The Opposite of Faith is not reason: Why atheists fail to grasp the concept of God.

 Atheists often gripe that those with faith are lacking in basic reasoning skills, why else would a person choose to believe in a "supernatural fantasy world". Atheists also claim that reason and faith are mutually exclusive: you can't possibly have one without the other. To an atheist a rationally minded person could not possibly hold the idea of a supernatural deity in their head and also be able to discuss scientific discoveries. They view faith as an impediment to reason, in a way they see the religious as purely ignorant, they lack basic knowledge about the way the world works because they have chosen to replace their critical thinking skills with magical thinking skills.
So how is it that there are many competent people running the world that can have these silly beliefs in fairies and bearded white men hanging out in heaven? First of all atheists are missing the mark when they claim reason and faith are incompatible. To an atheist the opposite of faith is reason, but to a religionist the opposite of faith is despair. From a religious persons perspective living life without faith in a higher power is an empty, depressing proposition that implies that the world is just a chaotic mess full of misery. That is why it's so difficult for a person of faith to imagine that atheists don't have some belief system, what a horrible proposition to live in a world governed by nothing. The truth is that atheists do have a belief system, they may not like to think of it as faith, but they certainly have a plausibility structure that governs their perspective of the world. The simplest way to define the atheist worldview is in Humanism; the belief in the inherent power of human reason. In a nutshell, atheists worship humanity, more on that later, first lets return to the faith versus reason argument.
The other major point atheists fail to grasp is that faith and reason can easily co-exist in a single person. Faith is not a set of blinders that one puts on and then simply ignores reality, rather faith is a way of living that involves humbling oneself to a higher power and unlocking inner love, compassion and peace. People become faithful the same way people become atheist: they are searching for meaning in their lives. Once they find this meaning, it serves as a vehicle for their daily actions, similar to a map used for navigation, it is a guide not a law or rulebook as atheists think. Faith in a power greater than oneself does not negate the ability to use reason to explain natural phenomena, but rather it allows one to see the beauty in such systems from a esoteric and mystical perspective, conceding that human beings are but one small animal within an infinite universe and cannot possibly hope to understand these mysteries using our mind. A scientist studying a bacteria can both test his hypothesis using the scientific method and also have a faith in a higher power that exists within the entire universe without losing his ability to do science.
Atheist derive their meaning from the world by relying on reason and what they view as the innate rationality of the world around them. Unfortunately, as even scientists have discovered, human beings are not rational animals. Study after study has shown that given the chance humans will behave irrationally over and over again. Just look at how bad humans are at making simple decisions concerning money. (Insert link) Atheists look to human achievement and progress as examples of the power of reason, but they are really just worshiping themselves, placing the ego above all else. Atheists look at people of faith and mock them because they think somehow that faith in a higher power is an admission of weakness, but it really is a source of strength. To have an abiding faith in the purpose of one's existence on earth and find meaning in everything that happens in the world is truly a satisfying experience that atheists crave. Atheists want to have meaning in their lives too, so they place their faith in human reason and rationality and are continually disappointed. Eventually atheists turned to science to be their savior; they look at the achievements of science and think "now here's some amazing human achievements I can hang my hat on. Look at what humans are capable of, we must be truly brilliant and god-like." Unfortunately for the atheists science is supremely flawed too, mainly because it is undertaken by the humans who are not rational machines but animals full of emotions and defects. Science is great at making cause and effect relationships, but fails miserably at explaining generalities. Add some complexity to a scientific system and it all falls apart: look how bad science is at predicting the weather or global climate. It relies on models made by the ultimate rational machine: the computer. Here is another piece of human tech that atheists can point to and claim is the apotheosis of human achievement: the computer. Alas, it is just a machine that reads 1's and 0's and is programmed by human minds and is useless at predicting or explaining complex systems like human behavior. Computers are the atheists saints. They worship tech in the hopes that it will someday explain the universe or spit out some perfectly unified theory about existence, but as Douglas Addams so eloquently showed us the answer to life, the universe, and everything is 42. Computers can only regurgitate whatever we place in them; if we don't have the answers in the code they are not going to output anything novel about existence.
Atheists truly just want the same thing that people of faith have; meaning in their lives and purpose. They choose to worship technology and humanity and are continually disappointed. Atheists are really treading in dangerous waters as they are placing human will and ego above all else. By relying only on their own self-will they are likely to fall prey to the fallacy of their own minds and give into to whatever whim they come up with. It is a selfish worldview that is devoid of the humility that is needed to promote love, compassion and tolerance. If one worships their self they will begin to view any idea they have as plausible and useful because after all, they think, I'm a human and I'm the best thing in the universe so far. This centrist, self-absorbed thinking is the opposite of what most people of faith believe in. Belief in a higher power is admitting that humans are not number one; we are special and have an eternal soul, but there is one greater than us that has all power and that is God. By living in humility, we begin to act selflessly and compassionately because we know that we are not in control or have power over the world.

