The Debate

I remember being in the Purdue North Central computer lab, logged in to infidels.org, and "debating" myself into an existential exhaustion. As a full on Christian at the time, I was dead set on poking holes in evolutionary theory. I ended up with little more than a caffeine heartbeat and a headache brought on by cognitive-dissonant despair. One thing happened though, that I will never forget, and which will serve me as a teacher and a blessing for the rest of my life: I learned that it was okay to say I don't know.

I'll never forget the surprise in the chatroom when this hyper-religious Christian boy, who was confronted with evidence for evolution he couldn't explain away, instead of having a knee-jerk name-calling religious fit, said:

"I don't know. I will have to look into that more. Thank you," and politely bowed out of the debate.

It was amazing. The tone in the room which had previously been very aggressive and condescending suddenly changed. There was an almost audible silence from the forum. I believe somebody even typed out begins slow clap. I had spun their minds. It was funny. It was at that moment that I realized I was not my religion, and my religion was not me, but that I had always had another mind. Namely, my own.

What is so remarkable about all of this is, looking back now on things I used to hold as "gospel truth" and my reactions to evidence to the contrary, I am embarrassed and appalled at how unquestionably "right" I felt I was. I had often thought I had a very open mind, and in many instances I did. But it is where the religion kicks in that the original mind shuts down, and this shutdown can be so breathtakingly complete that its subject literally has no idea they are not acting from their own mind, but from some potent brand of societal and/or cultural programming. Which programming, it is critical to add, is almost always based on a fear response.

Religion comes in all types, shapes and sizes. I have seen religious atheists, religious Catholics, religious agnostics, and religious secularists. To me religion can be defined as follows:

Religion is the refusal to think for one's self in the light of available evidence, and to accept as one's own mind and thought, the mind and ideas of some entity other than oneself.

Here are some mentally retarded (I don't use that as a casual slur) Japanese nationalists.

The Tribe

I recall reading a story of a boy in a somewhat primitive tribe who had been told that to touch a certain rock would be deadly, and that he indeed did touch it. According to the story he was exiled from the tribe and died, lending the superstition yet even more "credibility." I do not know the exact details of the story as the author was referencing it in an anecdotal fashion and secondhand, but one need look no further than the practice of "Mingi" in southwest Ethiopian tribes to confirm that religious superstition is severely detrimental to human beings. You can read more about the practice, where infants who are deemed "cursed" are suffocated by having their mouths filled with dirt, killed with rocks hurled at their heads, or drowned in rivers, here.

We tend to think this kind of phenomenon is not present in the West. We think wrong. I am reminded of the "You stomp my flag I'll stomp you ass!" type. A lot of these people are not joking. Indeed, a lot of these people are overseas right now killing strangers in the name of that flag, though they don't know who these strangers are, or what, exactly, they are "guilty" of. Welcome to the study of religious programming as nationalism.

Think of the militant atheist who mocks the agnostic when he asserts that perhaps some sort of intelligence, which may later be explained and discovered by science, is within the realm of the conceivable for him. This atheist may disagree, but why the seething anger? Again. Programming. Welcome to blindly and angrily worshiping the god of "You stomp muh atheism I'll stomp your ass!" Sure, most atheists are not militant to the point of violence, but many are militant to the point of viewing others as something less than human for their personal beliefs. Does not this dehumanization eventually engender violence in many cases? I am reminded of reading posts on vegan chat boards about murdering meat eaters. The people were not joking, either, but that is a rabbit hole I do not wish to go down right now.

I remember getting an email from my dad after I seriously began questioning the bible and my religion. I wrote from the heart, and laid out my case, saying not to worry, and that it doesn't mean that I "hate god" or even that I necessarily don't believe in some sort of higher intelligence, but that I have done what the book commanded me to (seek the truth) and have come out on the other side. The response was telling.

His email laid on the guilt pretty thick, mentioning how I had betrayed my wife (who had thought she was marrying a "good Christian boy") and also myself, because I was letting "pride" and not "the spirit" take over my mind and heart.

I don't blame my dad, and I don't blame my wife either for the times she has, and still sometimes does, express doubt about my personal convictions. Coming out of this sort of thing is akin to a computer choosing not to run a certain script anymore, of its own volition. Of course, computers really cannot do this yet. This is the beauty of being human.

What is really funny to me is that when talk of evil spirits, satanism, or yoga come up, or when my wife expresses interest in some "foreign" religious philosophy or practice, I often go straight back into my full religious "protective mode" and get defensive about the whole thing. Often this occurs just after one of my rants on how we should be "open-minded." I have to laugh.

I have to laugh and go back to the drawing board of digging down within myself to root out my superstitions. Evil spirits and shit may exist, but what is my evidence, and how much of my view has been colored by my programmers? I know of no other way to deal with this than through self investigation, and the investigation of facts. All other routes are laden with pitfalls and the propensity to idolize.

Alone, or all one?

You will be forever alone. Baby, get used to it.

The take away, for me, is this:

You have to accept yourself for better or for worse. Nature has designed you with one set of eyes and one mind. One brain and one heart. Nobody can move your arms for you. Nobody can speak your words for you. Whether you believe in a god or not, isn't this enough to prove that it is likely unnatural to surrender your executive capacities to the whims and capricious fancies of another? You know, there is a quote I recently read from a man who had lived under Stalin's iron-fisted and bloody reign of terror in Russia. I don't have the quote handy now, but it was basically this:

We could have stood up and fought. Death was coming either way. We should have thought to fight, but we didn't. We didn't love freedom enough.

Freedom truly is scary, and its consequences and possibilities infinite. Looked at another way, though, "scary" becomes "exhilarating," and freedom really is the default position. It is reality's foundation. Whatever you do with it, do you. Life is too short to be chasing the convictions of some other man, woman, organization, political body, or religious group. Funnily enough, I bet once you peel away all your bullshit programming, you will find something even more magical than you ever imagined possible, lying there right beneath your nose.

Can you do it all by yourself? Probably not. But hey, you are surrounded by millions of other alone people too. Why not bounce some ideas off of them? And say "hi."

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Graham Smith is a Voluntaryist activist residing in Niigata, Japan.