I Am An Atheist

I am, and will likely always be, an atheist. I simply don't have "the stuff" to believe in what we broadly refer to as "religious ideologies." And yet as I age, as I gain wisdom, and as science continues its inexorable push forward, I seem to come across more phenomena which would most accurately be described as "God."

Of course this is not the God of our ancestors. But since when have we believed anything just like even our own parents? As always our ancestors were using imperfect knowledge and imperfect language in a pathetic attempt to explain the inexplicable just as we do.

Fact: There is an unseen Power

But there are still unquestionably forces at work that we are incapable of perceiving. Science is telling us louder and louder that reality is an illusion. That our sensory organs, like all organs evolved to maximize fitness. To ensure the reproduction of genetic and biological information.

They did not evolve to perceive reality accurately. This would require some kind of divine intent and so to believe this is to possess the most antiquated of religious beliefs. Most scientifically-minded people will not dispute these claims. Yet if you tell these same people that there is a conscious god they will scoff at you. They will accuse you of a level of ignorance that borders on the criminal. But tell them that consciousness does not exist, that consciousness is an illusion, the mere byproduct of an infinitely numerous and complex network of unconscious actions, and they are perfectly willing to entertain the notion. As well they should be, for neuroscience is now telling us that the majority of our mental activity occurs before we are aware of its consequences, and that it is those consequences of unconscious activity which we refer to as "conscious thought."

They are a side effect of these unseen forces which move us in very consistent ways. But if consciousness is an illusion, if it does not really exist, but unseen forces do exist, then to dismiss them as "un-God-like" based on the claim that they are unconsciousness is to accept an irrational premise: that consciousness is even possible. In other words, to insist that these unseen forces not be referred to as "God" solely because they are not conscious is itself to engage in a religious belief.

These forces of which I speak move the universe as a whole toward chaos, but they also move pockets of the universe, like the Milky Way galaxy, in the direction of stability, and have done so since literally the beginning of time. They moved a diffuse cloud of particles to form our galaxy, and then our solar system, and then our planet.

And because these forces never cease, they moved matter on Earth to become life on earth, life on Earth to become primate life, and moved primate life on a path of ever increasing cranial growth until one day these forces birthed a new species we refer to as "human" each member of which was designed to experience the universe in a manner at least one population would express as "consciousness."

In other words, these invisible forces are consciousness. We are the unseen forces and these unseen forces are indistinguishable from God precisely because we are currently incapable of understanding them at all. But that doesn't mean they don't exist or that they don't influence our reality infinitely more than those forces which we are capable of "perceiving."