Is it not amusing how all debates, blogs and or discussions on religion (whether new age, esoteric or traditional) all revolve around circular reasonings!? And the more an explanation to a given position is proffered, the more extensively monologous the whole debacle becomes.
The one interesting supposition that struck a chord with me of late, is the use of the term atheism as meaning non-believer. I mean, in philosophical terms and by their very nature, they are two miles-apart ideologies.
The dictionary defines atheism as: disbelief in the existence of a god or gods (Oxford).
The word ‘disbelief,’ as used in the definition, does not imply non-belief but rather a choice not to believe in something due to some or other reason – inability or refusal to accept something is true or real (Oxford.) This precept is not to be confused with agnosticism: a person who believes that it is not possible to know whether or not God exists (Oxford.) One relates to choice, the other to lack of ‘empirical’ proof or substantiation.
Enter on stage, the non-believer. Here is a sentiate that does not believe in anything esoteric, new age, religious or even remotely spiritual. A being that accepts as true the power of the human animal, with all its imperfections, grand-narratives and mysteries. A being that understands and pursues secular cognitive reason as its primary source of wisdom and understanding.
The commonality to any non-believer lies in the deduction that everything humans do, they do out of their own volition and not because of some unexplainable pretext that requires faith (to believe without reason) to make it all plausible – why must unexplainable phenomena be attributed to something ethereal just because it is, given present understandings or knowledge, …unexplainable.
As can be deduced, atheism is a rather different approach to the world of the non-believer – even Richard Dawkins believes in something, just not in the concept of a god: “Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakeable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time.”
Experience tells me that, irrespective of what anyone says or relates concerning religious tenets and dogmas, the debate will continue ad infinitum. To a non-believer, given all the trouble, toil and strife saturating planet earth, all ponderings on where-we-come-from, life-out-there, god and spirituality, is a senseless waste of time.
Maybe we just came to be, to create the one thing that nature could not: Plastic!
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