Why does it happen that a man created by God does not believe in Him? ... It is not for the same reason that people close themselves off from God.
Our Russian philosopher Vladimir Soloviev rightly said that there is "honest" unbelief, and there is "dishonest".
The dishonest does not want God to be, it runs away from any thought of God, it hides from the moral laws of the holy world. Evil and selfish people are interested in "God not being." God's existence, which, in essence, is their salvation, appears to them as the Last Judgment, judging their impure and meaningless life. Among such unbelievers there are not only those who deny God, but also those who are seized with hatred of the Creator, which, of course, they only confirm the existence of the One whom they deny. Invisible, but felt by the heart, the image of the Creator's greatest sanctuary connects the egoistic and sinful will of man.
There are other unbelievers who suffer from the problems of evil, good, truth, moral life. There is no self-satisfaction in them. In their human relation to the world and people, they want the good for everyone, but they hope to achieve harmony and happiness in the world only by human and external means. In this they are, of course, wrong and too optimistic. Human resources and forces are limited. Without the help of the Highest Divine world, a person cannot find real life.
There is still a thoughtless, animal unbelief in the world. Man chews his cud of material life and he doesn't need anything else. Too lazy to even think about God, about your soul and eternity waiting for it.
The Gospel likens such people to guests who, being invited to the great and good King for a feast, “as if by agreement” refuse the invitation. One says: “I bought oxen and go to the field to test them, forgive me, I cannot come”; the other makes his marriage a pretext for refusing God's invitation; the third finds some other excuse not to come to the Source of life. People reject the most important value in life, closeness to the Creator. Immersed in their everyday affairs, worries, joys and sorrows, they do not want to raise their lives above them, to eternal truth.
People who reject the truth of God (or who have not yet cognized it) find themselves in the cells of different party, class, racial, national and any other personal and collective, egoistic, contradicting "truths" to each other in the world. They do not see behind their truths and above them the one God’s truth.
Many people live this way, not realizing that the whole human history with its wars, troubles, bloodshed and violence of some people over others is only a practical and logical result of human life, which has not come to its highest, spiritual completion and enlightenment through submission to God's truth. ...
Every person stands before God all his life, whether he wants it or not. The sun does not ask about the attitude towards him. It illuminates and warms the world. But - the gardens not filled with water are burned by the sun, and people hiding in the dark basement of their unbelief remain in darkness.
There are “unbelievers” as if by misunderstanding: they are spiritually honest people, but they consider themselves “unbelievers” because they were indoctrinated or they themselves assimilated the wrong concept of God, the world and man. Such people in the depths of their being are not against God, they are only against incorrect, narrow concepts of God. And in their search for truth, they are easily able to cognize the spiritual world.
The Gospel itself tells us that even among the twelve closest disciples of Christ, there was one traitor. This does not refute the truth of Christ; on the contrary, it further emphasizes it. Whether we Christians are good or bad, this has to do only with our salvation, but not with the existence of God.
Liars and criminals distort only their own personality, but not the truth of God ... No human hypocrisy can extinguish the light of the Divine world truth. "The righteousness of the Lord abides forever." And there are many, and always have been, people who love Christ's truth more than their lives.
The honest disbelief was the disbelief of the Apostle Thomas. Although he in vain showed his distrust of the words of people who could be trusted, to the apostles, but, wishing to see Christ risen to believe, he seemed to be afraid to believe with joy ...
If Christ is resurrected, then after all, his life, Thomas, must change radically, go completely differently ... Then everything in him must be illuminated by this light ... And when Thomas saw the truly risen Christ and touched his nail wounds with his own hands, - he exclaimed joyfully: "My Lord and my God!" And Christ said to him: “You believed because you saw Me; blessed are those who have not seen and have believed "(John 20:29)."
There are many such people in the world among all peoples. Not being able to see Christ with their physical eyes, they undoubtedly see Him through the eyes of their spirit, see the closeness of God with love and faith.
Honest doubt will find the truth, because it seeks it without guile. Those hungry for the last truth have already found God, because this thirst is the life of the Divine truth itself in people.
Why Some People Don't Believe in God? Really? Why? Every Orthodox Christian sooner or later meets unbelievers. And if these people mean something to him, he tries to understand the roots of their unbelief. The roots are different. Let's try to trace them together.
Residual atheism
It is quite common in our country in the form of a residual phenomenon. So to speak, the legacy of the Soviet era. This kind of godlessness is characteristic of the older generation, who was taught from school: "Science has proved that there is no God." The universities taught "scientific atheism." Doctoral dissertations were defended on atheism, and professorships were awarded.