-Continued in Part II-

The Spiritual Plane: God

            The idea of God is too small to encompass the actuality of it’s existence. There is truly an entire other plane of existence that is operating all around us, but that most of us are completely unaware of. There is obviously the material plane and we can test it, feel it and look at it. But there is also another plane that I label the spiritual plane: it co-exists with the material and yet is entirely invisible and immeasurable, but it is there, and when we tap into it we can reach the truth. This spiritual plane exists whether we acknowledge it or not and operates by its own intrinsic laws which we have begun to slowly discover with the help of prophets like Jesus and Buddha. However, because it is immaterial and eternal, by its very nature it is impossible to quantify. It can be experienced and if we are aware of its workings we can know it’s there, but it’s not possible to show to another person. Similar to electricity. We can use the manifestations of electricity, but we cannot see it physically in our everyday lives.(This is an analogy, obviously we can measure and quantify electricity, I use it for illustrative purposes)

            The spiritual plane is God. It is the infinite creation of the universe and the nothingness all at once. It is Cause. It is what sets everything into motion and being. It is all around us operating and helping and guiding us when we choose to use it. Unfortunately, because of its esoteric nature most people never utilize this force. It is a cosmic force for Good and can completely change people’s views and outlooks on their lives if they choose to use it. This force is at once benevolent and omnipotent, but importantly it is not individualized. It is not possible to explain the way this force acts on us and helps us in our lives; it is not some anthropomorphized deity that is looking out for us, but rather more akin to a supreme oneness. That feeling that you get sometimes when you suddenly feel at peace and one with all of humanity. That is the spiritual plane. It is everywhere and nowhere at once and pulsates throughout all of us keeping us alive. It may feel individualized when one of your prayers is answered, as if some single entity heard you and responded, but actually it was the act of going inward and tapping into this force that caused the event to unfold. When you pray correctly, you are tapping into this infinite source of power. Praying is a way to focus this spiritual force and direct it. When you pray to act in God’s will you are asking for alignment of your material self back into the fold of the spiritual. This is critical to having a fulfilled, serene life. We must always realign ourselves back into the spiritual plane because in reality, there is no self only God. I use God as a referent to the spiritual plane. There is only the illusion of self that is created in our minds to sustain our material needs. As animals we must have certain things to keep us alive in the physical world: food, sleep, reproduction, exercise, etc. In order to accomplish these basic animal tasks our minds have developed a concept of individuation from others so that we can be sure that we as an individual animal will have the requirements to live as physical beings. Unfortunately when we created this concept of self, it had the negative side effect of cutting us off from God. God is all of existence being at once. God is the oneness of all the living and non-living matter in the universe acting simultaneously in the present. There is no past or future in the spiritual Plane. There is no time: that is another human construct adapted for our physical needs. When we create the idea of self, we have placed a barrier to God. Self implies that the individual can survive with nothing more than a mind and a body, but that is simply not true. We also need the spirit and that is God. Our minds trick us into thinking that we have this clearly defined self that is in control and able to make decisions and guide the being independently. The mind creates this illusion so convincingly that many people fall victim to it and become delusional in thinking that there is nothing but self. They take it to an extreme position and glorify all things related to the self and the physical. Here is where the real danger is for us as this creates attachment.

