YmirGF
Bodhisattva in Recovery
Now, tell us what you really think.Why I Am An Atheist (Part 2)
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 David Hume 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 ce1iainly 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 pem1itted 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.
Answering My Objections
No theist has ever actually answered my objections, although I answer all of theirs. Instead, when I raise what I consider to be a killer argument against god, they simply move on to another statement, usually unrelated. I've observed this many, many times in debates, for example between Richard Dawkins and Francis Collins. Dawkins gives direct answers to Collins's points, while Collins frequently rebuts with discourses on “god's purpose,” and similar arguments which are irrefutable.
But the truth is, the counter-argument to “red and green make purple,” is not “yellow and blue make green,” no matter how true the latter statement might be.
No Answers From Scripture(s)
Answers from Judeo-Christian scripture are no better to me than answers from other scriptures, or from Shakespeare or any other fiction. In fact, every answer from scripture is easily refuted, and almost always by a different selection from the same book. If this were not so, there would be no need for the very busy apologetics industry.
Religion, it seems to me, teaches that we should be satisfied without bothering to try and understand, to accept without questioning. All I ever have is questions, and magisterial answers, fully dependent on authority and nothing else, leave me completely unsatisfied.
God's Greatest Creation
I've seen the human race at work. God's greatest creation is responsible for a list of horrors too long for recitation here.
But it's not just the evil that men do. It's the sheer bloody stupidity of so much of the race. Watch the football hooligans in the stands, or in the streets after the game. See this creature, a little lower than the angels, this “piece of work ... so infinite in faculty,” as it watches endless hours of “reality television.”
I've heard Joel Osteen, a “good Christian,” describe gays and lesbians as “not god's best work” on Larry King Live on CNN. Yet Osteen seems unable, at least in this particular case, to follow the one thing that Christ is said to have really insisted upon - to love his fellow man without judging. Having failed at this single Christian duty, he still considers himself to be, one must assume, among “god's best work,” and therefore competent to judge the “sins” of others.
Guessing Game
A universe with god, well actually, with all the gods that humanity has created, is an endless guessing game, with poorer odds of being right than the lottery. What does god want? You'll never figure it out by observing and trying to make sense out of who suffers and who enjoys happiness. If we can't tell here on earth, what hope have we of understanding the rules by which one merits “heaven?”
Confusion
No god worthy of the position could possibly have arranged to be so variously, and badly, misunderstood. One hundred thousand religions later, and still no agreement on who or what god is, and what He/It wants.
Spirituality Needs Art, Not god
Spirituality is not aided by unwarranted fear nor unjustified hope, but rather by deeper understanding of ourselves and our universe. For true spirituality, put aside your scripture and turn instead to art - any art. And having done so, recognize that scripture is likewise art, able to provide us with new perspectives on ourselves and our world, worthy of similar (but not greater) respect.
Too Many Beliefs, Too Little Reason
I do not believe in god for the same reason that I do not believe in ghosts, the Yeti, Sasquatch, Loch Ness Monster, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, the Invisible Pink Unicorn, fai1ies, gnomes, ogres, gremlins, banshees, naiads, dryads, djinn, fairy god-mothers or spontaneous human combustion, among a rather longish list of other nonsense routinely held to be reasonable by far too many people.
Morals and Ethics
- Every “fact” of science can be demonstrated again and again in controlled experiments. Every theory makes predictions which can be tested for. Not a single “fact” of such pseudoscientific or religious nonsense ever has been, nor ever can be, tested, and none makes predictions that I'm aware of (or when they do, as is sometimes said of astrology, they are either to general to be useful, or turn out to be wrong a statistically correct number of times).
- When a theory of science is finally shown not to fulfill some crite1ion or other implicit in itself, then the theory is either corrected or discarded. Pseudo-science and religion are immune to that sort of self-correction, since there is never going to be any evidence to “disprove” their assertions anyway.
- If anything must exist, it might as well be the universe as god. Is a naked singularity so much less likely than a consciousness without any other sort of existence, (or means to support itself)? Why propose a middle-man, which only complicates matters?
Throughout my entire atheist existence, I've managed to behave both more morally and more ethically, with more concern for my fellow man of whatever condition, than many of the religious people that I've known. I am in myself proof that morality needs no god - Torquemada, for example, is proof that believing in god does not guarantee moral behaviour.
What a tragic notion must be held by the faithful that if, by some calamity, they lost their faith in god, they would suddenly be unable to restrain themselves from theft and murder. The atheist is in no doubt at all that - should he suddenly believe in god - he should continue to behave as morally as he did before. The problem with morality guided by religion is that religion (at least the human ones that I'm familiar with) is manifestly unintelligible. If this were not so, there would not, could not, have arisen about 100,000 of them in the course of human history.
God's Infinite Mercy
I could never believe in both Hell and a merciful god. Mercy is not needed at all except by those who are not wo1ihy of it. It is completely wasted on those who don't need it.
Religion Gone Bad
I have seen human nature - that good people do good things and bad people do bad things. But to get a whole church or mosque panting for the deaths of the homosexuals, the idolaters, the “sinners” of every sort - yes, that takes religion.
Original Sin
Few things offend me as much as the idea of “original sin” - that 1 (the child abused by those most accountable for my security) inherit guilt along with their genes. The Bishop of Hippo would excuse god for deformed and still-born children on such a vile supposition, but I will not.
Conclusion, My Purpose, Not God's
Mostly, I am an atheist because I think, and none of my thinking led me to any notion of god. Nothing led me to understand that there was any other purpose to my existence than what I chose to make of it. My parents gave me life, but it is mine to live, not theirs. They can hope anything they like for me, but I will go my own way.
I am not interested in being the object of “god's purpose,” whatever that might be (and I challenge anyone to tell me what it is). I'm the object of enough other purposes over which I have little control. Regarding a meaning or a purpose for my life, I prefer my own. And at least I have some hope of knowing what it IS.
Post Scriptum
I was mentioning this the other day to a friend, who said to me my analogy of winning the lottery and belief is flawed with respect to belief. She said, “I play the lottery because I hope to win, not because I believe I will win.”
Point taken. And it is true that I, too, play the lotteries. I also hope to win. But you know, if I believed that I could not win, I would not play. So, what does that suggest about my beliefs (even though l actually do know the odds)? Beliefs can, in fact, be much stronger than knowledge, for reasons that are so completely human. It's funny, but it's also a bit endearing sometimes-- as long as it doesn't get destructive!
Another point about my original post. I said “I am an atheist because I think.” Someone I know told me that was pretty arrogant, and that many intelligent, thinking people believe in a deity.
For my comment, then, I must apologize, because of course there are intelligent people on this forum who also believe in a deity. My thought perhaps didn't read as well as it could, and I can see how it looks.
Ah, well, this is a work in progress, and I'm open to change. Still, I did not mean that believers don't think and atheists do. I meant that I have always spent a lot of time thinking, and every avenue of thought that I traversed led me to a different conclusion than the vast majority of other people.
Still, I wonder sometimes if it isn't true that most people don't really spend a lot of time and effort really thinking about the things that they take for granted, and if they actually did stop and examine more closely, they might arrive at different conclusions. This might be especially true, not so much for belief in god, but for rigid adherence to the particular dogmas of most formal religions. It would still be possible, I think, to believe in god and the message of Christ without believing that Mary was a virgin, that water turned into wine, or that the dead got out of their graves and wandered around town, and nobody thought to actually write a memo about it. Or that Jesus actually and literally died for our sins.
Just kidding. Totally awesome post!
