The reality of believing is that it is impossible to believe

“Whoever is scared of reality shouldn’t read me. I am reality.”

      Orazio Guglielmini

Six concepts which demonstrate the lack of foundation in matters of religious belief. What are they? The first is “ignorant”, the second is “egoistic”, the third is “prudent (knowing)”, the fourth is “absolute”, the fifth is “the will to believe” and the sixth is “agnostic”. Even an atheist is a person who believes, but atheism derives from Democrites, Epicure, Lucrezio and an atheist is an atomist, materialist, physicalist and has nothing to do with the above-mentioned believers. And now let’s illustrate these six concepts in chronological order.

The first concept: IGNORANT belief.

This kind of belief has no value whatsoever. What value could ignorant (to be ignorant means not to know anything, to be in the dark, not have any cognition), uncultured belief have? No value at all. But this kind of belief is dangerous both to the ignorant as well as to society. An ignorant believer can be easily manipulated, is impressionable. They are like a fish swallowing a hook, like a mouse caught in a trap. Fatal. Checkmate. Another example would be the similarity between ignorant believers and Pavlov’s dogs; there is no real difference. The ignorant believer, just as an animal, does not know, has no consciousness, has blind faith. Like a chicken believing that its benefactor will come today, just like every other morning to bring it some food, and being totally ignorant of the fact that in a very short time, it will be the same chicken to be eaten. Ignorant belief has no cultural parentage deserving of consideration. It’s foolish and animal, nothing else.

The second concept: EGOISTIC belief.

This type of belief is not authentic. The egoist believes, not because he or she really has faith, but in exchange for something. For example, they believe in exchange for Heaven after death, eternal life, their own or a loved one’s recovery from an illness. Egoists always believe, consciously or unconsciously, in exchange for something else.

It works more or less like this: the egoist wants to sell his or her soul to God.

The egoist: Do you want my soul?

God: Yes, I do.

The egoist: How much will you pay?

God: A million years being my factotum in Heaven.

The egoist: Not enough!

An egoistic believer can never get enough. Everything is done in his or her own interests. It becomes clear that, if an egoist has faith, it is only because they want something in return for their faith. But this is not belief; this is speculation, business, corruption, immorality. It is like Faust selling his soul to Mephisto, the Devil.

The third concept: PRUDENT (knowing) belief.

This is the only kind of belief which has any merit. This type, however, has doubts. It is impossible for a prudent, erudite, scientific, philosophical believer not to have doubts, and if they do have doubts, they don’t truly believe. True faith should be free of all doubt, it should be pure, but pure faith is not the same as prudent faith, it is innocent and animal. Therefore prudent belief is not true belief, either. The prudent believer is anything but a true believer.

The fourth concept: ABSOLUTE belief.

This type of belief is blind, and it is blind because, just as with ignorant belief, an absolute believer believes blindly and refuses to be questioned. If you demonstrate to a true believer that their faith is full of leaks, they are not interested: they believe, end of story. Absolute belief is despotic, Nazi, fascist, Stalinist, Francoist, communist. Absolute belief imposes its credo with force, nothing more, nothing less, as in every dictatorship. Even if you can see from space that the Earth is round, this type of believer still does not want to believe it. They refuse evidence, reality, physicality of phenomena, they negate what is perfectly visible, because, for an absolute believer, the Earth is square, that’s it, therefore absolute belief is not really faith, it is rationalised absurdity in the real sense, the height of irrationality and inhumanity.

The fifth concept: WILL to believe.

There is a very clear distinction between cultural and instinctive faith. The former, cultural faith, without will, does not exist. People who lack will are apathetic, lacking in action, principles, ambition, purpose, they are like the walking dead. Rarely does a believer discover the difference between blind, instinctive faith and the will to believe, and when they do discover it, they realise that theirs, in reality, is not faith, but the will to believe. Schopenhauer would say that it is all just willingness, blind willingness, because, just as the body is lacking in intrinsic finality, so is religious will lacking in rationality. In fact, religion is everything but rationality, everything but common sense, everything but science. In this way, all species including human beings, whether consciously or unconsciously, use instinctive will, our nervous systems demand that we do so, while cultural will, such as that of religion, is in reality an instinctive will which has been transformed into faith, faith in life after death, faith in the eternal spirit, faith in God, etc., but this type of faith is instinctive, therefore animal and nothing more. In a nutshell, religious faith is only the instinct to survive transformed into faith.

The sixth concept: AGNOSTIC belief.

For the agnostic, a human mind is incapable of knowing the absolute. But do humans, we ask ourselves, really need to know the absolute in order to understand whether a god may or may not exist? Is it not enough to know that the Earth, if it isn’t destroyed beforehand, will be swallowed up by the Sun before its death? Is it not enough to know that we live in a world where innocents are barbarously murdered and their murderers are then feted? Is it not enough to know than an omnipotent god, who is omniscient and merciful, would never have created a world like ours? Do humans really need to know anything other than understanding that there is no place for God in a world like ours?

In addition, the agnostic avoids upsetting both atheists and believers. The agnostic’s way of thinking reminds me of Voltaire who, when he was wanted by both the French and Swiss authorities, went to live on the border between the two countries, so that, when the Swiss came to arrest him, he moved across the border into France, and when the French came to arrest him, he returned to the Swiss side. The agnostic acts similarly vis-à-vis atheists and believers: “I’m an agnostic,” he says to them, “therefore I cannot declare myself to be in favour of or against the idea of the existence of God”. How convenient!

Agnostic belief, in reality, begins where science ends and ignorance begins, the rest is rhetoric.

If reason serves for anything, if common sense serves for anything, if reality serves for anything, if science serves for anything, in fact, if our brains serve for anything, I maintain that THE REALITY OF BELIEVING IS THAT IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO BELIEVE, and this goes for everybody, but most of all for priests and believers. Obviously, everyone is free to believe what he or she wants, but such faith should be arrived at personally and not taught by others. How can we have the effrontery to ask others to believe in something of which we ourselves have no idea? I declare that religious faith is an imposture and that whoever believes in a Christian God is an enemy of humanity.

These six concepts, ignorant, egoistic, prudent, absolute, will to believe and agnostic, demonstrate the impossibility of believing in a god. We are all of us, wittingly or unwittingly, children of material, our mother, and this our condition, in the end, is also our destiny.

If you believe in what you’ve just read, then share this post with as many people and groups as you can. Thank you.

Translated from the Italian by Joy Elizabeth Avery. Tel: 015.703954; Email: joyelizabethavery@tiscali.it