Author: Martin Hughes

There is a major war over a question right now in the 2020 presidential race:

What is the best way to enact change? Is it to trust it to exclusive rooms, with politicians and experts? Or is it to inspire the masses, getting them to vote and protest and demand change?

The danger of trusting change to exclusive rooms is that the room’s occupants may not have the interests of the masses at heart. Yes, it takes experts to figure out the best paths forward for the good of the masses, but experts are human, as well. They can be corrupted by money from corporations that are very interested in controlling the direction in which they think. Experts can be useful tools for those who have money, and not necessarily people interested in doing what is best for anyone outside themselves and those they love most. Politicians, likewise, are often knighted by wealthy donors, and however idealistic they might once have been, they often need to keep those donors happy if they wish to keep their jobs. Like everyone else, they have a mortgage to pay.

The masses, on the other hand, can be easily manipulated and are especially prone to us-vs.-them dichotomies. It’s not necessarily that they are bad (though they can be) – it is that they do not have knowledge – nor the time to acquire the knowledge – that experts have. They also often have surrounding culture in which your political views can have very strong consequences for where you work, who will and won’t decide to associate with you, and what your reputation in your community is. Simple messages – especially contentious ones – are likely to stick. Oftentimes this is not their fault. Most people don’t have time to be experts. They have mouths to feed, friends to bond with, families to enrich, lives to actually live. Many cases, they’re doing the best they can. Like everyone else, they have a mortgage to pay.

It’s a tough choice. But I think there is also further nuance here when you look at Trump and Sanders.

Sanders’s biggest criticism of Trump was Trump’s declaration, “Only I can fix it.” I think this is the difference between Trump and Sanders.

Trump tells his followers that they don’t have to worry about fixing things. They can be complacent and trust him. He’s easy. He’s got it taken care of. He’ll take care of the experts. He talks very simply, in ways that don’t require much action from his base. All they have to do is vote. His message is focused on protecting the masses that choose to be in his circle. And they can pay their mortgage, put the check-mark beside Trump, and laugh at the experts who object. They are protected from the intimidating experts. Trump, in their minds, has them insulated.

Sanders is not the same way. Sanders tells his base that they have to work. They cannot be complacent, because complacency doesn’t get things done. It’s not about trusting him; it’s about trusting principles.

And he does this in a way that appeals to the masses, with short, easy phrases that are hard to forget. The simplicity is frightening, in a sense, because it shows that the masses can be easily manipulated. There are many who would prefer to encourage the masses to engage in additional nuance.

I think, however, that much of the nuance the masses are supposedly ignorant of are not elements that are necessary to the situation; they are details about a power structure. For example, in the present setup it seems impossible to push a Medicare-for-All agenda. The insurance companies are too powerful, we’re fighting really hard just to keep the ACA, and the political makeup of the Senate is against it. Those actually in the situation in Washington can’t, presently, find a way to make it work.

If you give that message to the masses, my fear is that you’ll be perpetuating the problem. You’ll be reinforcing the barriers that prevent the situation from working by insisting that they are there and introduce unimpeachable “nuance” to needs and demands that would actually bring them to the polls for transformative change. Plus, you’ll be making the situation more complicated, so that fewer people vote…which, arguably, is what the powers that introduce policy-stopping “nuance” want.

There is a divide here. But I think, firmly, that the masses can change the political parameters in the United States, if there are enough of them. Up to a certain point, the masses don’t really matter. But there is a tipping point of size and intensity where the masses can bulldoze over the nuances and actually create change. This is what has happened throughout the history of civil rights in the United States – against the urging of those who would like more “nuanced” responses.

And so I am, currently, in favor of the masses enacting large-scale change. But I realize that this is dangerous. The same mallet that can build can also destroy, in this case. Mobilizing the masses and creating public campaigns can create a group that may be dangerous after they take power. People who have power tend to want to keep it, and they are often willing to disenfranchise others to do so.

In spite of this danger, I want change now. I do not want change forty years from now. I want it in the next five-six years. In my mind, the US is in a state of emergency.

I need someone with short, simple phrases that will instigate mass involvement in progressive reforms.

I need someone who can mobilize the masses — who appeals to voters to pressure unforeseen change instead of bowing to self-fulfilling insistences on “nuance” that perpetuates current power structures.

And if Elizabeth Warren can do this, then I’m with her. But I have doubts. She says that the fight will be hard, but she doesn’t talk nearly as much about getting the masses involved as Sanders.

I don’t think sufficiently major changes will be made in closed-door meetings with experts influenced by lobbyists who are discussing the “political realities” they face from wealthy campaign contributors.

If major changes are going to be made, they will be made in more accessible meetings because the politicians are scared of losing support from the masses, who are demanding change, and they feel forced to be as open and accessible as possible.

The power structures that exist will not be dethroned unless the masses mobilize and demand change.

