by Patrick Călinescu
Many years ago I decided to stop being a theist. I simply can’t believe in the existence of god. Yesterday I also decided to stop being an atheist. I simply can’t believe in the non-existence of god either.
I know that many think that god is either existence that has to be asserted as such or non-existence that has to be equally asserted as such.
Yet what neither party seems to understand is how united they stand in what actually disunites them so radically: the problem of god. For it is god itself that ultimately unites them as both theists and atheists believe in something which is in fact so profoundly connected to god. The former believe that it exists while the latter believe that it doesn’t. But both do believe something about it.
So, it doesn’t really matter whether you are a theist or an atheist. Whatever you choose to be in the end, you’re stuck with god. If you are a theist, you’ll spend your whole life trying to defend its existence as best you can. On the other had, if you are an atheist, you’ll spend the rest of your life trying to defend its non-existence as well as you can.
Paradoxically, then, a theist is to me just a passive atheist while an atheist is simply a passive theist. And both of them are active promoters of god—whether from the perspective of its existence, which the theist is trying to assert, or from the perspective of its non-existence, which the atheist is trying to assert.
Having finally understood how futile this whole thing is, I have decided to opt out of it. I’m going neutral. As of today, god to me is no more a matter of existence than it is a matter of non-existence. As of today, god is out of my life both from the perspective of its existence and from the perspective of its non-existence.
Whether it exists or not—whether it has always existed or not—whether it has never existed or not—I simply don’t care.
I just want to live in a world that is truly freed from god.
I just want to live in a world that is quite fed up with deliberating, usually done in so darn ungodly a manner, over whether god is permanent existence or permanent non-existence.
I just want to live in a world where god keeps on being the supreme god of oblivion.