Before I get into my main topic, I need a brief preface. I vowed to myself that I would steer clear in this blog of setting a critical or negative tone at any point, if at all possible. This is not such a situation though. I am being critical but the point is not to tear an alternate point of view down. I am not in the business of telling people what to think. These posts are for those who want them, not for those who don't.
(Concerning my "avoid being negative" rule: There are very often unpleasant truths that need saying. Sometimes the understanding of these truths are imperative, even morally imperative. However, I think that a person presented with too many harsh truths or statements at once tends to shut down and refuse to process any further. To an extent, everyone has to deal with unpleasant realities at the time they are ready. The best way to write of such truths, is often not dwell on them, but to sort of point to them in passing and let people decide themselves whether to probe further.)
Everything in my blog follows from the precept that there is a real spiritual reality and that this life is not the end. This is not a belief that I am interested in proving to anyone, as if I could. Everyone is, in the end, as they wish to be: and I could not and don't wish to change what anyone wishes to be. You will follow what is in your heart to follow: no one can change that but you.
That said, I need to spend a few minutes talking about the alternative. What if I am dead wrong? What if there is no spiritual reality at all?
Atheism is an evaluation that removes any pretext for valuation. For a logically consistent atheist, morality is in the end, only an opinion; truth only a means to an end; life only a mindless instinct to survive. An atheist is condemned to putting Self as the center and measure of all things - a terrible fate in truth, though he may not see it that way. As will unfold in further blog posts, I think that Self is both the characteristic mechanism of our existence here and also a potential obstacle to our leaving this realm of existence for somewhere better. So it is logical that a point of view that denies the spiritual would essentially have to put the Self in it's place by default.
I may well be dead wrong about there being a God, but in that case it wouldn't matter, because then nothing whatsoever would matter. Any assertion as to meaning would merely be an opinion. To a consistent atheist (of which there are few), the only measure of meaning would be the desires of that particular self.
Even though atheists often take the rhetorical position of positing a lack of belief rather than a belief, they are wrong about that. A negation only has meaning in the context of that which negates it. A disbelief in God only makes sense in context of an alternate position. And that position, functionally, is a subset of nihilism. If Man is the measure of all things, then there is no real measure. Fortunately perhaps, most atheists I think don't worry too much about how all that works out, not unlike many people of religious persuasions who don't look too closely at what their founders actually said. And doubt is only natural and to an extent even healthy. Every sane person doubts some of the time.
At this point some well-meaning person will say that their best friend is an atheist, that they know atheists of impeccable ethics and humanitarianism, none of which I necessarily doubt, nor do I even care. Those same persons will no doubt mention religious persons who are evil, hypocritical, intolerant and lacking in mercy, which I do not doubt in the slightest. In fact I could point some out myself. That is not the point. It is a poor debater who regresses from talking about ideas to talking about the people who have them. There is a logical fallacy called Ad Hominem, which attempts to link the truth of a position to the character of the person who holds it. That is an equally erroneous way of thinking, regardless of whether you are trying to disprove a position by defaming its advocate, or whether you are trying to promote a position by lauding the virtues of a person who holds it. I honestly don't care one whit how many honorable atheist friends you have. May they live long and prosper, they are not the issue.
The point of my critique of atheism is not to change anyone's mind about it. I assume most atheists won't spend their time reading this blog, nor should they. It is not written for them. The point is to set the groundwork as it were; to stake out the positions. Every chessboard has two sides, light and dark, and to an extent we can only see one or the other by way of contrast.
All that aside, the things I am about to discuss in the next post are to some degree speculative. To me, what I am about to discuss follows logically from the assumption that there is a God, that there is a continuation after death, and that such a God is not arbitrary, senseless or wrathful. No one should consider this authoritative, I don't even consider it that. Based on those assumptions however, I have not found any other conclusions to be as convincing.
Next up: The Loop