And this is why I am considering voting for Sanders, again. Most politicians say they can fix it, or to join them in fixing it, or to pay attention to political realities that are localized to the National Mall. Sanders seems to focus on the interest of the masses, on mobilizing them, on actually encouraging them to fundamentally change the power structure of politics in the US.

Whether I vote for him or not, I believe this is an important reality.

There is a charm in the ability to simply “be.”

I wish I had known that as a Christian. Christianity comes with an inherent sense of lack – you are born into sin, and you have to apologize for your very existence (or “repent”) in order to have the right to breathe in this world. And even then, your life is supposed to be consumed with an overwhelming degree of gratitude that swallows the entirety of who you are and can be. Your life isn’t even yours – it belongs to some all-powerful entity you have never seen or heard who nevertheless thinks that you belong in hell forever if you don’t submit to him.

You can’t simply “be” in the world.

I think I made a mistake when I first left Christianity. For so long I had owed my existence to a nonexistent God that I rejoiced when I saw that I owed my existence to nobody. Sure, I loved people, but I didn’t have to apologize for breathing any more than a rock had to apologize for simply sitting there. I was as much a part of the world as anything else. And this led me to embrace the entirety of existence with an exhausting gusto and enthusiasm, like a thirsty man suddenly faced with a river of freshwater. I was obsessed with freedom, and overexerted myself in a desire to embrace what felt like lost time.

These days, the fact that I can simply “be” in the world is wonderfully mundane. I simply feel at peace in my heart, like most people do when they silently look into a night sky. I’m a part of the vastness of existence, and I belong here. Indeed, it’s difficult for me to understand my prior conviction that somehow I didn’t.

Yes, I enjoy discussing the intricacies of philosophy now and then. I’m an avid follower of politics, and I have strong opinions about how my country should be run. I care deeply about social issues, making it no mistake that I’ve been dubbed a “social justice warrior” by some. I am passionate about many people in my life. I get hungry, the comfort of my body is very dependent on my surroundings, and I revel in social connection. Sometimes I get the hankering to write out my thoughts and send them out into the internet.

But I also simply feel like I’m part of the world. I’m not involved in life to prove that I deserve to breath. I’m involved in life because I belong here and, as someone who belongs here, there are things in life that I want.

I belong here as much as anything else, and am fundamentally free to live whatever life I want.

When I was a Christian, this prospect scared me. Wouldn’t being free to live whatever life I wanted mean I would kill or harm other people?

Since leaving Christianity, I’ve been pleasantly surprised. I’m not hell-bent on destroying people’s lives at my core; I naturally care about other people. I want to help them. I even love them, genuinely, from my heart. Not to earn God’s favor, but because I want to.

I am living here, as a part of existence, making the love that is so beautiful to me a reality.

I am not created by some outside entity. I am part of all existence, and as a part of existence I am a creator of the future, of every moment. It’s a beautiful adventure for me.

The longer I live this way, the more relaxed I become about this viewpoint. I’m not running ragged trying to prove I can embrace my existence anymore. I am at peace. I know I’m here, that I belong here, and that this isn’t going to change. And from that place of peace and innate comfort, I am joined with the rest of existence in creating the next moment I want to create – without obligation, without apology.

Even in the midst of turmoil, it’s a wonderfully peaceful life.

I think that, somewhere along the way, I forgot that atheism doesn’t have to be about leaders. It doesn’t have to be about joining groups, picking sides, or being partisan.

When I became an atheist, I was stating that God didn’t have authority over my life. Now, granted, there were people who made that statement easier — the so-called “New Atheists” cleared out a space in culture for us atheists to stand.

But when I was freshly escaped from church, I felt that I had some kind of obligation to find a new organization, a group of atheists, that I could join and campaign for. For a large part of my time as an atheist, that’s what I did. In the process I think I’ve missed out on some freedom and been hit with repeated disappointment.

I should have realized that the entire open world is in front of me, to embrace with gusto. And my life — the love I have for people, the awe I have for beauty, the drive I have for ambitious goals, the color and brilliance and music — all that is there for me to embrace.

I’ve heard it said that we are condemned to be free. Perhaps. But in this life of freedom there are still things we can grasp, objects and loves that we can hold onto, people who have the power to set our hearts aflame, journeys that make us relish each step. We can choose, freely and openly, how we wish to be ourselves.

The whole scenario reminds me of PT Barnum in The Greatest Show on Earth. Like the “New Atheists” who opened up a space for atheist outcasts of a religion-dominated culture back when I first became an atheist, PT Barnum opened up his famous circus for the outcasts in society — the people who seemed strange or unusual, like the bearded lady, or the dwarf, or the giant, and so on…the people who would be labeled “freaks.”

That’s an appropriate term for atheists in a lot of settings these days, especially here in the Bible Belt, where even atheists with the thickest skin can feel like outcasts. In the face of isolation, there can be a strong drive to find some representation, someone to give you a place in culture. And just as PT Barnum found a place for all the “freaks” in his day, so a lot of atheist “leaders” have carved out a place in culture for many of us atheists.

