What do I need to be human for?

Originally Posted: 8:51pm Wednesday, Aug 8


I was watching this show called "The History of Disbelief," its a history of athiesm. It wasn't the history itself which caught my attention (though it is pretty interesting); rather it was the attitude of the host Sir Jonathan Wolfe Miller.
In it he says (not exact quote but damn close): "I am so certain ther is no God that, I don't think there should be a term athiest because its stating what should be obvious logic like calling people who believe the sun revolves around the Earth, revolvists."

This struck me as such a defensive statement. I have noticed in observing and communicating with other athiests that they cling so tightly to their denial of spirituality and they refuse to even consider the possiblity that logic may prove itself wrong.
I wondered, why do they take such a strong stand in their position, and why be so defensive? Why put your whole self in the hands of logic?
Perhaps not in all cases, but in many cases the answer is simple.
Atheists don't want to be human. They don't want they weaknesses that come with it, the uncertainty of faith, and the acknowledgement that human logic and perception may be flawed.

This parallels the same reasons people become fundamentalists. They need solid direction in their lives and so they look to religous text. In following this religous text, they take this text as literally as possible because they fear that if it were to be interpreted on a higher level then the message of the text would be uncertain and their faith would be uncertain (which really is the opposite of true faith, because anyone can just believe the most literal translation of a book).

Now you may ask, why wouldn't someone want to be human? Why would someone immerse themselves so far in logic that they lose the complete perception of the world?
Think about what comes with being human, it is very hard to human, life is hard no matter how you slice it. Being human means feeling pain, feeling weakness, feeling uncertainty, feeling lost. But, if one immerses themselves in logic and block out anything that contradicts that logic, they have something rock solid that they can rely on. Logic is perfect, it works, its like mathamatics.
But, there is more to the world than what we see, there is more to the world than what logic and reason can explain (for example you can't convey what they the soul is using observation or description). Rather than admit to this, athiests fight this, they attack religon, they attack spirituality and they hide behind science saying it is the savior of man.

Science alone cannot save man, logic alone is not man's mana.
Religon alone cannot save man, faith alone is not man's key to heaven.

The two do not conflict, like Ying and Yang they make the whole of our being. It is only our fear of being whole that creates the conflict and has fueled both the athiest and the fundamentalist rage.

Brian Liebman

Futurechoes