Brief, succinct, powerful. From TheraminTrees, "there are no gods"
"A dialogue with only one participant is a monologue."
I'm posting this video today because I like the timing, as well. The author/speaker refers to the very Bible stories which were the subjects of my first two Barmy Bible Studies - the stories of Abraham and Noah. These stories, which are so popular for scaring teaching little children, are a window into the twisted world of theistic "morality". It is likely that many future atheists begin their journey out of the horror of religious belief when they are told these stories.
TheraminTrees has a uniquely clear, easy to understand way of explaining how it was that so many freethinkers made the journey from theism to atheism.
For your Saturday Inspiration, please take a few minutes to listen to this intelligent young woman answering questions from a theist friend. It will help bolster your conviction that some young people are managing to become free thinkers in spite of the cultural indoctrination and enormous privilege that religion enjoys all over the world.
Notable and quotable: (on the value of prayer in difficult situations) "I have to say, that I have never been in a situation that I could do...literally...nothing about. There is always something more useful that you can do than pray. Always." (7:02)
This week, and probably for the next few weeks, my posts are going to be focusing on issues that are important to children, teens and young adults in our demon-haunted world. Young people like FactVsReligion will be featured. I welcome suggestions for other great videos!
A filmmaker who was working on a documentary about Christian beliefs about life after death interviewed Greta Christina. That interview was later made into a podcast for "This is Really Happening".
The podcast features just Greta Christina's answers in the interview, giving the listener a pleasantly intimate experience. It feels as though Greta is confiding her thoughts about belief and the evolution of her personal set of beliefs to you, the listener, personally. (Spoiler alert! Greta does not believe in the Rapture! Shocking, I know).
This is a quick, engaging and interesting 15 minutes. Listen! Greta Christina's podcast:
Update: The first attempt to embed the podcast did not work, so here is the link to the (free) iTunes version.
"I was a good girl, very obedient and believing ...So why am I an atheist? The short answer is because I finally saw my religion for what it was: a confusing set of beliefs that made no sense once carefully considered. That said, I would not wish this experience on anyone. Sure, I consider myself more moral and caring than I ever was before, but I also lost all my friends and am still rebuilding the trust of my family and my husband’s family. In the end, it’s worth it to be a rational person, but I will always feel haunted by my past and have regrets." CM, "Why I Am an Atheist" series on Pharyngula.
Christians do a lot of talking about "love". They talk about loving God and loving one another. They talk about the love they believe their god is showing them when events in their lives go well. They claim, in fact, that their religion is based on love, and most sincere Christians truly believe that it is. Most Christians believe that they are living righteous, moral lives according to this belief in their theology of Christian Love and honestly see themselves as loving people.
Most Christians do not question these beliefs. They uncritically embrace the pleasing notion that they are the chosen, most righteous and worthiest people on the planet. They may condescend to feel pity for non-Christians who they believe have not been exposed to their "good news", but that pity quickly changes to outrage if the non-Christians hear their message and yet remain unconvinced that Christianity is "good news" after all.
The message in the Bible is crystal clear, but it is important in a country dominated by Bible-believers to really understand it. It is not actually love, but obedience to authority that is the root of the Christian belief system - as indeed it is the root of nearly every authoritarian belief system ever created by mankind (and I use the word "mankind" here deliberately). In the very first book of the Bible, this fact is underlined in the story of Adam and Eve. It is their disobedience which results in their expulsion from Eden and the subsequent staining of all future humanity with original sin. Christians believe that all human beings are bornsinners because of this Bible story of the original "sin" of disobedience.
The Bible stories are cited to give legitimacy to the church's demand for obedience by followers. Little children are taught the stories about the consequences of disobedience early and well. Conformity to the strictures of the group, never failing to express the approved opinions, and obedience to the rules laid down by the church authority and its deputies (male heads of families) are the requirements for continued acceptance in a church community. Above all, followers are commanded to "put God/Jesus first" in their lives and - since the "presence" of God/Jesus is indistinguishable from his absence - the church authorities step in to represent the authority of God/Jesus and to bask in the loyalty and obedience that is meant for the god(s).
One of the rules of Christian church groups is that those wishing to remain a part of the community must accept (and repeat) the false assertion that this demand for conformity and obedience to authority is actually an expression of love. Even as individuals are shamed, emotionally abused and threatened with expulsion from the group for disobedience, they must describe these actions of the church (and the alleged actions of its god) to discourage disobedience as signs of the loving guidance of the authority. Threats and abuse become confused with "love". Shaming and ostracism are held up as examples of guidance from a "loving" authority - an authority with the power to annihilate. This is Christian Love.
