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A New Domino Theory
In the Eisenhower era, the US posited a theory explaining the necessity of containing Communism. If a country fell to Communism,
adjacent and surrounding countries would inevitably fall to Communism. The analogy was like a string of dominoes falling one
after another when a neighboring domino fell on it, causing it, in turn, to fall against the subsequent domino, etc. It was
the ruling theory that led to the US’s invasion of Vietnam.
My domino theory is one of an unbroken string of dominoes, infinitely long to the point where there might be circularity.
This explains my atheism or lack of belief in a superhuman being, called God, Allah, or whatever you wish. Religion is based
fundamentally on blind faith, defined as unyielding belief in something for which there is no proof. I grew up a non-religious
family, one that neither glorified religion nor denigrated it. It was simply a topic that was never discussed. I considered
myself an agnostic because I discovered what it meant—not believing in the existence of God nor believing in the non-existence
of God. Wishy-washy might better describe my thoughts then.
About 15 years ago, while vacationing in Florida, I bought an interesting book called A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam by Karen Armstrong. I sat around our modest condo swimming pool and read this book cover to cover. The title was what convinced
me that I was an atheist because it was dealing with the concept of God, not God himself. The single word “A” in the title
means that there are many gods, not just The God that many believe in today.
I was convinced that a supernatural “God” was something that evolved from humankind’s fear of death and the hereafter. How
could we conceive of nothing after life? Humans conjured the God concept to answer the question “What happens when I die?”
Heaven and Hell were the two choices we were to be exposed to depending upon how we conducted ourselves during mortal life.
My thinking morphed into something most religious believers find impossible to comprehend. I believe that human life is like
a thin laser beam of light moving along an unending continuum. There is no beginning of the line, nor any ending. It personified
eternity or infinity. Our mortal life makes us think that nothing can exist without something creating it. Cause and effect.
The domino theory may be used to illustrate how humans can believe in a beginning and ending of life. If you envision a long
line of standing dominoes and see the last one fall, you know from human experience that it didn’t fall of its own accord.
It fell because the domino next to it fell against it, and so forth, going back in time. This is simple cause and effect.
A domino falls because it is the effect of a prior cause—a subsequent domino falling.
Religionists believe that if you take cause-and-effect backward in time, you will ultimately arrive at the domino that started
it all. What caused the first domino to fall? It surely could not have fallen without a precipitating cause. This is where
religionists take their blind leap of faith and call the initial falling domino “the uncaused cause” or God. God needs nothing
to make him start the chain of falling dominoes.
I prefer to see the domino string going on infinitely into the future and infinitely into the past, an unbroken circle—with
neither beginning nor end. We are here for a nanosecond, and then we are gone. Mortal death is something like being anesthetized
for surgery. You cannot remember what transpired during your unconscious state. Yet you finally come “out of it” and are again
conscious. For me, dying is akin to being anesthetized only you never wake up. You are unaware of being in an anesthetized
state and incapable of feeling or thinking during that state. For me, this goes on for eternity or infinitely.
This is human death to me, my own new Domino Theory. I am closer to the end than to the beginning. I console myself with the
thought that when I die, it will be as if I am anesthetized, never to awaken again. How can I be hurt if I have no consciousness?
Joseph G. Spinelli, Ph.D.
Bowling Green
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