Life sans god

In I realised that I, and most athiests don't really describe the subjective experience of life without a personal god, a sentient entity that controls the universe and perhaps it's more accurate to say describing what it is like believing there is no personal god, no sentient entity that controls the universe.

You see there's an ambiguity to it afterall, as an athiest I believe everyone is living in a universe without this 'god' character we hear so much about, whether you believe in him or not. Conversely for the devout and faithful, you believe everyone is living under the watchful eye of this omnipotent 'being' whether we believe in him or not.

I'm going to try to avoid arguing one way or another, I just feel to the genuinely curious it may be worthwhile to describe my actual experience that you might compare it to the lifestyle you imagine. To be honest, I'll probably do a poor job because mostly I just don't notice 'gods absence' I've never really thought like he/she/it existed so there was nothing as such for me not to notice. Basically I've had to base it on the queries I've heard or read about from believers or make educated guesses on the differences in mindset from personal encounters with the faithful.

My intention is simply that you be better informed by my description of what it is actually like, whether it is harder/easier, scarier/happier etc than you imagined it would be, or even to compare your own experience as an athiest if you are that way inclined.

"If God does not exist, everything is permitted."

Which is a paraphrase of Fyodor Dostoevsky, not his actual words and was raised in the Dawkins v. Someguy debate as an argument for God's existence. Without going into the technical details of why it isn't, let me just say that it's consistent with my belief that 'everything' is permitted and I percieve that to many this is an unpleasant prospect.

So in the spirit of the paraphrase, the 'everything' we are talking about here is our behaviour in a moral context. Without religion, spirituality to give us moral instruction how can we sustain a society where no divine being rewards or punishes our behaviour in the life everafter?

I don't find it very scary at all, in fact I find the notion quite wonderful. By saying that everything is permitted what I mean is that people can do horrible things and the universe will not actively stop them from doing so. There is no physical law (such as gravity) that prevented the holocaust, the rawandan massacre or the attrocities of the Belgian Congo. Terrible things happen every day and no divine force intercedes. Nor do I believe that the perpetrators of such inhumanity are punished with eternal damnation.

That's not the wonderful part though, I think the force that intercedes is society. Human beings are social creatures and tend to interject and reject antisocial behaviour. There have been many solutions communities have devised to keep people in line, the justice system and rule of law being the current favored artificial constructs removing people that are deemed to be a 'menace to society'.

It is in my experience and beliefs people's goodwill to eachother that decides what is permitted and what isn't. But beyond that, I believe that it is wonderful if/that people decide these things for themselves.

As scary as the notion that no devine being is keeping people in line, it presents this wonderful opportunity for people to stand up on their own and say 'I'm not going to do that.'

If you think about all the opportunities we have to do harm to one another for instant gratification and how few people act on these opportunities you have an overwhelmingly positive experience of the human race. Even in the most dangerous places on earth, people survive and live as communities and they do so because most people are social.

The information fed to us are the rare exceptions, the guy that tackles a jogging woman into the bushes and rapes her by the side of the road. We don't get a report on every person that didn't rape a person on the news that day for sheer practical reasons. Society will employ its resources to try and reject the rapist from our midst, precisely because most people don't sympathise with them.

I believe this is just a wonderful non-accident, the logical and simple product of millions of years of evolution that have given us our 'moral compass' we are moral because that is what we need to survive. There's some throwbacks that in small numbers can recieve temporary gratification from breaking the 'rules' of a civilised society, and if there is a god he permits it. My belief is that it's permitted because of physics and the accidental non-sentient forces that created the universe and eventually moral beings.

SO the thought that there is no divine law giver is not one that bothers me ever. I feel better that my decisions to be kind, generous or just plain decent come from nothing more than my own understanding and desires, not on punishment of eternal damnation or some massive payoff of eternal paradise.

Accountability

This segues into what I percieve to be another cloudy area for those who look through the other end of the telescope. Being an athiest I'm responsible for everything, and accountable to myself.

Similarly when something that is essentially meaningless and tragic happens like the Indonesian Tsunami or Kobe Earthquake goes down, I see it as a meaningless tragedy and read no design in it that could be seen as a response to my personal behaviour.

So it cuts both ways, but generally I find choice to be wonderful and can't really imagine or empathise with someone who doesn't think so.

My life is not governed by any taboos or superstitions. It doesn't mean I don't get superstitious or have personal self imposed taboos. My brain is wired that way, what I mean is that nobody else's will intrudes upon the decisions I make in how to behave. If I'm an arsehole to somebody it's my fault and I feel bad. If I do something kind and feel proud of myself, I'm genuinely proud of myself.

