My Journey To Atheism And Socialism

Our country is in a tough time right now. I'm seeing a lot of ignorant, hateful people in my area, online, and on TV lately trying to bully the rest of America and the world, much of that in the name of religion, and I'm deeply troubled by it. 

Over the past few years and after much questioning and experimentation with various ideas, I decided it was time to fully embrace the principles of both atheism and socialism as guiding forces in my life. It's time to tell my story about how I got here, why I feel the way I do, and how I hope to fit in to our modern world.

I have mentioned before that my mother was psychotic. She was also religious. While her psychosis was easy enough to justify in protest, the religious part of that challenge seemed to require a more nuanced approach. Religion is important to a lot of people and I felt I needed to be careful how I dealt with that.

I was forced to spend a lot of time in (Catholic) church as a kid learning about scripture, hearing the stories of how Jesus used parables to illustrate his message of mercy and compassion as a path to God. Then when mass or catechism was over we would go back home to have to face a woman who controlled her household with fear, guilt, abuse, and horrible psychological manipulation. There was a disconnect that I found confusing and frightening. Where was the truth in all this?

As I got older and started going out and seeing the world, I appreciated the broader perspective that gave me. I started meeting people of all kinds: talented, smart, not so smart, ignorant, kind, mean, resigned, serene, angry, happy, all sorts of folks. I wondered if there could still be some type of common thread in all these people, despite their different psychological conditions. That included the question of religion. Could one true religion cover all these bases? And if it does, which one?

Through all the stupid mistakes I made navigating my life concerning these (and other) questions, after many years of serious thinking I finally started to feel that there may be common sense answers to at least some of them.

First of all, I worried that rebelling against religion because of my mother's mental illness would appear misguided. It wasn't necessarily religion's fault that she acted that way, despite the fact that she did exploit her view of faith in the service of her dysfunctional demand for control and power. So it seemed appropriate to approach my religious question via its relationship to human behavior, since I felt I had been victimized by someone's application of it.

For me, there's no one great “gotcha” issue concerning the question of religion's veracity, but instead I have found many small ones that combine to help form the establishment of my overall theological theory. I'll just give you a couple of the most important ones here. 

Now, if a person given the title of God's Authorized Messenger instructs a congregation in the teachings of Jesus and a significant percentage of those people ignore that message as soon as they go out the door, what does that say about that congregation? Or if the head of a religious denomination instructs his flock that they alone are favored and that their prosperity and/or self righteousness is a unique blessing from God, what does that say in regard to every other denomination that sends that same message to its people? And how would they resolve the inevitable resulting conflict? Seems to me that if so many people are defining God so differently and claiming His righteousness for themselves, then it may just be possible that there really isn't one in the first place. 

But that's just one way of looking at it. Another way is via science. Advances in scientific thought, especially over the past 200 years, have really put a damper on what the Bible claims as truth. Google searches in biology, archaeology, anthropology, and many other disciplines are just a couple clicks away on your device if you want to explore any of that.

I do have to throw this in at this time, though. I'm not religious any more, but I still have many dear friends who are, and I am very proud of my friendships with them. They are still people who use their faith for honorable purpose. I try to be sympathetic to their frustrations in the struggle to get along in this world with so many people whose ideas concerning the practice of their faith are so contradictory. It is because of these good people I know that I simply cannot disparage religion altogether. My ongoing approach to this ultimate question therefore would seem to require further nuance.

So here is what I came up with. I think the concept of God is in each of our brains. Many people conceive it, and many people don't. Scientific study has proven that each of our thoughts and emotions emanate from a different part of our brain: Joy, love, fear, hope, faith, and so on. Despite the fact that each of our brains is so uniquely complex, we still tend to create our social groups around those whose brains function somewhat similarly to ours: Churches, support groups, political organizations, hobby groups, and so on. These groups can help to reinforce the strength and balance of our civilization. 

I've said this in other blogs, but it bears repeating. If a person's faith - by that I mean a person's set of guiding moral principles - helps bring him or her a sense of strength, comfort, compassion, justice, and serenity, that will show in a person's actions, and I will be glad to be associated with him or her. Goodness, mercy, and kindness are their own rewards. A socialist political view ties directly into this, but I'll address that below. If you claim a religious mindset but you still hold deep fears and/or resentments about others, you're not truly living or practicing your faith. You're hiding behind it, and you are not allowing the omnipotent God to whom you claim to be connected to do His work within you. 

We don't need to suffer through this miserable life in some type of anticipation of an ultimately unknowable eternity to experience the joy and serenity of true wisdom and justice. It's here right now for the taking. In the course of my life, I have changed how I think in order to arrive at this conclusion. I made a conscious effort to reignite the parts of my brain that had been closed off. You can do that, too. You should try it, it feels great. Every reason for being mistrusting, insecure, and hateful flies right out the window, and it's the most liberating feeling ever. If the concept of God helps you do it, then by all means do so. Better than a life on the pity potty. Who the hell wants to be around that, much less mired in it? 

As I mentioned, socialism fits right in with this idea. Too many people today still equate that word with repressive authoritarian government. Think Stalin, for example. His government didn't ultimately fail because of socialism (or in his case communism, which is a different thing despite many people confusing the two), it failed because he and his successors didn't practice it in its true form. There were still too many greedy bastards in charge hoarding wealth and power instead of working to honor their political charter to assure everyone's prosperity. We're doing that in this country, too. The first three words of our Constitution have been co-opted by fatcats with wildly nefarious ulterior motives, and we see the results of that through the suffering of our fellow citizens, every single day. Asking for wealthy people to pony up a bit more for the benefit of everyone is not only true democracy in action, it's ultimately a lot more cost effective than prisons, war, injustice, and poverty. And it feels good, too, once you fix your broken brain, like I did. 

Sure, I wish some people would change, but that's no reason to hate them. Hate is a precious and psychologically expensive commodity. If you care enough about someone enough to actually hate him or her, you may want to address that. You're wasting an awful lot of energy that you could be using on yourself and those you love.

Anyway, this is how I feel today. The ideology I've described brings me peace, and I hope everyone can find a way to bring that to themselves as well. Whatever works for you, knock yourself out.

Thanks for your time and attention in reading this. I hope it makes sense to you. All my best.

Terry