Blog post 5

I listened to "There Is No God" by Penn Jillette on This I Believe. I gravitated towards this one because for a long time now I have found the concept of religion and the ways humans personify and intellectualize the wonders of life very interesting. Having been brought up in a Christian household, I can say that the person I am today was–for the most part–positively molded by some of the Christian values my parents adamantly enforced on me and my brother, like having compassion for people and generally striving to be a good human being. In my adolescence we went to church almost every Sunday and I actively participated in the bible studies they had for the younger children. My nine year old self would probably call my current self a heathen with utter disgust. Let’s chalk it up to teenage rebellion, but eventually I started to question my faith and what the concept of god really means. When I realized that I no longer believed in something that used to give me great comfort, I was left feeling quite empty and lost, not knowing what to do with this new belief in no god. Penn touches upon this when he says:


“Anyone with a love for truth outside of herself has to start with no belief in God and then look for evidence of God. She needs to search for some objective evidence of a supernatural power. All the people I write emails to often are still stuck at this searching stage. The atheism part is easy.”


This quote really resonated with me because it articulated the experience that I had gone through. He brings up a good point that atheism, on its own, is unproductive and unrewarding. Penn goes on to say that atheism is merely a stepping stone; something that you land on and should be used to bring you to newer and enlightening things. On the other hand, even though it can be unrewarding and easy at times, Penn–and myself included–found atheism to be quite liberating. I guess that’s just the double edged sword to atheism.

Link: There Is No God