Religious Faith Under Exam

If I told you I was an atheist, you might stop reading and say, “God help your soul.” If I told you that you were an atheist, the odds are you stopped reading and thought, “He does not know me and my relationship with God.”

Firstly, the realistic fact is you are atheist.

You will not grant credence to Santa Claus as the Justice, Apollo as the Son, Jupiter as the Father, the Flying Spaghetti Monster as anything but the figment of the imagination, for that matter.

What distinguishes God or Allah or the Godhead from these supernatural, nonexistent beings?

Nothing at all.

Sam Harris--philosopher, neuroscientist, and author--gives the example: “If I told you that I believe there is a diamond buried in my backyard the size of a refrigerator...”

Granted, this diamond is invisible as well as the little, green gnomes which guard it.

“It might,” Harris continues, “occur to you to ask me why. And, if in response I gave the kind of answers you hear.... The answers which describes the good effects of believing as I do. So, I said things like ‘Well, this belief actually gives my life a lot of meaning, or I wouldn’t want to live in a universe where there wasn’t a diamond buried in my backyard the size of a refrigerator.’”

What makes these types of beliefs appear as the first signs of mental illness? Yet, when one replaces the invisible, non-active, refrigerator-size diamond with an invisible, non-active being named, by chance, Elohim, Jehovah, Yahweh, God, Jesus, or Allah, it becomes now someone’s religion and we do not question.

Secondly, no grounds exist to favor one god over another, as popularly believed.

So, when faced with the reality that geography and economics actually indicate and shape, for the most part, one’s religious views of the world, and when the realization takes place that practitioners of other faiths believe just as ardently as one’s own self, then how does one justify that newly found knowledge in a way that God or Allah or the Godhead might have intended?

Well, first off, if you go by the Torah, you are to stone the gentile or nonbeliever. (Deuteronomy 13:1-11 and Deuteronomy 17.)

However, if you go by the New Testament, you are to slay those who do not want to be reigned over. (Luke 19.)

The point is your religious faith is directly linked to the part of the world from which you come. On the one hand, if you are a Georgian or Mississippian, you are likely to be a Protestant Christian. On the other hand, if you were reared in Saudi Arabia, you are more likely to become a Muslim.

The same is true of the financial class in which you were raised. The poorer classes are always more likely of being religiously faithful.

Finally, why does being an atheist, as reported by a University of Minnesota study, make one less trustworthy of all minorities?

Yet, when one truly considers the fact we all are atheists to one faith-based dogma and/or another, why do we not just mistrust the whole 100-percent majority?

Richard Dawkins, biologist at Oxford and author, argues that all are atheists, yet some actually take it one god further.

So, if God or Allah or the Godhead stands “knees and toes” with other mythological beings and even to a mental fabrication or two, and if one’s religious identity is based on which plot of ground he or she was raised and how many nickels are in his or her pocket, then why not go another god further?


Again, I did a poor job proofreading this week's column. Yet, in my defense, I had two Sociology papers due yesterday and I did not get started until about 4:30pm. I had the thoughts but not the structure worked out. So, I was wrestling with that and missed about five simple grammar errors. Things like, giving a plural verb to a singular subject and a forgotten word as well as leaving an article behind after reworking a sentence. I am ashamed to call myself an English major these past two weeks. The thoughts are very simple. I read several books and watched dozens of lectures on topic of atheism and the plot holes in the religious texts and thus the beliefs.