Why All Religions are Wrong, Atheists have Faith, and Agnostics don't Know Jack

The following article is a philosophical walk through faith and religion, or lack thereof. Many things I write and post here I am not completely happy with like the Art of Violence and Justice Series among others. I feel when writing many of these articles that I haven't fully done my job and found the complete answers to the questions posed. I always feel like I've found some though. The same may be said for this article and what I like about all my work is that it promotes thought on these subjects in others. We all have many questions in life that need answering even if we may not be fully aware of them all the time.

Why All Religions are Wrong, Atheists have Faith, and Agnostics don’t Know Jack.

Humanity throughout its existence has believed many things. There have been sun gods, gods of the underworld, spirits of good or evil, concepts of karma and reincarnation. Many religions have risen and fallen across humanity’s existence. What is constant from religion to religion is the belief of the people of each religion that their own is the one true belief system. It is a frustratingly complex task given the sheer number of religions and their varying denominations to choose among them the one true belief system.

What makes all religions wrong is this overwhelming belief by all of humanity that their religion is the only true religion. It is the arrogance and vanity of such belief that shows religions could only be created by humanity and not of divine origin. Only humanity would put forth the idea “that I, because I believe, am more worthy than the non-believers”. Religions claim the unreasonable.

Many people in the new world died without ever knowing of Allah, God, the Jews, Jesus, Zeus, Osiris, or Satan. Yet to not believe in Christian doctrine, among others, is to be damned. These individuals had no knowledge of the beliefs of the religion yet would be punished by such contrived rules of divine morality. Limbo was brought into being by an inspired mind as the waiting room of God for individuals so unfortunate as these. Still limbo did not and does not exist in many religions. The idea one should be punished for lack of knowledge and even opportunity to believe is in total opposition to the concept of an omni-benevolent deity.

The odds that one’s religion is the one true religion are extremely small when given all the varying beliefs that exist and have existed in the world. To have to choose between them is as good as saying “damn yourself with your choice”. Whichever one you pick you will likely pick the wrong one.

In reality very few people even have the opportunity to make a choice such as the Native Americans before Columbus’s time. In other places one either believes what they are told or dies. It is in complete opposition to the idea of belief to deny one a free choice of their faith. Such a choice is not a choice at all and the forced belief merely the shadow of faith. These individuals go through the motions without ever choosing. Are they damned by their lack of options like the Native Americans?

How many people even question their beliefs even if given the option? We are born into the societies we are by fate or chance. What beliefs are there we are taught and they become our own beliefs. What our parents believe we generally believe. We never set out to decide from the start what our beliefs will be. It is by happy chance that a human ever decides to question and then make a choice as it generally goes against everything one is taught.

What makes one so fortunate as to be born in such a situation that one is given the opportunity to know of God and the one true faith from birth or even to hear of it, learn it, and believe it later? A truly omni-benevolent God would want all to benefit so such a God is in complete contradiction to reality. An omnipotent God would have the power to make it happen yet it is not so. If a divine being exists then it must not be what many religions teach for such a being and our reality do not lend themselves to be compatible. Such a being is either not omni-benevolent or not omnipotent. If not omnipotent why call him God, if not benevolent then why worship him?

The best chance one has of choosing correctly is to say that all religions are wrong. There is good evidence that they are all contrived by humanity and to choose one among many is an exercise in futility. Religions go far beyond the belief and concept of a divine being they outline scores of rules and ways of behavior. Unlike believers of many faiths philosophers are not fools they do not attempt to argue over which brands of meat God views as abominable. They may argue over God’s omnipotence, his omni-benevolence, his omniscience but they know enough to say that it is completely arrogant and impossible to determine what God would have on his deli sandwich or which hole God prefers to stick it in. Taking a look at the odds there is a fifty-fifty chance of God, an all powerful being, existing. Also by the odds there is an astronomically small chance that God, an all powerful being, enjoys being addressed with male pronouns, prefers beef to pork, decided to take six days to make the world instead of one or maybe a billion. Each addition is just another coin to flip and continually adds to the improbability of the claim. When faced with choosing between the impossible and choosing against it we are better served if we choose to say that all religions are wrong for in each case non-existence/non-belief is always the alternative, we have a fifty percent chance of being correct.