But some of these leaders forgot something.

And in the process, some of us forgot something.

It’s the same thing PT Barnum forgot:

His circus wasn’t about the leader.

It was about the outcasts who needed a place carved out for them in culture.

It was about the individuals who needed a voice.

It was ultimately, thoroughly, and finally about them.

Recently, the atheist world has seemed to me a bit of like a circus — especially here in the US. We have disputes over “leaders.” We have “leaders” who are exposed for things that are shameful. We have “leaders” who are saying things we do not feel, who do not represent the experiences of our lives, who seem fundamentally divorced from our thoughts and concerns.

In the midst of all this, it’s easy to focus on the “leaders” and forget that, fundamentally, they always and only existed for us.

They gained prominence because they cleared out a space for us to express ourselves.

But they are not the ones occupying that space. We are.

What I’m saying is that we can take the place in our society that has been cleared out for atheists and fill it with ourselves — not just our atheism, but all of who we are. What makes us fall in love, what gives us awe, what gives us drive, what brings us joy within our senses, what gives us hope in our dark days, what we struggle with, what our pains our, what the sources of our sorrow might be.

I can realize that this place labeled “atheists” is, for me, fundamentally defined by every scar and triumph written on the face I see in the mirror. Because it is.

And as you realize this space is ours, you also realize that the space cannot hold you or trap you. The small arena of so-called “New Atheism,” for example, is not big enough for us. We need more. And so do those we love.

We have to expand beyond the space, and in so doing we will find it necessary to change this space, because no space created by a small group of “leaders” is ever going to be large enough to hold who you are.

Yes, we may grow beyond “leaders.” But this is not a reason for handwringing; the place of atheists in the US was never there to be reserved for them, to be unchanged for them, to be controlled by them.

The space in culture for atheism was always and ever created and enabled and there for us “outcasts” of all different backgrounds and personalities and expressions of humanity.

We have too much within us — too much beauty, too much pain, too much love, too many emotions, too many stories, too much diversity — to be contained by restricting loyalty to a small group of “leaders.”

And I think, down inside, many “leaders” know this. Which is why so often it seems we are only allowed to express ourselves, according to them, in a small arena labeled “atheism” that forwards their personal goals for how the arena is supposed to look — so that ours don’t “belong.:

PT Barnum did the same thing. Oh, it was fine for his “freaks” to perform in the circus, as long as they were serving him. As long as they were improving his social position. As long as they were making him money.

But when their individuality expanded beyond that space — say, at a fancy ball for dignitaries — the “freaks” were shut out.

They were vehicles for him to clear out a space for himself…they weren’t supposed to express themselves. According to him.

And in the movie, the circus performers had a choice. They could be stuck in the place assigned to them by the “leader,” pretending to be perfect, unbruised models for their “leader’s” ego, losing themselves in the process, shaming themselves for who they were out of guilt or some twisted sense of allegiance to the man who supposedly gave them this space..

Or they could occupy the space, realizing that the leader did not create it ex-nihilo, but found it where they were. They can occupy it in all its beauty and in the face of all its manmade restrictions, proclaiming the entirety of their raw selves, and state:

“I am brave, I am bruised
I am who I’m meant to be.

This is me.

Look out, because here I come.
And I’m marching on to the beat *I* drum.
I’m not scared to be seen.
I make no apologies:

THIS IS ME.”

I think this is what I see atheists realizing. It is what I realize. I am myself. I am an atheist black man in America. I am all of those things. I am the sum of all the scars of my history and  the hopes of my future, all crisscrossing and intersecting into the person I recognize in the mirror, with every scar and smile. You can call this “intersectionality” and demonize it if you want; it does not matter. You cannot police the limits of who I am. I am an atheist, but I am more.

And I choose not to be restricted by a “leader’s” restriction of the label.

And maybe, just maybe, that choice clears out a space for you to do the same.

Thanks for reading.

PS: Thank you to all 23 patrons who made this blog post possible.

Alright, Christians. I know I’m an atheist and all, but we gotta talk.

Here’s the thing:

As Christians, I hear, you believe that God forgave you of an enormous debt. Of enormous sin. If he had let you get what you deserve or what you earned, you would be in hell for all eternity. Like, you sinned. You messed up. Bad. Terribly bad. You’re evil, in your own self. And against all reason, he sacrificed himself for you, and encourages you to love others with that same sacrificial love.  I mean, to me, that whole “sinner” thing is a bit extreme. It doesn’t work for me. But you, supposedly, believe it.

You claim that Jesus didn’t come so you could pull yourself up by your own bootstraps; God had to move for us to even have a chance.

You weren’t given citizenship in heaven because you earned it or deserved it.

You were an illegal.

No right to heaven, at all.

And God granted you amnesty, astonishingly. That’s jaw-dropping.

And he commands the same of you, right? That you love others as he loved you, fully, unconditionally, with full forgiveness for all who ask.

Let me break this down a bit more.