The entire huge educational system worked for state atheism. And the results were consistent. To break out of the gravitational field of "scientific atheism" from the Soviet person was required not only intelligence and erudition, but much more - unbending independence of thought. After all, people were constantly told: “Religion is the lot of backward people. An educated person is ashamed to believe in God. " Some people think so by inertia.
The venerable scientist spoke about faith in God at the level of pioneer speeches and anti-religious posters
I remember a public atheistic speech by one academician. It was specific, the venerable physicist spoke about church faith in God at the level of primitive pioneer speeches and anti-religious propaganda posters. From the words of the gray-haired scientist breathed a childish helplessness in the face of the grandiose machine of state atheism. He was never able to move in his understanding of religious issues from the junior high school level.
Atheism renamed
Not everyone is ready to profess pure Soviet atheism. Some middle-aged people understand that such a worldview has lost its relevance and needs to be revised. The title also falls under the revision. Instead of the old-fashioned "I am an atheist" now they say in a new way: "I am a skeptic." Or in another version: "I am an agnostic." What is the difference between an atheist, a skeptic and an agnostic? The atheist is convinced that there is no God. A skeptic, as he should be, is skeptical about any belief in God. The agnostic believes that it is impossible to rationally substantiate belief in God. How important is the difference, judge for yourself.
It is easy for a skeptic and agnostic to live: doubting something is always easier than defending something
It is easy for a skeptic and an agnostic to live: doubting something is always easier than defending or proving something. The main thing is that skeptics are not asked to justify their skepticism about everything in the world. except their beloved all-pervading skepticism. Post-Soviet skeptics have already written off Marxist-Leninist philosophy as unnecessary. They have new authorities (although there should be no authorities for skeptics). They discuss the ideas of Richard Dawkins, speak out about genes, memes, the illusory nature of Christian beliefs.
Oppositional atheism
The urge to “be different” usually awakens in adolescence. For many, it retains its remarkable strength for a long time, constantly changes, finds new points of application. Atheism is not so rare because of the desire to feel in opposition, in a chosen minority, to recognize oneself as an elite.
Finally, we note that a person who is forced to consider himself an unbeliever is sometimes just one step away from living faith. Remember the voice from the Gospel: “I believe, Lord! help my unbelief ”(Mark 9: 24). And the Lord helped the unbeliever.
And so, some to the last "stand their ground" and die without repentance and the sacrament. Neither the persuasion of church children or grandchildren, nor the tangible presence of the Church in the information space helps. Others, even at the end of their days, open their hearts to God, begin to go to church, prepare for eternal life.
And when you stand at a funeral, the question “why does a person believe or does not believe in God?” Is by no means an abstract philosophical question, and the thought “how much does it depend on the person himself - to believe or not to believe?”.
Archpriest Alexy Herodov, rector of the Church of the Holy Martyr Vladimir in Vinnitsa, says:
- My deep conviction that a person believes in God only for one reason: such a person needs God, and a person wants God to be. And man deeply does not care whether Gagarin saw God in space or not. Such a person does not need proof. The proof for him is his ardent desire, and only then the whole world, which eloquently testifies that without God he could not exist.
A believer searches for God all his life, although he does not see with his eyes. He perfectly understands that he does not see, but his heart knows that God exists. The initiative of faith always comes only from a person. The first and most important step is taken by man himself. And already in response to this, God gives a person help that a person feels personally. Unbelieving people in vain think that God has deprived them of something, did not give them faith. I am deeply convinced that this belief simply “had nowhere to put”. Our heart is open to God.
- Does a person have a special gift of faith, the ability to do this?
- There is. Everyone has this gift exclusively. We create all the good pathos in our life ourselves at our will. But we don't synthesize. Building material is equally accessible to everyone, but everyone acts according to the word of the Savior: "A good man takes good out of the good treasure of his heart, and an evil one out of an evil evil."
- Why do many people want to believe and cannot?
