I am an atheist. I have spent much of my life feeling guilty for this gut feeling. Yet denying it, is denying myself. Hence I feel the need to come clean, to state my case. I am an atheist not just because I do not believe in the God principal but, to paraphrase the Marquis de Laplace, “I have no need for that hypothesis”. I do not want to be altruistic, compassionate or generous because these acts ensure salvation. I want to be all of those because that is who I am. No perks required.
I have been vegan/vegetarian for most of my life because I do not want to part of the meat trade. Not because this is bad for my soul, but because I don’t think it benefits the planet. In fact my idea of the soul is contrary. It is not some spiritual form that will survive after my body perishes. To me, my soul is the heart of me, the passions, desires, intensions that drive my action and behaviours, forces me to create art, poetry, products, strings of words with meaning. My soul is all that I create that will either survive me or be forgotten with me.
I do not believe in religion, yet Daoist, Vedantic and Zen Buddhist teachings are an essential part of my philosophical outlook. I practice yoga, meditation, mindfulness because it benefits my body, mind, intellect. These practices enable discernment and focused attention. Hence I religiously engage in these practices for selfish reasons.
Even though I do not have faith, I respect people who do if that faith leads them to compassion, personal growth, internal strength. However faith that leads to mindless acts makes me angry. That’s where mindfulness practice comes in handy, I need to be aware of this anger so I prevent it biasing my behaviour. For all actions and behaviours have repercussions. Sounds a lot like karma. My karma does not span multiple lives for it all happens here and now.
My experience and gut feeling about life and the universe is somewhat similar to James Lovelocks, Gaia hypothesis. This hypothesis posits that the Earth is a self-regulating complex system that is constantly evolving. Biological organisms (biota) co-evolve with their environment: that is, they “influence their abiotic environment, and that environment in turn influences the biota by Darwinian evolution”. Hence the evolution of life and its environment are intimately linked. My worldview expands this concept slightly as I believe that every thought, action, deed (conscious or unconscious) either directly or indirectly affects your environment. Hence every being plays a vital role in how his universe was created and will evolve. So I am a universal atheist. And this is where I take a leap of faith. I mchoose to believe in humanity. I believe that as humans we will ultimately do what benefits the whole.
I present myself as a rationalist, yet my default mode of thinking is intuitive. Scientific exploration fills me with awe and wonder. Physics and chemistry feel like magic, especially when you observe a reaction or phenomena that you cannot explain. However, I hated school because I did not want to regurgitate information that was fed to me, I wanted to objectively and subjectively explore what lies beyond the known. Does this make me a mystic or sceptic? A fake, a fraud, a believer, a seeker?
things to talk about 