experiences. As a twelve-year-old, a sleepover I had turned from having fun and watching movies to three or four of my friends discussing the importance of God in their lives. They asked me what I believed. I said I didn't. There was a long, awkward silence, ad we went back to talking about how hard science was. One of my friends invited me to her church after. I longed to scream that going to church wasn't going to change my views. Later, at my summer camp, I did not say the under God part of the Pledge of Allegiance. A friend asked me why. I told her I didn't believe in God. She just walked away, offended. This year in history, we were talking about Richard Dawkin's views. I voiced my own atheism and was met with blank stares, and at lunch yet another friend invited me to her church. What could I do?
Much as I fear and do not trust religion, there is a passage from the Bible I would like to share. I first heard it in a No on 8 commercial and it has stayed with me since. If only religion was more like this.
"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." 1 Corinthians 13.
It's passages like these that give me hope, hope that some day in the future, people will stop fighting over which God is right, if that God even exists, and that one day, I will be respected for my faith, or lack there of.