The is no GOD nor GODs!

When I published my first book, almost everyone that I sought advice from while writing this book told me that the chapter I was writing about reshaping the role of religion within our State told me I was insane to mix politics and religion. The original title of the chapter was to be far more explanatory, ideas included “Responsible Religion” and “New roles for Religion” but for so many years now the controversy within my friends and family over the need to remove “The God Chapter” led me to decide to simply call it that.

I agree with my friends and colleagues that this chapter had the potential to be tantamount to political or at least reputational suicide. However, I couldn’t reconcile the other themes in this book against removing a critical topic for discussion on the basis that I might upset most readers or party members in the process.

Inherent with leadership is risk. Anyone can follow or dare not to rock the boat but I believe people know real leadership when they see it and one of the ways it is identified is when people see that the leader him or herself has been willing to risk something of themselves in order to influence change for the better.

So, at such risk, I rolled the dice here and now put this on my website with no need to fear but rather enjoy the debate…

One of the most fascinating things about religion in Australia is the lack of it. Apathy in Australia is one of the things I hate most about our culture and yet here I find an enormous opportunity to exploit it in an experiment that I believe could have global implications.

I have not been able to uncover much research on how many Australians actually believe in God vs those that don’t, go to Church vs those that don’t but anecdotally I have uncovered enough to form a strong view.

Most Australians are Christians, yes. But what sort of Christians are we? With the exception of my Grandparents generation, I am unable to find people in any demographic that actually sincerely care.

It used to be that we went to Church for weddings, funerals, Christenings, Easter and Christmas. Then weddings and funerals. Now, just funerals.

Seriously – if you think I’m wrong because you are two generations ahead of me, take a look around your Church on Sunday morning and see if you can find anyone my age. You will be lucky if you do and even then, it will be less than 5% of the congregation.

To a devout Christian, this is incredibly troubling. To most – it’s perfectly fine. I cannot help but find that fascinating.

Recently, I was asked to be in the wedding party for a close friend and of course I accepted the kind invitation. The couple decided to get married in a Catholic Church. Interestingly, during a discussion some months prior to the actual event during which the groom told me he was an atheist and had decided to stop paying for his World Vision sponsored children because “when you think about it – there’s nothing after this anyway so we need to look after ourselves” he also informed me that he and his wife had decided to marry in a Catholic Church.

Why you might ask – and the answer is simple – most Australian brides have the white dress and walking down the aisle fantasy that is a box that must be ticked on the to do list of their lives, irrespective of their views on God. Sounds terrible and no one wants to discuss it but it’s a reality that most people getting married in Church now not only don’t go to Church but don’t believe in God.

Further to this point, I love to ask people because it’s one of those topics I referred to in “What happened to debate” is: Do you believe in God? And, if so/not, why?

The answers from X and Y generation Australians are hilarious. Having asked hundreds, maybe close to a thousand, this question, I would estimate that I’ve found less than three people that can answer the second part. The first part is easy – most people have a good idea whether or not they’re an atheist or that they believe ‘in something’ but as to the question of why – forget it, most people have absolutely no clue as to why they believe in God/something or not and listening to people attempt to answer such a question on the fly is nothing short of comic to take part in and usually involves at least one backflip and four contradictions in rationale along the way.

So, let me explain to you my journey as it will provide some background for where I’m heading for a policy initiative.

I was born, christened and raised a Catholic – but like many my age – not really. This meant that my sister and I went to Church when our grandparents were staying with us or us with them and that’s all.

Beyond that, as a teenager I wanted to believe in something more than we just simply die and that’s it – as do we all but was never comfortable being a Catholic. The outrageous conduct of the Catholic Church throughout history and still today with such ridiculous preaching including no use of contraception while Catholic priests still are found routinely to be involved in sex scandals, mostly with children, was so hypocritical that I could never swallow it.

Wanting to remain a Christian however, I found a small home for myself and thus my journey within the Anglican Church. My Vicar is a close friend and a brilliant and insightful man who writes sermons that are modern, liberal, logical and inspiring. Not something I ever found in a Catholic Church although I hope in Australia such Priests exist within that Church.

