Why I'm an Atheist

Michael's Blog » Why I'm an Atheist
Introduction

Religion is a topic that is always highly emotional. You cannot state a belief that is extraordinarily different from someone else's with defenses going up, and individual prejudices being shown. Even stranger and more remarkable is that while tolerance for different religions is higher today than ever before (with the exception of some third world extremist groups), tolerance for an absence of religion is nearly non-existent.

It's interesting to note however, that if two intelligent, civilized people, one being a Christian and the other perhaps a Hindu, converse, they may find interest in each others beliefs, talk about the similarities, and maybe even debate over the finer differences, all while trying not to offend each other too much. Yet if someone were to proclaim to these same two intelligent human beings that he/she were an Atheist, these otherwise civilized beings quickly change to being either distant, rude, or downright offensive.

But what am I ?

Let me start by proclaiming my beliefs, so that those who may be offended by the rest of this entry can move on, and be offended no longer, because if your tolerance for beliefs different from yours are very low, you may very well be offended.

I do not "believe" in the existence of a supreme being. Whether that be God, or Allah, or Yahweh, or Buddha or any other flavor of modern religion.

I do not "believe" in life after death, re-incarnation, ghosts, demons, poltergeists, psychics, astrology, UFOs, astral projection, magic, ESP or any other type of supernatural-phenomenon.

I do not "believe" in homeopathy, the healing powers of crystals or magnets, laying on of hands, power of prayer, chi, dowsing, cold fusion, free energy devices or any other manner of pseudo-scientific claims.

Now here I lay out my disclaimer, and this is not merely to soften the blow to believers, but is in fact a solid statement of logic and reason, however it may offend even the true skeptic.

Just because I say I do not "believe", does not mean that these things do not exist.

I would be a greater fool to claim that "there IS NO God", "there IS NO afterlife", "there ARE NO supernatural powers". My statement that I do not "believe" simply means that there is insufficient (and concerning all of the items listed above, that amounts to none) hard physical evidence to warrant believing in these things. This does not mean that I am giving credence to these beliefs, it merely means that it is impossible to make and evidence based decision either way, and for myself, I prefer to lay my beliefs in cold hard facts. (And just so I am fair to the skeptics, there IS enough hard physical evidence AGAINST most of the pseudo-scientific claims to safely proclaim that they are in fact false.)

What does this make me? Perhaps Agnostic? Eh, I don't really like that word, because it suggests that I am wishy-washy on the subject, and that maybe I believe there is some kind of supreme-being out there that maybe has some-kind of effect on our daily lives. The whole idea is rather revolting to me. I am not wishy-washy on the subject. I don't believe in ANY deity, of any kind. I once heard someone say "An agnostic is an atheist without a backbone".

Am I an atheist? According to Wikipedia there are two types of atheist. The strong atheist, who outright denies the existence of a deity, and the weak atheist, who's position is more of an absence of belief. Do I believe that there is no god?, yes, however, I am also open to the possibility that I could be wrong, after all, there is no physical evidence suggesting that He does NOT exists, and given sufficient physical evidence that He does, I am confident that my reasonable side would accept the evidence at hand.

So what am I? If it came down to it, I'd classify myself a weak atheist, but even more befitting I believe, is the term Rationalist.

Here we go, I just offended someone. I apologize. I'm in no way stating that those who believe in gods are irrational in a general sense. And I am in no way stating that I am more rational than anyone else in the general sense of life. I have my days where I act completely out of emotion, and some of the most absurd things have come out of my mouth from time to time. I know believers who are some of the most rational people I know in every other aspect of their lives. But what is rationalism?

ra·tion·al·ism

n.



  1. Reliance on reason as the best guide for belief and action.
  2. Philosophy. The theory that the exercise of reason, rather
    than experience, authority, or spiritual revelation, provides the
    primary basis for knowledge.


The only problem I have with this definition is the inclusion of experience in the exception list. Experience is a huge benifit to rational thinking, not just your own experience but the experience of rational thinkers before you. This is how science has become as solid as it is, built on the discoveries of history.

But Faith ...

One of the most abused words in the English language is faith. Christianity has turned this word into something wonderful, something to be revered, something to be respected, a virtue. Why? To illustrate the absurdity of this use, I'm going to replace the belief in God, with a belief in frogs. Let's see how the following paragraph plays out.

