A Matter of Faith
Oct. 16th, 2004 03:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
misscamI've been hesitant to bring this issue up, as most people I have on my flist I do not have this problem with, but here goes anyway.
As most of you probably know, I don't believe in God. Or the Goddess or Allah or any sort of Creator. I don't rule it out, but I don't believe it.
So don't ask me for prayers. I cannot give them. I have no address to give them to. I will offer sympathies and wishes and hope, but your prayers you will have to get elsewhere. This does not mean I don't care, but I cannot start believing just to give you that prayer.
Secondly, please don't talk about "saving" us non-believers. Don't assume all atheists live in ignorance and need to be set straight. And please, do not capitalise "Save". I find it offensive. I made my choice as others have, and who are you to say thus I'm somehow inferior and I need to be "Saved" from it? My life, my choices, my consequences. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. But I cannot believe just to sort of be on the safe side. For better or worse, there is no organised religion for me.
So you might ask - what does the young Miss Camilla believe?
I believe compassion, mercy, justice and good deeds are human concepts, not Universal ones, but that this does not make them any less important to us. I believe in life and death and that you cannot have one without the other, but that life is so fragile we need not invent evernew reasons to bring it to an end. I believe we do not know everything and never will, but that searching for answers matters anyway. I believe simplicity can breed complexity and thus humans came to be. I believe my footprints in the sand will fade after I die, but they will still have been there. I believe the most important meanings in life you create yourself. I believe - that whatever your faith, it is what it gives you that matters. That will never be the same from person to person and none of us can know which is better (or even is there is such a thing as "better faith"). Nor can we know if any of us even needs to be saved. This I believe.
Of course, how well we live by our beliefs is another matter - perhaps one more suited for another day.
As most of you probably know, I don't believe in God. Or the Goddess or Allah or any sort of Creator. I don't rule it out, but I don't believe it.
So don't ask me for prayers. I cannot give them. I have no address to give them to. I will offer sympathies and wishes and hope, but your prayers you will have to get elsewhere. This does not mean I don't care, but I cannot start believing just to give you that prayer.
Secondly, please don't talk about "saving" us non-believers. Don't assume all atheists live in ignorance and need to be set straight. And please, do not capitalise "Save". I find it offensive. I made my choice as others have, and who are you to say thus I'm somehow inferior and I need to be "Saved" from it? My life, my choices, my consequences. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. But I cannot believe just to sort of be on the safe side. For better or worse, there is no organised religion for me.
So you might ask - what does the young Miss Camilla believe?
I believe compassion, mercy, justice and good deeds are human concepts, not Universal ones, but that this does not make them any less important to us. I believe in life and death and that you cannot have one without the other, but that life is so fragile we need not invent evernew reasons to bring it to an end. I believe we do not know everything and never will, but that searching for answers matters anyway. I believe simplicity can breed complexity and thus humans came to be. I believe my footprints in the sand will fade after I die, but they will still have been there. I believe the most important meanings in life you create yourself. I believe - that whatever your faith, it is what it gives you that matters. That will never be the same from person to person and none of us can know which is better (or even is there is such a thing as "better faith"). Nor can we know if any of us even needs to be saved. This I believe.
Of course, how well we live by our beliefs is another matter - perhaps one more suited for another day.
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no subject
Date: 2004-10-16 05:22 am (UTC)The most difficult thing I have had to deal with as a non believer is not the attempts at conversion. Its the pity, the whole patronizing attitude of "you poor unenlightened creature! I'm going to pray that you find God's love."
Not all religious folk behave this way thankfully. I have many Christian friends who are able to acknowledge that their way is not absolute and respect my beliefs without censure.
However, those who feel that their way is the only manner in which one should live and believe and all that deviates is wrong are not only delusional but dangerous. Get enough of people like those together and you have the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition or the Bush administration. (heh)
The point is, belief or non belief should be nothing more than a personal choice. When it moves beyond that, it inevitably becomes intolerance.
If people want to honor their religion, they should do so through love, compassion and helping others, not by forcing beliefs upon them. That destroys the whole point of faith in my opinion. Being a good person is not based on the absence or presence of God in your heart, its in the way you treat others.
Until there is concrete, scientific, irrefutable evidence proving the existence of a God, a wise person and a tolerant one will accept and acknowledge the fact that they could very well be wrong.
The only true enlightenment is in realizing we don't know everything and probably never will.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-16 10:12 pm (UTC)So I agree with you that religion is mainly of the private sphere. It can people define who they are and how they view the world. The problem comes when they try to bend the world into this definition. I refuse to live in Bush's definition of the world, same as with bin Laden. Their world is not my world and neither of us sit with all the answers. Sometimes, a little humility goes a long way.