What one Atheist believes

Can I say that I believe in God?

(I was asked, by someone who seemed to think that was important.)

Can I define God as Einstein and Spinoza did?

What?

Well then I can, actually, I can.

What I mean, and what they meant by "God" is the creative potential of the Universe, excluding nothing. Every particle of matter, every quantum of energy. The physical laws that give order to the Universe, written in the fabric of matter itself.

That I believe in, because I cannot know it all, I believe in it. This kind of God is all around us. Within us. Is us.

With this kind of god, there is and can be no priest, no holy book. We reason our way to understanding; must experiment, observe, and proceed with the intellectual humility of knowing that sometimes a new experiment will fill in details that we didn't expect, and erase things that we thought we knew.

And every now and again, a pillar will fall, as new research undermines it.  We will flinch and fear a rock fall, and the Dome of Science will show us once again that the span of it's arch is greater than Plato, greater than Newton, greater than Einstein; it will stay up, even as we shovel out ignorance with all the tools that we build.

The weird tribe of scientists and engineers will keep excavating the rubble out of the Cathedral that was our ignorance, leaving more and more room for our knowledge of the world. And we will see the majesty of this Universe, this Cathedral of un-created wonder, as more superstition, and more fear, and more ignorance are shoveled out of our future, into our history.

To me, this makes understanding science a kind of religious obligation. It makes learning a spiritual journey. It makes the life and death of stars and galaxies somehow personal, and makes the personal tragedies and triumphs of us little creatures seem less cosmic. We are part of this God, and never, for a second, are we separated from this.

This kind of Faith places greater demands of those that hold it than a faith of Supernatural miracles and an eternal Afterlife. As we get just one shot at this, we need to get it right.

There is no eternity of cloud-sitting to tell our loved ones that we love them. No recourse to good intentions. We need to show our respect and love today.

Our dog knows we love him when we take him for walks, and show affection in the tactile, physical way that canine species appreciate. I have no idea how to please a cat, as they seem not to like me. I try not to take it personally.

The only meaningful way to show affection for the natural world is by preserving habitat and reducing waste; there is no Personal God looking inside your mind to see what you intended; an endangered species understands only the kind of gestures that allow it to survive. Intentions, good or bad, are quite perfectly meaningless to any species that does not know us well enough to forgive. (Dogs know when we didn't mean to step on them, and accept our apologies. Not sure about Cats, I think they plot revenge. Rain-forests just don't understand us at all.)

So what I am getting at, is that we have to speak to people, to animals, and to the natural world in the language that they understand. This means verbal and physical respect and affection toward humans, physical affection and care towards animals that are the friends of our species, and appropriate regard for the welfare of animals and ecosystems that are wild, or even a bit pestilential.

Its a physical morality, from physical souls.

And I think Spirituality exists too, in its way. When we die, those who remember us, can still hear our voices. They can still feel the warmth of our affections, or the hurt of our wrongs. The consequences of our actions linger. Our thoughts linger on paper.

These fossils of our thoughts are impressed into the world, and into other minds.

The Beatitudes of Jesus of Nazareth, the works of Brahms, the words of William Shakespeare and the Epic of Gilgamesh speak to us; the thoughts of one mind, shine out into the future as long as there are people who understand.

So, while i reject the Supernatural, to the greatest extent possible, I can say that I do have a spiritual life. Hope for the future. And a God, into whose oneness I will dissolve when my time comes.

One who will create new life, out of the matter that used to be me. The matter that used to be stars, and which I was lucky enough to have at my command for a little while, in this most improbable of worlds.

Much love.

Brett