My beliefs regarding god and religion

January 18, 2010 at 20:58 (spirituality)
Tags: agnosticism, atheism, philosophy, religion, spirituality

So I guess in light of my whole interest in the Bible, I should explain my spiritual beliefs. You see, I am incredibly lucky. Despite being very poor, I always come into money when I really need it. Also, despite constantly reaking the law and doing ethically questionable things, I have never faced repercussions for these acts. The few times I’ve been caught I’ve been let off the hook. When I was homeless, I had a huge circle of friends who let me crash with them in exchange for art or doing work around the house. I was also in a very wonderful relationship, and I consider myself lucky for that. I sometimes wonder if all this isn’t luck, that maybe some higher power is looking out for me. More frequently, I wonder if Taosim is accurate and since my general attitude is to just go with the flow, I have less spiritual friction with the Universe. However, I don’t believe any once religion is correct (I think the closest things we have to correct religions are Taoism and Buddhism). I certainly don’t think the Bible is the literal word of god, especially not the English translations, and I highly doubt that it was even inspired by god.

You see, I have been into philosophy since I was 10. I’m very well versed in philosophical topics, especially issues of logic. And, as Immanuel Kant has shown us, the existence of a universal being is an atinomy of pure reason. For those of you who aren’t up to speed with you logic, that that means that every logically valid proof for the existence of a universal being is also inherently a valid logical proof against it, and vice versa. This is why neither atheism nor theism can be said to be true. The only thing left is agnosticism, which is why I’m agnostic. (I get very pissed off when people lump atheists and agnostics together.)

In case you’re wondering how this can be true, let me provide my theories on the subject. The first reason I thought of is that logic is very black and white; either something is true, or it’s false. Perhaps there is some sort of grey zone between true and false that we don’t know about yet, and maybe that would be how to accurately define god. Or, more recently I came up with this simple explanation: if god created existence, it would have to function outside of/separate from existence. We can only have knowledge of things that exist, therefore we cannot have knowledge of god since god would transcend the existence/non-existence continuum.

I’m certainly not always hostile to religion; the only times I take a hostile attitude is when I see religion being hostile (e.g., when people use the Bible to deny others of certain rights). I see plenty of evidence of religion being good; the hope it gives many people makes it very valuable to them, and they would probably be pretty lost and depressed without it. Some people, like my mom, just need that sort of crutch. However, you also need to remember how much violence and war is waged in the name of religion. I’ve never heard of agnosticism being used to justify murder (or atheism for that matter). In short, religion can be good, but it can also be one of the most evil things humaity has ever invented.