Santa killed God, Agnostic Atheism, and bittersweet mortality

I think I am agnostic as of late. “Agnostic Atheist” to be precise…. But it still means I am moving on that grand scale of belief systems.

At the age of 6 or 7 when I figured out Santa, I simply “got” it. I remember… sitting down for a chat with the folks. “Alright,” I said, “Santa Claus isn’t real, so much as the spirit of Christmas, right.” I mused on the subject with my folks for some time, into that night. Speaking about belief, reality, and the confounding logical problems inherent to Santa’s journey.

No Santa?

I am sure you think it would be ridiculous to believe in him at age 30. Or 40. Maybe later?

But then why would one believe in God?

So it was… the evening was a pleasant intellectual conversation about the mechanics of life, allegory, meaning and purpose.

This evening laid the groundwork for an overwrought atheist to come out as a matter of brow furrowing obviousness.

No Santa? No Easter Bunny. No Tooth Fairy. No God. No goblins. I get it. If one exists, they must all have the chance of existing. When one allows fairy tales to govern one’s reality, or desire no evidence for one’s beliefs, the reality one lives is populated by endless conjecture and claims that disengage one from the beauty of how the world really exists.

The world isn’t less for these things not being here. In fact the magic of life becomes even more incredible when we figure this stuff out.. because it is real. It wasn’t created by someone. This all happened so that we are lucky voyeurs, coping with bittersweet mortality, on an arcing chunk of rock on a distant spiral arm in a distant galaxy in one of *who knows* how complex or how many universes.

We stand here, lost at home…. Gripping the earth and one another as tightly as our arms will clench. Recognizing all this has helped me to love more deeply than I could ever imagine. Because as a human free of belief, I am aware that the only thing we truly have is – one another.

So clutching my fiancée, my parents, sister and her young family, my friends, or my dog (chasing rabbits in his sleep at my feet this very moment)….

I clutch for support. For love. For the singular moments… each and every one that I watch, a chest rises and falls, and I take it all in.

At times it cripples me, as I recognize how difficult it is to be allowed this privilege of life. Entropy keeps me up at night on the level that I can understand it. I don’t want this all to go away. Please.

I grip and hug tighter because I don’t have the luxury of believing in anything out there. What a support! What a breath of fresh air! I would adore the chance to believe, but it simply never made sense to me. So my friends, and the echo of my steps, and my thoughts, and languid conversations over drinks or coffee, or afternoons in bed is my God. Kindness a religion I follow. But it is existence that I am pious for, and the moment that challenges me to love to and be open and feel life wash over me as I hum and it glows.

Freeing oneself from the confines of religion and spirituality opens up an endless universe of exploration and discovery. Without the pressure and limitations of a faith based existence of conjecture and belief…. You can delve into the utter beauty of knowing things deeply…. Profoundly. When we understand the world around us…. And connect with what we truly know….. we celebrate existence for the miracle that it is, without defaming it with needy tales of

The water, our movement through space, the passion, even sadness…. It is all a complete miracle. And I am not talking about fruit on trees and snakes and “creating” light and wrath of God miracle nonsense. I am talking about the coalescence of inert, noble gases…. the collision of particles…. Biological processes expanding past simple crystalline ion exchanging or whatever preferential theory you have about the development of life. The fact that if the earth moved towards the sun, or away from it, in our orbit… even by .00001 of a degree… we wouldn’t be here. Life couldn’t exist. It’s a miracle, as much as the chance happening has allowed us the moment in time to reflect on it having happened. You know…. The fact it happened allows that we can ponder it. Not the other way round.

However, it is astonishing… and completely as real a miracle as you might ever hope to see.

I promise we are getting to the agnostic part.

What’s more….. I just can’t believe there is some super creator out there, because why would that GOD allow all this misery in the world? I know it is one of the simplest or more sophomoric philosophical premises on the subject, but it still exists as a fine, fine question. So much doesn’t make sense.

And here we get to the agnostic part.

I *AM* an atheist. I *AM*skeptical….

But I intone others before me whilst knowing only one thing: I don’t know much. Doubt if I ever will.

And it is this natural skepticism and constant doubt that bolsters my walk through my time…. That allows me to say I don’t know shit, and who knows about this stuff on the greater philosophical level anyway? I can’t even get the concept of “God” right. I keep anthropomorphizing it, him…. Humanizing the concept because my teeny brain cannot wrap around the idea of what form it would even take, let alone what it is, or if it is.

However, I can’t say there is or isn’t some overriding idea or purpose or concept above me. I know now… I will never know. As a skeptic, my atheistic opinion isn’t enough verifiable data, or not significant enough as a large sample, double-blind study to merit any real consideration. It totally lacks proof, and is just positing. I don’t really need to prove my disbelief, in fact. I think it is for someone that believes in God to prove it. You can’t disprove a negative anyway, so I don’t mind not spending energy on it.

I do know I always thought God was an allegory for a supremely moral human. I never thought the cocker spaniel haired, white-robed guy was real. I just thought it was us as our dogs think we are.

I don’t even know about the whole Jesus thing. Like… I don’t even know if he existed, or how he did. He was one of thousands of “messiah” of the day. Monty Python’s Life of Brian wasn’t too far off, really. I can say a book written 200 some odd years after Jesus died might contain some serious flaws about the veracity of events. If anything the living Jesus was some burly, rough and tumble messenger of GOD type thing….

But as for God, I always thought he was an example of humans as we *could* be if we were divine, perfect, infallible. An ethical, even, grounded, loving being.

You know.. all this ramble came from an interesting place.

I was sent this: http://www.theinterviewwithgod.com

And I watched it as an open hearted atheist with a desire to believe in a brain that never will. I get the need, I get the desire…. but it simply isn’t fair to waste one’s time here. As Carl Sagan said:

The world is so exquisite, with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there’s little good evidence. Far better, it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look Death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.”

Whatever the case… the interview is a vehicle to simplify the lessons of kindness that we all wish we could perfect. If we were Godly that is. Good luck with that, of course.

For now I remain a skeptic. I remain a humanist. I remain an agnostic atheist in deference to my incapable mind.

And I remain humbly yours. Now turn and hug someone.