My journey has involved reading almost every atheist book I can get my hands on including the commercially published authors including Michel Onfray, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and philosophy by and or commentary on Nietzsche, Ferreira and Mesiler. I have wanted to be absolutely sure that I am not deluding myself by believing in a mythical character and to be perfectly honest I was in no way sure I was right. My belief was something I couldn’t help but I was routinely torn by the question – the likelihood that there is a God, especially one God and that it is the Christian version is a near, if not actual an, impossibility.

Many simplify the issue by suggesting that life can go on in other forms. Ray Kurzweil believes that future technologies will enable us to live forever and in the event of biological failure that backups of our mind files will ensure we go on but this is physically not possible and never will be. Digital and mechanical life can replace itself as it is separated from biology but biological life cannot. If the life continuum of a biological being is broken, any clone, backup, copy or other not yet envisaged new form will not be the former. It will be another. Biology may be driven by electrical pulses but it is NOT digital.

People seeking to cheat death through clones or copies fail to admit that while another form of them goes on, which may provide some level of comfort, they themselves do not. Technologies that will enhance new entities that may even become fully mechanical can mean prolonging life well beyond current biological limitations but a being, once destroyed, is gone. When an identical twin dies, his brother living on does not mean that the deceased twin lives on. If you were to clone yourself before your death then that being would start its life but yours will still end. What or how is deciding why you are you and not your twin nor your clone and visa versa is where the problem lies and as far as I’ve researched no one has an answer.

The bottom line is Australians treat religion as a superficial part of their lives. They mostly have no idea why they believe or disbelieve and simply adopt the views of others, be they parents, friends, colleagues or partners. Those that don’t believe have little or no rationale as to why they don’t and those that do - do so because their family does or they were simply raised a certain way.

Theoretically, there is no problem with this if you think religion is irrelevant but now lets take a look at what happens when you ask the same person(s) whether or not religion is important in society and suddenly there are very strong and emotive positions on both sides, being espoused by people who have no earthly idea as to why they do or do not believe and I am highly offended by it!

If you don’t believe in a Christian God, don’t get married and take vows before a Christian God in a Catholic or Anglican Church. And, if you don’t believe in a Christian God but believe in a supreme being or ‘something’ then by all means explore that as part of your individual journey but get married in a Garden before a celebrant.

Faith for the sake of faith is irrational.

As part of my journey, I have researched the origins of religion. The most fascinating learning comes from a starting position and an end position – I found both in two very different books.

If you’ve read A History of Ideas by Peter Watson, you will know just how mind numbing and difficult it is to read. Undoubtedly one of the most comprehensive books published commercially, it is nonetheless incredibly boring. I read this particular book for alternative motives, mostly around learning more about our history as a species, but in the process uncovered an amazing albeit very obvious truth: religion began for Homo Sapiens at precisely the time that we became self-aware. Before then it simply didn’t exist.

I found the end position in the translation of a French book by Michel Onfray titled Atheist Manifesto:

“The last god will expire with the last man”.

The reason behind the need for religion is less obvious but stems from this obvious fact. As soon as our species became self-aware, we inherited a wonderful gift with a terrible downside. With rational thought came the ability to ponder our mortality. What was previously an innate fear of death when we were more animal than human turned into the knowledge that we will die! An animal fears death but does not understand it or ponder the inevitability of it as we do.

In turn, we had the ability to work out that we didn’t want to. Every human being fears death, not the act but the reality that we die, that we are mortal.

The need to believe that our ‘soul’ or our inner being is not lost is an enormous comfort and one that was invented as a concept at the precise time that we needed it. This is not to be confused with the death experience as defined by Freud – I don’t believe the child development process to form part of this although I would assume that our evolutionary past dictates much of the process steps involved. An infant experiencing Freud’s death experience is yet to undergo the conscious thought processes that come with an intellectual awareness that we will die as distinct from an animal like fear of being detached from a food source and an innate fear of death. An infant does not fear death the way a child or an adult does.

The older we get the more aware we become of our mortality. I recall being a fantastic skier until I got a job and I recall being a child and being satisfied that yes I will die one day but I will go to heaven and besides that’s a long way off. By the time I got to my late twenties I started to panic! By my mid-thirties I became almost fixated on death and thus stepped up the pace of my spiritual journey. Now, having broken my neck during a seizure after a long haul flight, I am never allowed to ski again, despite being a triple color rated ski instructor - getting older really is crap.