You know Matthew 18: 21-35? Basically, it’s a parable Jesus told about a servant who was forgiven by his master of an enormous debt — like, a million dollars or so in today’s wages. That’s what God did for you. Forgave you of an enormous debt.

And the servant walks away. And he finds a fellow servant who owes him about $150 bucks (much less than a million).

Instead of recognizing that he was forgiven of a huge debt, the servant decides to force the fellow servant to pay back what he owes him. The fellow servant can’t, so the servant throws the man into prison for not paying back the $150.

Here’s how the story ends (Jesus is talking):

“Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

“This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

Those are some cold words.

You’re the servant. God is the master. God has forgiven you of an enormous debt, adopted you, and given you amnesty so that you are a citizen of heaven.

And yet you won’t do the same for your fellow human beings. You throw undocumented immigrants in jail, and when they beg for amnesty, so many of you make the entry into amnesty tougher instead of offering the slightest bit of forgiveness God showed them.

Now, I’m an atheist. I don’t have to follow these rules. But if you’re a Christian, you supposedly believe this. Which is why I’m flabbergasted. Doesn’t it chill you, a little bit, that Jesus said that the servant who didn’t have mercy on his fellow servant was tortured? Doesn’t the prospect of torture strike fear in your heart?

Given how much God supposedly has done for them, Christians should be disgustingly liberal in helping people out. They should have such open hearts it should be nauseating. If anyone were to state we should grant amnesty to all who ask, it should be the people who were granted much greater amnesty, against all reason and logic, through the mercy of the Almighty God.

I mean…it should be so annoying and nauseating to us atheists that it makes us ill how frickin nice and forgiving you are.

And yet, Evangelical Christians are significantly more stringent in their attitude towards immigration than any other religious (or non-religious) affiliation. In fact, more often than not, we atheists are disgusted with Evangelical Christians due to how conservative and unforgiving they are in their views.

It makes me think…maybe these Christians don’t really believe what they claim to believe.

Maybe Christianity, for them, is more about feeling superior than actually…well, taking what Jesus said seriously.

Thanks for reading.

PS: Thank you to all 23 patrons who made blog posts like this possible.

Atheism isn’t as big of a deal to me, anymore.

I’ve made peace, somewhat, with the idea that there is no God. When that happens, atheism isn’t so much presence. It feels more like absence.

When I first left Christianity, I was a new atheist who was trying to carve out something to fill the void. But I found that the world did not wait for me to fill that place that was once filled with Christianity. It didn’t change merely because I found out God didn’t exist; God had never existed in the first place. Everything kept moving, as it always had. I just knew that God wasn’t real.

It’s true, though, that knowing that God isn’t real made life simpler, in many ways. For one, God wasn’t orchestrating a Grand Plan I had to figure out. Everything simply happened. Sure, I could organize things that happened into an order, or structure, that would help me predict future events. But I was doing this work; there was no deity behind the machine orchestrating it.

That knowledge demystified the world for me. God was always working in mysterious ways when I was a Christian, but people worked in often transparent ways, once you took the time to try to understand them. The world became less mysterious and simply began to make sense.

Another thing that happened is that the ideals I believed in became transparent, like facts more than abstractly perfect concepts. Take love, for example. I once believed there was an idealistic self-sacrificial love that only considered the other person, and not oneself. I believed this because I thought there was a God who embodied this concept, not necessarily because I saw proof of it in the world of human beings I was actually living with.

Now, without God, I’ve taken off the rose-colored glasses. The ideal is gone, and I see how people actually love. It’s gotten complicated. Most people have a lot of self-interest even in their most fervent feelings of love. For example, several people love according to their identities — if someone is part of a group that protects an part of who they are, they’ll do more for that person than they will for those outside of their group. Many times, love can be coaxed by the attractiveness, prestige, or possessions of the person receiving love. Love is also something that you feel when you give a part of who you are to somebody and trust them to validate that part of it.

The way I judge these features of love has also changed. I used to get upset when people didn’t exhibit the self-sacrificial love I thought was the ideal. Now, I don’t have any reason to be; I can simply accept the world as it is. “God’s standard” of love is a made-up one that doesn’t exist in reality. I see the reality, and then I make judgments based on what I think is best for myself and those I care about. This is refreshingly honest and open, in my mind.

It’s really simple. It’s a straightforward way to live. And it’s actually quite boring, in many ways.

Honestly. Being an atheist, for me, is really not all that mysteriously interesting. I just think about life without stopping to filter it through God. And love, trust, happiness, sadness, etc. — these emotions just seem to make more sense to me. They seem raw, more genuine, more real, more connected to the world I live and breath and exist within.

I guess that’s what I really feel. Connected. Like I don’t have to live in a fairy-tale life. I can simply take the world as it comes at me.

Sometimes I forget that I’m even an atheist. I’m just living life these days.

