Faith In A Godless Age

(Disclaimer: People of faith, I truly respect you and your beliefs. This blog post is about me and mine, and will be written accordingly.)

I was raised in a moderately religious household. We didn’t “practice” as such, but God was real, with the capital G and everything. Mostly I’d pray for personal favours, such as the acquisition of a new videogame, or for technology to stop malfunctioning on me, which surely isn’t how that’s supposed to work. I’m afraid my core understanding of the bible comes from a picture-book version for primary school children, and whatever my distracted mind soaked up in RE at school. And so I suppose it’s no surprise that as I got older, I treated the Christian faith as one might treat Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny: something to tell the little ones to make the world a little more magical.

I don’t mean this derisively, of course. Whilst religion may have been the perpetrator of many crimes across history, I also know many people here in the modern world who have a perfectly well adjusted view of their faith. I’m not one of those atheists who believes that I’m the only smart person in the room if I’m the only non-believer. But if I’m to write about what I want to write about today, I have to be honest about my perception of the world.

Let’s continue to talk about atheism, because I don’t like to label myself as atheistic. It’s… true, as far as the heart is concerned, but I prefer to call myself agnostic. We covered as much in the previous blog post. The reason for it, besides what I covered already, is because I don’t consider my belief system to be a closed book. I’m not about to embrace religion, and this isn’t an invitation to be “converted”. I’m simply not comfortable proclaiming that I absolutely know that there’s nothing outside of scientific coincidence that causes us to exist when we still have so few answers on that front officially. But, yes, as far as the heart is concerned, I’ve spent the last decade or so of my life adjusting to the reality that there is no great plan, there is (broadly speaking) no life after death, and there is nothing to make us behave aside from our own moral code.

So, nihilism then. Right? Life has no meaning, we were born to die, let’s bang on some metal instruments and scream into a microphone about it. (I’m allowed to make that joke, I listen to Architects.) Well, not necessarily. A lot of people who think they don’t have a faith kind of do. Some turn to conspiracy theories about aliens existing among us for thousands of years. Others look to ghost stories for proof of something coming afterwards. It doesn’t have to be a theistic belief system as long as it tethers you to a world with a larger meaning, with room for the unexplained. But I can’t say I fall into those categories, either. I’m largely a cynic when it comes to ghost stories, and don’t get me started on the History Channel.

Aliens. (Cue the meme.) Don’t get me wrong, of course they exist. The universe is so vast, how could they not? But personally, I tend to believe that we’ve not met them. I mean, you look at the vastness of the universe, the likelihood of life emerging, and the difficulties involved in space travel, and the question becomes less if life exists, but if we’ll ever get to meet it. It’s fun to dream of secret galactic empires and guardian aliens watching over us until we meet some perceived threshold, but ultimately, you’ve got to separate the fantasy from the reality. And, speaking of nihilism, the Fermi Paradox is a whole thing… and that truly does frighten me.

But enough beating around the bush. We’ve ticked off religion, aliens, superstition, and nihilism. I guess that leaves the obvious, doesn’t it? Love. We make our own meaning to live. And even if nothing comes afterwards, even if legacies eventually fade, even if the universe finally winks out of existence and there’s nothing left at all, we’ll still have happened. We’re still in this moment, the present, and as hard as I find it to live in sometimes, it’s all that truly matters. I worry that as modern society moves away from the safety net of religious certainty, the question of what gives life meaning is drawing too many of us to nihilistic despair. But the truth is, we don’t need gods. We don’t need ghosts or aliens to affirm our place in the universe. We just need each other. How we got here, whether it was by accident or on purpose, it ultimately doesn’t matter. What matters is that we are here. And in an uncaring universe, we’re the ones who have to care for each other.

And of course, it isn’t as easy as that. But as far as faith goes, that’s what I have.

Respecting Faith

Let’s get this out of the way: I’m agnostic.

This doesn’t mean I’m “sitting on the fence” or that I’m afraid to make a decision. It means that I have no faith that I truly believe in, but I’m open minded to the idea of a higher power. I am not using this as some half-baked justification for the meaning of life. I personally believe that the universe’s existence could very well have been designed with purpose, and that the universe itself could be that perceived higher consciousness (for is that not what omnipotence is?). If there was such a higher being, I’m not sure it’d exist in any form we could fathom.

I’m certainly not saying that you have to be at least agnostic to respect other people’s faiths. Some people – and I won’t say atheists, for that in itself is a label of sorts – some people are just rude. Some people take personal offense to religion, as if those who have faiths are telling them that their children died for a reason and that they shouldn’t be sad. And that, I suppose I can understand, even if I don’t agree with it; grief can become this complex monstrosity that warps the world around you. In that hell of a state of mind, some things just twist you the wrong way.

What I cannot stand is when people look at those who follow a religion and look down on them as a lesser person. Those who look at someone with complete conviction and tell them they’re fools, they’re just desperate beings attempting to rationalise their lives, that only science holds the true key. Who are you to tell somebody what to believe? Who are you to insult their very core? And, of course, the heart of discussions such as these; if you’re telling them they can’t prove it, can you disprove it? Science is all about the search for facts, and the open-mindedness that your theories can be wrong, and attempting to disprove yourself in order to strengthen your findings. And here is somebody who lives their life like they want, believing in their faith as wholly and trustingly as you do your science, and you have the nerve to tell this person that they are not only wrong, but somehow less intelligent for having the strength – and I maintain that it is a strength – to follow something which has not presented itself in fact? It’s called faith for a reason. The idea is that your faith is a bond of trust, that physical proof isn’t required to acknowledge the way the world is and that you’re stronger, purer, kinder for it.

Sidenote: Who even says that science and faith can’t be mutually exclusive? There are plenty of scientists who are also religious.

Do not get me wrong, people can believe what they want. If you’re an atheist, that’s to be respected as much as if you’re religious. I’m not speaking to groups of people here, but individuals. Evil has been born in both religious and non-religious people, for it is not our beliefs that define us. That’s a whole other kettle of tea. You are not purely atheist or purely religious, for there is so much more context to our identities than that. What ultimately drives us to do what we do is something only we can answer on an individual basis, and to judge any group of people by the actions of one who belongs, or believes themselves to belong to it is what we call “prejudice”.

I just wish people wouldn’t be hostile to each other, and I personally see far more of it from people of no faith to people with it than vice-verca. What always gets me is that the reason some people lash out at those of religious belief is because they claim that they are ignorant. But these people are attacking others without stopping to consider the wider context of what faith is, what prejudice is, who this person is and what they’re saying to them, and that is the very definition of ignorance.