As I was sitting in church yesterday, a thought occured to me.
I will never have all of the answers.
Profound, I know.
I realized that if I sit around waiting for a “Jesus experience” or a “Holy Spirit experience” or an “encounter with God” I’m probably going to be waiting for a long time. Waiting in the state of turmoil that I’ve been in for months. Setting myself up for failure.
Instead, I have to make a choice.
Will I choose life? Or death?
I choose life.
To those of you who have chosen life and still don’t believe in God – that’s a great choice for you.
For me, if I don’t choose God, then I’m choosing death. My black and white syndrome will be sure of that. I’ve overanalyzed everything so much that for me to not choose God would also mean that I don’t choose morality. I would be embracing a completely hedonistic lifestyle if I didn’t choose God.
So I choose God. I choose life. I choose faith.
This isn’t to say that I have it all figured out. I don’t. I hate religion! I hate that I don’t know all the answers. I haven’t figured out how to believe the Bible while not believing the Bible at the same time.
But all it takes is a first step.
And for me, that step is a choice.
I will never understand this mindset:
I’ve overanalyzed everything so much that for me to not choose God would also mean that I don’t choose morality.
I will never understand how one follows from the other. You have morality first. That is how you filter out the nonsense in the bible (do I really need to list it?) from the good stuff in the bible. Its how you just know killing and forcing people to do things is wrong, despite it being endorsed in the bible many times.
Its what makes you care about your pet bunny as a child, even without any religious training. Its what make you stand in front of a car before it rolls over your child. You have morals first.
Could you really go out and start slutting around and stealing stuff just because you decided there is not enough evidence for a god? Would you really start disrespecting your mother who was recently so understanding towards you, just because you realize no god is watching you?
You could lead a hedonistic life like many religious and non-religious people …but would you really? I doubt it.
15 million american atheists aren’t out plundering the landscape. Most of us are witnessing the amazing things around us, trying to help make our society more focused on evidence before action, reducing suffering and increasing happiness and enjoying our short 78 years on this planet. You should join us
I’m with tech here. It makes no sense to say that any sense of morality is nullified or destroyed if you don’t believe in a god. I’d love for you to explain this a bit more, cause right now I’m just thinking, “WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!”
You guys really read what you want to read into things.
I didn’t say that generally speaking no God= no morality. I recognize that all of you don’t have a god in your life, and you still have morals.
But for me, it doesn’t work that way.
In my black and white brain there are God and morals on one side and no God and no morals on the other. If I don’t believe in God, then where do my morals come from? Without God, I don’t see that they’re there.
For me.
Not for you. That’s just how it works out in my head.
Well, its just a comment from our vantage point. I realize you said for you that your way of thinking is the way it is.
Its just a strange concept: you realize people don’t need god to have morals, but you need god to have morals.
Have you created a god to keep your morals in tact and adhered to? Would you truly be without morals and willing to do the bad things I suggested above if this god didnt exist? It seems unlikley to me, from all I have read on this blog, that you would go on this big Amanda Rampage (Ramandapage?)if you chose to forego the god stuff.
It doesnt seem like a black and white issue (well at least to me). You recognize that God and morals dont need to be related. You dont need to link them in this way. You’ve pulled away from religion and can focus on morals as a way to live, all by itself. you don’t have to kill god to crystalize your morals, but you don’t have to require him either.
What is important to Amanda and the way she wants to live in her community? How does she want people to perceive her and what can she do to reinforce that perception? To be clear, I dont mean a personality contest. I mean, do your actions and reactions help your friends and family and community and species? do you want to live a life where you can trust those around you and they can trust you? Do you want to have people be honest with you and want you to be honest with them? Thinking about your place in your environment is what gives morals, you just need to get some clarity on the edges of it.
Go ahead, make that black and white. Thinking along those lines makes your morals stronger, more concrete, more relevant, because you will have defined them in relation to other human beings (again they were already there, they just needed some definition). This may take some time.
Then you can focus on the god stuff. Knowing your morals are in tact and not subject to the views of one religions interpretation or another, you can focus on a relationship with god. Or in my case, the serene peace of living without one
Just some thoughts.
Best wishes.
I think you’re selling yourself terribly short by seriously believing that your morals are so eternally tied to a belief in god.
That sentence was a lesson in adverbs. you like?
Anyway, if you place limits upon yourself, you’re not truly living. (My students do this all the time- “I just can’t do this”- when in reality, they are quite capable, just scared to death to take a risk). You have no idea what you are truly capable of doing, and I don’t mean in a Ramandapage kind of way. Give yourself a chance to soar and see what happens. None of us is going to let you worship satan and bite the heads off of live pigeons.
At least I think none of us would!!
Interesting, I just read a chapter in The God Delusion about whether we need to beleive in God in order to have morals.
So are you saying you have decided you believe in God but are just not sure if you are a Christian yet?
Thanks for sharing your thought processes anyway.
they are quite capable, just scared to death to take a risk
Jeez Musicguy, what the hell do you teach? coal walking? SpearCatching?
sounds like you teach middle or high schooler and they are scared to death of what other people will think. am I right?
Buffy,
Amanda will certainly correct me if I am wrong (why am I bothering speaking for her? Maybe I like the look of my own characters i type), but she is coming out of religion, not going into it. As I understand it, she in fact is coming out of a fundie form of religion (‘inerrant word’ type of thing) but missing the good parts of religion: The community and the comfort. She has her own evidence about God and that part of it has not diminished her faith in him. She is trying to understand her new relationship with him sans organized religion. Is that about right?
When I first came to this blog I also thought she was going the other direction. I’m not sure why, it had to do with the number of religious folks in the comments waiting for her to come back (and being pretty positive that this would happen)
I really like to read about her thinking on this, it doesnt often happen this way.
I teach high school choral music. You are correct- most of their lack of confidence and fear comes from them dwelling on what others might think.
I have a similar situation to Amanda, albeit from the other side. I think that for years I’ve been hoping something will come along that will really challenge my atheism. I’ve been pretty sure that godlessness the best conclusion, but I haven’t quite dared trust it.
I’m increasingly coming to the conclusion that no such challenge is going to be forthcoming, and that I can therefore stop throwing myself into religious debates with quite so much vigour. What matters now is how I move forward from here. If I spent my daily hour of religiously-motivated debate on something more productive (working for charity, or writing open-source software, or just being sociable) then I’d be achieving infinitely more.
Having said that, I’m not properly on the wagon yet, so I’m going to join in with the morality feeding frenzy.
In my black and white brain there are God and morals on one side and no God and no morals on the other. If I don’t believe in God, then where do my morals come from? Without God, I don’t see that they’re there.
Let’s assume that you do believe in God. Does that really give you any more information about where your morals come from? If God told you to torture and kill a small child, would you do it? I’d like to think not. Even if you believe in God, He doesn’t qualify as the source of your morals.
So where do they come from? Actually, as far as anyone can tell, they don’t “come from” anywhere. They’re hardwired into your brain, as much a part of you as your language skills or your dress sense. You don’t need an external source. The source is you.
There’s an explanation for this hard-wiring involving evolutionary psychology, but it’s kinda irrelevant. The important part is: if you can trust yourself to act morally in the presence of God, you can trust yourself to act the same way in His absence.
Obviously I’m not expecting to deconvert you here. I understand why you feel that this is the right decision for you. Even as a “militant atheist” I can accept that it might actually be the right decision (for a given value of “right”).
But don’t short-change yourself. Don’t lose track of your motivations for belief in God, and, if you ever feel they no longer apply, don’t let vague fears stop you moving on.