I think the freedom to be responsible for your own actions is a wonderful, happy and underappreciated freedom. As Miyamoto Masao wrote in Straightjacket Society:

"In any case if any of the parliamentarians express dismay at what I have written, please send them directly to me. Ii will accept full responsibility for dealing with them." I said.
"It's not up to you to accept that responsibility," he answered. "That responsibility lies at the top."
"But sir, you didn't write that article, so why should you take responsibility for it?"
"You belong to the technical advisors group for the Ministry of Health & Welfare. I'm in charge of that group, and if any problem arises out of it, I'm automatically held responsible."
"That's strange," I said "I could understand you taking responsibility if you interfered in something a subordinate did, but why on earth you should take responsibility for a case like this, which happened entirely out of your jurisdiction I can't fathom."

What's this got to do with religion? Well Masao was oppressed by the Japanese beauracratic 'automatic responsibility system.' which was designed to force him to censure his own behaviour because somebody else was responsible for the consequences of it. This is oppressive to me.

You can't have choices without responsibility. But in a universe without any 'grand design' or purpose that is discernable (the athiest view) I feel as if I have more responsibility than I would if I subscribed to a belief that some beings will was evident in every nuance of life. I'm accountable and responsible to myself, and it makes making choices more rewarding. I don't pray for guidance but try to learn from my experience.

In fact learning is one of the core benefits of taking responsibility. I once read that one of the key tactical mistakes the Commanche were prone to makin was to dismiss their military failure as the result of thier 'medicine' being against them. Rather than analitically learning from the defeat and adjusting they routinely dismissed it as bad luck and were happy to go out the next day with the exact same strategy.

Now while that may be historical conjecture, I find the notion that my place in society stops with me and the choices I make a rewarding and uplifting one. I take comfort knowing that my moral infractions are non-systemic. What do I mean by that? Well if you have a religious instruction saying 'beat and humiliate your child' and if you carry it out you feel bad when you do it.
Rather than taking responsibility for the fact that you feel bad and learning from the experience via your bodies natural feedback, responsibility lies with the instructor, you quash your reservations and learn to ignore your feelings in preference for the grand design.

Or as Abraham Lincoln put it: 'When I do good I feel good, when I do bad I feel bad, that's my religion.' conveniently I choose based on the evidence to believe that Abe was a believer of political convenience.

Purpose

So no grand design? What is the meaning of life? Why do we exist? etc. It is my experience that many believers feel that religion provides them with answers to these questions. Personally I am not satisfied that any religion does.

But basically as an athiest, I don't believe there is any grand design or purpose to our lives or the collective lives of the human race etc. I don't think we are preparing to destroy evil for good at some celestial battle ground, nor do I think that out there in space is a giant crystal lock that we must find the key to unlock it and recieve 100,000,000 points in some grand game of existence.

There is a vacuum where the idea of 'purpose' arises, and admittedly I find this daunting. As I said though, the hole for me, personally is too big for religion to fill. Being a good christian (which given my circumstances in a western society was the only alternative presented to me in my developmental years) is not purpose enough to justify my specific existence.

But over the years I've come to accept that I don't have to. I'm here now and plan to be around for a while. My life is a brief glimmer of experience between two infinite stretches of nothingness.

I have the opportunity to define the context of my own life. To try and achieve something that means something to me and that's the same for everybody. Whether the purpose I assign myself is to run a high altitude ultramarathon or eradicate rabies from the world, it's mine for the choosing and it is a very comforting and inspiring thought.

Michael Jordan cried when he recieved his first NBA championship trophy, and perhaps a large number of people wept with him. But is their any greater purpose to winning an NBA chamionship? I think if you asked an economist they would say that people derive utility (pleasure) from entertainment. If you asked a philosopher they would probably say 'no'. But that does not mean that the emotions were not real, overwhelming and one of the sweetest moments of MJ's life. It is not to say his life was wasted, or that it isn't inspirational.

It meant so much because he, and we the spectators, gave it meaning. That ability is probably the greatest 'gift' of being alive.

Berieved

When people die where do they go? On the surface the athiest experience is pretty bleak and unforgiving. 'They' is consciousness, and dependant on your curiosity or scientific understanding athiests differ. For me I think consciousness is an as yet not understood but essentially mechanical function of the human brain. It is the product of electrical activities that give rise to our subjective experience.

As such, if the brain is turned off, so in essence is 'we' and that's the end. The 'self' doesn't go anywhere, it is dependant on the body.

