Faith and Unfaith (philosophical/autobiographical/story)

By Luke Labern

A test of faith

Ever since it was revealed to me by my faith as a children that there was an option – or rather, that it was possible – not to believe in God I have found it the most profound question that there is, followed closely by ‘is there a meaning of life?’. I do not so much believe that I have the answer as much as I believe I have done all the right calculations and, from the evidence I have, have made the right decision.

But there is no ‘answer’: an answer implies that the question has been replied to and the case is closed. But that is never the case in these matters. The proudest part of being an atheist, for me, is the sustained effort it takes to be one. Being an atheist is a badge of honour not just because you have placed your faith in the simultaneous insignificance and beauty of humanity (both in terms of time in existence and in relation to the rest of the known universe) but because of the troubling, fascinating and difficult conversations you have with yourself and with other believers and non-believers.

The most important part of being an atheist – and this is the one thing that the pious disagree with most of all – is that one should always doubt their unbelief and question their unfaith. If something happens in life – a death, a tragedy; a love, a world-changing experience, a psychoactive experience – the deep questions that many people would rather not think about come into play. But for an atheist (atheist here standing in for agnostics, sceptics and the rare breed of non-dogmatic religious believers for the sake of concision), every single day brings with it a flurry of new experiences which must be categorised and must force the non-believer to question what it is they belief. It is remarkably easy to fall into a pattern – an ideological trench from which it is all too simple to stay in, rarely peeping over the top into the battleground. But it is almost certainly their duty to not only look into the battlefield, but to spend their life there, perhaps retreating to their trench at night, asleep. Or perhaps a dream will change their life like it has done mine. 

As I mentioned, this need to constantly re-evaluate the evidence and one’s experience in life is exactly the difference between the composed thinker and the dogmatic. But I do not mean this as an insult. ‘Faith’ (in a higher power) is supposed to be the crowning feature of the (monotheistic) believer. Even when times are tough and life is not going their way, it is their faith in God – their ability to stay true to ‘Him’/it – which is most important. This is an exact inversion of the unbeliever.

A believer might lie to you and say that they have always believed in God, but I can guarantee that there have been times – days, weeks, months, possibly even years – that the most devout persons have severely doubted these things.

I know this precisely because I have doubted my unbelief, and spent many, many hours convinced that there is ‘something’. And this is coming from the most passionate atheist that I know (though I can only speak for myself). I consider myself a staunch atheist, but that does not mean I don’t question it whenever I get the chance to reflect on it.

And though after all of my doubting I almost always conclude once again that there is no God, that evolution is how we came here and that there is no why, and that life is thus absurd, it is not like a rubber band pinging back to its original shape: I suspend my convictions and reason it through – though all of this is true, and that I am currently writing from my usual atheist standpoint, I will now suspend my unbelief once again and talk you through (perhaps) the most profound test of my unfaith to date.

A test of unfaith

I have often written about dreams.

Dreams in the metaphorical sense – although it could be said that when a dream is achieved it is like stepping out of reality and floating in a viscous sea of unreality, where things obsessed about for so long become the every day. And it is exactly this move from abstract contemplation to reality that is testing.

(By dream I mean a vast, grand goal established either consciously or unconsciously (what you desire most in the world; impulsively desiring a circumstance, event, moment or person or even a form of recognition or tranquility in life), worthy of obsessing over -- the sort of thing that would change or define your life, that would act as the peak. Part of the dream is how much you believe in it -- vehemently wishing with every spare moment that you would, or could -- and then revelling in that moment you succeed. This moment of realisation, where time slows down and the world becomes vivid, and life itself takes a snapshot of you looking dazed and stunned at what has just happened -- the closest thing to realising that there is a meaning of life (defining one and achieving it), in my mind, stands for the moment (or moments) in your life where, if you could, when dead, you would look back and say: that was it.)

Leaving aside the various details of subjective consciousness – which is undoubtedly one of the biggest questions facing the humanist, the atheist and the biologist – that is, why is what we see our unique view of the world? Why does our body ‘end’, as it were? What is the rest made out of? And the easiest thing to grasp: how on earth do the mind and body interact? How can thoughts, which we assume are ‘unextended’ in the sense that they don’t have a length, breadth of position in space (although we do think of them chronologically (how?)) interact with our body? How can my thinking ‘there is a car headed towards me, I need to move’ translate into my moving out of the way?

All of this (and a huge amount of other troubling/fascinating problems/questions) aside, I want to focus on grander things, using some very loaded words which I will attempt to explain in more minute detail with particular reference to myself and my life.

The most troubling thing for me as an atheist is my notion of fate.

Fate, or destiny, is the belief that ‘the cosmos is ordered or predetermined’. I disagree with this definition, as in I don’t believe that the cosmos is ordered by a higher power (I believe it is ‘ordered’ in that, obviously, things have structure – although quantum theory attempts to say that actually, the universe is in flux) and I certainly do not think it is predetermined – definitely not by a higher power.

