Get comfy, This is It In a Nutshell

I was a young, cute, shaggy haired little altar boy, sitting left of the priest and looking out into the crowd, groggy and slightly pissed off for being woken up at the ass-crack of dawn to be on time for mass. Gotta serve that altar! Yeah right. I was fed up with being an altar boy. None of the other altar boys would show up, I did all the work, I was so damn loyal, I didn’t get paid, why the fuck was I there, and then I thought, “No really, why the fuck am I here, I don’t even believe in God.” For the first time I had consciously acknowledge my disbelief in God, ironically enough as an altar boy in mass. The revelation came to me kind of similar to when Christmas came around that one year - your presents still said ”From Santa” and for the first time ever you looked up at your dad as if to say, “Good one, jackass”.

So to classify myself, I think it was in the writings of Paul where he distinguished between two types of non-theists. There are those by wisdom and those by sight. Those by sight say, “I haven’t seen, therefore I do not believe”. Those are the dumber kind. Then there those by way of wisdom, who lack belief by way of reason. I am an atheist by wisdom; although it doesn’t help much either that I cannot see what so many have judged me for disbelieving. Grr.

I think it comes down to the simple descriptive fact that there are those who have faith and those that do not. And by faith I do not mean “faith” that my chair won’t break under my ass, I’m not heavy I’m actually quite fit so I’m justified in believing so. I’m talking about pure religious faith. I don’t have that. Not because I hate life and I can assure you I was never beaten as a child with a wooden cross. Instead, it’s a matter of giving my intellectual consent. I speculate that I was ready to give up my belief in God as a child so readily because I had no emotional attachment to the notion; I felt no overwhelming want for God and therefore no overwhelming desire to amend or rationalize what I saw as irrefutable incongruities within the entire framework of religion. Because I’ll be the first to admit it, if I wanted to believe, I totally could. We’re good at that.

But I feel that my lack of emotion towards religion brings me clarity and objectivity and this held true for me at a very young age. For example, as a child one of the things I thought was, “As a Christian going to heaven, aren’t I going to a Muslim’s hell? With so many religions out there, how can I be so sure?”. Through faith of course – but to have faith I must give intellectual consent to certain biblical and ontological booboos as if to say, that’s not a problem, I’ll believe anyways. I can’t do that.

Because can I really believe in something if deep down I feel it to not be true? Do we choose what we believe? I suppose a Christian must believe we do, they say belief is a choice all the time. But doesn’t belief merely fall upon us? Don’t our beliefs just align themselves with the way we view the world, and isn't how we view to world all too often too fundamental to change, or even want to change? That being said, here's how i view the world.

I see molecules, atoms, luck, probability, coincidence, evolution, biology, etc., I see a reality out there that is very real and not for the choosing. I see a universe so big and unfathomable, so unpredictable in nature that it is pure unadulterated hubris for anyone to say that God must have created it all, only to throw up their hands in a double-standard lockjaw when asked, “Who created God?” People look out into the world and see harmony as being the product of God. People see God in spider webs, hummingbirds, the clouds, humans, they can’t fathom how any of this could have come about without the help of God. Well not to sound like a jackass but I can.

I believe evolution to be the one underlying current, the one truth that defines and produces all of existence. Not just the theory but the concept. People tend to think of evolution in terms of how mankind got here, I say why stop there? Not just mankind but nature, the planets, the universe - its all constantly evolving. From a chaotic soup evolved the universe, from bacteria evolved mankind, and since existance is one ongoing process, this is the same to say that man evolved from chaotic soup. Unfathomable yes, I jerk myself to sleep thinking about this. But evolution gives the apparancy of being intelligent in design, and likewise indicative of intelligent design. I believe this is all an illusion. Evolution is the most intelligently dumb conceptual truth to ever exist.

Everything builds and therefore evolves from the ground up, nobody can/should argue with that. Start with very basic atoms and as time goes on they mingle and meet with other atoms. They do a little tango, intermix and stick shit in the right place, and suddenly what emerges is something more complex than what was before. It's really just simple functions coming together to form complexity, and while complex functions appear to be intelligently designed they are really just the outcome of nature's blind ongoing roll of the die in an attempt to land on what numbers are necessary for the equation to work. The product is harmony, because nature is math with a body.