Those that are atheist constantly claim that they have lost faith and no longer believe in God or an afterlife. The problem is that they fail to justify a disbelief in both. Every reason for becoming an atheist I have read has always been in objection to the religion not to the existence of God or the existence of an afterlife. There is a distinct difference between a religion and God. There is a difference between God and there being an afterlife. Atheists, on the whole, fail to use reason and philosophy to argue against there being a God. Even in rejecting all religion one does not have to reject the existence of God or an afterlife. God is not inextricably tied to religion nor is the concept of an afterlife to God.

Atheists fall for the same poor reasoning that believers of religion do in their belief. They attempt to claim more about the divine than they reasonably can. It is simple to reject religion for it can be shown to be nothing but the desires and arrogance of man. It is another step and another thing entirely to say that an omnipotent being does not exist. There is no way to disprove such a belief beyond doubt and in an existence of limitlessness, in time or space, one, the other, or both, it is reasonable to say that one has existed, does exist, or may exist in the future. On the other side of the coin, the one atheists blindly leap to without due consideration of the former consideration, there appears to be no indication that such a being is actively doing anything involved in our existence in the present.

It is the same with the idea of the afterlife. Atheists seem to leap to the conclusion that their existence will enter a permanent state of cessation just because there is no God. It apparently never occurs to many of them that there does not need to be a God for there to be an afterlife. In an existence of limitlessness it is arrogant to say that you will never be, never exist, again.

Before I get accused of leaping to a conclusion like atheists and believers let me say that there is no reason not to believe in the limitlessness of existence. This is not the same as ceaselessness as one may cease yet one may also come into being. I exist now, I continue to exist, I have evidence which suggests many things existed before I became aware, I have every reason to believe I, the parts of me, shall continue to exist even after I cease being aware. If the universe had a beginning and will have an end then I see no reason another could not begin or ours begin again. I may yet still exist as part of that universe or one of the many after. If the universe is continuous, without end, then I will without a doubt continue with it. The form in which I do so is irrelevant and in a limitless existence one may have many, similar, and the same form or forms. In these forms I may be aware, or not, yet it is a distinct possibility that in some I will be aware.

At the same time there is no argument to refute beyond a doubt that everything simply ends at some point. I can reasonably argue that believing everything comes to nothing is futile because in believing and arguing for such a thing one’s argument is pointless. The believer, belief, and argument will end up not existing and there is no logic in believing in something that isn’t there, like a mirage. But on the coin of reality existence and non-existence are equal fifty-fifty chances.

When the coin comes into play, then so must faith, in order for one to believe in either the existence or non-existence of something since there is nothing to recommend one choice over the other. Hence, all atheists have faith they merely choose to believe in the non-existence of things rather than in the existence of them. In reaching this faith they commit the same type of errors as believers in leaping to say “since my belief in this religion is wrong then my beliefs that there is/are a God, gods, or an afterlife is/are wrong as well” and in so doing believe unreasonably.

Given what we know, that those of faith, whether of religion or atheist, believe unreasonably it seems reasonable to adopt an agnostic stance to existence, or lack thereof, of the divine. When the answer is admittedly beyond our determination, withholding judgment, suspending belief, and striving to come to a better understanding from which to make a determination is the best we as human beings can do.

In reality agnosticism means “we don’t know jack”, we can never know. That is something that human beings cannot possibly accept because of our nature. We must come to an understanding at some point if we merely collect enough information. It does not factor into our drive for understanding that there may be no way to collect enough information or analyze that which we have thoroughly enough to reach an answer. It seems absurd to us that we could live in such a universe where not all answers may be obtainable.

For salvation from this unceasing cycle and feeling of being trapped where we are in our understanding we turn to faith. We choose to believe in something rather than to withhold belief. Faith is by no means a wrong to have as it can by chance lead to the right answers but it is wrong to take a leap of faith. To take a leap of faith is to choose faith over knowing the possibilities and the likelihoods. If we ignore them then we limit ourselves to being unreasonable. When the possibilities and likely hoods have ended we can choose between agnosticism and faith. But when doing so we do not forget that our faith is merely faith and not truth. It is important that our truth be only what we can reach through logical thought for otherwise we have rejected what we have learned and all reason. It is a human thing to be unreasonable but it is not a desirable thing.

In summation, all religions are wrong, atheists have faith, agnostics don’t know jack, and its ok to believe in something as long as we don’t take ourselves too seriously.