At times I think it’s strange how Christians try to cast this as unhealthy, as depressing, as me being “lost.” First, I’m not trying to be happy; I’m trying to live a life that feels as connected to the world I actually exist in as possible. That’s what gives me comfort. That’s what makes me feel at peace in myself, in spite of all the turmoil in my life.

Second, I’m generally more happy than I was as a Christian. A boring, transparent, “clear” spiritual life is much preferable to the turmoil I experienced in the ups and downs of the Christian adventure. Sometimes, I think it’s strange that so many Christians are terrified of experiencing this.

But I’ll at admit that other times, I do understand why it might be nice to think I had a big guy in the sky, helping me out. At other times I wish a had a million dollars in my bank account. But wanting those things doesn’t make them true.

The thing is…I don’t really think about being an atheist, really, until someone makes clear that they think it’s strange. They look at me like I’m an alien, like I’m strange, like I don’t belong in their world. Like they need to feel sorry for me.

It’s them that make me self-conscious. But without them? Atheism is strikingly straightforward.

That’s made me realize something else. When I “defend” atheism, I’m not doing it for me anymore.  Explaining why I’m an atheist has grown increasingly repetitive, boring, and, at times, pointless. Most Christians aren’t going to change their minds, and I’m not particularly interested anymore in making them full-blooded atheists. I’m more focused thinking about my life and the way I wish to live it to create better lives for those around me, Christian or not.

It’s far more interesting for me to analyze and look for the best way to operate in the world than to force myself to always work to promote the thought that God doesn’t exist. I know God doesn’t exist. There’s still a lot I don’t know, and want to find out, about how the world works. And I find it fascinating to continuously discover the way things work — not in a fairy-tale world, but in the actual world that I exist in.

The world both of us are in.

So…I’ve answered the question of God’s existence a thousand times over. I feel I know that road. That path is boring to me — it’s so often the religious who try to make defending atheism such a big deal.

It’s far more interesting for me, personally, to move on.

These days, I just want to get on with my everyday, living-breathing, unembellished, simple and beautiful life.

Thanks for reading.

PS: Thank you to all 23 supporters of my blog. Also, apologies for the sparse content over the last few months; bad case of writer’s block. I’m trying to get back on the rails.

Jordan Peterson’s main problem with atheism, as can be seen from the above clip, is that atheism is, supposedly, morally bankrupt. The problem, he claims, is that atheism doesn’t have any grounding in morality. If you’re a “radical atheist,” he says, why not kill? Why not steal? Why not transgress? The only thing holding anyone back would be traditional Western morality, but in the scheme of atheism, without a personified foundation, this morality has no teeth or fundamental reliability.

This translates to a confusion, on his part, as to why atheists would want to do good – why not, he says, act in our own self-interest? Why not be psychopathic? Why not be completely and thoroughly selfish?

My response is that most of us are not psychopaths. Most of us care about each other and, in addition, acting as if we don’t will lead to mutually assured destruction. Sure, we all bend the rules a bit here and there, inevitably. But most of us care about other people beside ourselves – especially those among us who make us where we are, who allow us to recognize ourselves and our position in the world, or who we respect and admire as beautiful.

That’s something I’ve found about being an atheist – for me, other people replaced God as the foundation of places I find my worth and value.

And I think, furthermore, that when Peterson tries to call us to the “transcendent” in thinking about morality, he is encouraging psychopathic tendencies – because when you say that morality transcends human emotion, you are, in effect, saying that human emotion doesn’t count. If your son is gay, for example, then your view of him would not be based on the way he sees himself or his emotion – whatever he felt, the moral code (say, a moral code that said homosexuality is wrong) would transcend all of that.

In my view, this so-called transcendent morality leads to constructions of morality that miss the entire point of a healthy moral system, which is to decrease the amount of harm and increase the amount of happiness within the population. For Peterson, this goal is unsettling, because it challenges the notion of morality as something transcendent and states that it is, fundamentally, dependent on us; a traditional, religious morality has no “transcendent” veto power on human experience.

Another thing that Peterson indicates is that you can’t start with moral presuppositions that are in religious systems when you switch to atheism; you have to start from scratch. I don’t think this is the case. In my mind, religion often follows advances and moral constructions that reflect our actual environments. So, inevitably, there will be some elements of morality in Western Christianity – like “thou shalt not murder” – that are the same whether you believe in God or not. We made that rule for a reason, and it didn’t all have to do with the Bible (especially considering all the killing in the book). I don’t want to be in a society where people murder each other for two reasons that have nothing to do with religion – one is that I don’t want to be murdered, and two is that I don’t want people I care about or rely on to be murdered.

Furthermore, when it comes to morality, you have to start somewhere to even begin to function in the world. As we live our lives in society we can find the places in a traditional morality that are nonsensical or no longer needed, and we can construct places within our morality that is needed.

There’s no God needed in this equation at all. And yet Peterson seems absolutely horrified, like many Christians, that God is jettisoned from the equation. That’s puzzling. There is no need for this anxiety.

