I was driving to the university I attend today when a particular song came on through my CD player. It's called "Let It Carry You" by Jose Gonzalez off of his newest album called "Vestiges and Claws". These lyrics hit me as the vocals and music climaxed during them:
Let it carry you away and dissolve into the foam... of things near of things gone... to remind our restless souls of the beauty of being here at all.
After this beautiful song ended I quickly found on YouTube the Richard Dawkins video titled "We Are Going To Die" and seamlessly added to my "spiritual" moment of elation I was experiencing.
I had all the characteristics of a "spiritual" experience (chills, hairs standing on end, overjoyed, awe, wonder, rapture, heightened emotional connection, transcendence- an almost out-of-body floating experience). Do I believe in spirits if we are using the term to mean "supernatural beings"? .. Nope. Do I like to use the word "spiritual" or "soul"? .. not really because of all the religious baggage but i have no problem doing it with a disclaimer of course. Does it take away from my elevated "spiritual" experience to not believe in the supernatural realm or in a god? Nope.
Once Christopher Hitchens offered up a challenge to anyone in the audience at many of his debates. He said, "I challenge you to find one good or noble thing which cannot be accomplished without religion." There is nothing the religious have that we don't. Nothing is off limits to the atheist - EVEN SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE! - as demonstrated by my account above. You could line up my experience with a religious experience many people have had in church (in fact religious experience I even had in my past when I was a Christian) and physiological effects would be mirror images of each other. I wrote a blog a few years back called "The Spirit Among Us All" comparing elation at sporting events to charismatic worship services in churches. These experience are identical if you merely drop out the context.
There is a completely valid argument that could be made that Christianity or any religion offers us nothing original. We don't need their moral laws (despite what we've heard by some New Christians recently that atheist's "feet are planted firmly in mid air" when it comes to a basis for our morality). This is an easy argument to eviscerate from multiple angles. Don't even stress, friends. Of course I would suggest firstly and correctly the God I read about in the Old Testament is immoral. One merely need eyes to read for this conclusion. You've heard it all before - slavery, genocide, homophobia, bigotry, sexism, racist, etc. My morals (baseless apparently as they are) are far more superior than that of the god of the Old Testament. I would even point out that many of the New Christians have a much higher morality themselves (even with all their awkward anti-gay talk while still trying to love their gay neighbors - comical to watch in real time by the way) than the God of the Old Testament.
So, that's one thing - this old theological argument handled without much brain power at all. The other angle is that this quest of definitive objectivity is a red herring. There is no reason for us to think that complete objectivity is even possible. In Thomas Nagel's "What Is It Like To Be a Bat?" he writes, "It may be more accurate to think of objectivity as a direction in which the understanding can travel." New Christians seem to always require definitive end points with absolutes. One major problem as pointed out in Nagel's essay- many beings here on Earth have subjective conscious experiences observing the universe. New Christians love to use god as "the get out of philosophical arguments for free" card all of the time in these debates. Theology is really just bad/lazy philosophy, isn't it? What's the answer to morality? God. What's the answer to the beginning of the universe? - God. What's the answer to free will? - God. (I'm still a little confused on how this makes sense- adding another agent to understanding"free will" seems to needlessly complicate things and go against free will doesn't it?). What's the meaning of life? - God. What's evolution by natural selection really? - God's way of changing life over time. and so on and so on. Science is just a tool to explain all of god's creation. What a terribly sad way to view scientific inquiry. It sucks the awe, wonder, and most importantly MYSTERY right out of doing science!
In reality, Good Philosophy saved our "souls". Science saved our "souls". (*See below my brief thoughts and links on what I mean when I use soul-talk.) We have reasons to be filled with joy every day of our lives. Listen to the Dawkins' speech to get a better reason why than I can type in that last sentence. Reality, consciousness, this cosmos, our planet, life is spell-bounding in it's stark beauty and the cosmos is also spell-bounding in its nightmarish destruction and utter disregard to human life (and clearly other animal life too when 99% of all species that have ever existed have went extinct). Rearrange the way you view the world and it will open your eyes to all kinds of wonderful things. It is heartbreaking to realize many New Christians are still wandering around inside the bubble under the spell of religion. They comment on this piece of reality (through the lens of "the gospel") or they observe that piece of reality (through the lens of the God of the Bible). They cannot be free from it. We've all heard the faithful Christians say (and I did as well when I was one) they have been "set free" when they accepted Jesus in their heart but how is one free when it's mandatory to be a "slave to Christ"? Even in Romans 6:18 (NIV) it says "You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness."No, being a slave to anything does not equal freedom. True freedom comes from freedom of the mind (letting go of ALL dogma/rules in ancient books). Atheists are free in this regard.
I have never felt more free than I have as an atheist. It's really true, because I feel like I've graduated to a newer level (a more educated level) of my picture of the cosmos. This picture of the universe is coming at me via raw information and what I can conclude through my subjective conscious experience about the cosmos I'm encased in as it is encased in me (via the molecules that make up my body). Cosmology can fill that "god"-shaped hole the shitty Christian rock band Audio Adrenaline sung about years ago. Carl Sagan is akin to a priest to us secularists. The priest of cosmology, if there ever was such a thing. He had this amazing way of connecting that awe and wonder based in emotion to the tediousness and dryness of science and mathematics. We have Neil deGrasse Tyson now filling Sagan's shoes quite well, though he will never be Carl. We miss Carl deeply. He was a great science communicator and knew how to make science poetic. Richard Dawkins is also a beautiful science writer. Rewatch Sagan's Pale Blue Dot again on YouTube. It's one of the most profound powerful poetic things I've ever heard as a human being. We are unbelievably lucky to be alive today. And you are all so unbelievably lucky to have reached the end of this amazing blog post.
*Originally posted 4/15/15 on my blogger account: https://godsaiditibelieveitthatsettlesit.blogspot.com/
Sources:
Jose Gonzalez "Let It Carry You":
Richard Dawkins: "We Are Going to Die":
*I mentioned "the soul" as part of a lyric of a Jose Gonzalez song... As you can imagine I don't believe in souls as in the soul (ghost organ) many religious believe in. I am pretty confident that neither does Jose Gonzalez. His lyrics are pro-reason over superstition and religion. Can we that don't believe in souls use soul-talk? Yes. Here's how:
Thomas Nagel's "What Is It Like To Be a Bat":
http://organizations.utep.edu/portals/1475/nagel_bat.pdf
My blog "The Spirit Among Us All":
http://godsaiditibelieveitthatsettlesit.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-spirit-among-us-all.html
Audio Adrenaline's "God-Shaped Hole" (WARNING: This is a terrible fucking song)
Carl Sagan "Pale Blue Dot":
Science Saved My Soul: