ASS lags behind as religious alternative, agnostic support

There is a serious, age-old question that guys my age are
constantly forced to ask, one that can have profound implications
for one’s life: Are you a breast man, or are you a butt man?
Although I must place myself in the latter category, I am
definitely not an ASS man.

ASS is the acronym for a relatively young club on campus that
calls itself the Associated Secular Students, and it certainly is a
catchy one. Strolling up Bruin Walk, one cannot help but notice the
stark white-on-black lettering of the club’s hand-painted
signboard, urging students to “wake up” and
“question religion.” Tired of being bombarded by signs
and flyers for the Campus Crusade for Christ, Christian Crusade on
Campus, Crusading Campus Christians and the countless other
religion-based clubs at UCLA, I thought that ASS seemed perfect for
me.

You see, I am a self-declared apathetic agnostic. I don’t
believe that God exists, and honestly I don’t really care
whether he or she ““ or they for that matter ““ does. I
was born into a Catholic household but not of the stereotypical,
strict, ruler-to-hand kind. I was baptized and received my first
communion, but Christianity was never forced down my throat. As I
grew up, religion fell many rungs on the ladder of what’s
important in my life.

Coming from this background, I went to my first ASS meeting this
past spring with the great hope of acquainting myself with other
people sharing a similar disenchantment with organized religion. So
I got there, and everyone seemed really cool and down-to-earth.

Before the meeting began, we new people introduced ourselves
(“Hi, my name is John, and I celebrate Christmas for the
presents.”). So far, so good. But then the meeting actually
began, and I found myself completely lost. Members were getting
really deep into the stuff and actually quoting Bible passages and
religious scholars. It was all going in one ear and out the other,
while I just smiled and nodded.

Herein lies my problem: I came to escape religion, to escape the
Bible quoting, and what I got instead was more Bible quoting.
Granted, it was similar means to a completely different end, but I
was nevertheless thrown by the ASS members’ intense interest
in the religious texts.

I don’t believe in God, and I don’t have any
interest in questioning or disproving the existence of God. The
existence of God is not a scientific fact.

Despite what some people who hear the voice of God coming from
their pet Schnauzers may have you believe, there is no hard proof
that there is a higher being. There is a flip side to that coin,
though. Despite what the most hard-core atheist may have you
believe, there is no hard proof that God does not exist,
either.

I admire the ASS men for their desire to discuss theological
issues rationally. But in reality, religion is one of the most
irrational things in this world, up there with love. Belief in an
all-knowing, all-powerful force greater than man is a matter of
faith, which is defined by Merriam-Webster as a “firm belief
in something for which there is no proof.”

Disbelievers are equally irrational in their views, because
really, who is to say that God isn’t up there watching us
scurry around like the little ants we must look like from way up in
heaven?

I have found a comfortable middle ground in my apathetic
agnosticism. I have resigned myself to the fact that I can’t
know the truth about God, so I just don’t care. My life of
non-belief has been great for the most part, so why complicate it
with theological considerations that would just send my head
spinning?

Some would argue that it’s the afterlife that matters, not
our life on this earth. But I’ll take the risk that I may
burn in hell for eternity so that I may enjoy a happy, somewhat
hedonistic life right now.

What I mistakenly expected from ASS, and what this campus really
needs in my humble opinion, is a club that exists not as an
antithesis to all the religious groups, but as a parallel entity to
them. It would promote a way of life free from the beliefs of
organized religion, but at the same time, it wouldn’t feel it
was necessary to question the beliefs of others. To each his own, I
say.

And if I’m completely wrong about all this, may God strike
me down where “¦ (Note: Article could not be finished as the
writer has spontaneously combusted.)

Vaszari is a third-year cybernetics student.