On the contrary, those of us who base our belief as to what is right and what is wrong on empathy for human beings instead of God actually have the ability to create a more robust morality that ensures we have a society more of us would like to live in. And admitting to the absence of God enables us to say that we are the ones who construct this morality ourselves – there’s no God we rely on. It’s all us, learning from our environment and our care for each other, all the way across the moral code.

Peterson says that we don’t have foundational support for our morality, but I look at you and see otherwise. I look in the mirror and see otherwise. I feel the love in my heart, and know otherwise.  I see a fraction of the value within human beings, and I see otherwise.

Perhaps it’s heresy, but it needs to be said:

There is no “spiritual” foundation needed.

The only real foundation we need for morality is ourselves.

Thanks for reading.

PS: Thank you to all 26 of my patrons for your support.

I don’t really want to be spiritual today.

Five-sensory experience is mysterious enough. The mystery of how hearing, tasting, touching, smelling, and seeing – each in their profound complexity – creates an experience for me is what captures my attention at the moment.

I think that many people embrace the spiritual because they know sensory experience can be faulty. They know there is no guarantee between what we perceive, and what is actually the external reality. And they think there is an external reality somewhere that is less subjective, and that grounding gives them a sense of comfort, of control.

I, on the other hand, do not necessarily believe in an external reality. It also seems clear that the experience we tend to label “reality” is overwhelmingly dependent on our five-senses, and even within this experience we know that sometimes a different construction of reality can be created when a sense is lacking or disabled. We know that our construction of reality in what we see, for example, is largely dependent on how much light is in the room – pitch dark rooms give us a different perception than well-lit ones. We know that we can hear ringing in our ears because there is no sound, that we can feel as if we have a pain like pins and needles when there is nothing pricking us, that we can have a nasty cold that impedes our sense of smell, that our taste buds can be burnt – we know that our senses are ways of getting around the world that often presents us with inconsistent experiences. The world we casually refer to as “reality” comes from our conscious perception.

Sometimes, I wonder if the idea of a reality definitely existing outside of and independent from our perception comes from the theory that there is a God who has the ultimate perspective of the world; the outside perspective that somehow trumps all of ours, because it sees the actual “real world.”

But I think God’s perception would just be another perception…

Let’s say there is a God or “higher power.” There would still be a way this God sees the world – that’s God’s perception. Colors can only be perceived through a subjective lens; they don’t exist independently of our experience. So to say something is green or yellow is to put it in the realm of subjective experience. Same with other senses – it doesn’t make sense to say that something made a sound if there was no ear to hear it, or to say that something smelled disgusting if there was no one to smell it. Smell is a judgment call – what smells good to one may smell terrible to another, so without a smeller, there’s no way to really judge the content of a smell, or even if the smell exists.  These perceptions create an experience that is based on a subjective viewpoint. If God has a perception that could create an experience of “reality,” then God would be the possessor of a subjective viewpoint, as well. Trying to see the world through this God’s eyes would force us to somehow divorce ourselves from our own subjective experience and see ourselves through the eyes of another subjective experience.

Some people want to do this, and although I’ve come to respect some of their reasons, I do not – at least, not most the time. Personally, I’ve grown increasingly impatient, over the years, at attempts to see “behind” my construction of experience, because I’m convinced that this enterprise is impossible; the closest people get is desperately trying to live out a construction of experience that, in their perception, is not their own. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life trying my utmost to live someone else’s – someone, imaginary or not, who doesn’t have my perception or construction of reality. Everything I interact with seems to show me that time is short. I don’t want to spend my whole life ignoring the experience right in front of me to look behind a curtain I can never really, actually look behind, especially if there is nothing there, and even if there was it would just be another individual or “deity” subjectively creating their experience.

I think what we are looking for when we try to look behind the curtain, though, is control. We want control of our experience, which makes sense, because our experience can be terrifying. Some people think (and perhaps get) a sense of control over their experience by believing in a God who has it under control. To me, that seems disempowering. I don’t think you need God to have some sense of control over your experience. Even if you can’t completely control them, it is your five senses that are constructing, continually, your experience. That knowledge is enough for me, oftentimes. I’m enraptured by the mystery of a sensory experience I’m forever creating. I revel in creating new experiences for myself, and for other people. I take pleasure in ensuring beautiful experiences for the next generation.

I often get impatient these days when there is abstract thinking that tries to distract me from my experience. Sometimes I love abstract thinking, but more and more, as my time of life on earth gets shorter and shorter, I want to more fully indulge in the naked five-sensory input constructing my experience. I want to thoroughly savor every pleasant touch, succulent taste, aromatic smell, beautiful sound, and stunning sight to create the most vivid experience of reality. And much of the time, that is the right balance of control and mystery for me.

More, and more, I don’t want to diminish this experience by calling it “spiritual.” The term seems too sanitary. I want to embrace all the rawness, the concrete mystery, the tangible adventure of existence. I don’t want to escape my experience; I want to embrace it more intensely, I want to let my consciousness wrap around it more tightly and firmly and passionately, I want to really LIVE every second of every minute with a sharp and enthusiastic awareness of every sensation created by my five-sensory experience.

