I am an atheist.
I do not believe there is one god or many gods. I do not believe in heaven and hell. I do not believe that we are consciously aware of our own deaths and/or what happens to us after we die. I do not believe the Universe was created by a divine authority or that favoring creationism offers any real explanation of our lives. I do not believe in faith, luck, karma, signs, astrology, fate, or any of the vague notions that mankind uses to explain that which he/she cannot. However, I was not brought up to believe this way.
I am Native American, but I was not raised with Native traditions or beliefs. Most of my family is Catholic, my mother was Baptist. From the time I was younger, I always had doubts about god. For fear of not being accepted, I chose to follow everyone to church, to pray at dinners, to nod my head when people told me that our loved ones were watching over us. I asked questions in church. Questions that one should never ask a man of god.
Because of this internal conflict, I went searching for things to fill the great void in my life. Drugs, drinking, sex, marriage, love, understanding, compassion, a family, fights….anything and everything to fill that hole, that terrible, icy cold emptiness. I tried to talk to god. I asked him why he allowed my mom to die. I asked him why he took her from me. He never answered. My anger with him grew stronger every day. I hated him. I cursed him. But nothing happened. I began to realize what I understood long before anyone ever told me about god. That I was alone. And nothing....nothing comforts me when I come to this realization. Which is why I do not see the absurdity people find in their faith. People always say, don't question god. It is the will of god. That's not an answer, not for me. I question everything. I follow no one. That does not mean I do not love my fellow man. That does not mean I do not feel the pain of those who suffer, That does not mean I cannot see the beauty of the world without the awe of believing in a divine creator. Quite the contrary.
I believe--wait, let me rephrase that for the sake of clarification....I "know" that human beings are significant. We are conscious. We can see and feel and understand with a large degree of accuracy that we are special. We have qualities among us that no other creature on Earth has. We have a complex language system that allows us to express even the most minute variations in our thoughts and emotions and we are able to communicate or convey these ideas and feelings. As such, I have found in all that emptiness of my existence the need to understand why we are significant. I looked at the intricacy of how we have evolved. I looked to the skies to see how it all began, the billions of stars showing us the way. And it became clear to me. We are made of the same things. Our bodies, the plants and animals, the complexity of all life, the Earth, everything. We were born in the death of stars. We had an origin long ago. Yes, we are significant. We are the custodians, the survivors of a Universe gripped in chaos--we are the order, the fingerprint of perfection. Yet we are fearful of this implication. We understand the natural order. The duality of nature. We live, we die. We are fragile.
Yet, are we not god-like? We control the life and death of so many species including ourselves. We act righteously to protect or destroy the world around us. We possess the power to create life. This poses so many questions, of which, I am certain we will never be able to answer fully. But realizing that we could be here without the need for a god or many gods is a start for me. It helps me look at the world objectively. It answers more than a bible ever could. I can hold up a rock and understand how long it took to form, how it was made, and what it is made of. I can look at a flock of birds and know what they needed to become to survive natural selection. I can look at a glass of water the same way I can look at the ocean with such grandeur and know how important it is to my life. That was something I could never appreciate fully before. I just want an opportunity to share what I experience with others and relate the issues/trials of my life to how I perceive it. This brings me to the moniker, "The Waking Gods"....
The title "The Waking Gods" is a metaphor for the conscious awakening of the human species. I derived the term from the Greeks. They believed their gods, based on humans, were endowed with all the human frailties and weaknesses that humans possessed. They looked like humans and therefore, led to the symbolic representation of gods in human form, characterized in sculpture. I found that the Greeks, above all civilizations, were the most influential in the advancements in science and mathematics, language, philosophy, and politics that we have in civilized society. I credit them largely for their contributions to how I see the world today, but make no mistake, this is not merely an attempt to glorify those contributions to discredit others. I am only here insofar as I can contribute to some understanding of my life. This will not be the last version of my formal writing, but for the most part I will attempt to write very instinctively so please bear with me as I attempt to clarify my views of the world and of the Universe.
Again, I do not believe there is one god or many gods. I do not believe in heaven and hell. I do not believe that we are consciously aware of our own deaths and/or what happens to us after we die. I do not believe the Universe was created by a divine authority or that favoring creationism offers any real explanation of our lives. I do not believe in faith, luck, karma, signs, astrology, fate, or any of the vague notions that mankind uses to explain that which he/she cannot....And yet, there is room for probability, for chance. For cause and effect. For philosophy as well as science. For one person to change how you see the world....
I begin with a quote that figures largely into this beginning, a quote from a man who dedicated his life to searching for answers. It begins with Albert Einstein....
“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
-J-
