The Athiest and the Believer

Talking with athiests, it seems to me that they hold a sense of a great power; they just resist, for whatever reason, calling it God. The power can be a variety of things, from the self to money to dark forces to nature. Regardless of what it is, it seems that underneath it all they are seeking the same thing as so many seeking God: some sense of control in the universe. Whether it is to assuage fears of control within -- too little or the frightening prospect of too much -- or a vast question of Who or What is in charge of everything everywhere, all seem to be looking for the same thing.

Looking for the universal control within religion, the most difficult point is that people ascribe control, positive and negative, to something outside themselves. They attribute everything good to God and everything bad to the devil, and an entire discussion can be had about people being too short-sighted or selfish to accurately judge good and bad. In the focus on things outside themselves people fail to recognize that every human has both the good and evil within (Isaiah 45:7, in the King James version, says that God creates evil. Why is that ignored? Why was the word 'evil' modified in later versions?). Seeing everything as outside the self, one unavoidably gives the responsibility for anything and everything to things outside the self. One becomes a pawn to awesome forces. How maddening! Nothing can be done by a puny human compared to these vast forces.

It's handy, of course. Anything bad can be blamed on the devil, anything good can be given to the adopted loyalty to God. The person gets to withdraw into the shadows and not take responsibility. And any manner of personal pathology can thus be exercised and responsibility denied. My own observation is that the more fundamental the religion, the stronger this tendency this is. And not just in Christianity.

But here's the main point: many athiests, sensing this exercise of pathology and denial, choose to say that religion is nothing more than rationalization for human failings and choose the belief that it's all made up. They miss one important point: even if too many people engage in religion for personal failings, which is undoubtedly true, it doesn't mean that there isn't a God. Even though I drew away from religion a few years ago -- after forty years of going to church and ten years of no longer being challenged to grow -- this has been one of the most intriguing questions that has escaped answer for me: getting past all human ignorance, misunderstanding, pathology, and rationalization, what is God beyond these things? There is a vastness that I cannot even begin to approach with my limited understanding, and the search is boggling. Yet believing that it is based in Love -- the most positive power in the universe, the forward-moving impulse, the exercise of cooperation between all things in existence, the thing which no amount of darkness can ultimately resist -- gives my search the flavor of excitement and wonder that they promise in religion.

A related thought: in religion why do they try to figure out complicated things like what the Book of Revelation means when they haven't even mastered the simplicity of the Golden Rule?