Gott Mit Uns: Open Letter to Atheists and Theists

[DarkPoet]

I remember very well a morning (I may have been fourteen or fifteen and was just sitting on the loo, but that's not really that important, though the bathroom seems to not have lost it's inspirational qualities since the times of the old Greeks) when I, for the very first time, discovered the enormity of my lack of knowledge. Up to then, I'd get curious about this or that, and if I couldn't deduce a valid answer myself, I'd ask someone about it or read a book, and get an answer. But on this special morning, I was wondering about what was outside of the universe, having recently read that the universe itself has limited dimensions.

So I had asked my mother, and suffice to say, her answer wasn't very elucidating, and my grandparents could only offer me the vague advice to not delve into questions that aren't helpful in life. My teachers told me that this was something that couldn't really be explained, and our preacher just shrugged it off with a comment on the wonders of god. So I sat on the loo for quite some time, trying to imagine a big bubble of almost nothing surrounded by even less than nothing, and even trying to bring it together with what I had learned about God and his creation.

I couldn't. And I realized at this very moment how limited my knowledge and imagination really are. The floor below me gave way into a dark abyss of uncertainty and I felt as if free falling from fifty thousand feet. My security vanished in the blink of an eye, and I became aware that I had to re-learn so many things, ask so many questions anew, and that I, even if I got them all answered correctly, might not be able to understand the answers.

I was lost, a blind beggar in a strange world filled with endless noise, asking questions about life, death and reason that nobody could answer satisfactory. And for quite some time (even years), I struggled with the feeling that I had experienced this very moment, the loss of the security of an explainable world.

The world became a foreign, cold place for me, and I desperately searched for ways to give meaning to it, from trying out esoteric or occult rituals to taking all kinds of drugs and wearing "Make love not war" t-shirts. I went through some really bad times and only barely came out alive, pushed to see reason (or light) at the last possible (and maybe also first possible) moment by someone who loved me.

Having been there, fallen into that abyss, how could I expect others to make the jump? Calling religious people morally reprehensible is, in my opinion, unjust and narrow sighted. Our world is imperfect, as we are ourselves, but even in our lack of understanding we are (slowly) developing. Away from a world where the strongest, most knowledgeable or most ruthless dictate how reality has to be perceived, towards a world where everyone can build his/her own opinion and freely discuss it (the existance of bdsml is proof of that).

Getting rid of religious dogmatism is, for me, a part of this development, but I've also discovered that this comes usually as a secondary effect of developing one's own morale. There's no need in fighting religion when experiences like love, trust or gratefulness can make a much more convincing argument. It was, after all, Ghandi who led India into independence with his weaponless revolution, while lots of surrounding states just swapped oppressors through their liberty wars.