As a member of the LGBT community and a part time activist, I often encounter people who have been harmed in some way by people who claim to be christian. As such, I've met many people who have turned away from Christianity and, usually, turned to atheism, agnosticism, generic theism, or something else. Unfortunately, by both being exposed to these people and going to a science and technology school, I've seen many people who have an outright hatred or disdain for anyone identifying themselves as christian. While I understand the frustration many of these people are feeling, I try to see the good in everyone and give everyone a fair chance. As such, I've tried to view religion from a fairly objective standpoint. Additionally, I've done a lot of thinking to resolve some of the worst-case scenarios involving spiritual matters, and I've found some interesting results in the process. While I'll cover some other aspects later, right now I want to share the conclusion I've come to: regardless of your belief system, you are no more or less right than anyone else.
This conclusion came about after I thought long and hard about which viewpoints on spiritual matters required a leap of faith and which were founded in pure logic, and I came to the conclusion that no belief system truly was founded in pure logic. This statement probably would have many of my atheist scientific friends screaming, but I'll explain why this is so. I'm not saying any one religion is more right than the others: on the contrary, I'm trying to give certain religions more of a chance than they normally get.
Spiritual beliefs, when based solely on the existence of a god or goddess or multiple gods, can be classified into four major categories: theist, atheist, agnostic, and irrelevance. Theists are individuals who believe that at least one god or goddess exists, and this category of belief systems encompasses most belief systems on Earth. Atheist, contrary to popular belief, is not the pure opposite of Christianity, and is not an umbrella term for everyone who doesn't hold a belief in a god. Rather, it is the belief in the absence of a god. This is a very important distinction to make, as many people who are true atheists often use a certain argument (which I will get to later) to justify their beliefs that many self proclaimed atheists don't use. Most of the people, I believe, who claim to be atheists are not, in fact, atheists, but rather agnostics. Agnostics hold the belief (yes, the belief) that there is no evidence available to us to determine whether a god exists or not. And the last one, the group most probably haven't heard of, are the ones who believe in the irrelevance of a god to our daily lives. I might go over this idea later on, but for now, I wanted to clarify the four categories of divine belief before going into more detail about them.
Theism is the belief system most people are familiar with. It comprises of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, the well known ancient religions of Egypt and Greece, many of the religions of the Native Americans, and thousands of others. No doubt, if you've been involved in any kind of conflict with a religious individual over the correctness of their beliefs, they'll point you toward a set of circumstances which they believe is proof of the correctness of their religious values. Some will claim that certain aspects of the universe are indicators of God's mercy, as my mom did once by saying that a release of endorphins after a critical injury was proof of God easing a creature's way into the afterlife. Others will say that the universe is too structured, too orderly to have come about randomly and without direction or design. The only problem, however, is no one can agree on the proof for these statements, and no one can agree that certain things about the universe actually do prove the existence of a god or anything about said god's nature. It is possible that some of these people might be right, but as we can't test these theories, we can neither prove them nor disprove them. As such, belief in theism requires believing something whose truth value is uncertain, thus requires a leap of faith.
Atheism is similar. However, the primary argument I hear given to support atheism is the lack of evidence of a god's existence, the idea being that this supposed lack of evidence is evidence of the lack of a god. Now, anyone who can use logic can see that this is a logical fallacy: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Before we delve further into the subject of atheism, we need to examine the definition of evidence. According to Google's built-in dictionary function, the definition of evidence goes as follows: "the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid." The biggest part of this definition is 'available body of facts or information', meaning what we have found and can access with our senses. The idea that our current level of evidence can say something about the existence of god requires many assumptions. One, that any evidence of a god's existence will be observable by our senses, even as enhanced as they are by technology. Two, that our five senses can detect all aspects of the universe and that there is nothing we can't discover, despite the fact that our technology only enhances our five senses and does not expand upon them. Three, that our technology and science will never expand to the point where we might find evidence of a god's existence at some point in the future. And four, that we will never develop additional senses. There might be others, but these are the four I have found. There are many people who are true atheists who claim their belief system is purely logical, however, by just looking at the assumptions I brought up, and knowing that we can't confirm or deny those assumptions, we can come to the same conclusion that belief in an atheist system requires a leap of faith similar to those taken by the theists.
Naturally, we move on to the agnostics, who believe that there is no evidence to support either the theist or atheist viewpoint, so there is no reason to come to a decision regarding the existence of a god. This belief system, however, also makes an assumption, which many people in the scientific community do as well. They believe that their society's scientists have got it right. They believe that the current picture our scientists have painted with the technologically enhanced senses we have now is complete, that our scientists have left no stone unturned and that every bit of the universe they've analyzed has been done so completely and perfectly. However, this also implies that scientists haven't missed something, haven't created a false assumption about part of the universe. Agnosticism requires the belief that our scientists are not only finding the correct image of the universe, but also painting it for us, that what we're learning in school is actually accurate. You might think this is a crazy thing to consider, that believing scientists is something we do every day when we handle any piece of technology. But think about it for a second. Do you go out and try to confirm every aspect of the science behind a laptop before you use it to make sure that the scientists who discovered the principles that were used to design the laptop were, in fact, right? Of course not. You take their word as gospel. You decide that you have neither the time nor the resources (or in some cases, the intelligence) to grasp all of the scientific principles behind an object and examine each and every one of them for correctness, so you decide to believe what our scientists are telling you. Don't get me wrong, I don't believe that all of the world's scientists are participating in some kind of conspiracy, but we tend to forget the fallibility of human beings when we put so much faith in our scientists. Agnosticism, like atheism and theism, requires that leap of faith.
And now comes the fourth category, irrelevance. Technically irrelevance can be thrown into any of the above three categories, as irrelevance can say that there is a god, or that there isn't, or that we don't know. But the big part of the irrelevance belief system is that it doesn't matter whether a god exists or not, that the potential impact a god can have (or would have) on the universe as we know it shouldn't affect our every day lives. This requires a belief that is less based in the existence of a god and more based in the existence of a divine purpose. The irrelevance belief states that whatever purpose a god might have for us, if there even is one, is not relevant to our lives and should be ignored. This, of course, requires the belief that we can find a purpose that is meaningful enough to us to bring significant meaning to our lives without having to turn to the divine for that purpose. That requires making arbitrary assumptions about who and what can provide said purpose and how to define meaningful purpose. The answers to these questions are arbitrary, and as they can't be proven or disproven, they require a leap of faith to believe in.
The idea that a belief system is better than others because it is not, in fact, a belief system is a logical fallacy, as I've already shown. The idea that any belief system which tries to make any kind of determination on the existence or nature of a god is nothing more than a logical conclusion is also false. The idea that an atheist is superior to a theist simply due to either party's beliefs is nothing more than a continuation of the problems that drive many people away from modern religions, and the prevalence of this viewpoint in the LGBT community, among others, is saddening. It's the kind of self-righteousness and bigotry that we've been fighting for years to end, and by calling ourselves superior for simply having a belief system, we continue it. If we're to ask for equality and acceptance, we have to extend that same courtesy to others that we don't agree with, to create an example for others to follow. And to do that, the hatred and bigotry need to end.
And not just on the theist side, but on all sides.
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