On Atheism

"You're an atheist, you believe there's no god!"


"Atheists have to believe in god, otherwise you wouldn't talk about him so much."


"Atheists choose not to believe in god so that they can lead lives of sin."


"When you're laying on your deathbed you'll change."


"All atheists want to destroy <insert religion here>."


Virtually every atheist who's open about it or discusses it with others has heard these statements. And, quite frankly, they display a great and deep ignorance about what atheism truly is. So that's what I'm going to talk about today. So then, right down into the grit.


Just what is atheism?


Well the answer to that is not quite so simple as it has more than one definition, one is more exclusive than the other but the other is more correct from an etymological point of view. The word comes from Latin. A, without, Theism, belief in one or more deities. Put the two together and you get atheism, a lack of belief in deities. And that is, in fact, one of the definitions listed in the dictionary. The other definition is much more exclusive as it defines atheism as a belief that there is no god or gods. So what does this mean from a practical viewpoint? Well it means that you have to choose which definition you want to use, or better yet, let those who self define as atheists tell you how they define it. Personally I define atheism as a lack of belief rather than a belief in a negative. In other words, I just don't believe in god rather than believing that there is no god. I've yet to meet even one atheist who uses the latter definition, every one I've met uses the former so that's the definition I'm going to stick with in this paper.


Now, many will tell you that my stance is actually agnosticism, but that isn't quite right. The term gnostic refers to knowledge, what one knows. So being agnostic is admitting that you don't know something while being gnostic means that you do know something, and you can be agnostic about many things. Theism and atheism are belief stances, not knowledge stances, though if you wish to apply the term in addition to the theism and atheism that's perfectly acceptable. Therefore if you are an agnostic theist that means that you believe in a god or gods yet don't know whether or not they exist. And by the same token a gnostic theist both believes in a god or gods and claims to know for a fact that they exist. Of course the same dichotomy exists for atheists as well, there are both gnostic and agnostic atheists. So given how I described my atheism earlier I am an agnostic atheist, I don't believe in any gods but I don't know that they don't exist, and I'll get into why I feel that's a logical position to take in a while.


Now that we've covered what atheism is what does that tell us about what atheists believe?


The answer is not much. Atheism is a negative descriptor, it only describes what a person doesn't believe and speaks nothing about what they do believe. Theism, on the other hand, is a positive descriptor that tells you something about a person's beliefs(they believe in a god). Why is this difference important you might ask? Well because it's the cause of so many of the misconceptions about atheism. One such misconception is that atheists believe that religion is evil, and while some may there are plenty of religious atheists out there, mostly Buddhists. In fact there aren't any beliefs that are common to all atheists, the only thing linking them is that negative descriptor. Atheists can have virtually any belief and their beliefs are as varied as any theist's beliefs. There are atheists who believe in spirits and ghosts, psychic powers, homeopathy, and I even know one atheists who believes in a young earth. There are atheist democrats and atheist republicans, atheist liberals, atheist conservatives, atheist liberals, atheist free market capitalists, atheist communists, atheist Zionists. The list goes on and on, there's really only one belief that an atheist can't have and that's a belief in a deity.


Atheists are a recent thing though, right?


No, most certainly not. Keep the definition of atheism in mind here and think about what that means for everyone, it means that we're all born atheists, we just tend to learn theism from our parents. This indoctrination, and it is indoctrination, usually takes the form of teaching kids religion, whether they like it or not. And given the malleable nature of a child's mind, it's no wonder that many religious people were raised that way(not all, but many).


So why is it only recently that atheists have become visible?


That's simple. We've only recently become visible because it's only recently, and only in certain parts of the world, that being an atheist doesn't carry a death sentence. For tens of thousands of years atheists have been hunted and killed by most religions(not all religions), usually because they were stupid and opened their mouths about it, something which has only been tolerated in the past twenty or thirty years. During the Dark Ages you didn't even have to admit to being an atheist to be burned alive for it(the favorite method of execution for Christians at the time), just being accused of it, by a jealous neighbor for instance, was enough to land one on the grill. For thousands of years the only people who were more thoroughly persecuted were the Jews, and that was only because they couldn't really hide it. Atheists were often portrayed as being the opposite of whatever religion was prevalent in the area. If the prevalent religion was Christianity, Islam, or Judaism then you were a worshiper of Satan who drank blood, engaged in homosexual orgies, and ate the flesh of good, god fearing believers. And all of this was assumed to be true even if you could prove that it wasn't, that's how dangerous it was to be an atheist and why there really were no great atheist movers and shakers before recent times.


Even in recent times being labeled an atheist, or worse, labeling yourself as an atheist was trying. Even Einstein wasn't immune to threats of death and general ill will when he said that he thought the idea of a personal god was childish. It wasn't too long ago, within living memory, that atheists weren't allowed to testify in court because they didn't believe in god. And to this day there are seven states in which it is against the law to serve in any public office


Why were and are religions so hostile towards atheists though? Aren't religions supposed to promote peace, love, and acceptance?


