Why I’m no longer an Atheist….but still don’t believe in god!!

Let’s get one thing straight; just because I talk about spirituality, doesn’t mean I’m religious! Far from it. In fact, I’m dead against organised religion of any sort. Big institutions are not needed in order for people to follow the basic and profound teachings which underpin all religions. Besides, these organisations have caused as much pain as they have helped, through wars in their name, corruption and the controlling of society through needless, harsh rules.

But the basic principles of the major religions are actually very similar. The men who these religions were born from (Christ, Krishna, Buddha, Mohammed) were all trying to teach the same message; to be kind to one another and to realise that we have the power within us to do whatever our heart desires. These gurus weren’t attempting to set up a religion! Other people decided on that. And all this bullshit about heaven, a cushy afterlife that we have to somehow suffer for now in order to attain once we die – what a waste of time! A waste of life.

AGNOSTICISM

I used to be a staunch atheist. Somewhere during my teens, I stopped believing in a god. My family was never devoutly religious, but we did consider ourselves Christians. Well, my parents did, I was following their lead – just as everyone does who becomes religious. It’s blind faith. But I guess it became less and less easy for me to believe in a benign god the more I experienced the harshness of life – not just my own struggle with anxiety but what I saw in the world. Poverty. Hunger. War. Racism. Hatred. For me, there was no way that any conscious, omnipotent, almighty creator would ever let such atrocities happen. So the more I learned about life, the more I became firmly entrenched as an atheist.

Honestly, if you’d said 2 years ago that I would no longer be an atheist, I would have laughed in your face! But since I’ve gone down this journey of self development, I have come to redefine myself as agnostic – and proud!!

Proud because it means I can consider myself way more open minded on the subject. I’m not saying god definitely doesn’t exist……but I’m also prepared to say that there’s a chance there MIGHT be a god.

WHAT IS GOD?

But there needs to be a definition of what “god” (and yes, I’m refusing to write it with a capital g because I find that completely ludicrous!) actually is. Most people see god as a being – a physical entity who is separate from us and lives in the sky somewhere and usually is a man with a big white beard! Facial hair or not, most think it’s an actual being. But I’ve come to realise that god means different things to other people.

Many don’t see god as a separate being at all. When they refer to god, they are talking about consciousness – a living entity that we are ALL part of. So in essence, WE are all god too. Everything is connected, and everything is energy.

This is the definition of god I would use. But my preference is not to call that “god” at all. I prefer “the universe” or “consciousness” or “higher self”. The very use of the word “god” always produces images of that man with the beard telling us all what we should and shouldn’t be doing, and that is too inexorably interwoven into the mind of most of society for us to envisage a different definition. Lots of people in the spiritual and self development fields, use the term god to mean consciousness or some form of mind that created everything – but not the stereotypical Biblical bloke.

QUANTUM PHYSICS

Personally, I don’t like it and you’ll never see me refer to god on this blog. That doesn’t mean I don’t think one exists. I can agree that a mind of some sort created the universe at the beginning. From the evidence I’ve seen from quantum physics, from the way the natural world seems so mathematically perfect and from my own unusual experiences and coincidences over the past year, I have enough new knowledge to believe that something more is going on than we’ve been led to believe.

If our whole reality is simply a creation of our minds, if nothing is solid as it seems and everything is energy, if everything is connected even if it’s many miles apart, if science has proven all of these things (which it has!) then why on Earth could a single sentient mind not have made the world this way? Perhaps the Big Bang was started by this mind?

My old argument was that no god would allow the world to be as it is if he was a true god with immense power and omnipotence, as all these religions seem to state. But I now have softened on this. Perhaps if there is one mind at the centre of everything, that this mind already gave us everything we need but somehow we fucked it all up? Still wouldn’t explain why he’s not stepped in to do something about it! But maybe he/she does? Maybe it’s subtle hints? Things we view as coincidences?

My feeling at present sways more towards this conclusion; we are little shards of a mass, collective consciousness, known as the spirit or soul. Each one of us is this soul and we inhabit a human body – but this is just temporary.

The body will die but the soul will live on, as energy, and move elsewhere. To where, I have no clue! But the more I learn, the more I’m of the opinion that we are infinite beings, shards of consciousness and we’ll be reunited with that mass/super consciousness one day.

But for now, we are stuck with the human body we are in and we need to figure out the game of life on planet Earth! And it IS a game! One we are supposed to enjoy and use our innate powers to get the most out of. Unfortunately, most of us have lost the instruction manual! I think I’m slowly starting to understand the fine print though……….