Why I Am an Atheist
This post is written from the perspective of someone brought up in a Christian world, and all arguments will therefore reflect that. It will also be in more than one part, due to post length restrictions on RF.
“But how can you be an atheist?” That’s the question I am most often asked when I’m discussing my non-religious views with religious acquaintances. This is usually followed up with some variation on, “how do you know right from wrong if you don’t believe in god?” Another frequent question is, “where do you go for help when it’s all too much?”
And yet, to answer the question, “why am I an atheist,” seems to presuppose that I had some choice in the matter. That, for the record, is simply not true. William James and Pascal’s Wager aside, one cannot really will oneself to believe. One either does or one does not. Certainly one can pretend (lots of church-goers do that), but at the core of one’s being, what one believes about god does not feel as if it’s a matter dependent upon the will. Not if one is honest.
So the real answer, the only one that actually answers the question “why am I an atheist,” seems to be, “because that’s the way I’m made.” This is hardly a satisfying answer, of course, and doesn’t seem to answer the question that is so often asked. The intent of that question, if I understand it correctly, is rather more “how is it possible you gave up god?”
I Did Not Give Up God
I cannot recall a time, ever in my life, when I believed in a god, a soul that survived my body, or a “spirit realm” called either heaven or hell. I was certainly told about all of those things, of course – along with Santa and the Tooth Fairy – but I simply and quite honestly thought it all equally silly nonsense for kids. The Tooth Fairy and Santa didn’t take long to dispense with, as I’m sure it doesn’t for most kids, but it seems as if, somehow, I just applied the same kind of thinking to god.
I went to Sunday school and heard the Bible stories specially prepared for children. I was told that “Jesus loves me,” though nobody else at the time seemed to, and that “god sees the little sparrow fall.” I noticed, though, that god didn’t hold out a single deified digit to prevent that fall. Then I checked out those Sunday school stories – I read the book (yes, that book, the Bible), from beginning to end, before I was 11 years old.
What horrors I found there! And what nonsense!
Now, as it happens, I was also a big fan of National Geographic (the only place I could see naked bodies back then), and everything I could find on dinosaurs and as much science as I could understand. Even as a little kid, I was happier with books and quiet time than on the playing fields. Peaceful walks in natural surroundings, hours with a magnifying glass (and later microscope) examining the wonders of the pond, under rocks, around the roots of trees – these were the things that occupied my mind.
The Bible didn’t come close to being as believable as any of my other reading material. The god I found there was not, most assuredly not, the god I heard about in Sunday school.
What Did Other People Believe
And then, I discovered (perhaps I should say intuited) quite early on that most of the people around me who thought of themselves as believers – and who were supposed to be my role models in religious belief – didn’t seem to believe much either. Or rather, I should say that they may (I couldn’t tell) have held some belief about the existence of god, but they most assuredly did not give much evidence of believing any of the Christian dogma that I was learning about.
“What an astonishing statement,” I hear you say. “How can you possibly know what somebody believes or doesn’t believe?”
Well, I know that people “believe in” gravity when I see them step back from the edge of the precipice, or that fire burns as they quickly draw their hand back from the little explosion in the fireplace. Their actions give them away. I know that people believe that they actually have a chance at winning the lottery, else they wouldn’t buy a ticket, which given the actual odds is pretty much exactly like tossing your two dollars over that precipice. Beliefs inform actions. Where the action is inconsistent with a stated belief, I must assume that the action is informed by some other belief, unknown to me and perhaps even to the person performing the action. But what I do know is that the claimed belief cannot be strongly held internally, or it would prevent the action that is inconsistent with it.
Let me provide a couple of examples.
There is wildly inconsistent use of Bible texts. Leviticus is used to label gay people as sinners worthy of death (or at least hell, perhaps), but seems remarkably ineffective in getting its message about the evils of pork chops, bacon and shrimp out to the masses. I for one (and I knew I was gay before I was ten) couldn’t see why one verse was dutifully adhered to, to my cost, while others right around it were studiously ignored. That seemed to have a whole lot less to do with believing anything at all about god, and was more reflective of personal tastes. In other words, hypocrisy.
And I was told that faith, not good works, was needed to please god. Except, of course, when it was good works, not faith. I decided early on that good works couldn’t be what people believed guaranteed entry into heaven, because those works were in remarkably short supply. And, of course, it doesn’t take much actual observation of people to see how routinely the commandments are broken. I saw a graven image in practically every church I was in, but if you’re going to flout a commandment, I suppose church is the place to do it.
Every believer seems more concerned about his own soul, its disposition after death, then about the condition of his fellow humans who are still alive. The Bible is chock-a-block with prohibitions and "though-shalt-nots," but how much better than “don’t get your hands dirty” might be the enjoinder to soil them dreadfully helping those in need?
And sex! Don’t even get me started on the religious view (at least the Christian one I grew up with) of sex. (Yet, as a science reader I knew that sexual reproduction was only one of the options god had open to him. Nature, however, needed sexual reproduction as the surest route to evolution and the continuation of life through changing conditions.)
It Started with My Upbringing
I was a battered child. Through all the torture of my growing up, I bore the pain and scars. Those who inflicted them went scot-free. I paraphrase Epicurus in saying, if god could have prevented my pain but didn’t, then he shares the blame. If he wanted to help me, but couldn’t, then he was weaker than those who were hurting me, so I’d be better off bowing down before them than god. It was certainly clear to me that god was not simultaneously interested in and capable of my protection, or else I would not have been so horribly hurt.
And nothing I found, either in the Bible or in church, answered my questions about why that should be so.
And then I began to see that the world – supposedly the work and pride and joy of a loving god – while often beautiful, awe-inspiring, grand and mysterious, was also a world of unspeakable horror, visited without rhyme or reason upon the just and unjust alike, as were all its many pleasures. And I wondered how it was possible to lay all of the beauty – yet none of the horror – to god’s account. And there were no answers.
Ah, but then I was told about Satan! The Devil, eager to cart everybody’s soul off to Hell, which would be permitted for eternity for quite finite (often mild) indiscretions. Poppycock! Balderdash! Rubbish!
If god is omnipotent, then Satan must be nothing by comparison. Infinity is infinitely greater than anything finite. Therefore, Satan could hold no sway – there cannot be two omnipotent entities in a single universe – by definition – since both would be unable to best the other – a clear failure in the definition of omnipotence. Thus, if god exists and moves in the world, then he’s responsible for it all, including how ludicrously unfair it is.
Such a god, when I thought about it, was completely unacceptable to me.
(To be continued...)
