Ever since I left my Christian faith behind me and became an agnostic atheist, I have had a huge moral dilemma in my life – should I try to ‘convert’ theists to a more freethinking way of life? The problem is this – having left Christianity, I now feel I have achieved some kind of enlightenment. I’ve realised that I now believe what I want and life is pretty much how I want it to be. Now I have discovered this, I feel I want to help others achieve the same freedom of thought and help them gain freedom them from the semi-brainwashing that some religions seem to employ.

However, I’m also a great believer in leaving people to think what they wish and being accepting of people from other belief and faiths. I am privileged to know people of many different faiths, and I realise my friendship with them would get nowhere if I were constantly attacking the religious wall of blind faith around them. However, am I morally obliged to help them towards what I see as true freedom of thought? The agnostic atheism wager says that we must all try to make the world a better place. Well, wouldn’t it be a better place if everyone was free to think for themselves without being dictated their morals and rules by religious leaders?

So the question is, do we live in harmony with our religious neighbours, knowing that many of them are constrained by their religion? Or do we do our best to ‘help’, perhaps in a Dawkins-esque preacher type approach, or even (as an extreme example) by employing a strategy not dissimilar to evangelists to get our point across? I’m sure many people here would agree that evangelising is one of the most annoying aspects of religion that affects our everyday lives. However, if we genuinely believe that it is the way to make the world a better place, is it our duty to preach to others in a way that we ourselves dislike to be preached to?

I remember when I was a Christian I would simply try not to think about the contradictions and obvious fallacies in the Bible because I firmly believed that it was doubting God and as a result, an evil thought. Now I wish the same freedom I now have for others. I myself am split on this issue and so giving my friends gentle nudges in the direction of atheism is all I allow myself. However, I can’t help questioning whether this really will make the world a better place.

- Mary

So, why do I bother? Why don’t I selfishly ignore the needs of others in an ongoing quest to promote my own personal happiness? I think for me, it’s because in helping others I do promote my own happiness. When I give money to charity, I no longer do it because I believe Jesus said I should, I do it because I’ve realised that it makes me feel good. In a simplistic way, when I hear stories of starving children, I feel sad, therefore to make myself feel happy again, I give money to the charity in the hope that I have contributed to giving those children a better life. This makes me happy.

If you think about it, all our actions are to selfishly add to our own happiness, otherwise we wouldn’t do it. So the reason I continue to be good is that it makes me feel happy. When I act compassionately, I find people respond in the same way and ultimately my own life improves, and I find that the energy I initially invested to be good has been worth it. I realise that this is a slightly harsh and unromantic way of explaining the reason for human goodness, but I believe it to be true.

So, why do we bother to be good to each other? Why does it make us feel good? I think it’s all down to good old evolution and survival of the fittest. We are all biologically programmed to want to continue the human race for as long as possible and to increase it as much as possible. Therefore, we do not want other people to be ill as this decreases their chances of survival and their death would mean a decrease in numbers of the human race. Therefore, we do our best to make them well again whether this requires actually being there and looking after them or giving money to charity. In other words, the biological method of making us do things that are good for us is making us happy therefore being good promotes our happiness.

- Mary

THEISM ————————— AGNOSTICISM ————————— ATHEISM

That is the chart of theistic ideas as I see it. This site, of course, represents a view about here:

THEISM ————————— AGNOSTICISM ————————— ATHEISM
————————————————————————–^

Many people have asked me why I don’t simply call myself either an agnostic or an atheist. Why blend these into one? Well, here are the reasons as I see them.

First, let me clarify that by ‘God’ I do not just mean a higher power. I’m more referring to the “loving” Christian God type of being. Now, I’m sure most people would agree that a person on the true path of rationality would not be on the theist end due to the complete lack of hard evidence for God.

Having established that, let’s go to the other extreme – complete out and out atheism. Why isn’t this a completely rational belief? In my opinion, that requires just as much blind belief as theism does. We do not have proof there is no God. There are even many semi-convincing arguments for a higher power, which could lead you into the belief there is a God. However, even if these arguments are not convincing, we must admit there is no proof for the non-existence of God.

FairyLet’s do a quick exercise- put out your hand. Ok, now that you’ve done that, look at your palm. I’m going to suggest there is a little fairy sitting on the edge of your hand with her little pale legs dangling off the side. What? You don’t believe me? Why not? You can’t see her? Well, there is an easy explanation. She is invisible. Can you feel her? If not, maybe you’re just not sensitive enough, but she is there. How can you argue with me? Can you really completely deny the existence of that little fairy sitting on your hand if we’ve agreed that she’s invisible? Of course you can’t. I don’t believe you can say the invisible fairy isn’t there since I’m telling you she is. Also, since we’re having this disagreement, she’s probably an invisible and slightly pissed off fairy by now because you do not believe in her. Wouldn’t you be annoyed if I didn’t believe in you? I would apologise to her if I were you.

So far I’ve explained why I believe it is not rational to be theist or atheist. So, lets go to agnosticism. By agnosticism, I’m referring to the belief that there is roughly a 50% chance God exists. Why isn’t that right either? Well, while you may not have been able to come up with an explanation as to why the fairy isn’t there, you probably still think its highly likely that she doesn’t exist although I hope I’ve convinced there is a possibility of her existence. This is the very reason agnosticism doesn’t work either. If you cannot use sensory perception or logic to prove the existence of something, it is automatically more likely that there isn’t some thing there. If there appears to be nothing, you must prove that there is something. You do not look at what appears to be nothing and assume there is something and equally, if I showed you an apparently empty room, you would not say there is a 50% chance of something being there.

I say all this to say I’m between agnosticism and atheism.

By the way, where’s your hand? You haven’t closed it and crushed the fairy. Have you??

- Mary