The Serpent That Bade Me Well

There is a kind of happiness that ignorance delivers (1) especially the ignorance encouraged by the pious or by the social engineers. I sometimes envied the religious; those who follow blindly deeply entrenched and dogmatic beliefs. It somehow seems to me that one can defer deep spiritual meditation concerning the nature and meaning of things simply by believing in the moral fortitude offered by hard work, or by the promise of an eternal paradise of the afterlife. Of all the charges levelled at atheists it is the assertion that they are devoid of a spiritual nature that is the most offensive to me.


As a committed atheist the questions that have always taunted man seem more pertinent and pressing without the safety net of a benevolent deity. When I was young, and bad things happened to me, which was thankfully a rare occurrence, my parents would console me by assuring me that "everything would be ok". For someone of tender years, belief in their words was both easy and comforting. As we grow-up, without exception, we all learn that everything is not ok; we absolve ourselves of ignorance and what a painful experience it is.


Is religion really so different? Is not the distraction of the working life designed to mollify the true spiritual problems of living? In this respect, the contention of a divine afterlife is a comparable fallacy to working for the world-go-round. There is no god and no plasma HDTV. There are only moments.


The comfort I found counting anonymous wealth was self-perpetuating; and how I worried it would all be taken away. But the comfort it engendered came at a price: I paid with my soul, and sacrificed the chance to attain true contentment.


Eventually, after and interminable age, I found it in me to change, to purge my ignorance. That was some years ago, and moments latter, I'm still here. I'm not afraid anymore.

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(1) Footnote
I am reminded of a little verse I once may have read or perhaps will some day come to read, viz:

"See the happy moron,
He doesn't give a damn.
I wish I were a moron,
My god, perhaps I am."


~ Extract from "The Serpent That Bade Me Well", (c) SomethingWonderful Press 2037.