With that in mind nature cannot make 2+2=6, nor can it make atoms form functions that are "unworkable" or against physical laws. Only what may work may exist, giving the appearance of harmony and likewise intelligent design. In other words, within this atomic tango, that which cannot “work” according to the laws of physics cannot exist in the first place for one to see it, so all that we are left with is what works, what is harmonious - that harmony you see when you look outside your window. Even chaos or what appears to be chaotic (because chaos is relative) is a catalyst for harmony. Fractals are pretty!

I have no problem seeing how complexity emerges from simplicity, or how harmony emerges from chaos. In the long run - bacteria to humans - it may be hard to surmise, but taken in small chunks its not. And the small chunks make up the big chunks, so why is it so hard to fathom? Complexity is born from simplicity, because it sure doesn't work the other way around. The baby doesn't give birth to the mother. The sheer "oneness" of this all makes me wet my boxers in my dreams.

So speaking of oneness, as far as life goes I only see different degrees and varying shades of life. Varying shades of everything for that matter. A plant is "conscious" in the sense that it will grow towards the sun, while a worm is "conscious" in the sense that it will wiggle if you cut it in half. A dog more conscious than the worm, us more conscious than the dog, because our complexities allow for higher functions - but we emerged from simplicity and still somehow connected to that dumbass worm. We're really just looking at varying degrees of existance and function. Nothing is cut and dry as most would think.

So I think existence just works itself out. Trial and error. Natural selection. That which works moves on to become even better, just like technology, just like our ever expanding intellects, I see evolution in everything.

Okay okay, who set off the Big Bang? Who knows. Why jump the gun and say God? Everything in nature works itself out, the universe is nature, catch my obscure drift? And I will say this - it is moot, pointless and absurd to argue and presuppose our laws of physics apply to a point in time before the big bang if our laws of physics and time were solidified at that very moment. Is it not? WE CAN”T KNOW WHAT CAME BEFORE! It rubs my bejoogles the wrong way how certain people use Intelligent Design as a “scientific” reason to believe God must exist. ID IS NOT SCIENCE. So while theists grasp for certainty I point out uncertainty - that is science, and that’s the best I can do.

Shit, and howabout quantum physics for a lesson in uncertainty? Particles appearing and disappearing out of thin air, seemingly random in nature and reliant on no laws or principals? Or how about M Theory that describes 11 dimensions of existence, infinite universes all with different properties and we’re simply in one of the many. Suppose that theory is true, (the math checks out, just can't be empirically verified) then our existance here is no surprise and damn near inevitable. Suppose its not, on a basic level at least, why do so many suppose that all of existance is accounted for within this bubble we call a universe?

Sure, anything outside this realm looks like a fucking cartoon in my head but really, who says existance stops at the edge or anywhere at that? What lay outside these walls - after all, what is this universe expanding into? Nonexistance? That’s paradoxical. How can nonexistence exist without being existence in itself? Something must be beyond these walls, and what about beyond those walls? Where does it stop, or better yet, when?

Because in the beginning of it all, was it even possible for there to be absolute nonexistance? I really question whether nonexistance can exist without it being a state of existance in itself... And how can I even use the word "beginning" if time is only relative to our paradigm? What laws governed the universe before this particular one came about? Maybe existance has taken many forms, maybe physics have embodied many laws, maybe our universe is simply one of the many - a single link in an unending chain of events.

And I suppose a theist would say, “yeah yeah but where did all THAT come from”

But my overall point isn’t to say that God did not create the universe and everything in it. My point is only to present a myriad of possibilities to show why I personally do not believe God is necessary for existence. I stick to my naturalistic guns because consistancy is of great value to me. And yeah, usually people who don't believe in God are all into that "science" shit. Yeah those fuckers wanna be so damn smart. My theist friend told me the other day while discussing religion, "fuck your science". I love him. But he has to realize that some people can't leave their brain at the door so easily, and that's all i want religious people to admit - it DOES require leaving one's brain at the door in certain areas. I mean, how could it not, thats why it takes faith right?

So look at all the shit I wrote. Look at how this shit fires me up! I guess this is my religion, to use the term loosely.

But how did we get here? Fucking. That’s how we got here. Through lots and lots of fucking.