And yet, time after time, even during my formative years as an agnostic-turned-atheist, I have always believed in some sort of ‘destiny’. Even if it was just a strong likelihood, I have always had faith in myself, my dreams, and what I would become. One of the defining – if not the defining components of ‘Luke Labern’ is his faith in himself. Other words for this faith are ‘drive’, ‘ambition’ and so forth: but it has never occurred to me that I would ever fail. The only two options I have considered are success at those things I wish to achieve, or early death. ‘Failure’ through early death I do not consider failure. As long as I am alive, I have and always will believe that the dreams I have had since I was a boy, which became more specific as I grew up as a teenager and are not only hardened today, but are coming true, would come true and will continue to.

I have envisaged my future for so long that it is simply a matter of the time passing and my doing what is necessary at the right time.

Even during the few times I have ever doubted myself, it was not true doubt: it was a cloud of thick, negative emotion brought upon me but two very different circumstances which merely threatened to blow out the flame of my self-belief, but which never quite got extinguished. If it had, I would be dead.

But I am not. Yet.

And yet, as I am sure you will have already realised, this is surely a contradiction. How can I believe that there is no God, no overall control in the universe and nature other than the law of natural selection (random mutation, survival of the fittest and a lot of luck) and simultaneously believe through all this that my very precise dreams will come true?

More shockingly, how is it that I not only believe all this, but that they are all coming true? And how is it that, no matter what happens, as long as I am alive, this self-belief will be (quite literally) easier than breathing?

A quick overview will show how unbelievably ‘lucky’ or even absurd all of this is.

All of these must be true: there must have been a universe; there must have been life in that universe; there must have been a particular solar system with a particular planet to cultivate life; there were billions upon billions of imperceptible changes throughout time of the original life that begin through all its myriad stages until the human emerged (but let us pause: just how impossibly lucky this already is: the luck factor here is quite literally impossible to conceive); human history must have emerged; the precise number of humans lived, did particular actions, died after passing on their genes; the very precise human history that has happened, had to happen; my ancestors had to pass on their genes at the exact right moment with the exact right partner; meanwhile, life had to continue with no extinction during this time… fast forward to my parents: they meet, they happen to procreate on a particular date; a particular sperm finds its way to the egg and a zygote is formed: me.

I find this fact particularly fascinating and difficult to grasp: consider how many potential human beings could have been created in this one situation, ignoring all the rest of the history of time and the universe. All of the millions of potential sperm and all of the potential times when procreation was possible. And I arrived.

And now to the particulars: I came to live, I grew up in England, shaped by my genetics and my surroundings, and I discovered I had a few innate talents and certain psychological and physical characteristics. And I discovered what I was good at, and I began to dream certain dreams. And for whatever reason, I simply cannot, will not and never will relinquish my faith in my ability to achieve those things. Not only my ability to do them – that would be too easy – but I refuse to believe that I won’t achieve them. Even considering the infinite amount of things that could stop me which are quite definitely out there and are compossible in all of the various futures of the world.

And though it seems impossibly hard to marry these two together (my lack of belief in God and my apparent belief in my ‘destiny’, though the labels don’t matter), I still continue. Even in the complete face of reason.

Why?

Perhaps it’s because I’m simply a human who cannot even begin to comprehend the important things in the universe. That’s quite possible. Almost certainly true. But the fact that I have grasped this much – the fact I recognise how unlikely it is that not only am I here, but that I have such precise dreams and that I believe I will achieve them (and continually march towards them, achieving them at particular intervals) – seems to me indicative of the fact that I, or any one else, should not give up thinking.

Though there are no firm answers to these questions and never will be (who or what could possibly prove them?), this simply proves that I must never stop questioning them. It proves a few other things, the most important of which, I think, is this:

I will never ‘know’ whether or not there is a God. But I reject the term ‘agnostic’: it implies sitting on the fence. But that is not what I do, or who I am. I am very much always on one side of the fence – usually both – arguing both sides. And this is proven perfectly when I say that, at this moment, I am an atheist – and, simultaneously, I have complete and utter faith in myself. It is hard not to question one or both of these beliefs when all of the above circumstances, and their combined unlikelihood are taken into account. It seems to demand that I ask whether there is some guiding force, or control, or meaning behind all this.

And yet I seem to be able to say this – because I truly believe this – no, there is not. The only person with control is me (and in your life, you).

Whilst I am, of course, in a continual state of faith and unfaith, each being tested in equal measure and with equal vigour, the question remains open, just as I remain open. And though all of this seems confusing and contradictory, it only confirms my lust for life.

The phrase ‘you only live one’ is a fact. But this is also a fact: if you live well enough, and you place your faith in the right place… once is more than enough.

The taste of dreams will make you think like that.