– Because in a person's life there are things that are unimaginable and inconceivable. There are many phenomena that we have heard about, and we want to get them, but we do not know what they look like. It is a fact. The Gospel calls a way to find anything. It says: "The kingdom of God is weary and the needy girls delight her." This principle is not accidental. We see him in Scripture many times. God, as it were, sets a task, and leaves a person to solve it by working. For example, he displays animals in front of Adam, so that he, in turn, would give them names. Or he says to Adam and Eve “be fruitful and multiply,” and does not tell how, so that they themselves fill it with meaning, so that it is their own life, and not someone else's. Likewise, the Gospel creates a space, rather strange at first glance, so that a person can fill it with his own love. So that a person does not have a reason to feel bitterness over the fact that the treasure of his heart was not stolen by the fact that he was told to him in advance, and he was not given a place for his personal love.
- Is there a criterion for the authenticity of faith? This– believes sincerely, but this– pretending? Moreover, he is deceiving himself.
- The criteria are mandatory, but it is better to answer this question from my previous comment. A person recognizes only those things that he has experienced himself, are familiar to him. Therefore, the alien experience of faith, although useful, can also be understood only through personal labor. It is labor, not work. You find out later that it was a job, but while you are looking, it’s as if you are moving mountains.
It can be difficult to tell the difference between a believer and an unbeliever. For one very important reason. Many people start churching as if from the bottom up - from church tradition to Christ, instead of correctly churching - from Christ to tradition. Tradition in itself does not lead anywhere, and at the same time it is very "high in calories", so that you can earn all sorts of disorders of "digestion". And that is precisely why people who church through tradition do what they think is prudent. At first, they will become disgusted with tradition, then they become "philosophers", but they never reach Christ. "They can't anymore." As a friend of "Little Johnny" who does not drink or smoke, because she can no longer.
- What do people who do not believe in God rely on? And those who say that God is in their souls, that all religions are equal, and God is one for all?
– My conviction that such people, as well as atheists, and even suicides, which, in general, are the same, are simply original before God. They think that God is sure to be "seduced" by the "beauty of their soul." Thus, they oppose themselves to everyone around them, pose, and think that God will definitely pay attention to them in this way. This is a crafty calculation, and the end of it is death. Unfortunately, these “witty” ones learn the result of their cunning too late, beyond the threshold of death. It's scary to even imagine how they would like to return. To experience such melancholy - and you no longer need any hell.
- What will be the posthumous fate of unbelievers and those who did not go to church, did not partake of the Mysteries of Christ?
- I believe that they will not inherit any salvation, but I am far from forbidding God to invent anything for them at His Righteous Discretion. If I see them in the Kingdom of Heaven, I will not be offended.
Prepared by Marina Bogdanova
Tell me, is there a god?
-No.
-When will it be? "
From anecdotes
Once, at the methodological seminars at our academic institute in the 1980s, the doctor of biological sciences, I will call him by his initials E.L., began his speeches with shocking: "As you know, there is God!"
So I'll start with shocking. As you know, there is no God in nature. Neither Orthodox, nor Uniate, nor Catholic, nor Protestant, nor Calvinist, nor Anglican, nor Shiite, nor Sunni, nor Jewish, nor, I apologize, Chinese.
Dear reader! If you are a believer, do not rush to close the page with indignation! A little patience. I'm just going to explain that God exists, but as genetic knowledge, and that belief in the existence of God is rooted deep in the subconscious of people from their first breath at birth. But, unfortunately, he does not exist in nature, just as there are no ghouls, Baba Yaga, Santa Claus, not to mention the god Ra, the goddess Astarte, Zeus, Jupiter, Perun, etc. And certainly there is no God in churches, cathedrals, monasteries, mosques, synagogues and other "godly" institutions that claim a special closeness to God.
The human baby is born completely helpless. He will not survive even a few hours without help. Unlike baby animals, which literally immediately or very soon after birth are able to move independently, see and look for a food source, a human newborn can, and for a relatively long time, up to a year or more, only breathe, suck milk, and get rid of digestive products. A newborn can also cry. And it's all. The first thing that a newborn does is that he begins to breathe on his own and immediately begins to cry. Why he begins to breathe is clear. He lost his maternal oxygen supply. Why is he crying? And then, that he - still actually a completely unconscious living lump with a wandering gaze and involuntary movements of the limbs - initially "knows" at the genetic level that outside of him there is someone who will respond to this cry, warm, feed, wash, protect. No normal person can calmly and indifferently ignore the cry of a child. Numerous Mowgli stories show that animals cannot do this either. And the child uses this tool for the first few years of his life, until he becomes a conscious being. The crying instinct is one of the most basic human instincts. We add that the instinctive desire to cry in stressful situations remains for a long time in adults. It is in this property and primordial knowledge that the roots and breeding ground of religious belief in God are found. It is possible, perhaps with some degree of exaggeration, to say that the crying of a child is an instinctive prayer. This means that people actually do not just believe in God, but initially, subconsciously know that God - someone outside of them, who will personally protect them, feed and save them from all dangers - is. It is therefore quite possible that, as some researchers note, there is a region in the human brain that is responsible for religious feeling.
