confessions of a knife

as the majority of posts from this past week obviate, i am no longer a “member of the church”. actually, i haven’t been one since the late 1980’s. the only “epiphany” that occurred this week (to shamelessly borrow upon religious terminology that i have found really means very little anyway), was that i have been quite unhappy the past several years as a blogger, carefully sidestepping the truth of the fact that long ago, i didn’t fall away from the church, i leaped.

while i was in ministry school, no less.

it took me about four years after i took that leap to finally land on my feet, and ever since then, i have striven to be at least somewhat respectful of the beliefs and perspectives of those that i consider to be unnecessarily dependent upon the need to believe in invisible, mythological creatures in the hopes of intangible, fanciful rewards of unprovable, desperate meaning. but i have found that those attempts at respect and understanding generally fall short, and quite often only serve to compromise my own self-integrity. after all, any willful omission is a lie, and one of the things i have prided myself upon since leaving the church was being a good person in a more holistic manner than i was back then.

so, tired of essentially lying to myself every time i addressed certain issues on this blog, i finally decided to “come out of the closet” so to speak. the only problem is, specific labels such as “atheist” and “agnostic” don’t really gel with me. for example, some of my atheist friends focus on their atheism so much, it’s almost like a religion to them. and the real problem i have with religion is the insular thinking and exclusionary application of their beliefs. relatedly, agnosticism also doesn’t directly apply to me. because i do believe there is a higher consciousness that has at least something to do with our overall lives. and without going into great detail about it, i have come to believe (indeed, in the most classical definition of “faith”, in fact), that it is quite possible that consciousness can be re-animated over time, perhaps perpetually.

but on some pertinent, salient issues, i believe i basically agree with these concepts:

1. on atheism: i do not believe that an individual being fitting the typical religious definition of “God” exists.
2. on agnosticism: indeed, i believe the pursuit of ultimate knowledge is merely a life-path through which those in positions of authority can meddle in the affairs of the common people, and one by which the common people can distract themselves from the mundane, carnal realities of life (which ironically define them). i am agnostic at all levels. i don’t believe we’ve comprehensively nailed down the natures of the Universe any more than i believe we’ve come anywhere close to understanding the pros and cons to the potential of there being non-physical, intangible aspects to the human psyche. at the very least, as a species, given the way we have evolved, we’re way too young to have attained anything more than opinion on these matters.

of course, i have some differences of opinion on these two subject matters as well. i’m sure you can analyze what i write and attribute my stances on these things to an unwillingness to let completely go of the concepts under which i was raised. i think if you do so, however, you’ll be missing what i believe to be the greater point.

1. on atheism: a lack of belief in a deity does not automatically or inherently negate the possible existence of, or potential benefit of, relatively intangible aspects of the Self. the argument that if we can’t see it, we can’t define it, falls flat when viewed against our progress throughout history. for example, the evidence for a round earth and the sun as the center of our solar system existed for billions of years before humans gained the ability to properly recognize their perspective in order to determine these conditions as fact. in other words, our inability to see something has proven on numerous occasions not to be a problem of capability, but a problem of perspective. therefore, it is logical to assume that just because we can’t currently tangibly recognize spirit doesn’t mean spirit doesn’t exist. there is even less evidence of a collective consciousness, and yet it is basically undeniable that one seems to generally apply itself to the governance of our societies (hence concepts like “common sense”, “common law”, etc). it’s when individual actors within those arenas make decisions that jeopardize our well-being that we get pissed off.
2. on agnosticism: denying the existence of an ultimate truth is inherently self-limiting. especially when people use agnosticism as a platform to deny the relevance of anything and everything they do not, or choose to not, understand. self-limitation of any form is hardly beneficial to one’s progress in life, and even if you don’t believe there’s a higher state of being to eventually attain, that fundamental limitation keeps many agnostics from being beneficial to their societies. why be beneficial?, some ask. because even if you don’t think “God” can ever turn out to be a function of the collective consciousness, you’re living like a cancer, not a body part, and that world-view simply sucks.

as a result, for lack of a better definition, i consider myself to be an agnostic atheist. that is, i don’t believe in our current concept of “God” (et al), but i likewise believe that a steadfast adherence to atheism alone conflicts with the concept of agnosticism. that is, atheism, as generally promoted today, is conceptually set up as an absolute truth in denial of religious doctrine. many of the proponents of atheism are just as adamant, just as outspoken, and just as belligerent as their religious counterparts. but just as there is no tangible evidence that there is a higher being, there is no tangible evidence that there is not one. therefore, steadfastly denying the existence of a higher being is just as self-limiting and rhetorically baseless as the steadfast belief that a higher being should be credited with all human progress.

obviously, these beliefs are important to me, essentially having come to define me in certain ways, and my long practice of not including them in these online extensions of myself has contributed to a subconscious frustration that i finally realized last week. now, many of my friends, online and offline, are religious. and they’re good people. and i think it was largely out of respect for them that i decided not to include postings or comments directly relating to my anti-religious tendencies. however, the vast majority of what i see wrong in the world at large, and most definitely in politics today, is religion. well, maybe not so much religion per se, but certainly how some people choose to go about practicing, exercising, enforcing, legislating, etc. their concept of a theocratic state. and so, with some trepidation, i decided to quit shutting up about it, because shutting up about it was just making me tense all the time.

i say with trepidation because i was worried that some of my friends would take things the wrong way when i’m really more inclined to pick on the nut-jobs on the extreme right-wing. while, as noted above, i don’t think whole Jesus/God/Muhammed/Allah/Yahweh thing does anyone any good, it’s not my opinion that people need to be made fun of for believing what they believe. don’t get me wrong, i honestly believe that specific religious beliefs are a crock of shit and i think religion exists, primarily, as a way for the otherwise-common man to exercise power over the population. but that paradigm has long been ingrained in our societies to the point where mentally dismissing it suffices. and i’m sure that given that stance, i will eventually offend some of my friends. i can only hope that they will understand that there’s a difference between respecting them as individuals and disrespecting their beliefs in mythology-as-truth. i won’t much touch on that issue, however, but by the same token, i hope there is not an expectation that i refrain from pointing out some of the inherent self-contradiction in mythology-as-truth.

wow, all that’s a bunch of serious stuff, and is hardly indicative of what i do here. over the near-year that this blog has existed, and over the years on previous incarnations of this blog, i have occasionally included postings that snarked on religious subject matter. basically, all that’s changed is the intended frequency. i think humor is important in our lives, so this post here might well be the singular serious commentary on the subject that leaves my fingertips. as noted previously, i will be doing some full product snark on items found at various online stores dealing in religious kitch, and i will be more inclined than before to point fingers at religious leaders currently in the public eye, and of course at the things they do. the Pope is also a specific target, because he embodies the concepts of willful ignorance, duplicity, and unapologetic revisionism. and need i even mention the various televangelists? probably not.

but yes, it’ll continue to be snarky, fun, irreverent catharsis that is primarily karmic payback for the way i was raised.

i have added some links to resources for atheists and agnostics. this blog is now aggregated by Planet Atheism, and it is also on the Atheist Blogroll. i am also a member of Atheism Online. all this was precipitated, actually, by joining the Out Campaign a couple of weeks ago. i thought i was just going to leave it at that, but found that i couldn’t.

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the title of this post is from My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult’s song “Confessions of a Knife”. i found a version of it on YouTube, but it isn’t the whole song (just the first minute of so of it which is largely a sampling from an older movie).