“I Understand God”
This is a re-post of a story that reddit user assfly0 posted in the atheism subreddit, which I thought was so good that I wanted to share it with as many more people as possible. Enjoy!
Today was a dreary, drizzly Sunday. Wet, cold and raw, it decided. I lounged in the house, eating breakfast, completing my easy homework assignments, looking outside at the rain, wondering about a good time to get a run.
Hours went by and the rain went on, unrelenting. Unbelievable, I thought. It cannot last much longer. It can’t! I have to go running. Running is the only thing that can remedy a spell of smashed asshole syndrome (SAS), which is what I felt like.
Eventually, the rain subsided into a mere sprinkle. I figured, Ah, it’s going away. I better run for it and take my chances before it’s too late. So I put on running pants, my black hoodie, my Nikes and my mp3 player and took off in the rain.
Pretty soon, I realized it was coming down harder than I thought. Fuck! It’s too late. Can’t turn back. I’m already running, and I’m only doing four miles. About two miles in, it really starts coming down, soaking my shoes, saturating my sweatshirt heavy. God! Cock! Shiiiittt!
This makes no sense. It was raining all day and then it lets down to make it seem like it’s going to stop. Then I decide to run and when I’m too far out on my route to justify going back, it begins pouring worse than all day. What the hell? What’s your god damn problem, God? Huh? Are you enjoying this? You slimy omnipotent turd!
This is what was actually going through my mind at the time. I really and truly felt as if there were some mocking entity out there doing this to me, if for only a brief moment. For that fleeting time, Descartes’ evil prankster was doing this to me.
Thankfully, a moment later, I remembered that I don’t believe in God. I’m a semi-Christian turned agnostic turned militant atheist. After I realized this, something remarkable happened: my anger evaporated, like steam off my hot face. There was nobody doing this to me, no reason to be angry; there is only apathetic, negligent mother nature—god bless her. There is no reason to take anything personally. It wasn’t my fault or anyone else’s; there is only circumstance, like everything in this world.
It was during this time I insighted why people believe in God. They believe in him because it is so fucking easy. It is automatic. It is so natural when feeling pain or hate or any strong emotion, to attribute human qualities to anything, even when it doesn’t make sense. It feels incredibly, extraordinarily good to personify things. We see faces in everything, in clouds, blankets, even three dots—two on top, one of the bottom—can make us think of a face. Our cars, computers, or anything that requires our input, has a “personality.” In a highly emotional state, cognition is hijacked by more primitive and dominant neural pathways, which negotiate social interaction. Personification reflects this regression or crosstalk of circuitry.
Much of our nature is defined by the environmental significance of the other. Our brains in particular, have evolved so quickly and to such great heights largely to accommodate for language ability, so to better anticipate and manipulate the other. Our brains are wired to understand the other and the extent that we do this is nothing short of remarkable.
Our brains are, thus, specially configured to understand phenomena in terms of humans. Of course, then, there is a God!
written by assfly0
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