I cannot subscribe to the mindset needed for religion.
I would need to give up my free will, to blindly accept a supernatural creator
whose dictates I must obey without question. Many of the religious tenets I
would be expected to embrace are questionable and some are downright evil.
Without God’s guidance, I manage to live quite morally without being tempted to plunder, rape and murder. Faith in
an imaginary God plays no part in my life.
If you want to reason about faith, and
offer a reasoned (and reason-responsive) defence of faith as an extra category
of belief worthy of special consideration, I'm eager to play. I certainly grant
the existence of the phenomenon of faith; what I want to see is a reasoned
ground for taking faith seriously as a way of getting to the truth, and not,
say, just as a way people comfort themselves and each other (a worthy function
that I do take seriously). But you must not expect me to go along with your defence
of faith as a path to truth if at any point you appeal to the very dispensation
you are supposedly trying to justify. Before you appeal to faith when reason
has you backed into a corner, think about whether you really want to abandon
reason when reason is on your side. (Daniel Dennett: Darwin's Dangerous Idea).
Religion originated, and is firmly based, in the
distant past when Man understood little of the environment he found himself in.
Adverse weather was God’s wrath, plagues were caused by spells and curses.
Clearly religion’s simplistic explanations for our existence gave comfort and
succour to primitive man. I could almost say, looking back from a modern
rational standpoint, it served some small purpose.
We are now more sophisticated, understanding much of
the how and why of our immediate environment and universe. What we don’t
understand … we don’t yet understand, or perhaps never will. Accept it. We do
not need to invent a supernatural creator to explain it.
Religion and God should be well past their use-by date
and it is not easy to understand how they are still largely tolerated, if not
actively supported by some, in our information-rich age.
Heather Hughes (Knoxville News Sentinel 4/11/2012) explains
her world view: “The elaborate nature of
creation is just one of the many reasons why I believe in God. In fact, it's
difficult for me to understand how anyone who truly takes a moment to reflect
on the world would not at least believe in some form of intelligent design.”
The Intelligent Design belief set really is a product
of unsophisticated and un-enquiring minds; minds that are incapable of understanding
the evidence or comprehending the logic of the processes involved in natural
selection and evolution. Similarly, the irrational and delusory views of the
Young Earth Creationists, flying in the face of redoubtable evidence to the
contrary, are easily embraced by gullible, uncritical minds.
“If someone doesn't value evidence, what
evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If
someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show
the importance of logic?” (Sam Harris, University of Notre Dame, April 2011)
It is a misconception for the religious to label
non-theists (or atheists) a ‘quasi-religion’ with a set of beliefs, the most
important of which is: ‘God does not exist’. This is utter nonsense. It is
simply a lack of belief based on bad presented evidence and until this
situation changes, the gods and their holy books should be considered as
man-made constructs supporting myth and legend.
My vote is for rationality, secular humanism, the joy
of enquiry and discovery, an appreciation of the beauty of the natural universe
and, through these, a real purpose for our existence. And all totally free of
any divine authority.
“A life that partakes even a little of
friendship, love, irony, humour, parenthood, literature, music, and the chance
to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called
meaningless.” (the
late Christopher Hitchens)
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