blueballs

I must say, I have thought long and hard before starting on this piece. Writing about beliefs and religion is NEVER easy. And as i write, this might still never reach completion. Nonetheless, having read the long “debate” between Eric, on the side of the ‘Militant Atheist’, and the people who defend the validity of religion under Carol’s Facebook note, I was personally spurred to jarringly meld together some opinions of my own. This little piece of writing shall serve not to take sides, for it is my very premise that in an argument as such, professing to be ‘correct’ is unacceptable. This little piece subsist as a mere reflection of my vanity in thinking that somewhere, my opinion might interest someone. My SGD$0.02 worth, basically. Or 1.32 Yen, 0.66 Rupees, et al.

As a matter of clarification, let it be known that I am neither religious, nor am I a spirited atheist of the ilk of Eric. Religion interests me purely at an intellectual level, with such an interest primarily stemming from how much religion affects literature. Secondly, I do not claim to quote reliable statistics to back myself up, neither do I lay claim have a take on a higher truth. Any conception of the truth is, after all, inherently unstable.

I start by quoting J.M. Coetzee, who could not have accented it better:

I have no desire to associate myself with the people behind the Intelligent Design movement. Nevertheless, I continue to find evolution by random mutation and natural selection not just unconvincing but preposterous as an account of how complex organisms come into being. As long as there is not one of us who has the faintest idea of how to go about constructing a housefly from scratch, how can we disparage as intellectually naive the conclusion that the houseful must have been put together by an intelligence of a higher order than our own?

As a rule of thumb, one of the premises on which the scientific discipline operates is that what cannot be proven to be true, is untrue. Unfortunately, such a ‘rule’ has been elevated to into what Coetzee calls ‘epistemological axioms’, or in other words something close to a ‘universal truth’. Such a measure of validity has been advanced onto all accounts of life, above and beyond the discipline of science. It is one favourite argument of atheists, to argue that if you cannot see God, or if his existence cannot be proven, He does not exist.

I would like the militant atheists also to consider the possibility that we human beings do not even come close to comprehending the exact degree of complexity that the universe holds. In short, we know, and are capable of knowing, far less than we would like to know about how the world came to be and what kind of beings we are. It can therefore be said, that this is one yay for religion.

Nevertheless, the concept of Intelligent Design is still regarded very much as a creation myth, rejected in schools as a credible alternative to Evolutionism. Most schools do not even explore the theory of Intelligent Design alongside Evolution. Yet, as Robert Jensen, Professor of Journalism at the University of Texas and author of various books on this subject succinctly puts it, “intelligent design is not open to being tested experimentally and has no basis in science… (therefore) such treatment is not disrespectful of people’s religious beliefs, but simply intellectually honest.”

Playing the amateur sociologist, the functionalist theory with regards to religion holds that religion plays the important and much under-appreciated role of ensuring social solidarity and cohesion. Stretching the term ‘religion’, one could also take the communal fervour excited by events like concerts or football matches to mean that the very events themselves are somewhat religious. At least I know for me, I have idols to worship and rituals to follow when I watch Chelsea play. Lucky shirt on, beer always after chips. Religion, therefore, can loosely be defined as any such thing that evokes in one a belief in and of anything.

So, is not the fervent and ardent, not to mention collective belief that there is no God, or as Friedrich Nietzsche famously proclaimed, that “God is Dead”, in a sociological sense at least a religion? Quasi-religion, some may call it. My point is, that atheism and it’s beliefs in the absence of God as well as the fierce determination to prove themselves right has a lot in common with what we may call the traditional institutions of ‘religion’. Atheists hide behind supposed logic and reasoning, which I personally purport, because of the abovementioned elevation of scientific inquiry to the level of ‘common sense’, to be flawed. Is not a belief that science can magically provide all answers, even as we ourselves do not comprehend what we do not yet know, in itself a leap of faith?

I do personally believe, even if I am not myself a believer or religious by any consideration, that the very concept of religion is positive. While it is true that people throughout history and even today abuse religion for their own negative ends of violence, such as against those with contrary beliefs, or wrongful subjugation of certain groups of people like women, that itself is no fault of religion. The blame has to lie squarely at the criminal religious leaders.

So, live and let live. I hate the way some ‘evangelists’ have their tongues down my throat. Yet neither do I thus believe in the cause of the atheists. We all have different beliefs, and these beliefs contribute in no small part towards who we are, for better or for worse, whether or not it is huge and is institutionalised globally or it’s just some idiosyncratic OCD quirk. The religious people (in the traditional sense) have their gods, the militant atheists believe in overthrowing religion. And I believe in beer.

In the course of this rambling entry, I hope my other point has not been lost. It goes along the lines of: Don’t be complacent with whatever version of the truth you think is right. The very nature of truth is precarious, and whatever we know of everything is simply what everyone else accepts to be right.

We all have our lucky shirts, lucky underwear, et al. And I believe that when Chelsea win I must not brush my teeth for that particular night, for good luck. The whole world tells me I’m disgusting, but I simply shrug and move on.