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I had a conversation with someone today. It’s my usual holiday conversation about the existence of Christ. As a gratefully recovering Catholic and now proud atheist, I did my usual dance of trying to be considerate and polite and changing the subject. As is often the case, my friend continued on undeterred with great curiosity about how I cannot believe in any god and what that might mean. I obliged by quickly employing the word delusional and said that I see no difference between one fairy tale and another. Predictably, we finished up pretty quickly after that.
However, as I was walking the dog and enjoying the more respectful conversation it provided, I thought about what kind of god I might be interested in. Nobody ever asks me what kind of god I want. They always seem to be shoving theirs onto my lap for blind acceptance, fear, intimidation, peer pressure or just a plain old grab for cold, hard cash.
Here is a list of the attributes I would want in a god / supreme being / maker of all this stuff…
- Does not give a shit if I swear. I can say anything I like.
- Does not care if I listen to any priests or anyone else pretending to be god.
- Does not send me off to kill people.
- Does not want my money.
- Does not want me to be afraid of god.
- Does not care if I believe in god or not.
- Wants me to use my brain as much as I possibly can, exercise my own judgment and choose my own life.
- Does not want me to tell / convince / convert anyone else to believe anything about god – ever.
- Doesn’t really care what I do with my life – it’s mine to live as I choose.
- Does not care which words I use to define myself or for what reasons I choose them. This includes gender, race, age, ability, sexuality or any other descriptor I define myself with.
- Is not keeping track of my fuck-ups as a reason to justify me being punished to suffer for eternity.
- Does not care if anyone agrees with my definition of god or not.
- Is happy if I’m happy.
- Doesn’t allow people to be raped, starved, beaten, tortured or killed.
- Can move neocons or me to another planet entirely, so that I don’t have to hear or see them – ever again.
- Would make a public statement that all the ‘holy books’ in the world are a bunch of crap, written down by men, for men over the last few thousand years – and nothing more.
- Is not a man.
I am not guaranteeing that I would believe in this god, but I would have a hard time not really liking it a whole lot.
You may have your own. What are they?
You may find this hard to believe, but I do celebrate Christmas. I celebrate life, each other and the giving of joy. I wish you all the very same.
- gadfly
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on Jan 5th, 2010 at 14:54
God is a father, those who follow Him are his children. Would you apply that list of things you want God to be to yourself in regards to raising your children? Atheists are just people that are so caught up in their own problems that they are incapable of thinking or talking about God.
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gadfly Reply:
January 6th, 2010 at 01:52
We’re both atheists. I just believe in one less god than you do.
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on Jan 8th, 2010 at 19:56
Bigfatloser:
Project much?
Atheists, by default, accept responsibility for their own actions, circumstances, and decisions since they do not have various demons, gods, devils, or angels to blame them on.
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on Jan 10th, 2010 at 19:57
Gadfly-
I hear what you are saying. My experience of God is pretty close to what you are talking about here, though no 100% and there is still allot of stuff that I am working through, for me this is a life long process.
A couple things to keep in mind:
1) I am not selling anything. I have my story of experiencing God and others have theirs. I always gain from engaging with others in that are willing to wrestle with these issues.
2) I am a Christian who is married to a Buddhist. We have a great marriage and our differences combined with our mutual humility and sense of mystery are a source of an on going conversation that has lasted over 5 years.
Here is how I see it.
The first concept that your concerns seem to be addressing is that of sin. My view of that all behavior has consequences and those consequences either are constructive or not. If someone swears, I am not sure there is any skin off His back, but it may impact the way you occur to other people, even create distance. I remember when I got out of the Navy I would drop an F-bomb every other word with our even realizing it. My car broke down and I was talking to a wrecker driver who was ex- military he mentioned the impression that it left so I curtailed it because it wasn’t constructive. (This was during a period when I was agnostic.) So I don’t view God as so much punishing for sin but granting us free will being there when we need him. In a semi-parental role using these experiences to help us grow. I also feel that while we make more of one “sin” or another it is all the same to him.
As far as the whole organized religion thing the Church is not God. In my view the Church falls short of what God intended it to do. I studied to be a minister and left the Church for 17 years. The issue was never God but the some of my own stuff and some of stuff that you point to in the post.
As far as what you do with you life goes, I don’t think that He is like a domineering parent that wants you to be a doctor or lawyer. Again I believe He creates us with certain passions and abilities and passions. He expects to use those in things that are constructive. (Caring for the poor and pressed is mentioned over 2000 times in The Bible.)
I believe God does what us to be happy. I also believe that He is not a cosmic vending machine. If we want to be happy we need to be, and do the things that will have us be happy. He gave us free will and in that we are responsible for being happy. I believe He is there to support us in certain ways if we ask.
The suffering in the world is really the results of the way human being behave. If human beings wanted to stop killing, raping, torturing and other wise oppressing each they don’t need God to step in like a parent breaking up a fight between two siblings. Human beings need to stop doing those things or stand up and stop those who are. As long as there are greedy, intolerant, violent or mentally ill people these things will happen; they will continue as long as there are those who don’t but say and do nothing.
I do believe in a God that created the universe, is in all things and at the same time separate from them. A God powerful, mighty, infallible, totally just. A God that would be 100% justified in leaving this world to destroy its self and letting us all perish.
I believe that my God did the unthinkable, he cared enough to take on human existence, spent his life showing us what would have us be truly happy and what got in the way of that, let us know that any time we wanted to reach out to him was there and that if we wanted to, we could spend eternity with Him.
For that we did what we do so well, we criticized Him, tortured Him, and we killed Him. Three days later he came back, even after all that, he still returned to express His love. He did this not because He had to, or needed to, but because that is who He is. That is that God I have faith in, that is the love that I experience and am able to share with this world.
He desires only 2 things of me that I love Him as He has loved me and that I love the rest of the human beings on this planet regardless of what they believe.
This is not that God I would have created, but I am glad for that.
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