The Philosophy of Non-Belief
3/12/08 12:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wobblerlorriI posted this in reply to aemilia's note about being depressed and religion, and thought I'd throw it out there for anyone who isn't in the habit of going back and reading old posts to check out the replies... I've added a little to it, since I'm cluttering up my own journal now.
I sometimes envy the religious types -- they seem so content and peaceful in their blind faith that there is some big Daddy God out there that will eventually make everything OK. Seems like a nice, sheeply way to live your life, and certainly removes any responsibility for Bad Stuff you do or is done to you -- simply pray for forgiveness or magnanimously forgive the other party and it's all Just Peachy Keen. I could never buy into that though, I guess because if I was styling an idea of "God" on my own father, I'd hate to have a mean drunk as the omnipotent power of the universe. Forgiving and Being Forgiven just seemed so unsatisfactory, too. Dammit, I wanted someone who hurt me to fucking SUFFER, and by that same token I felt if I'd done something bad the consequences should be notable -- certainly kept me from fucking up much.
So growing up I was an agnostic/animist. I flirted with paganism and Buddhism along the way. None of them really fit well. So for the past 10 some-odd years I haven't really been much of anything, I guess mostly an animist. But there was always that little kernel of Judeo-Christian indoctrination still lingering deep inside.
It's gone now. It died when I lost my horses and my farm after I was poisoned with gentamicin. During one of my depressions just after the damage I realized I actively hated the very idea of God, in any form and by any name you wanted to invoke. I wasn't all that impressed with karma anymore, either.
I didn't see, don't see and never WILL see how I could have been such a horrible person or have had some esoteric lesson to learn that was SO.FUCKING.HUGE. that my entire world had to be destroyed and my life long dream had to be taken away, just when it was on the verge of taking off and supporting me.
Not believing in anything in particular except reincarnation is very freeing, but it's scary sometimes too...
BTW, here's how reincarnation isn't contradictory to a basically atheist philosophy: the animating energy we call a soul is part and parcel of everything in the universe, inanimate as well as animate. When something ceases to have physical coherence, that energy enters another object. Sometimes it's a rock, sometimes it's a tree, sometimes it's a person. Sometimes the energy gets lost on the way to another physical home, and that's ghosts.
Well, it works for me. Animism rocks. I think it also conveys a level of respect for everything around you that no religion does. You also can't absolve yourself of responsibility for injuring another living thing pointlessly (remember, everything is alive) by saying some Daddy God says it's okay to rape the earth or kill something.
I sometimes envy the religious types -- they seem so content and peaceful in their blind faith that there is some big Daddy God out there that will eventually make everything OK. Seems like a nice, sheeply way to live your life, and certainly removes any responsibility for Bad Stuff you do or is done to you -- simply pray for forgiveness or magnanimously forgive the other party and it's all Just Peachy Keen. I could never buy into that though, I guess because if I was styling an idea of "God" on my own father, I'd hate to have a mean drunk as the omnipotent power of the universe. Forgiving and Being Forgiven just seemed so unsatisfactory, too. Dammit, I wanted someone who hurt me to fucking SUFFER, and by that same token I felt if I'd done something bad the consequences should be notable -- certainly kept me from fucking up much.
So growing up I was an agnostic/animist. I flirted with paganism and Buddhism along the way. None of them really fit well. So for the past 10 some-odd years I haven't really been much of anything, I guess mostly an animist. But there was always that little kernel of Judeo-Christian indoctrination still lingering deep inside.
It's gone now. It died when I lost my horses and my farm after I was poisoned with gentamicin. During one of my depressions just after the damage I realized I actively hated the very idea of God, in any form and by any name you wanted to invoke. I wasn't all that impressed with karma anymore, either.
I didn't see, don't see and never WILL see how I could have been such a horrible person or have had some esoteric lesson to learn that was SO.FUCKING.HUGE. that my entire world had to be destroyed and my life long dream had to be taken away, just when it was on the verge of taking off and supporting me.
Not believing in anything in particular except reincarnation is very freeing, but it's scary sometimes too...
BTW, here's how reincarnation isn't contradictory to a basically atheist philosophy: the animating energy we call a soul is part and parcel of everything in the universe, inanimate as well as animate. When something ceases to have physical coherence, that energy enters another object. Sometimes it's a rock, sometimes it's a tree, sometimes it's a person. Sometimes the energy gets lost on the way to another physical home, and that's ghosts.
Well, it works for me. Animism rocks. I think it also conveys a level of respect for everything around you that no religion does. You also can't absolve yourself of responsibility for injuring another living thing pointlessly (remember, everything is alive) by saying some Daddy God says it's okay to rape the earth or kill something.