The illusion of Self

            However, we need some of this attachment to the physical world for the survival of our physical bodies. If we truly existed only with God our physical bodies would stop providing us with consciousness and we would be called ‘dead.’ It’s almost as if we are both God and human at once. That is we contain a part of the eternal and part of the physical simultaneously. When we are ‘born’ we already existed, but are merely now manifested into a physical body. I use the term we, but because there is no such thing as self what I really am referring to is the eternal part of the being. The idea of self is created later, once the human grows into maturity. Therefore, there is eternal life just as Jesus speaks of in the Bible. Eternal life is a byword for this second plane of existence; the spiritual plane or God. It has existed since the beginning or rather in more esoteric terms, God has always been and always will be because God does not operate on this corporate physical plane that is constrained by time. If this is true then that means we are also eternal. Because we are manifestation of both the spiritual and the physical we have God within us and are therefore partly eternal. This should be comforting to us all, but it does not imply that we should retain our idea of the self. That is a pure construct of the mind which is physical and will decay and die. But this shouldn’t be cause for worry. We will rather become pure God when we shed our physical bodies. We will flow back into the river of infinite oneness that we were plucked out of when we started this adventure and we will return back into everything and nothing at once. We will be reunited with God and become pure spirit again, able to flow in and out of all matter freely. Will we then be reanimated into another human body and remember our old selves? I don’t believe so, but I don’t know. There is no way to understand the realm of the spirit and its mysteries concerning those questions, but it shouldn’t trouble us and if it does that is because of an attachment to self.

             Most of us are truly attached to this self that we are creating. We grow to like our bodies, our identity and our selfs. But getting attached to this self is dangerous as it leads to the idea that we are the cause of events and existence. It also leads to addiction, vices and selfishness. A love of ego and self is the way that we cut our beings off from God. There is only one cause and that is God. When we begin to worship our selves we begin to feed off of all our materialistic and animal needs: sex, desire, greed, lust, jealous, fear, and hatred. A person that is self-worshipping will see no problem with accumulating objects like money because they are trying to glorify and separate themselves from God and the other humans. They are operating on a purely physical level and they see the other humans as threats to the objects in the world that they desire. So they strike out against their fellows and try and take from them, they indulge in any desire that pleases their physical body like sex, drugs and food to excess. When a being places their physical body above all else this things seem natural. They may say things like: “Everyone wants a lot of money, so I’m going to get the most.” Or “Let’s be honest, everyone knows that to be happy you need a house a good job and security in this world.

They think that the way to happiness and serenity is by winning the game of humanity; that is getting more than everyone else and indulging in whatever fancy they want whenever they want. They truly believe that flying a jet to Paris to grab a bite to eat is what everyone wants to do and is true happiness. They have perfected the art of living in the physical plane and they derive all of their pleasure from life from that one part of their beings never truly utilizing the spiritual plane at all. Many of these people suffer from depression and a terrible emptiness that continues to follow them no matter how many vacations and splurges they indulge in. It seems as if the next desire will fill that void, and it may temporarily, but eventually it never lasts. It can’t because the physical world is not eternal like the spiritual. The physical world is transient and mutable, whereas the spiritual world is eternal and infinite. Most of us live primarily in the physical world and are tormented by these desires on a daily basis, rarely finding time to look up and take a breath of the clean spiritual air that is right around us. We get so mired in our dharma that we are like birds with our head in the sand, never glimpsing the whole other world all around us. Our physical bodies work to create this illusion with our minds in order to keep this part of us satiated and so most of the times we have to fight against our firmly rooted sense of self just to begin to see that there is this other glorious reality all around us if we just look.