Some elderly people are actually terrified of sleep and have sleeping disorders because they literally fear that they could die without their knowledge. For those who believe they are going to heaven, why the panic – is the belief not as great as they make out? I don’t think so – it’s the primal fear of death coupled with our consciousness of what death means that is so terrifying. 

Without revisiting whether you believe in God, a supreme being, something else or nothing, the point here is that we must accept religion was a concept created by early man, one that has been modified again and again throughout history and that its main attraction is that whichever one it is it provides a comforting answer to our greatest fear – that there is nothing after this.

Even today, it can be (and has been) argued that the rule of law in the Commonwealth relies upon an ordained Monarch. God determines who the Monarch will be (to repeat the theory – why am I me and not you? Why are you not Prince William?). While I want to see Australia become a Republic, most do not and one of the core arguments against being self-governing (even though we already are) is that we need His Majesty to be able to step in if something really goes wrong. This is an extension of the benefits argument for God still being seen as the ultimate fear. Ministers are not Ministers of the People – they are Ministers of the Crown who swear allegiance not to you nor I but to His Majesty who has delegated His divine power to us to self-govern because He chooses to do so – there is no obligation for Him to do so despite laws that have been written to suggest otherwise.

It seems even atheists are now prepared to admit that religion has done a lot of good as well as a lot of harm but this is qualified to be something that relates strictly to times where we didn’t know better; and I agree. Now that we do, fear of afterlife judgement is not a good motivator for most and, more importantly, ought never be used by one person or organisation to take advantage of another.

Agree or otherwise, I hear you ask: how does all of this relate to a State Liberal Party policy position? Before I get to the answer, let’s discuss the state of the world we live in and the impact blind faith is having on it. Do we need to?

Is there a rational Australian who believes that a majority of the conflicts, wars and terrorism our generation (and future generations) face are the direct result of religion?

Does any rational Australian honestly believe that the nineteen Wars currently raging in world right now are not based on religion, money, oil and the need for power over Islamic states. Or, inversely, do we honestly think that it is sane or rational to interpret The Quran’s words of a man should avert his eyes to mean that women should wear burqas?

Of course we don’t. This level of blind faith and insanity is directly linked to a lack of logic and education. And any Australian Christian who believes Arab Muslims are living in the dark ages compared to Christians may be correct but are likely forgetting that the Arab world has not developed as ours has. Where there are ill informed, illiterate and uneducated civilians, religion has all the ingredients required to take advantage of the innate fear of humanity.

Enough!

Being based in Indonesia for three years, where I was surrounded by the most wonderful, tolerant and open minded Muslim people when in Jakarta and the most loving and devout Hindu people with their many Gods when I holiday in Bali, it is impossible to contemplate that their Gods don't exist but the Christian God does. It is interesting to me that Australia is seen as a mutli-cultural, tolerant model whereas the inability for the average Aussie to discern between a Muslim and an extremist demonstrates nothing more than we are mostly ill-informed. The common response when I told people I had an apartment in Jakarta is: "aren't you worried about being bombed". Other statements included: "they stone their women", clearly illustrating they have no idea about the difference between news stories covering Muslim conduct in the Arab world vs what occurs in a country of which, when I was based there, the President, democratically elected, was a woman!

As part of my research for the God Chapter, and honestly my personal ongoing spiritual journey at the time, I was highly interested in speaking with scientists who believe. A close friend of mine lost his wife to breast cancer and her family are devout Catholics.

Her parents go to Church every day and in their lives have buried two daughters - one died in her twenties in a car accident and then Jane (aged in her mid 30s). The father is a heart surgeon - a man who has given so much to the community and saved literally hundreds of lives and yet life has taken two of his girls from him.

He is of an age that it would be disrespectful to ask him why he still believes in God but the question is obvious and I'm sure he has an answer. It seems so impossible to think that a man who is intimately aware of our fragile biology and the knowledge that we are but an animal like the others with minor exception (you have highlighted two: the ability to contemplate our own mortality and the ability to laugh), along with substantial intellect, scientific education and a lifetime of travel and study in other disciplines, still be so devout.

Is it just a case of the alternative is so horrible to contemplate, that even with all the knowledge that can be attained to disprove most if not all that we read in a Christian Bible, that we simply must believe? Is this a paradox for people like I that cannot be avoided.

