Searching to understand...

I'm not done, not by a long shot, but sometimes you just have to clear the air. I've been reading a good bit latly, and I've got a lot of reading to go. I picked up several authors, philosophers mostly, who I thought would give me a good look at the questions an atheist would raise, their perspective on religion in general, and some of the answers they would provide. I chose philosophy and not science on the simple grounds that science is in essence another religion. Through Science we've created another set of beliefs, as well as another world view, based on the scientific method and what we've "discovered" based on our own rational thought. You could of course say the same about philosophy, except for the fact that no one has ever (to the best of my knowledge) created a religion based on a man's philosophy. It has of course helped the case of many prophets, and in course many philosophers consider themselves prophets trumpeting the truths of the world to the milling masses. Some would say that Christ or Mohamad are nothing more that prophets/philosophers of their day whose followers took things to far. Personally these people have missed the point of the messages brought, especially in the case of Christ. I'll stay away from Mohamad, on the simple grounds that my thoughts and feelings on Islam are vague at best and my knowledge minimal, the best that I could offer would be personal opinion at best and that seems to just get me into trouble I don't need that right now. We can easily seperate the philosophy from the man when it comes to christ, which is I believe were we come up with the majority of our problems. We create new theologies, based off of the philosophy of Christ. This is were we get our so called social gosple. Please don't mistake me, those things are there, but it is only when we seperate them from the man that we can produce a gosple solely on the basis of the social ethics found in the Bible. Our Greatest problem is taking the Christ as a whole, blood, guts and all. I'll write more on this later, since it really isn't what I'm focusing on right now.

Of the authors I've decided to converse with I thought that I should start with Nietchze. Who better to start with than the man who claimed God was dead. Now before the atheist tells me one more time that a true athiest doesn't believe there was a god to begin with, let me remind you that when Nietchze says that God is dead, he's saying that the need for a belief in God no longer exists, so in essence this is different from the Diecide philosophy that came out of Emery University. That stated that God did in fact exist, but found that we didn't need Him anymore and in fact died on the cross, but never came back to life. Nietchze more simply takes humanism to its ultimate extremities and states that we no longer need God so there is no reason for religion. It's important to read Nietchze as an athiest or a thiest simply so you understand the true consequences of the Statement "God is Dead." The modern atheists that I've come in contact with seem to hold to moral standerd that are not much different that my own. They reject the anarchist formula that most christians would put on them, the long hair, death metal, all in black all the time, etc. etc. so on and so forth. They want to be seen as regular people, except for the fact that they don't believe in a deity. They go to great lengths to say that there is no god, but what it sounds like to me is a simple scurtting of the issue. They don't have to deal with many of the great problems of the world simply on the grounds that the problem revolves around there being a god in the first place. No god, no problem. Very simple you see.

The problem then becomes that they argue so long and so hard that they have no god and there for no religion that they create their own with out even knowing it. This is where science comes back into the picture, and gives me one more reason to exculd it, at least for the moment, from my research. Unfortuately science cannot regulate morality, so the atheist is left with a problem. If you reject the existance of God, you there for must reject religion, in my case christianity, wholly. This means that everything associated with that religion must die. This is the logical, and there for the only road left for the atheist. Nietzsche saw this, understood it and accepted it. Nietzsche took the precepts of humanism to there full extent, first in saying that God was dead and then in stringing out the next steps for human kind. He regected the notions of modern morality because he had too. You can't adhear to Judaeo-christian morality and ethical thought, basically the Ten Commandments, if the basis for those morals didn't exist in the first place. Nietzsche spoke of an Uber-Mensche, or superman, that would be able to replace this old form of morality which he considered a slaver morality with that of his own. this new morality would be based on the strenght and virtue of the person, much like those of Homer's hero's in the Illiad. In essence a might make right mentality. I don't nessisarily see this as the ultimate out come, but it is possible. In anycase, the fact remains that for some reason this is not acceptable to most atheists today, who are simply not willing to let go of the moral code that makes them, in there eyes a good person. But why.

Some I'm sure surmise that this moral code was the ultimate conclustion of time and human interaction, a kind of noble savage mentality. If we are all truly good to begin with then of course we would come up with moral laws that our government is based on today. I've struggled, and continue to struggle, with the idea of humanities inherent goodness. I want desperatly to believe in that goodness, that we all have the best for each other at heart. I see people go and join the Peace Corp, people give blood, people donated millions of dollars to the people of the gulf coast after Katriena, I watch shows like the miracle worker and Extreme Makeover: home edition. I see them and think that there is hope for humanity, that maybe we are good at heart, but then I see the news, or I watch the history channel. I hear about the things like the Holocaust and how nations simple turned there backs on the slaughter of innocents and refused to acknowlegde it was even happening. We shake our heads in wonder and discussed at ancient Romans who sat in the colosium, yet we delight in watching horor movies where people are ripped to shredds for pure enjoyment. I see this and I wonder if Calvin wasn't write with his total depravity.

Before this get any longer, I'm going to stop. I don't answers. I'm not even close, but I needed to get this out. I'm going to start writing again on other things. I've taken enough time off, and my head its starting to hurt. If I don't empty it soon it may pop, and everyone knows how much I hate to clean. So I'm back...for better or for worse, I'm back.
A.T.H.