THIS IS PART 2 OF A 3 PART SERIES
I’ve been agnostic for about 6 years now – since I was 14. Prior to my agnosticism, I was a very strong believer in God. What I always was, and still am, is a very probing, very discerning person. I always questioned. I questioned everything. Perhaps in my 14 years as a theist, I did not directly question the existence of a God, and all things surrounding such a belief, but I did seek to make my understanding clearer.
In addition to that, I have always been surrounded by theists who forever lay their arguments on the table – justifications for their belief. I have always been surrounded by the biblical stories, supplemented by the alleged reasoning behind them. Even after I became agnostic, I sought to know more. I tried to read the bible – I only managed the first 5 chapters of the old testament, though I saw quite a lot in there to find the existence of a god, as described by those first chapters, laughable. At best.
Still, I am uncertain – which is partly why I am agnostic and not completely an atheist. There is always that possibility. So I listen to the arguments posed by believers, and slowly pick my way through them. I refuse to simply strike down as foolish those beliefs that negate my own, because that is what many believers do to my disbelief. They believe that atheists and agnostics are inherently foolish.
"The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. Corrupt are they, and have done abominable iniquity: there is none that doeth good." -- Psalms, Chapter 53, Verse 1... The Bible.
I have no wish of lowering myself to their level.
And this is why I always found it increasingly annoying when I hear fellow atheists and agnostics making weak arguments for their non-belief in a God, and then claim to base these arguments on reason. Their “reasoning” cannot be reasonable if I, a fellow disbeliever, can dismantle it!
Anyway, I am particularly occupied by “The Freewill Defense” as it is called by atheists. Free will. It always confused me. It is supposed to be the reason that some people will enter Heaven, while others will not escape hell. But even before free will, came the eternally-asked question:
“Why are we here?”
I have an even better question. Or perhaps it is the same question, though more provocatively phrased.
“Why did God make us?”
To me, it makes very little sense. God is supposedly an omnipotent being. He is perfect. In his perfection he needs nothing. He simply exists. He Is.
Yet, I am to believe that this pure, perfect, omnipotent God decides to create angels. Angels, as you should know, are the servants of God. They have no free will. They do whatever God wishes them to do.
Why would God need servants? If God is omnipotent, he can do everything himself by simply “thinking” of it.
Then again, Angels are thought of as messengers between God and people. Although it is a generally accepted “biblical fact” that angels were created before men, no one knows how long. Okay. Let’s say that God created the angels just before he created us. Let’s move on to “us”, then.
Why would he create us?
Being an omnipotent, perfect deity, he would not create us out of boredom, for entertainment, for company, to have something to love. He is love. However, I can picture a theist saying that he created us in order to give us the gift of life. Many people believe that life is a gift. Do not ask me why. I would not know. But let’s assume, for the theist’s arguments sake, that the reason for our existence is to give us the “gift of life”.
So God says to himself: “I’m going to create a life-form that did not previously exist, because life is beautiful, and they need to know what they’re missing out on.”
So he creates our planet, and us humans, giving us free will, knowing that some of us are going to use it to serve Him, and do good, and others are going to use it to take advantage of other people, shun Him, and generally fuck everything up. Those who do good, he is going to take into Heaven for an eternity of bliss and happiness. Those who do bad will be thrown, head first into a Lake of Fire, roasting slowly for all eternity.
The vast majority of us are going to end up in the latter category. Kind of a steep price to pay to experience the “beauty” of life, don’t you think? Think of your life. It was pretty shitty at times, not so? Is experiencing those 70-odd years of hell-on-earth worth an eternity of hell-in-hell?
Eternity.
Forever.
Until you die… and keep on until-ing.
UNTIL.
PAIN FOREVER.
Frankly, it would be a lot better to have not existed at all.
Why would an omnipotent, perfect being create us knowing that 95% of us are going to spend an eternity in torment? It is not as if he benefited from creating us – that would mean that after creating us he would be somehow better off, and it is very difficult to be better off when you were perfect to start with. In God’s perfection he needs nothing – and “nothing” excludes everything, and “everything” includes us.
But He did create people. If He wanted though, He could have just created those people who he knew would use their free will for good, and saved Hell a whole lot of space.
I remember the 2nd Matrix movie. Theists used a specific part of it as a vehicle for religious propaganda. It arose from that scene where Neo discovered, from the Oracle, that his path was already chosen – his choice of whether he would save Zion or not was already made. I cannot remember exactly how Neo expressed his misgivings about having a pre-paved path, but I do remember the oracle saying something to the effect of:
“…because you have to understand why you made that decision.”
The first time I heard this statement, it disturbed me, because I had trouble picking it apart. The girl who spoke of it was saying, that similarly, we humans all have free choice, but our paths are already known to God. She emphasised that God did not choose those paths, only that he knew of them, and that although God already knows what will happen to us, He wanted us to see why we did the things we did.
Okay fine, I told myself. God wants us to know why he is sending 95% of us to Hell, because understanding pacifies, and guilt torments. It made sense.
But then there is that question of free will. It is one of the more fundamental cornerstones of Christianity. Free will always confused me. It was while looking through an article arguing against the existence of free will, and going over my reasoning and beliefs, that I had an epiphany.
I skimmed through the article and did not see that rationale for the non-existence of “free will” as presented by religion, so I believe I have discovered something. Or at the very least, I have thought of something that I have not previously read, though someone has undoubtedly written about it already.
Or worse. I wrote a 3-part series about an argument so simple, so obvious that atheists never bothered to write about it. It was just understood.
Read it, and tell me if you see any flaws. I will be glad to accept criticism.