Well yes, and they do, but they do so within their own group. This is due to a mechanism called in group altruism/out group hostility. Basically you have an "in group", a group of people which share something in common, it could be political outlooks or skin color but the more things they have in common the better. People who are part of an in group are more likely to show altruistic tendencies towards others of their in group. Then we have the "out group" which is basically everyone else but typically those who have viewpoints which oppose those of the in group are targeted more. People show a tendency to view those in the out group with suspicion at best and hostility at worst. This mechanism is the basic drive behind most group conflicts, though there are others. The in group/out group dichotomy likely arose deep in our evolutionary history and it did offer some benefits. Long ago anyone of the "in group" was either family or someone you depended on for one reason or another(cooking, hunting, defense of the home, whatever) thus showing them keeping them safe and healthy improved the odds of them keeping you safe and healthy as well as your offspring(keep in mind that family members share genes too which is yet another reason for altruism). Meanwhile harming or killing the "out group" not only ensured more resources for you and yours but meant less competition for future holders of your genes. The benefits of the mechanism are obvious, it's just too bad that it's still around.


As for the specific "why" of religious hatred of atheism? Just look at their holy books. Each of the three big monotheisms specifically condemns nonbelievers, and in some cases orders their torture and death. Apparently eternal damnation isn't enough. And those three represent somewhere in the region of half the world. It's pretty frightening at times, especially if you're an atheist who's wandered into an area where people take the Bible literally, as I've had the misfortune of doing.


So we've established what atheism is, and isn't, as well as covered one or two of the misconceptions. However we haven't really gone over why someone would be an atheist. Why would someone choose atheism over theism? What are the benefits of atheism and do they outweigh the benefits of theism? And these are fair questions.


To start I'm going to say this, and many may disagree with me, atheists included. But I don't think atheism is a choice. We don't choose to not believe in the tooth fairy or the boogie man, we just aren't convinced that they exist, and I think that belief in god/s is no exception to this. I know that I didn't choose to lose my faith, I just came to the conclusion one day that I couldn't bring myself to believe in a god regardless of how much I wanted to. And I did want to. I'd been told my whole life that my purpose on this planet was to have faith in the god of the bible and to love him unconditionally, I'd been told by everyone I trusted that doing so was the best thing a human could do and that by following these instructions I would be able to live forever. Lords I wanted to believe, and I was sincerely depressed once I discovered that I didn't anymore. I even hated myself for it at first. I'd been told that my entire purpose on this planet was to believe in, love, and worship the god of the bible and I just couldn't bring myself to do it anymore.


I would say that most people who are people who became disenchanted with the religion they were raised with for one reason or another. For some it may have been the internal contradictions found in their holy book, or the contradictions between the actions of the religious and the morals they preached. Other people, who are in the minority, are those who just weren't raised religious, they weren't indoctrinated with a religious belief in their youth and have just remained neutral rather than choosing a belief. Still others were raised religiously and wholeheartedly believed, but the more education they received, either through interacting with learned individuals or through self-education, the more they questioned their faith and the less they were able to believe. I was one of the last category.


I was raised religiously by a religious family and I was full to the brim with faith and zeal. I read all of the pro-god and pro-christian books and took to the internet to try and educate those who didn't believe and those who believed wrongly. However I was trounced at every turn by those nonbelievers that I had so pitied. I found that, by comparison, I was woefully uneducated and hopelessly ignorant. Not being one to take such defeats lying down I decided to educate myself and show those atheists what was what. However the more I learned, the more I inquired, the more I studied the facts and how we knew them, the more I realized that I wasn't satisfied with the answers my religion gave me anymore. They rang hollow and they always required me to believe before I could accept them. When I compared that to the answers that I received from science and philosophy I found none of those flaws and better yet they taught me how to figure things out for myself rather than just look to a two thousand year old book. Slowly I transitioned from a fundamentalist Christian to the atheist that I am today. And yes, I tried other religions at first, however I found with them the same flaws that drove me from Christianity.


As for the benefits of atheism, well many of them are subjective, they exist in the eyes of the beholder. However I do think there are some objective benefits. One of them is that an atheist isn't required to engage in special pleading anymore, some do but it's not a mental requirement without theism. I speak, of course, of the selective application of logic, typically exempting certain believes from rational inquiry on the justification that faith is the evidence of said beliefs. It's a phenomenon called mental compartmentalization, where you wall off part of your thoughts from outside influence, and theism requires this in order to maintain it's integrity. This freedom of inquiry is both enlightening and liberating. The subjective benefits include a feeling of relief at not having to worry about pleasing an impossible god, or about the possibility of going to hell. These are things which, when I was a Christian, caused me no end of grief and now I'm free from those burdens. Another benefit which I've observed is that, without an all powerful force making your morality choices for you, people tend to be much more caring and compassionate towards each other, this is just a personal observation though.