"I am a Frogian, I believe that the almighty Frog created this universe when she laid billions of eggs into the void. Each of these eggs became the bodies of the heavens as we see them today. She then laid upon a few of these heavenly bodies which she deemed special more eggs which gave forth to life. From these early single celled eggs grew amphibious frog-like creatures created in her image, from which evolved more and more complex creatures over the span of hundreds of millions of years. When these creatures evolved intelligence and belief systems, and free will, they strayed from their early amphibian ways. So occasionally she sends down storms of frogs falling from the sky to remind us of our humble beginnings. This is my Faith, and though I am ridiculed and persecuted for it, my Faith stands strong that someday the Almight Frog will bring us all back to the great Pond where we will live free of hunger, predators and DTDs."

Ridiculous ain't it? But is it? At least my story allows for the age of the universe as estimated by evidence, allows for the evolution of life on this and OTHER planets, and heck would even explain (at least in a religious, if not scientific way) why fetus's have such amphibian-like features in the early womb. And in case you are wondering, frogs falling from this sky is an actual, documented phenomenon (completely scientifically explainable).

The point is that faith means nothing more than belief in something of which there is NO proof. That sounds kind of foolhardy to me, not commendable.

Yet, I recognize the human need to believe in something, I just don't feel it.

Toleration, not acceptance ...

The purpose of my little sketch at the beginning was to illustrate religious prejudices, and the inability for humans to tolerate anything that may threatens their belief system. I try to tolerate others religious beliefs, I myself was brought up as a Christian. From as early as I can remember, I went to church every Sunday, participated in Sunday school, Vacation Bible school in the summers, even went to a Christian school through many of my elementary and middle school years. I was part of a Church Youth Group that provided charity work and ministered to those "in need". I understand and appreciate the moral benefits of a religious upbringing. But when asked about my beliefs, I express them, and defend them from attack if necessary the same as everyone else. You don't have to accept my rationalism, the same as I don't have to accept your religion. But I ask that we tolerate each other.
In my years as a rationalist I have received some fairly offensive criticism. I have been referred to as narrow-minded, empty, cynical, lost, back-slidden (a term that refers to my loss of Faith, I prefer to think of myself as forward moving), and even as a void by my own wife. I have been told that my view of the universe and our existence in it is "depressing". In response to those accusations, I ask, why is it necessary to believe in something ethereal to achieve fulfillment? I have no feeling of emptiness, I don't feel as if there is something missing from my life. This universe is FULL of wonders without having to invent them. LIFE itself is a wondrous achievement of natural processes that boggles the mind. The very FACT that we can understand those processes without having to revert to mythology is a wonder in itself. The spectacular beauty of this planet, and the evolutionary processes that instinctively make us see it AS "beautiful", and the FACT that evolution has developed this brain in us so that we may FULLY comprehend the NATURAL processes that hold all of this beauty together, is enough to fill me with a sense of fulfillment. Beyond Earth, the vast differences in the environments of our sister planets is enough to fill the mind with lifetimes of wonder and achievement in understanding. Beyond our solar system, the processes that keep our home
galaxy, the Milky Way, ticking are a monument to human understanding as far back as 400 years ago! We now know in a high level of understanding, the History of the ENTIRE universe as far back as ONE SECOND after it's creation, over 14 Billion years ago. That AMAZING ability, of the human mind to understand, and the drive and tenacity of the human mind to continue to find the answers is enough to give me fulfillment for the rest of my life. And enough to let me let go of childish fairy tales.


How I lost "Faith"

As I mentioned before I had a very religious upbringing. I'm not exactly sure where or when I lost "Faith", I think it was a gradual thing, as I matured and began to think on my own and realized that our existence just didn't make sense as the Christian Church portrayed it. At first it manifested itself as a backlash to Christianity. I searched for other religions to fit my view of the world, each one claiming to be the "Truth". But the more I searched the more I was exposed to the differences and more importantly, the similarities between the religions and I began to formulate a theory of my own.

Human religions are ALL, without exception, inventions of the human mind.

