The Uncertainty Principle

I just visited our good friends at http://www.ziztur.com/ who proclaim that “Atheism is Freedom of the Mind”. I highly recommend the site for anyone with at least a couple of neurons wired together. I found more intellectual substance in five minutes of perusing the site than I got in two years of graduate school. I can well imagine that a single one of the participants in their most recent conversation thread (excepting myself, of course) generates more intellectual horsepower than the entire Republican Party or any 1374 Baptists chosen at random. But you know I cannot take anything on faith, not even Atheism.

As a practicing South Georgia Muslim, I can tell you that practice does not make perfect, but in reality I am more of an Apatheist (its in Wikipedia), that is I’m indifferent to the question of the existence of God or gods, primarily because whatever God or gods there may or may not be, they just don’t figure into anything that has anything to do with us. I realize that there are several billion people who beg to differ with me and that’s ok, because I don’t care.

The problem that I have with Atheism is the same issue I find with belief; how the hell does anyone really know what the truth behind all of this is? Faith is a matter of choice; the reasoning behind the choice is more or less irrelevant since no one can logically be certain that they know how something comes from nothing, or how something could exist without a beginning or the other flock of spooky questions that might obsessively circulate in one’s mind without an adequate dose of Fluoxitine.

It seems to me that the Atheists have more of a problem with ignoramus morons who use God as an excuse for crappy behavior than they really do with unproven theological assertions. In that respect I am in complete agreement with their objections, however I believe that (borrowing from Shakespeare) the fault dear Ziztur is not in our religions, but in ourselves. We evolved from less psychologically complex creatures (with or without God’s help) and we have dragged a few billion years of selfish survival baggage with us. As a species, we do show some progress over time, but it is largely 2.1 steps forward and two steps back, followed by a period of immobile introspection.

The socio-biological explanation for man’s predilection for religious belief is pretty powerful and has to do with the mind seeking to understand cause and effect relationships in order to control environmental variables to enhance the probability of survival unto procreation. It doesn’t matter if the control is just an illusion; humans have been habituated to this thought process over time. Religious belief is part of what we are and it will take some pretty sophisticated genetic engineering to eradicate it. Until then, the Atheists will have to fight their lonely, but perhaps worthy, battle against the corrosive effects of religious belief with only the strength of their certainty to comfort them.

Of course, none of this means that the universe was not created by some conscious force or that there isn’t some objective purpose to our existence, but I’m in no position to confirm or deny such speculation; I’m just a humble worm hole repairman; but I do know that virtually all philosophy that qualifies as religion focuses on being cool, helping old ladies and thinking about somebody besides yourself. It’s just that part about disemboweling everybody that doesn’t agree with you that sucks.