I don’t want to sanitize anything. Give it to me raw.

Or at least, that’s how I feel today. Maybe tomorrow will be different, because I will want it to be different.

And that’s another thing. People seem to say that the way you experience life best has to be the way EVERYONE does, but what I like about the world is that there is so much diversity. That’s beautiful, too. Not everyone likes a raw five-sensory existence all the time; I need to take a vacation from it when things get too much sometimes, and so I go off to meditate and lose myself, or I watch a deeply spiritual movie or something. And that’s OK. You only have one life – do what makes you happy, as long as it doesn’t hurt others. And while you’re at it…maybe, if you want to understand your world, see the beauty in the worlds other people wish to embrace, even if it’s not your own. Even if it’s repulsive to you. I mean, you don’t have to. But sometimes, it can bring light to your own experience of existence, adding a beauty that wasn’t originally your own.  That’s a beautiful thing, too.

Anyways those are my two cents on spirituality at the moment. Today, anyway. Just need a vacation from thinking abstractly, I guess. I’ll try to live the rest of the day looking at the world in front of me in the only life I have, and hope this was helpful to you in some way.

Thanks for reading.

PS: Thank you to all 26 of my patrons for your support.

“The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what’s true.”
― Carl Sagan

There was a time when I had to see people the way God saw them, and after my deconversion I had the opportunity to see them without that filter. I could see them as they actually were.

Or, at least, that’s what I thought. But it’s not so simple. There are still filters in the way that I look people. I don’t believe in God anymore, but I do believe in stereotypes that put people in boxes. Sometimes I don’t see people because I’m so focused on seeing the stereotype of who I have assumed they are.

This isn’t all that different from being religious. God was made up because people wanted shortcuts to the way the world worked. They wanted to gain confidence, power, and the moral high ground. They wanted to feel like they were Better People in the universe, and stereotypes do much the same thing.

They’re usually false shortcuts people use to map out how the world works. Like God, they are used to give one group confidence, power, and a sense of moral authority over other groups. And those who believe in stereotypes often tend to congregate in their “gathering places,” be they church buildings or Facebook.

When we get rid of God, we get rid of only one method that protects an inaccurate way of viewing people. There are many more.

This isn’t just true in the realm of empathy and understanding. It’s also true in the scientific world, because although you (arguably) get rid of one scientifically incompatible way of looking at the world when you discard God, there are millions left. You can still believe that the world is flat, that vaccines are fundamentally harmful, or that crystals can forecast your fate. Not believing in God doesn’t earn you a gold star of walking away from scientific myths or myths that prevent you from understanding other people.

Most people realize this, eventually. At first, atheism is bright and new to new deconverts, but most eventually realize that not believing in God, in the scheme of things, is not a big deal. I’m not saying that your decision not to believe in God won’t have major repercussions in your life, or that it won’t profoundly change the way you think. I’m saying that it’s just one thing that you don’t believe in. And I’ve found that, as I adjust and become more comfortable with my lack of belief, it becomes less and less of a big deal that somehow means that you’ve “arrived.”

Start an atheist organization in any local area, have them get to know each other long enough, and one of two things will happen. One is that the atheists will largely agree with each other within the group, and they’ll think it’s their lack of faith that brings them together…when in reality, what brings them together, as they get to know each other, is a more thorough set of values, values that include the way they view other scientific concepts and other people, that often are results of their location or subculture. But, more often, members of the group will find radical differences among each other, and will see each other as holding to an alarming number of mythical stereotypes and scientific inaccuracies. They will become alarmed, because this is what they were trying to escape when they left church. And they will inevitably enter into their subgroups, because arguing against myths is exhausting.

Yes, a lack of belief in God or gods gives us freedom to understand others and ourselves better but it doesn’t guarantee that we will. We have the opportunity to get things more right, but we also have more ways to get things disturbingly wrong. And in some ways, I think that trying to get things more right carries more importance to me, at least these days, than insisting that God doesn’t exist. I have one life, and I want to understand as much as I can within it. Talking about a nonexistent being might be part of this understanding, but there’s a whole world to explore, full of people and exciting discoveries. Why would I want to spend it talking about someone who doesn’t exist, when there are so many people and experiences that do?

People are always more complex and profound than their stereotypes, I’ve found. Fighting the stereotypes is admittedly hard sometimes. It takes compassion, talking, reading, and understanding. I’m wrong a lot. But I also feel like this makes my life mean something.

Maybe I can’t get rid of stereotypes for the rest of the world, which has been a difficult lesson for me. But I can try to get rid of them in myself. Maybe I can’t encourage understanding, empathy, and a compassion that instills a strong sense of justice for the entire world. But in the small arena that is my life, I can try to humbly encourage understanding in my world, and empathy, and compassion, and justice that protects the vulnerable. And it won’t change the universe, but it will make a positive ripple on this infinitesimal spot of spacetime.