For a kid of 22 or 23, this was a HUGE epiphany! I hadn't yet heard of much less read anything from the skeptical movement, I came up with this all on my own. Granted I had heard of atheists and agnostics before, but the church had always portrayed these people as confused sinners or even henchmen of Satan himself, working to lead God's sheep astray. Never before had I actually considered that there may be no one who really knows. That there was certainly no single "Truth". It wasn't until years later that my interests in understanding the physical universe helped me come to the realization that science provides the closest most reasonable facsimile to a single "Truth" that we could ever hope for, and far from the claim that that kind of thinking is "depressing", it was one of the most exciting realizations I have ever had. Science not only gives us answers to question we have all asked at one time: "why is the sky blue?" (because the nitrogen in the atmosphere scatters the red wavelength of light, allowing the blue to dominate), "is the moon made of cheese" (of course not!), "why doesn't all the snow melt right away on a warm day?" (because entropy is slow and the laws of thermodynamics rule heat systems). It also answers questions that haven't been thought of: The universe is expanding! and at an accelerated rate, Light travels at 186,000 mph and NOTHING can move faster than that. The implications of Mr. Einstein's theory changed physics and the way we understand the universe to work forever. Science can give us ALL of the answers.

Except ..

There only remains two questions about our physical universe that science cannot now nor ever answer.

What was the state of the universe BEFORE thing singularity known as the "Big Bang"
What exists if anything beyond the horizon of the Physical Universe.

The reasons that we cannot answer these questions are frustrating, yet unavoidable. We have no way of peering into what came before the Big Bang, no telescope nor microscope will ever be able to see past that point, and any physical relics, would be lost in the immense temperatures that were created at that point, temperatures in which even the individual particles of atoms could not be held together, and would not condense to form a hydrogen soup until many seconds after the big bang.

The reasons for why we can't understand what exists beyond the horizon of the expanding universe is more complex. For one, if we were to assume that the universe were expanding in just 3 dimensions at the speed of light, that alone would make it impossible for us to see beyond the horizon, because we visualize through light, any light that we see coming at us from the edge of the universe has traveled billions of years already and the edge of the universe has in that time expanded many more billions of years. And that we can never hope to travel faster than that light, leaves us trapped by the universal speed limit.
There are however complexities even to this view of the universe. There may not be an edge of the universe. Current theories present our universe expanding in more than 3 dimensions, which due to certain factors could cause curvatures in space-time where the universe curves back in on itself. Meaning there really is no edge. If you were to go straight in one direction for tens of billions of light-years you could conceivably come back to the exact position you started. It all sound very science-fiction, but the work being done is not fiction at all, and it's all a very exciting part of our ability to understand this universe we live in.

It's that first question that the religious folk latch onto though. And you know what? Science has no defense against that, it's a limitation and we admit it, we accept it. It's the one chink in the otherwise solid titanium armor that is science. And it's also the one reason I CAN NOT say beyond a shadow of a doubt, "there is NO God". Yet, I still believe there isn't.

You may still believe there is. Let's let it go at that.
Posted Jan 23 2005, 11:30 PM by michael
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Comments

vjack wrote re: Why I'm an Atheist
on 03-19-2005 1:40 PM
Well said. Faith is the enemy of reason, tolerance, and compassion. The sooner we can discard it, the better off we'll be.
Marcus wrote re: Why I'm an Atheist
on 03-21-2005 3:57 PM
It´s a question of choice: people must choose wheter they think or believe in something that makes them feel important and eternal. It´s easier to believe.
Michael's Blog wrote Tolerance is out the Window
on 03-29-2005 6:12 PM
A while ago I posted an article on Why I'm an Atheist and a large part of the post was dedicated to promoting...
illuminati wrote re: Why I'm an Atheist
on 05-27-2005 11:01 PM
given infinity (mathematically proven)implies eternity..Awesome..infinite 'big bangs' in infinite space..No begining therefore no creator, no end therefore no destroyer, just eternal change. every atom and subatomic particle that comprises 'everything' always has been..always will be.. and we are part of it a conscious, rational, aware part.. More awe inspiring to me than any shallow man made religion.. atheism is not lacking in ecstasy. Why?.. is an irrational question, in light of eternity ..ask what? when? where? how? etc. all valid questions in context.

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