At the time I wrote to Dr. Gordon Livingston:

You may not want to participate and I would respect that you may never respond to this email, but given your impressive works, I am compelled to ask you, why do you believe? Why do you think people like my friend's father-in-law and someone like myself are able to believe in God? I sense that you have contemplated these questions in your own mind and I know you have had, like many, good reasons to feel angry about a loss and may have at one time blamed God.

I know we don't know each other and this may be incredibly insensitive so if you have any negative response to this email please accept my apology for I mean no offense and only seek to learn from those who have a high level of insight and I don't seem to be able to find too many.

If nothing else, I thank you for your works and the pleasure reading your books and articles has given me.

Yours sincerely, Kurt.

His response was as follows:

Kurt, I am deeply moved that my ramblings about what I have learned in a long life would provoke such a thoughtful and intelligent response. I admit to an attitude of uncertainty about how my ideas fit with the religious conceptions of morality. I feel that my own experiences of loss, especially my children, have robbed me of a belief in a benevolent deity acting in our best interests. To accept this feels like a betrayal of my wholly innocent boys, which I cannot comprehend.

The older I get the less inclined to a view of a divine power directing our lives. Whose deity, after all, would we choose. I do believe in love as the value that sustains our efforts to build a coherent and benevolent universe. Mostly I must admit ignorance of the large questions of why are we are here and what is our essential duty to those with whom we share this fragile planet.

And yet I have come to see my atheism as an act of courage that forswears the easy answers proposed by religious dogma,

comforting though they may be. I blamed God for a while (Why, if he exists, is he so inscrutable?). Now I ignore this whole idea and focus my care an attention on those who need me.

And yet I am constantly impressed by how little I know about anything, so I do not try to impose my ideas about religion on anyone else.

Thanks for you thoughtful letter. I have gotten so many useful communications from Australia. Perhaps one day I will get there.

All best,

Gordon Livingston.

Here’s the truth my friends:

THERE IS NO GOD!

THERE ARE NO GODS!

THERE IS NO AFTER-LIFE!

What I love is the so called ‘agnostics’. I’m currently writing two new books; one titled: “This is a can of Pepsi” with the front cover having a picture of a can of coke. It could be a can of Pepsi, maybe someone emptied the can of coke and poured Pepsi into it?

It’s actually not that hard to explain why there is no God; think of the following logical sequence:

Only the natural is real. The supernatural is not real. God is supernatural. God is not real. There is no God.

Simple to follow, simple to understand for even the most of us whom are barely educated but yet for most of us God is real and in particular ‘my God’ is the one that is real.

The argument that supernatural things exist cannot be in of itself mounted because to state that supernatural beings exist is to state the there is a world beyond the natural that does indeed exist. Now; that’s actually a reasonable opinion. If one wants to believe in ghosts, goblins, unicorns or Gods then there’s no reason why they can’t and I wouldn’t stand in the way of any person whom chooses to believe in things they cannot prove so long as the argument remains clear: that such concepts cannot be proved.

Counter arguments such as it’s my job to prove that God doesn’t exist don’t hold water at all.

It’s not my job to prove that something doesn’t exist doesn’t exist. If one wants to prove that a supernatural being such as God exists then the burden of proof is squarely on them and not me.

The agnostic arguments of anything’s possible and science doesn’t have all the answers are also the nonsense of the highly uneducated idiot. Of course science cannot prove everything because we can only observe what we can within the limitations of the human experience. And; no: anything is not possible. I’d like to fly but I can’t and never will be able to without the assistance of an aircraft.

Again; if you (as the reader) want to believe in the tooth fairy well then there’s nothing stopping you and I certainly won’t get in the way. But where belief in a God becomes problematic is that it then goes from just a belief to a very dangerous belief which always leads to war - always! Always has and always will.

Believing in a bunch of nonsense in my mind will always make you a fool but go right ahead especially if it’s culturally important. But please: put a line in the sand when you decide that your God is the only right and true God because you can’t prove it and saying things like that are really harmful and will inevitably lead to conflicts even if only between friends and family or a local community.

So my spiritual journey has gone from Catholic to Anglican to atheist to anti-theist.

This is a must watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IZeQ3-ykc0When