Skepticism is a virtue: The religious don’t know what they’re missing

2008 September 1

By Amr Hima
Article ID: 1246

Download audio: Play Now

Many people question religious truth differently than most religious philosophers. These philosophers treat the question not with curiosity, but by totally neglecting the value of truth and claiming that their beliefs make their lives better or their belief makes them happier. This is a response to that claim, I will try to show how false religious beliefs can harm us and why they should be abandoned. Here’s a list of what religious people might be missing.

Religion removes freedom

It is better to die for oneself than to live for someone else. A virtue in religions is living according to a law (in Christianity this is the Ten Commandments). Living for God and according to his laws should be considered a vice because people enslave themselves to this tyrant they call “God”. While God’s laws themselves differ, the problems aren’t with them. Sometimes they can be real virtues, but the problem with these laws is that they come from outside, from “above”, which supposedly doesn’t belong to humanity. How can we be free if we live according to God’s law? A religious man does not kill because he sees killing as wrong, but because God tells him not to. A religious man is spiritually subverted. Religion in this sense is infantile, it keeps humans from growing and being independent, it keeps them from being free.

A skeptic on the other hand acts according to his or her own will; they know they are alone in this world without an imaginary invisible father image. Our dependence created God, and as we grow God should die and cease to exist, religious people refuse to grow for it is easier to be passive, and they create a comfortable prison. A skeptic breaks these walls of lies with logical thinking and skepticism and lives free and from my own experience this is a much better life.

A life of mysteries is essential

Among its many descriptions, life is a mystery, to live it and not wonder about it is not to live it fully. Not only do religions impose on us laws of right and wrong and good and evil, they also impose on us answers that get us nowhere. Someone once said “if the history of science taught us something, it is that we get nowhere by calling our ignorance ‘God’”.

How are we here? God created us.

Then who created God? Don’t ask.

Why are we here? To be slaves to God and do what he tells us to do.

How did the world come into existence? God created it.

How did God come into existence? Don’t ask.

The arguments for the existence of God are just to show that the world needs a cause, a designer and a sustainer. Why doesn’t God need those? Don’t ask. Why not try to explain things naturally? Why not seek the reason and not assume it? Thanks to science, we have come to know a lot, and there’s much more to be uncovered. The more we explore and learn, the more we find out there’s nothing but the laws of nature affecting this universe. God’s role is getting smaller and smaller. None of this would have been known if we had been contented with the answers given by religion. As a Monty Python-created Nietzsche would have said, God is “almost dead”.

But even now, there’s what Richard Dawkins called “the worship of gaps”, just look for anything we don’t know about and fill the gap with God. Why not really enjoy the gap as a mystery? I can’t imagine how life would be if we knew everything, it would be boring, but it’s even worse when we believe false beliefs. Why would people rather have assumptions than real knowledge? Not only that, they reject knowledge when it disturbs their assumptions, such as rejecting the theory of evolution even though it answers questions we’ve been striving to know. Given two choices, it’s a much better life to wonder about the truth than to hold and defend false beliefs.

This world is here and now. The afterlife is not.

To live for another world is to betray our world. It is such a waste of life to live while waiting for another life to occur, even if one calls the first life unimportant and insignificant; it’s a virtue in most religions to renounce this world for the sake of the other world, for heaven. To live waiting for another life is not to live this life fully, and not thinking about how we choose to live is the best way to waste it.

Religion is all about life-denying values. Life is beautiful when one embraces it, living it fully and enjoying every moment. But to despise life, to deny life and betray our world seems to most religious people to be a virtue, to live waiting for a world that is never going to come. The life of a skeptic doesn’t lack value or meaning, nor does it lack purpose, because it’s beautiful. The best way to live is to live life like an artist making his masterpiece, not for a purpose, but by making it seem beautiful and joyful. This kind of life is much better than waiting for another life that’s not going to come.