I Do Not Believe in God(s)

This is going to be a difficult one for me, which is the point exactly. For our last @dolphinschool assignment, we are supposed to tell a story that costs us something, and the sad reality is, there are some people who will not even have read this far.

There are those who might read that title and immediately unfollow me.

I contentedly accept that cost though, for it is a small price to pay for having the rest of you with me as I open my heart to you. A small price to pay, too, because this post will open the way for me to write about one of my favourite things: My(Our) existence, and trying to understand the very nature of reality itself.

Let me begin by saying that your having a belief does not make me value your thoughts any less, as is the case with so many atheists. Indeed, I often hesitate to call myself atheist exactly because of the stigma. Many atheists are assholes but I assure you, I am not. At least not most of the time ;P

So please, please, comment after this and share with me your thoughts. One of my few convictions in life is that it is beneficial for us as humanity to share with each other our experiences. We all grow and mature as a result, mentally and emotionally.

I grew up in a Christian household. But from a young age, I questioned things. Things happened that made me doubt, and things happened that made me fervently believe. But at the age of 16, more or less, I had an epiphany of sorts which separated me from Christianity ever since. I explored other "spiritual" paths after that, calling myself agnostic, but I knew for sure that the Christian creed (and other major religions), at the very best, were crutches for people who needed to live life in peace, without having to deal with trying to understand an indifferent universe that sometimes seemed even cruel.

After some time though, I realised that agnosticism (as most people understand it) was... not accurate. It came down to two things, the first of which is called the "Burden of Proof", which works like this: If I make a claim, it is up to me to show why the claim is true. If I say, for example, that clouds are made of candy floss, the burden is on me to prove it. I can't expect anyone to just believe me. Of course, in this example, others might decide to make the effort to prove me wrong, by perhaps scaling a mountain or sky-diving through some clouds with a net ;P ...

But what if the claim I make cannot so easily be disproven? Which leads to the second thing: Unfalsifiability:

For example, if I make the claim that there is a rare species of mole, that have two tails and are purple, with pink eyes, but that they're almost extinct with only 1 male and 1 female left on the entire planet, it would be up to me to provide evidence of these moles. You would not simply believe me, nor would anyone expect you to. And nobody is going to make the effort to search the entire Earth to prove me wrong. Indeed, that wouldn't be possible, not because of the enormity of the task, but because no matter how much you searched, I could always claim that my purple moles were hiding in a place where you hadn't looked yet.

NOW... Imagine I go further, and claim that my purple moles are invisible. And not only that: They are invisible, super-intelligent and have incredible power to manipulate time and space at will. This is a claim that is impossible to disprove, or prove, either way. An unfalsifiable claim; and you'd probably be wondering if I shouldn't go see a psychologist at this point. ;P

The concept of a god or gods is exactly like our purple mole. And yet people who believe they exist are taken seriously. When I started to understand things from this perspective, my mind was blown, and I couldn't call myself agnostic anymore. Most people who call themselves agnostic believe that a god might exist, or it might not exist, and that they just don't know. They give each possibility a 50% chance of being true. But why? Is there a 50% chance of a purple, orange eyed mole existing, even without super-powers? Of course not.

Thus I became an unbeliever. An infidel ;P - I hope you see that this does not make me a bad person. You can be morally good without believing in gods. Indeed, if one is only good because of a belief and perhaps fear of divine punishment, then that isn't really being good, is it?

Of course, there are many, many more factors that have lead me to where I am now on my "spiritual" journey, and I'm looking forward to exploring these with you in future posts. I didn't want to make this one unreadably long.

Please use the comment section! What do you believe in, if anything? Why do you believe it? Tell me why I'm wrong. Share your story with me... My favourite thing in the world is getting to know people through this kind of conversation. You can really discover who people truly are ;)

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I Do Not Believe in God(s) - Why do you?