p13dev

 ePhilo Dialog,

 By John Taylor; 2008 Jan 10, 11 Sharaf, 164 BE;

 Here is my translation of what I think is ePhilo's most important question till now:

 ePhilo: Is there a simple ending for the sentence: "Indeed, I do (do not) believe in God because..." For me there this a simple answer, but about you I still cannot articulate an answer.

 JET: Now it is personal. I believe in God because I have seen Him. Here is how it happened.

 My mother taught me from an early age about God but it was a naive, superficial faith that I absorbed, no match for the skepticism I soon learned. When I was about seven years old my parents got into a fight, as they often did, and forgetting my own safety I tried to intervene on my mother's side. My father (who prides himself on never having hit any of his children) marched me into my bedroom and showed me his fist; the implications of further interference were pretty clear. I was so furious that I swore I would kill him the moment I was big enough to win in a fight. Then I remembered God and all His lovey-dovey teaching about niceness and avoiding parricide, but it was far weaker than my searing hatred for my father. Basically, in my heart of hearts, I told God to hit the road. And He did. I cannot describe the feeling, it was if a soft glowing light had been switched off and my soul went dark. What they call a "weak atheist" was born. I ceased to believe in God, but I had nothing against those who did.

 When I entered High School my anger at my father calmed down and even though I was studying Judo and quite big enough to do what I had sworn to do to him, I decided it was inexpedient to commit murder. Besides, he was driving me to my judo lessons three times a week. In every way he was and is a great, devoted father, but because of that threat I still cannot summon up any warmth or intimacy in my heart for him. That implied violence in this case did more than real violence could have done.

 Then, the following incident turned me into a so-called strong atheist, one who actively opposes religious faith. Although it was a public high school, a fire and brimstone preacher somehow wangled an invitation to address our entire school. He told us that if we did not accept Jesus into our hearts we were all going to hell for eternity. I had never witnessed such hypocrisy, arrogance and sanctimonious effrontery. All the hatred I had felt for my father shifted over to Jesus, Christianity and especially to Christians. I came across the Richard Dawkins of the time, Ayn Rand, and became her ardent follower (I never read her novels, just the philosophy, such as "The New Capitalism," etc.) I tried to convert my agnostic friend, Doug, to atheism, but he was not to be moved.

 I remember one argument I lost with Doug rather miserably. I repeated Ayn Rand's lavish praise for the space program, which had just been crowned by putting a man on the moon, a memorable triumph for science and free enterprise, and what a great a contrast this was with Woodstock, an anarchic disaster where deluded long-haired hippies came with their false ideals of love and peace and the only result was a mud-filled cesspool with no rules and people wandering home in disappointment.

 Doug answered: Hey, wait a minute, who were running these events? Was the space program not run by the big evil government, and was not Woodstock a privately-run project, entirely for profit? According to Ayn Rand's theory, it should have been the other way around, the oppressive government's space project should have ended in disaster and the private initiative of Woodstock should have been a model of efficiency. I could say nothing to that, and I began to doubt. Then I ran across a book written in opposition to Ayn Rand. I read about twenty pages into it and threw the book down. I did not need to read another word, it had refuted her systematically, point by point. This atheist thinker, I realized, did not deserve the name she arrogated to herself: philosopher. As scientists say of New Age drivel, she was so far off base that she was not even wrong. For years later Doug mocked my excursion into anti-religion, and my only defense was that at least I can admit it when I make a mistake.

 Having rejected strong atheism, I had nothing to put in its place.

 Values and beliefs are like food to the soul, and as a wholly critical, negative belief system the meaning of atheism had not proved nutritious enough to sustain. I felt as enervated as Morgan Spurlock after a month of being Supersized. Unlike Spurlock, whose common-law wife saved his life by putting him onto a scientific diet to recover from his month of only McDonalds food, I had nothing. A void. I felt my soul dying and there was nothing I could do, nowhere I could go to save it. This state of having nowhere to seek for guidance Baha'u'llah defines as the essence of oppression, the Arabic word meaning literally "pressure." This is the pressure that, in the body, leads straight to coronary infarction.

 When I turned seventeen years old I was forced by the requirements of my Grade 13 English Literature class to write a book review on a religion of my choice. I still hated all religions, and there was no way I was going to have anything to do with a Christian. Fortunately, I knew a Baha'i, in fact I had a crush on one. She was my partner in chemistry class, a girl by the name of Joan Harrison. Shyly, I asked her to give me the shortest Baha'i book she could find. It turned out to be "The Reality of Man." I was also required to interview some believers, so I asked her and a more knowledgeable believer by the name of Barry Engler to meet and answer the questions I had written while reading these selections from Abdu'l-Baha's talks.

Months later I was alone in my dark bedroom, depressed, on the brink of suicide, and I thought back on what Abdu'l-Baha had said about sense impressions being not the only criterion of knowledge. That indeed was the basis of my atheism. I believed fervently that what we see is what we get, you only hear what you hear, taste what you taste, and so forth.

There is no God, no spirit, no afterlife.

But then I remembered when I was in Joan's basement rec room, and the feeling I got when I listened to Barry give the answers to my questions about Baha'i. When he spoke he had been inspired with something. I could not put my finger on what it was, but I could not deny what I had seen. Call it love, call it spirit, call it God, call it whatever you want, it is real and undeniable if you have laid eyes on it. Indeed the more I thought about that experience the clearer I saw that this God I had seen was more real than the flood of impressions that fill my sense organs every waking moment. I still remember what I sensed in that interview, but all the terabytes of data that entered my brain before and since mean little, most I have forgotten but not the first time I saw what physical eyes cannot and never will see, God.