I am an atheist, you should know that by know.
I KNOW that I'm an atheist not because I chose to be one, but because I had no other choice, which makes me my case as hard to argue as a religious person's one.
I have limited scientific knowledge, and I'm very bad at math on paper. But I always look for scientific and mathematical analogies that help me better understand the nature of the universe.
I am not a completely closed-minded atheist. If God one day popped up and said, "here I am", I would question first, then, if satisfied, embrace God. In this sense, I am very VERY SLIGHTLY agnostic (there is almost certainly no God).
This is only because atheists have a tendency to put ego before truth, just as theists do, and so a lot of truth gets lost in between. This does not make atheists are as bad as theists(as some would put it). It simply means we are as human as theists.(something I wish to talk about later in this post).
This also means that as far as I'm concerned, no man can convince me of the existence of a God.
I have a passion for expressing explanations by writing them down, and on rare occasion, actually talking them out. However, every thing I write on this blog, I question. Some of my posts, I admit have very major flaws. The only reason I keep them on is to remind me that I make mistakes. And just like evolution, my blog has no ultimate goal. It is simply the progress of how I interpret everything. It can get better or worse. That which is better, I keep, that which is worse, I discard. For what purpose, I can only speculate.
If any christians aren't happy with what I have to say, then forgive me. (doesn't your religion deal forgiveness in spades?). As for offended Muslims and Jews, i urge you to remember who your true enemies are.
Now, let's start this post off. (I am aware this post contains a billion references to "will to power", which cannot be tested objectively. Will to power, being more of an analogy than a theory does not require objective explanation, because it is not truth)
Will to power is very easily understood. It is, to me, a leading candidate in the reason of existence. Nietzsche describes will to power very well. He states :
We can infer that no individual form of matter or energy can master the universe by itself, but must try by all means to do so. Do not mistake will to power for human ego, will to power is more like a rule that applies to things that exist, for if it does not exist, it has insufficient will to exist, ergo, no will to power. Though I admit the will to power hypothesis tends to bring up more questions than it answers(like, "why exist?, whose game are we playing"), it does explain on a less than objective level many aspects of chemical, biological and social behavior.
My idea is that every specific body strives to become master over all space and to extend its force (its will to power) and to thrust back all that resists its extension. But it continually encounters similar efforts on the part of other bodies and ends by coming to an arrangement ("union") with those of them that are sufficiently related to it: thus they then conspire together for power. And the process goes on.
Trust me, there probably is a more mathematical or physical explanation for will to power or an alternative that is more objective but probably less understandable. Therefore, will to power must be used as the platform for the arguments below.
I have already disproved logically the Abrahamian God in past posts, now for the attributes that are common to other Gods. (some of these are derived from Richard Dawkin's, The God Delusion, which in my opinion completely destroys any potential theory of the existence of God but fails to show a proper solution to the God problem, it also disregards the purpose of God to less fortunate people)
Anyway, most of the time, God is said to be the ultimate being. Meaning a being more powerful than God cannot be imagined. But this is what Douglas Gasking says(from The God Delusion):
"
1 The creation of the world is the most marvelous achievement imaginable.
2 The merit of an achievement is the product of (a) its intrinsic quality, and (b) the ability of its creator.
3 The greater the disability (or handicap) of the creator, the more impressive the achievement.
4 The most formidable handicap for the creator would be non-existence
5 Therefore if we suppose that the universe is the product of an existent creator we can conceive a greater being- namely, one who created everything while not existing.
6 An existing God therefore would not be a being greater than which a greater cannot be conceived because an even more formidable and incredible creator would be a God which did not exist.
Ergo:
7 God does not exist. "
I will not dwell on the existence of God further(unless required later).
Emotions can be described using will to power. If each individual has a will to power, then obviously, there must be tools to manipulate this power. This perhaps is the reason of consciousness and emotion. I am a firm believer that emotions are tools.
We do not all ways smile when we are happy. Sometimes, a smile can invoke happiness.
Think about it. If you're in a group of friends, and you don't understand the punchline of a joke, you are still likely to laugh. If a stranger smiles at you, you are likely to smile back. If a person is screaming in pain, you're likely to 'feel' that pain too. If a person is crying, you also feel sadness. This all depends on a few things.
1)in all of the situations above, there must be a balanced will to power; that is, in the case of the stranger smiling, both you and the stranger must be of equal social status, emotional condition, etc.
2)both parties must be sane, that is, the empathic level of both parties must be high enough to qualify a person as sane.
We can derive from the explanation above that emotion is a tool of an individual to manipulate his will to power, his (or her, sorry for the use of "his") will to exist. A slave or lesser being will allow himself to be bullied because his will to power is low. However, it is not non-existent. Therefore, the slave or lesser being will willingly allow himself to be discriminated or abused in order to survive a little longer(presumably to increase his will to power later on).
There are obvious methods of ensuring the exponential growth of will to power of an individual. I have explained this using the short term and long term greed theory. To summarize; an individual(or collective depending on the case) needs to understand the consequence of his actions in the long run even if the short term feedback seems to indicate he is in power. Shouting at workers, for instance, may increase productivity in the short run, but in the long run, the workers will have too little will to power to conform and will realize that unless they challenge authority, they will have no chance of working on their own terms. If the workers revolt too early, they will have no way to justify or reason with their employer.