That’s a pretty big deal to me.

And so…I’ll continue to write this blog, trying to break impossible barriers with this pen, and if the result is a small glance of understanding through a crack that, for a moment, allows some of us to see beauty beyond the lies, the truth will be more than worth it.

Thanks for reading.

PS: I want to thank all 26 of my patrons for supporting this blog.

At such moments I don’t think about all the misery, but about the beauty that still remains. This is where Mother and I differ greatly. Her advice in the face of melancholy is: “Think about all the suffering in the world and be thankful you’re not part of it.” My advice is: “Go outside, to the country, enjoy the sun and all nature has to offer. Go outside and try to recapture the happiness within yourself; think of all the beauty in yourself and in everything around you and be happy.”

I don’t think Mother’s advice can be right, because what are you supposed to do if you become part of the suffering? You’d be completely lost. On the contrary, beauty remains, even in misfortune. If you just look for it, you discover more and more happiness and regain your balance. A person who’s happy will make others happy.

— Anne Frank

I’ve been wondering what atheism means to me these days, in the midst of a series of disturbing scandals.

I think many of us atheists got too caught up in numbers. In leaders. In bringing people in, regardless of what we had to do. In hallowing the leaders, even if it meant devaluing ourselves.

Maybe it’s time to forget about the numbers.

Maybe it’s time to come back to ourselves.

These days, my atheism consists of everyday realities, like sitting beside a lake with a beautiful woman, looking out over the water, and realizing that the beauty right there is simple, uncomplicated, and enough. Beauty that we create together in that moment, with our own eyes taking in light, with our ears taking in sounds, our skin sensing touch, our hearts beating together, in an intimate cocoon of reality we largely create ourselves. It’s just us, and we’re creating every moment, and every moment matters because we believe that it does.

It’s really that simple to me, some days. And in those days, I think…you can have your drama, your sexual assaulters, your jockeying for power in a movement that you think is The Answer. I’m not saying that’s not important. It is. But this time, these moments — they’re important to me. More than any of that. And that’s fine.

I did not know that these moments would exist after I left a future as an apologist and was honest enough to leap into what seemed to be the dark. I did not know there was color beyond this black-and-white. I did not realize I could be this happy again, or that I would feel this full again, because I was lied to for so long it just didn’t seem possible.

I think, sometimes, that the greatest activism any atheist can do is to live happy in the midst of a Christian nation, to feel truly free, to embrace who we are without having to feel alienated from fellow human beings.

Why do I need to join a movement? Why must I hold a creed? Why can’t I embrace the parts of the universe that are beautiful to me, and live and die in the happiness of that embrace?

Why can’t I look at the entire universe without feeling overwhelmed, but more like I am a man stroking his chin, picking and choosing what gives him joy in the one life he has? Why can’t I simply choose the corner of the universe I wish to put my heart in?

Other people have a right to judge, and judge they do. But this is my life. This is my happiness. This is my atheism. This is my humanism.

And it’s beautiful to me. And me and the beautiful woman I’m with are beautiful to each other.

And when that’s the reality…I honestly don’t feel I have to worry my life away, as much. I’m still an activist, in some respects, but it’s more to protect the little slice of heaven on earth I have, and less to change the world.

If I’m hesitant about changing the world, it’s because I’ve had to admit, lately, that that I’m not sure what the best way to change the world is. I tried to change it by making everyone Christian once, and found that this was unhealthy. Then I tried to make everyone atheist, and that was unhealthy. Then I tried to embrace a movement to make everyone social justice advocates, but I’m finding that there are powerful forces preventing that and extremes in the movement that don’t resonate with me, so I may not be completely in the right pushing things there either.

I’m finding, increasingly, that what makes me happy is what makes ME happy, and that’s OK. As long as I’m not unjustly hurting people, I can do what makes me happy, with the understanding that others will do what makes them happy, and the biggest difficulty might just be trying to find the harmony in all that. But that search for harmony isn’t desperate, and my life does not depend on making sure it becomes a reality. It’s a negotiation to keep my little plot of happiness open, as long as I’m here.

To be fair, I may go out in the fray. I might fight battles again. But right now I’m tired of fighting and, overall, happy.

Maybe this seems self-indulgent. If so…then I’m encouraging you to be self-indulgent, too. Do what makes you happy in the one life you have. Meet people who make you happy. Feel free to take advantage of happiness wherever you find it. Don’t get so lost in trying to make the world a better place that you defeat the purpose by making it hell for yourself. Don’t focus so much on what’s good for “atheism” that you forget that you’re an atheist and it’s important to do what’s good for yourself.

And I think embracing what makes you happy, regardless of color, gender, or class level is really what the movement ultimately should be trying to get you to experience anyway. If you can experience those moments while you’re here, in some ways you’re embodying thoroughly the fundamental definition of “atheisting.” At least in my book.

Thanks for reading.