A Future Without God(s)?

by Phinehas Treptow

When I was a child, a seemingly rhetorical question my second-grade teacher posed to the classroom resonated deeply with me: “Can one person change the world?” I immediately internalized the question, and it became “Can I change the world?”

At that time I was under the influence of the theistic movement Jehovah’s Witnesses, a splinter of Christianity with its own millenarian, restorationist interpretation of the Bible, based on the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society’s “New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures.” I had faith in the movement’s maxim that a theocratic new world order called “the new system” was coming soon. Introduced to my impressionable mind from birth, this and other irrational principles of Jehovah’s Witnesses were deeply rooted in my version of reality.

I firmly believed that, when God created this “new world order,” all wrongs would be made right and everyone who had suffered throughout all of history would be recompensed for their pain. “Wait on Jehovah” was the group’s repetitive rhetoric: no one but God could bring positive social change. For me to try to do so, beyond merely preaching the movement’s faith and attempting to convert others to it, would be arrogent and blasphemous, and would show distrust in God. This was how my blind devotion to Jehovah’s Witnesses suppressed my desire to have a positive effect on the world.

My world view has changed considerably since then. I am now an outspoken Atheist. “Can I change the world?” still nags at me. Whenever I have tried to suppress that question, I always knew it was there, deep inside of me. Now, with such a different outlook on life, my honest answer to that burning question is simple: “Not if I don’t try.”

Now that I am close to 30, I realize how much I do not and will not know. No matter how much research I mentally ingest about the world around me, I will never have enough of the accurate information required to connect all of the dots. However, the connection between some of the dots is glaringly obvious to me.

Religion is madness.

A mental sickness that plagues our species, religion breeds hate, intolerance and war. Religion creates conflicts between irreconcilable views and beliefs, which divides and antagonizes individuals and groups who could otherwise make more progress toward mutual cooperation and understanding. While the death of all religions and their illogical, faith-based principles would not solve all of mankind’s problems, it would alleviate much human suffering. Without religion, we could achieve greater peace and happiness together as a world community.

We, as a species, have adopted various religions in diverse types of societies for thousands of years. Time and time again, religious movements have failed and given way to new, supposedly superior ones. It is time we give way to reason.

I do not believe in stamping out religion forcibly or debasing the human dignity of theists. Civil debate and the spread of accurate information and logical arguments are the only weapons we need. Logic is the vaccination for the disease that is religion.

“Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”

— Steven Weinberg, Nobel Laureate in Physics, from a 1999 speech made in Washington, D.C.