Why I Am Atheist

So why am I atheist? To put it succinctly, I am atheist because I do not find sufficient, verifiable, unbiased evidence to believe in a god or gods. I am a scientist by nature, but my atheism did not necessarily arise from learning about biology, or some arrogant, unexamined assumption that science has all the answers. No, my atheism arose from my choice, once I was old enough, to think critically and apply reason to the world around me.

As a kid, I was sheltered in a largely Christian community. I grew up in a loving home, went to a religious school from kindergarten onwards, and was taught that Christianity was the one true religion. I had of course heard of other religions through books I read or movies I watched, but I didn't know anyone in my immediate circle who wasn't vaguely Christian or a God-believing, Jesus-invoking spiritual. My sophomore year of religious high school, I took the required world religions course, and for the first time I visited a Hindu temple,

saw a Buddhist sand mandala being made, and was had the chance to explore the customs and beliefs of different religions. That, coupled with Sophie's World, the first book I read that had the audacity to question the existence of God, which I read the following summer, set me on the path to agnosticism. For a time I didn't think too much about the issue, content to believe that maybe there was some truth to all religions, and that everyone's beliefs could peacefully and parsimoniously coexist, or something like that.

So why am I an atheist now? Because I realize that the world's major religions can't be parsimonious - in fact, even the same general religion, or even one denomination of a general religion, teaches conflicting messages. You've got the Quiverfulls condemning birth control - the Duggar clan just welcomed J-baby #18 this month - the Catholics discouraging birth control but nobody giving a damn about it, and some Muslims, Jews, and Hindus being fine with most or all forms of birth control (see Wikipedia's article for a brief, yet I'm sure incomplete discussion). The same goes for issues like homosexuality, abortion, euthanasia, violence or non-violence, and so forth. Yet many, if not all, religions smugly assert that their belief system, and only their belief system, is correct, and failure to comply, to live by strict social and gendered standards, and to donate an appropriate amount of money will result in eternal punishment, or rebirth into a life of toil and suffering, or something along those lines. Now religion, culture, and history are so closely intertwined that it seems like religion would be just the thing to control the populace, wouldn't it?

So given the notion that only one of the world's thousands and thousands of religions is entirely correct, which one do I choose? Which tattoo do I get - a giant cross, maybe some Kabbalah prayer, maybe an ankh in case the ancient Egyptians were really onto something? Sure, religions have holy books and prophets and supposed miracles, conveniently occurring at times and places where they can never be objectively verified, and of course they can never be attributed to coincidence or poor memory coupled with latent desire, or some other logical explanation. And sure, religions offer different prizes - so which sounds most appealing to me right now -

an eternal life with Jesus as my best buddy, enlightenment and no more reincarnations into suffering, toilsome life forms, 72 young, female virgins...oh wait, I'm straight. And also women...guess that's also an inferior, submissive role if I choose a Western religion. Or even better, which religion has the worst professed consequence for disbelief or a life that otherwise does not conform to receiving the happy afterlife?

This last argument is Pascal's Wager, but I'd assert that choosing any religion on this basis is a case of Althusserian misrecognition. It's like investing in a scam product because the advertisement you saw on some late-night infomercial sounded convincing at the time, except now you have a worthless product, and they have your money. It's like hearing a song on the radio that you could swear was written about your last relationship or break-up, and feeling so connected to the song, when the band doesn't even know who you are, and some dude wrote the song based on an event that never happened when he was half-drunk and eating a batch of pot brownies.

The reason that none of the world's thousands of religions, past, present, or future, are true is that they are not verifiable or consistent with what we can prove about the natural world. Most religions hinge on the idea of an afterlife, but there's no proof that humans or any other organisms on this planet have any semblance of an existence after they die. How wonderfully convenient - how can you disprove one baseless assertion built upon an equally baseless assertion? And believing it on basis of faith is a blatant failure of every human's amazing brain. How can you disprove the Christian god, or the Hindu gods, or the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Ishmael? No, because there is no verifiable, objective proof of ANY god - because no kid raised in some jungle away from all humanity emerges one day believing the in the exact same god and teachings of a religion he or she was never exposed to (or hey, even an alien will do!) - the burden lies upon you to prove your god or gods' existence before you deride us for our nonbelief.

As someone with a background in science, literate in the language of peer-reviewed scientific journals, I recognize the creation stories of most religions as myths - yes, that's right, entirely fictional. And in fact, let's put Biblical creation in public school, in literature classes alongside Greek creation myths, American Indian creation myths, and all of the rest. These stories do have literary value, imagination, and reveal insight into the ancient cultures in which they arose. But keep Creationism, Intelligent design, and everything else that doesn't appear in peer-reviewed science journals OUT of the science curriculum.

Some religions are so bent on proving their existence through a specific theory, or an apologist reworking of a theory, on how life on this particular planet originated, or how this whole universe came into existence. Please, if any religious folks are watching this, understand that these two are separate entities! The former lies largely in the realm of biology, specifically the theory of evolution, which has in excess of 46,000 hits on nature.com's search page (in contrast to 227 for "intelligent design," which mostly seem like editorials and rebuttals, or different topics altogether), and the latter lies largely in the realm of physics. Sure, you can somehow warp your Bible's Genesis or your pertinent holy book to sort of apply to some explanation of human origins or the origins of the

universe, but now that society has progressed into the Age of Reason, not much outside of your holy books and your own personal convictions lends support to the idea that life on earth, or the universe, arose from a god of one specific religion, and not any of the other thousands.

You say everything needs a creator, that every watch has a maker, that every banana fits perfectly in a human's mouth or up their ass, but then where did your creator come from? The logical answer is that he, or less commonly, she, is a figment of the human imagination, of the desire to be singled out or chosen, to have a life of purpose, to be reunited with loved ones after death, to quell fears and inspire hope in times of suffering. It's a wonderful, comforting notion that's attractive to any human being in every culture - hence so many cultures have unique religions full of beautiful customs, lovely artwork, and imaginative stories. I'd encourage everyone to

celebrate their own cultural background and appreciate the beauty and other admirable aspects of other cultures. But it's important to recognize all of these religions as ultimately fictions or myths.

I stopped believing in the tenets of the religion in which I was raised about six years ago, and about a year and half ago, I recognized that I was in fact atheist with respect to Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Wicca, Scientology, and every other professed religion in the world today. While I think that science, and the scientific method of forming hypotheses that can either be proven, or disproven and discarded, has come a long way in helping us understand the natural world, I do not necessarily think that science can definitively explain everything there is to know about our universe and everything in it. Thus, I am an agnostic atheist with respect to deism, or the notion that some non-natural phenomenon was involved in the start of the universe, though I find the idea highly doubtful.

Being an atheist for me is extremely liberating - I am not confined to live my life as inferior to anyone, I can be true to my own self, my own desires and my own mind. Since I do not believe in an eternal soul or a never-ending afterlife, I am free to live each day of my finite life with happiness, and I don't feel obligated to jump through a never-ending series of hoops that I may or may not personally agree with just to garner a positive afterlife, or avoid a negative one. And even without the promise of a heaven or the threat of a hell, I still feel the need to live a moral life, because I feel connected to every organism on this planet, of which we are all products, and I do not seek to cause undue harm to anyone or anything. I neither go around preaching promises of spiritual happiness nor condemning anyone who's different than me with threats of eternal suffering. If you agree with me, great; if not, fine, and I won't treat you any differently.

So, for all of these reasons, I'm atheist. And I've never been happier.

Alraera, 12.31.08

see my Youtube account to listen to me narrate this