This instinct in children continues in the instinctive "faith in an adult." Without this instinct, children will not survive and will not learn anything. Children don't need to experiment with fire to find out that they can get burned. They will be told by mom or dad or grandparents or other adult in whose care they are. When children grow up, they learn from their parents, from other adults that there is an Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim Shiite, Muslim Sunni, Jewish or some other god (where did they come from, this is a separate conversation, let's not be distracted). But in the same way, they can overnight and lose faith in this, if another authoritative adult tells them, there is no God. And they will not experience any trauma from this, just as they do not experience any trauma when they are told that Santa Claus is a fairy tale and that dad bought them a New Year's gift. My wife recalls that as a child she had a very devout nanny, and until she was 7 years old she believed in God. Once her friend Valya said in the yard that there was no God. Terrified, she ran to her mother to ask what would Valya be for. But in the first grade, at one of the first lessons, the teacher at the school, Lydia Fyodorovna, said that there is no God, that's all. Since then, my wife has been an atheist.
But instinctive belief in the existence of God is not yet religion. Religion is a form of social organization. There is no doubt that modern world religions as social institutions originate in a slave society. They even retain many of its attributes. Suffice it to recall the attributes and phraseology of Orthodox Christianity: believers are God's servants, church hierarchs are rulers, etc. In those distant times, this natural initial instinctive predisposition of people to believe in an otherworldly omnipotent being, along with the innate ability to blindly trust the elder and stronger, naturally turned into an instrument of their subordination and social organization. And the basis of people's adherence to one religion or another is, apparently, another "basic" instinct, the herd instinct. The ancestors of modern Homo Sapience lived in flocks. Homo Sapience lived, and many still live, in tribes, and herd instinct was an important genetically inherited property for the survival of offspring. The fact that this herd instinct has not disappeared and remains in the human psyche, I think, does not need special proof. We are not nearly as far removed in our basic instincts from our primate ancestors as we might think.
The phrase "herd instinct" has a negative connotation in the Russian language. Therefore, modern "culturologists" have invented a splendid euphemism for him: "national self-identification." Remember, gentlemen, how many massacres he caused and continues to cause, how many human destinies he broke and continues to break in the vastness of the former Soviet Union the mental virus of "national self-identification", which spread epidemically in the late 1980s simultaneously with the epidemic of the mental virus of religiosity!
During these years, the cases when adults, who were previously unbelievers, suddenly become devout believers (I, of course, do not mean the cases typical for the Russian-speaking emigre environment of the USA, Germany, Israel, and not uncommon in Russia itself), also became widespread. when it is caused by purely mercantile considerations). What should be the position of atheists who realize that the most convincing rational arguments that the God that religions preach is an illusion may not be heard, simply because people can lock their minds to subconsciously unwanted information?
Of course, you cannot dispute the right of people to believe in what they want, as long as it does not affect the interests of other people. You cannot forbid them and unite in groups and public associations in accordance with this belief. The root of the atheistic worldview is not in the prohibition of religious beliefs, but in the categorical rejection of religions as social institutions, rejection based on the realization that the idea of God that they represent is a lie used to take possession of the souls of people, and that the fundamental goal of churchmen is not to serve people , not the storage and dissemination of moral and ethical norms and the spiritual heritage of civilization, which they cynically claim without any reason, but self-preservation and reproduction of religious institutions and infrastructure through privatization, moral enslavement and exploitation of the flock.
The humanistic duty of atheists is to try to use the still available opportunities to open people's eyes and free them from the mental viral infection spread by the churchmen, and from the mental slavery, and often quite real slavish submission to religious preachers and church hierarchs. We cannot leave unanswered the constant massive brainwashing to which they subject all of us from television screens, on radio and from the pages of newspapers and books in recent years with the servile and enthusiastic shameful participation of the literary and artistic beau monde, the persistent and obsessive zombie, the most recent example of which serves the recent funeral campaign of the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Perhaps people are predisposed - genetically and from infancy - to believe in powerful otherworldly beings - gods and angels. But no less, people genetically prefer the truth to lies, prefer to know what is in reality and what is not. Otherwise, the human race would not have continued, that's for sure.