Natural History

Today, I was reading in one of the West Virginia local papers about a wildlife photographer who has captured some amazing images of creatures in the East.  He talked about his travels and about how he could sometimes become so immersed in his hobby that he would come in until well after dark.

I felt a certain amount of kindred spirits with the fellow, but at the end of the article, he mentioned that his work photographing wildlife brought him some knowledge of God.

And there, my connection was severed. The same wildlife he photographs includes species like black bears in which the boars often kill and consume cubs.  The beautiful red fox he photographed is not immune to bouts of surplus killing, and the same animal often dies horrifically when the sarcoptic mange overwhelms its pelt.

I find in none of these animals an intelligence that forged them. Instead, I see “the other nations” that are “other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.” The processes of nature produced these beings just as I was produced from them.  The only thing about me that is special is that I am part of an unusually large-brained species that has created such complex social systems and has created all sorts of moral philosophies and codes by which to live in these societies.

I confess my doubt openly and honestly. I no longer believe in the Christian deity. Indeed, I don’t think I ever did. When I became baptized and confirmed in the United Methodist Church, I was something like 13 or 14 years old. I never denied evolution. I never truly believed in miracles.

But I was culturally Christian, but the deity I recognized was very wishy-washy.  By age 16, I was a deist.

And now, I believe in nature and nothing else. If there is something else, it will be fully demonstrated to me through tangible evidence and not tired bromides,constantly moving goalposts, or idle speculation.

And the more time I spend in nature and the more time I spend reading about it, the less I am convinced of any deity’s existence.

I reject the term atheist, but only because the behavior some vocal atheists has given me pause. I don’t think that the public can be won to our way of thinking by railing against people’s stupidity or delusions, because it is not reason that causes people to believe.

And in some areas of the world, it takes courage to let it go. I’m not just talking about countries that are run as theocracies. Even in the United States, it can be so difficult to admit that one no longer has supernatural beliefs.

It took me years to realize that I had no supernatural beliefs at all. The beliefs themselves are lost or lost then rearranged in the cognitive space to make some sense of it all.

In the end, I lost my ability to rearrange these problems in my brain, and I honestly just dropped them all. It was the only way I could make sense of existence.

I had to accept that we don’t know it all, and the only way to know anything is to study the evidence. The best way to study the evidence is through the scientific method, and science makes this whole question unworthy.

Science knocks man off his throne at the pinnacle of creation.  Science makes us smaller and more insignificant. It is far more profoundly humbling to enter into these questions with a doubt that you know will never be answered fully than to enter into them with a predetermined conclusion.

I no longer ask questions about God. Instead, I accept that there is Nature. And Nature just is. Nothing more and nothing less.