On the open mindedness of Atheism
It is said that there is no "open mindedness", only opposing views, and that we either choose a side and then close our minds.
This section is dedicated to justifying atheism. The primary attribute of a religion is in it being a collective thought. Religion is then more akin to a social tool than a truth finding tool.
As I have mentioned, personal truths are not learned, they are experienced and thought to be true by the individual. This same subjectivity can be used to understand why religion is said to be a form of truth. It is easy to believe in a group, because humans, being social, tend to find emotional comfort in groups.
Groups of people have obviously, a higher degree of will to power than individuals. This is partly because they are a collective of common interest. Perhaps this may seem imply the whole Atheism vs Theism a battle for power, but I think that there is a lot more to this(I will elaborate more on the battle for power between the two views in a later post).
Will to power represents every common want of the human race. Every one, or at least almost everyone wants justice, a sense of identity, recognition, respect, to be wanted. Justice is a way of returning a balance or power between two parties.That is why a trial is said to be unfair(unbalanced) when a criminal is set free or an innocent man is executed. Without going on and on with examples of the application of will to power, I will just say this: Religion offers to people more power than any individual belief.
This means that indeed, religious groups have more power than individual believers. That is why there are laws in place that allow freedom of speech, and if not, we have the internet. Like I said before, these laws return the balance of power, so that atheists, and individuals with opposing views are allowed to speak up.
So is there a reason for a person to leave the power that he finds in religion? Well, yes. People do it every day. Some convert, some drop out, some have their faith renewed. All of them do what they do, because the alternative either grants them more power.
For example, if you leave Hinduism for Christianity, there is an immediate sense of dominance over polytheists, who are constantly put down by monotheistic religions. If you follow the way of the Buddhist and give up on nihilistic atheism, you are simply living with principles that make you feel enlightened. Nothing is wrong with any decision, it just gives people more power, or at least the illusion of superiority over other people. Whether this is acknowledged by the individual or not, does not matter.
This brings up the question :
If all belief is simply a tool of will to power, then those belief itself have anything to do with truth?
I acknowledge that atheism too gives me the illusion of superiority. That much I can say is the downside of atheism. Agnosticism however is simply saying : "Nothing is true, so everything is permitted, so no one should influence or change my belief that nothing is true."
What agnostic people fail to understand is that, if the above statements are to be taken into account, then agnosticism is just as much a way of manipulating will to power as atheism or any other belief.
I would argue that on some levels I am agnostic. It feels as if it's a battle that I don't want to lose(otherwise I lose my power), so being agnostic gives me that safety of not being able to lose.
However, upon further examination, I have found that agnosticism is appalling. It is the most cowardly approach to dealing with curiosity.
"I am too afraid to lose, so I'll not take part."
Sure, I agree the whole Atheism Vs Theism debate has gotten barbaric and stupid at times(for both sides). But of the most agnostics I know are more atheistic than theistic. They are simply atheists who don't want to lose.
Their argument really does sound fair when you look at the atheists we have. They're all so aggressive in dealing with the issue of God that it almost sounds as preachy and stupid as religion.
This is where I can start to justify Atheism as a more open minded way of looking at things.
1)Atheism itself, even though it sounds like believing, but without God (as opposed to theism's Belief in God) is actually just a belief that life and the universe is real(we believe it is, even though we cannot say that every living thing experiences life the same way objectively) and that we don't use God to explain every damned thing.
If an atheist believes in that fairiest invented the universe, then he's a fairyist(or something). If he believes that chance created the universe, then he's a chancist(ok, maybe not, but you are getting the idea already). To clarify, Atheism is NOT a belief system of unquestionable facts of life. Most, almost all atheists rely on scientific proof to justify their arguments. It is not a criteria that we have to meet to be atheists, because I have known of Buddhists who are atheists and Hindus who are atheists.
However the term 'atheist' has already put people into a group of their own, making it seem as if there are facts that we never question, etc. But this is too much of a sweeping statement. In reality, atheists often are as divided in their points of view as Hindus and Buddhists are. The main point of atheism being the general rejection of God for explanation of everything. It's not like a rule we made that we do not believe in god because Darwin was right, or because chance could work, or because real men don't believe in Gods. (For example, my reasons for being an atheists conflict with Richard Dawkins' because I rely more on the philosophical, chemical physical, mathematical aspect rather than the scientific biological aspect, that is natural selection. Not to say I don't believe in Natural Selection, but I would much prefer to work from the top down, not the other way around)
It's not like that AT ALL. Atheists generally believe that God is not real for very individual, personal reasons. There is no recruitment center, there is no center at all. We only seem to group or organize ourselves because it gives us more power to oppose religious views that, you have to agree, have a frightening amount of power.
That, was just my first point.
Be sure to read up next month's part 2, which will include all other reasons for the justification of atheism as a more objective truth finding system, how faith exists in all levels and must be ultimately broken down, and balance in the economic system of man to ensure controlled and balanced progress.
