RE: Religion for Atheists
This morning I stumbled upon this beautiful post from Absurd Pirate and thougt: wow, there's two of us! So I decided to leave a reply to it.
I was raised Catholic, because that's what my family was, but I never quite fit. I don't remember this but apparently, when I was seven years old, I came home from church school and complained to Mom that the teacher talked about Adam and Eve and didn't mention the theory of evolution. What I do remember is the time I was eleven and got in an argument with a nun at school, because I coloured my Jesus figurine dark (he was Middle-Eastern!) and she scolded me for not making him blond and blue-eyed. It would have been prettier, she said. To a distinctively mediterranean-looking girl who was about to hit puberty.
I don't think I ever truly believed, but I stopped trying shortly after. I have the soul of the scientist, I just can't accept that things are "just so" because it's written in a two-thousands years old book. I especially can't accept that picking the fruit of knowledge was a sin, and that my whole sex should forever be considered inferior and insidious because of that. So I proclaimed myself an Atheist, and was so for a long time.
Then I took a masters in astrophysics, a PhD in atmospheric science working on rare and poorly-understood phenomena, hit my thirties and realized that maybe, just maybe, we know even less than we think. I adopted a pretty Lovecraftian view of the Universe, in that I believe our physical senses and intellectual capabilities are limited, therefore we don't know and can never know what lies beyond them. Most scientists have accepted that some things will forever be unknowable, but it is more difficult to accept that some things may elude us simply because our senses aren't made to detect them. Dark matter is a famous example of this, as well as the way some birds, insects and fish can detect electromagnetic fields and be guided by them. So who's to say that there isn't a being or consciousness that escapes our detection, its mind inscrutable and inaccessible? It certainly doesn't mean that this being(s) has created us or even cares about us, but I'm certainly open to the possibility of its existence. Its existence is also irrelevant, though, since we cannot interact with each other. And I'm not sure what's the value of putting our life purpose into something so unreachable and detached from the world we actually live in.
The world we live in is the only thing we have for sure. What we can experience, what we can interpret, what we can imagine. That's invaluable, and sacred. As I wrote in my very second post, we can consider the Universe sacred just because it is our home, the home of all we can experience. There's no planet B and potentially there's no life B, no afterlife; so why waste the life we have worrying about the one we might have, if a god exists and is in a good mood?
Life is sacred. From the smartest hooman, to the smallest bacterium, to the mycelium that connects us all, life is wonderful, sacred and worth celebrating. I hold this as the basis of my worldview, but in addition I also call myself a witch. That's not because I believe in the meowgic we see in fantasy books1, but because I believe that we can influence our mind way beyond what we think possible, and also that we gotta do what we gotta do to survive in this world. Meowgic has always been the last resort of those who had no power, and in a dark moment of my life when it felt that there was nothing I could do to affect my circumstances, knowing that in fact I could do meowgic made the difference between life and death. Quite literally. I still had control, even if through unconventional methods. I had power.
Witchcraft is generally seen as a "woo woo" thing (and it definitely can be!), but there is such a thing as atheist and secular witchcraft2. It maintains the sacredness of the Earth, but also that the power of our meowgic is inside us. There may be "spirits" roaming around, as a representation of all we don't yet understand, but we are not less important than they are. We are not toddlers in some deity's kindergarden. We are wise enough to act for ourselves and take responsibility for those actions. Wise enough to ask ourselves the question that I hold at the heart of everything: What do we want to do with the power we have?
Ritual is also a very important part of both witchcraft and religion that we can all adopt for our wellbeing. Feeling in tune with nature and its cycles make us feel that we are part of something, that we do, in fact, have a place in this world. Every morning, I take the time to drink my coffee without distraction and just enjoy the quiet before the buzz of the day begins. I meditate for ten minutes. I listen to my body and give it the chance to communicate whatever it might need on that particular day. I check on my plants and water them. It makes a huge difference, not just because I found out I experience much less migraines, but also in a more subtle way that is hard to explain. I feel calmer and more lucid. I take the small obstacles of daily life in stride. I enjoy things I wouldn't otherwise even know they existed, such as the singing of birds, the way sunlight changes as clouds shifts, the first appearance of a new leaf or bud on one of my beloved plants. And it costs me just a few minutes of saying "no" to the rush. It's meowgic.
although you never know! There's still those things that may escape our senses and understanding... am I kitting? Am I?↩
it's usually referred to as SASS witchcraft, for Science-minded, Atheist/Agnostic, Secular and Sceptical. I can recommend the Critical Thinking Witch Collective for all who are interested. You might even bump into me.↩