That is my personal belief, and it's based on the reading I've done. Few people actually bother to read up on the mysteries of consciousness, and frankly I don't blame them. What I've read have been some of the most inaccessable texts ever.

So when people die, I feel sad. In 'moments of weakness' I might escape into fantasy and try and imagine greener pastures where we will be reunited again one day. Particularly when my first dog Lil died. Except whilst denial is an important coping mechanism for overwhelming grief, my reason brutally will not let up, constantly reminding me that there is no heaven, no afterlife etc.

This is probably the 'worst' in terms of gratification of being an athiest. But it isn't that bad. For one we feel sad because the people and pets and animals and bands we lose were special to us, and there's no shame in that. To feel the loss is to love them.

Secondly it is a reminder that life is precious and not to be squandered. It motivates me to do more, try more, be more than I already am whilst I still have the chance to experience it.

Thirdly, I take comfort in memetic replication. That is, people I have known may cease to function as an individual, but everyone we met influences us for better or worse. Those that are worse influences lets face it, we probably won't care are dead. Those that are better are preserved in part, in the ideas they have shaped in our own minds. Our minds are temporary repositories of ideas, our identity and values are shaped by the lives of others. All we lose in death is our own frame of reference, it doesn't mean our influence stops there. It will live on as ideas and mutate and combine and have offspring of its own so long as there are people to recieve them.

What of my own death? Am I scared? Not particularly, which is very different from saying 'I want to die.' I don't want to die and if you see me cycling on a road you are driving down, please drive safe.
What I mean when I say I don't fear death is the experience of death itself. (I'm quite afraid of dying). Because for me, as an athiest death is the cessation of subjective experience itself. No concept of pain, suffering or elation. No concept of time. No nothing. It is incredibly hard to comprehend and I guess it resembles our experience of the time before we were born or concieved, or under general anesthesia (which for me always feels like being 'switched off' for awhile.)

This state is preferable only to a life of suffering with no hope of relief. A tumultuous life full of ups and downs is quite exciting in comparison. Thus I want to live for as long as possible whilst I still have the prospect (however remote) of enjoying myself. If I'm a vegetable, fuck it. Pull the plug and help the environment.

Life Amongst Believers

You learn to live with it, and it's not that bad. I don't believe in the belief vs. non belief debate. Part of the attraction for me of being an athiest is that I am not going to waste vast amounts of my life in devotional activities. The logic is circular I know, and Blaise Pascal would have a go at me.

But basically, I don't enjoy debates, because I think most believers are not having a crisis of faith where they will genuinely consider the perspective of life for a non-believer. So you just have two parties that disagree upsetting eachother.

Having said that, morality is a choice for me. I'm guided by my own compass and generally I am for anything that expands the opportunities of individuals anywhere and sometimes this comes into conflict with religious beliefs.

For example, in Australia there are people who from their religious convictions believe that Gays should not be permitted to marry. I personally am for people having the opportunity to openly and officially declare their love for eachother, gay or straight, no matter how overly optimistic or genuine these claims may be.

Other people find such notions offensive. Here I feel the need to speak up and defend my rights and others. Even if they don't officially exist yet.

I'm fortunate to live in a country where this is easy and safe to do. I understand for other athiests living in secular societies this behaviour is very courageous because it comes with very real (and barbaric) consequences attached. I'm inspired and shamed by the athiests and heretics in history that have stood up and spoken out against organised religions transgressions to their own immediate detriment.

Having said that, it's consistent with my beliefs that atheism in the long run is not under threat. This is because my conviction is that anybody truly curious about the nature of our universe will come to reject the god hypothesis. I'm an athiest because I see no god or grand architect in all the workings of the universe.

Evolution is far more satisfying and compelling than creationsism, the big bang is far more reinforcable by empirical obsevation than the word.

Thus even if the world was overrun by Inca fundamentalists and I was burned on a funeral pyre after having my heart cut out, I think that people will always be spontaneously discovering atheism as revealed to them in what is perhaps known as a 'crisis of faith'. Its my belief, and its not necessary for anyone to share it, that the only belief that has any real chance of spontaneously recreating itself without an institution to specifically propagate it, is atheism.

By contrast when the conquistadors arrived in the New World, they didn't find Catholicism waiting for them. The Papal ambassadors to Prestor John whom they assumed must be emporer of asia and representative of the universal faith of Christianity only found the court of Ghenghis Kahn.

Lunch

Now I'm going to eat lunch, and I'm going to enjoy it.