I just had my browser erase approximately 1000 words of development in my political thought, as well as about 8 links, and I still have a relatively lengthy draft of an experience I had in Japan on tap. However, in the course of writing the political discussion, I felt it was necessary to talk about something perhaps too personal for a blog. We’ll see.
I no longer believe in any extraordinary/supernatural/spiritual/what-have-you powers. I felt this way as an adolescent and young teenager, then became a somewhat boring deist, and then returned to atheism. My reasons for the final step might be worth hearing, and the background allows it to make any sense anyway.
I was a gloomy kid. Maybe not in kindergarten and such, but in grade school I was pretty damn pessimistic. I had reasons. The fascist attitudes of both the social environment and majority of teachers in the Catholic elementary school system of my youth were not a good place for me. There are people who do well there and are nurtured and find what they need and so on. I wasn’t one of them. I became increasingly bitter and nasty through elementary school, which included junior high for me. The most tangible case of my gloomy bitterness was, as someone who literally never had to study to get decent grades, failing one quarter of Religion class at my school because I conscientiously refused to memorize The Beatitudes, or even write anything in the space provided on the test. I now recognize the amazing literary and intellectual significance of The Sermon on The Mount. However, I was in 6th grade, loudly self-identifying as an atheist, and certainly did not get a fair chance at The Gospel of Matthew by the comically bad instruction I was receiving in religious studies.
Moving on, the Jesuit High School and eventually my weirdo college slowly drew me further into the fold of halfhearted Deism, and would have continued in that direction, no doubt, had I not made a very unusual acquaintance my senior year of college.
Jack Angstreich located me due to his interest in my undergraduate program. He was surfing through lists of “Johnnies” on Friendster.com, and I stood out due to my interest in Sergio Leone’s films and well as aforementioned Deism, which by that time had turned to some variant of Dualism. Jack talked me through the flaws in some of my thinking (over the course of 8 or 9 months). This focused mostly on dissecting and discrediting Plato’s Theory of Forms. At this point, I was increasingly unhappy because I didn’t know how to find out if I was doing what was morally right, if what I wanted to do was what God wanted me to do. One’s will needs to be in accordance with God’s will to be truly happy in life, by mainstream christian theology.
Y’know what made me happy? I am not making this story up.
One night, lounging around my parents house, a failed enterpreneur at age 25 and an hourly part-time employee of an overpriced chain of sandwich shops, I almost bawled my eyes out to a friend I had met on okcupid.com because I was having an intense emotional experience in the process of rejecting God. Previously, I thought there was a possibility that what was best for the world might not be what made me happy. With the Old Testament’s God, The Gospels’ God, and especially God according to Paul of Tarsus, and especially especially Augustine of Hippo, and no doubt with Thomas Aquinas, it is perfectly realistic that God wants you to be unhappy, if temporarily. This leaves the question “when should I be happy?” I shit you not, I was at an impasse with my counselor with this question for at least 2 years.
By giving up God, I could unreservedly work towards what I thought would make me happy, always. I had nobody to answer for except my own conscience. I didn’t have any obligations besides those I put on myself. Morality became what somebody else thought was best for me, i.e. “usually bullshit.” Everyone talks about these incredible journeys of salvation, moments when they “knew God was there” and how awesome that felt.
The absolute most wonderful night of my life I declared that there is nobody at the universe’s helm, there is no necessary beginning or end, and nobody is in charge. I have never been happier in my life than I have been since that day in fall/winter of 2006, sitting at the counter in my parents’ kitchen, and accidentally stumbling across a theological discussion. I now believe myself completely incapable of art in any true sense, as I have no gods besides, well, human happiness. This is about my only regret, and experience tells me that I make pretty shitty art anyway.
