Faith

A crisis of faith. That's what people call it when something bad happens, and you are forced to question your entire belief structure. It's when what you believe in becomes most important to you, because it's an explanation for the bad stuff that's going on around you. Right?

Not neccesarily. Fortunately for me, I have no faith to be shaken - or if there is a faith, it is that the Universe is truly uncaring and perfectly neutral about everything that happens to everyone. If that's painful to us, well then, so be it.

Take any seemingly random act of sorrow in the world. A young child dying of a horrible disease. A freakishly random truck accident. Even a zit on the eve of a big date. All these tragedies would not occur in a world where there is inherent justice or morality. But we do not live in such a world, and so, tragedies occur to the innocent and guilty alike. There is no God, but the dice are rolled just the same. And the croupier counts the spots with emotionless accuracy. Electrons jump in their shells, atoms crash and rebound, sagan chains of cause and effect leap from the big bang to today... and the numbers come up. Snake eyes. You lose. Thank you for playing, and please don't think the Universe notices or cares, because it does not.

Cliches are cliches because they are true. "There is no justice, there's just us." That's the core of it. There is no built-in order to the Universe, no divine sanction on events. If we want justice, we must take it from creation by force. We stumble through life believing that rules do not apply to us. We all think, subconsciously, that somewhere there's an escape clause down in the fine print. "The Universe doesn't care about anyone" is the rule. I have found out, quite pointedly, that it does not include, as I've always imagined, the caveat "except for me and my friends."

No exceptions. None. No court of appeal. No God to repeal the laws on your behalf. No guiding hand, no explanation, no higher purpose. We can scrape out a cheap facsimile of one, if we have to. We can excise tumours from corpses, freeze them and dissect them and try to find out why they live and how to make them die. We can walk in the ashes of Auschwitz and learn what happens when you have a State that exists for the State alone. But these are nothing more than man's attempts to impose purpose on the Universe, or at least cut our losses somewhat. There's no inherent, native justice. No elves running to save you from the big bad wizard.

I do not understand how the Believing do it. I think they must all be a little mad; keep twisting and turning reality in their minds, trying to justify the concept of a loving controller, of a reality that is patently hateful and uncontrolled. How can they be sane? "God wanted little Raju to be hit by the bus", "almost all the people who died in the Holocaust are burning in Hell alongside Hitler because God loves them!", "The reason God lets children shoot each other is because they wear jeans to college!" These are not the thoughts of sane people. Their insanity may not keep them from living otherwise harmless lives, but let us call it what it is. Trying to reconcile the reality in which we live, with the idea that there is someone in charge (rather, anyone benevolent in charge), is madness. There is no other term for it.

Random tragedy is bad enough, but to believe that there is someone who could have done something about it at no cost to himself, yet deliberately chose not to, that would be intolerable. I could not live in such a Universe and retain my sanity. To the limited extent, I am capable of pity (which is by no means the same thing as compassion). I pity the Believers. They trudge through life holding blindfolds to their eyes, and, when disaster causes them to stumble and drop the cloth, to see the world as it truly is, they scramble through the mud to find it, desperate that the vision of reality be blocked again. They cry and whine and fret and moan and scream endless "Whys" at the sky, knowing they won't get an answer but believing they should.

Me, I accept that life sucks, and do what I can to make it suck less, for myself and my friends. I do not offer duck-billed platitudes and warm fuzzy sentiments - just my compassion, my time, and what material aid my meager resources will permit me to give. It may not be much, but it's real - and that's what matters most.

Thank God I'm an atheist.