I can hear some people screaming though, they're shouting "Atheists are just as bad if not worse! Look at Hitler, Stalin, and Mao! They were all atheists and look at the horrible things they did!" I suspect people are shouting this because I hear this argument on an almost daily basis, so I'll take this opportunity to address it now. The argument goes something like this, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were all atheists and they did horrible things and likely killed more people than religion ever could. However there are quite a few flaws in this argument and they go like thus.


Flaw number one, and one of the most glaring flaws, is that Hitler was not an atheist. He was baptized a Catholic and never renounced his faith, nor was he excommunicated. I guess that genocide isn't an offense worth excommunication but ratting out a pedophile priest is...never mind, just a tangent there. Even if you wanted to argue that he was no longer a "true Christian" or a "true Catholic" after a while, that still doesn't make him an atheist. He was both an occultist with a fascination for Norse mythology and a certified loon who may have thought of himself as a god. We know from his writings that he considered himself a new, and final, prophet for god and that he derived a lot of his ideology, including his antisemitism, from the works of Christian authors such as Martin Luther. So we can scratch Hitler off of that list entirely, but can we do the same for Stalin and Mao? Well, no.


Stalin, like most people, was raised religious. In his case it was Russian Orthodox, and he even went to seminary school to enter the clergy. However while there he became disenchanted with his religion and did become an atheist. However unlike what some would claim, he did not turn against religion entirely, he merely regarded it as a useful tool for controlling the populace. Stalin gave grants and boons to the Russian Orthodox church and much of what he did had their blessing.


Mao was similar in that he was raised religious and later turned away from religion becoming an atheist. Unlike Stalin he saw no use in keeping the churches and religions around and so he completely disregarded them and instructed others to do likewise, saying that focusing your attentions and your energy on the church took away from the State, and that the State was all important.


However this still leaves us with the question of whether their actions can be lain at the feet of atheism. Does the fact that they were atheists mean that atheism was to blame for the deaths they caused? No, it does not. It doesn't for the same reason that you can't blame the deaths they caused on their lack of belief in Bigfoot or Santa. A lack of belief doesn't motivate actions. It what we actively believe that informs our actions. This is a fairly basic concept and is readily understood by pretty much everyone. The reason that this argument comes up so frequently is that it stems from a misunderstanding about what atheism is. It assumes that all atheists are gnostic atheists, which is a rather startling assumption since gnostic atheists are by far the minority.


Now there's one last common misconception about atheism and atheists that I feel the need to address, and this is a very important one. One thing that the religious in the U.S. constantly assume about atheists, is that we're trying to take away their freedom of religion and destroy religion in general. And while I won't lie and say that there are no feelings of distrust and even disdain at times, nothing could be further from the truth. There are a good number of reasons for atheists to support freedom of religion and even demand it, not the least of which being that it insures our freedom from religion. You can't have freedom of religion if you're told that you have to worship, so you must also have freedom from religion if you're truly going to be free. This is a concept that many in America have a difficult time comprehending, perhaps because they've always lived with religion and couldn't imagine wanting to live free from it. That is, they have a hard time comprehending the concept until you mention forcing someone else' religion on them, then they want freedom from that religion. We atheists just tend to take it one religion, and one god, further than most.


Part of this misconception, I feel, comes from the fact that those of us who are atheists tend to push the hardest for a secular government. We want no religion being any part of the government, and with very good reason if history is to be our guide. Historically, theocracies(government by religion) have had horrible track records when it comes to civil liberties, such as freedom of religion. Even the modern theocracies have much less than stellar track records when it comes to this stuff. So we want to avoid going anywhere in that direction, and that angers many who want to see more religion in government. However wanting a secular government is a far cry from wanting to destroy religion or take away religious freedom, in fact most atheists feel that it's really the only way to ensure religious freedom. That's our take on it, and it's possible we could be wrong, but if history is any sort of guide then it's a safe bet that we aren't.


So, obviously I accept the premise of nonbelief as logical, and I feel that I have good reason to do so. There just isn't any evidence supporting the existence of any deities, and before you start typing about things like "faith being the evidence of things unseen" and whatnot finish reading what I have to say. When I say there's no evidence I mean from an empirical standpoint. There's nothing about nature which demands a theistic, or even a deistic, god. Every one of our explanations of natural phenomena function perfectly well without that assumption so it's a pointless assumption to make, from my point of view at least. There's no need for a creator so we're better off not positing one until we need to.


So that's the basics of it. That's what atheism is and that covers the most common misconceptions about atheism. Now, I didn't write this to convert or deconvert anyone, that's not my goal. I just want to foster a greater understanding between the two groups, and historically it hasn't been atheists doing the misunderstanding as most of us were theists. I just hope that you take some of what I've written and think on it long and hard, scrutinize it, subject it to rational inquiry, try to prove it wrong. Do all of these things, but please don't let your feelings or personal opinions on atheists color your judgment. Only by doing this can we ever hope to come to an understanding.