The impetus for obedience and conformity is, of course, not love but fear. Fear of social ostracism remains one of the most powerful motivators known to humanity. That is because for most of the history of humankind, individual survival depended upon belonging to a group. Life was brutal and short for everybody, but groups fared better against threats to human survival than individuals did, and ostracism was usually quite literally a death sentence. We have evolved to have a bone-deep, visceral fear of social ostracism. Religion uses that fear to its advantage, and religious authorities use the religion to further their own ends.
In today's western culture, there is a lot of talk about "unconditional love", too. We strive to show family members and close friends the unconditional love which is almost universally seen as the only true kind of love. If we truly love another human being, we love them for themselves- for their quirky personalities, their talents, their hopes, their dreams, their likes and dislikes - the whole package that makes that person the unique person s/he is. Unconditional love means that we may not always agree with our loved ones, but we love them anyway - warts and all. The essence of who that person is - the essence of that beloved person - does not disappear when they make a mistake or adopt opinions with which we do not agree. Disagreements between loving people may cause pain, but the underlying love for each other cannot be washed away by the wayward tides of changing opinions and interests in life. Most people feel that unconditional love is simply LOVE.
One of the most painfully difficult things about coming out as an atheist in a world ruled by authoritarian theism is coping with the reactions of family and friends. Contrary to the Christian self-image, most human relationships are not, in fact, permitted to be based upon LOVE. Unconditional LOVE is reserved for the god (God/Jesus) while mere humans receive Christian Love. Obedience and conformity are the fundamentals of Christian Love, not unconditional love of complex and beloved human beings. This becomes obvious the moment that an individual within a faith community hesitantly expresses doubts about the religious beliefs shared by the community. When LOVE and Christian Love collide, the result is usually an emotional minefield, and the casualties are those non-conformists whose families and friends have embraced Christian Love, as well as the Christian families and friends themselves.
It is the very nature of Bible-based religious indoctrination to pervert and overturn every normal, healthy human emotion and reaction. That includes love, even familial love. Emotional cruelty is seen as loving guidance, because the Bible tells Christians that all of the ferocious punishments meted out by God were because he "loves" his followers. God/Jesus is not loved less because of this cruelty - he/they are offered the unconditional LOVE. In return, God/Jesus gives its/their followers Christian Love: love that is conditional upon belief. It doesn't matter how good a follower is, nor how much s/he has tried to live by the rules of the religion, love hi/r fellow humans and believe in the goodness of the deity; it does not matter how precious and unique a follower is, how gentle to animals, loving to other people, brave, funny and wise. None of what makes an individual lovable matters to Christian Love, because it does not matter to the deity in the Bible. The only thing that matters is belief. If the follower cannot believe - even if s/he lives an entire life following the rules of the believers according to the Bible - s/he is consigned to an eternity of suffering in a lake of fire. All that s/he is, all that s/he has done, all that s/he tried to do (including, in many cases, praying fervently to believe) means nothing. Without belief s/he is nothing. That is Christian Love.
This dehumanization of love is a hallmark of religious belief worldwide, and particularly of Christianity. It harms believers and non-believers alike. Families are dragged through a living hell when their belief systems are out of sync, and some families can never recover. Families apply enormous pressure to the apostate family member in an effort to force him or her back into the religious fold. When that fails, they often reject the disbelieving one out of anger and often out of fear of ostracism in the community themselves. Luckily, most human beings have stronger - real - love for their family members than the religious indoctrination can overcome, and many families survive a crisis of faith. There is tremendous pain, there are often long exiles and separations, but ultimately most families' sincere LOVE for each other overcomes the fearful Christian Love, and they find their way back to each other.
Fundamentalism harms both believers and non-believers. The damage caused by Christian Love may never completely heal. The apostate must recover from the rejection of family and friends - from the realization that s/he was not loved unconditionally - at least not until s/he broke the spell of belief - and that without belief in the god(s) s/he lost nearly everyone who had professed Christian Love. The damage caused to the family may never completely heal either. The family often cannot truly obey the dictates of the church by permanently ostracizing a loved one - god-belief rarely completely overpowers the essential humanity of human beings, in spite of the intense indoctrination and psychological weapons it employs - but their sense of "failure" and their reluctant recognition of the shallowness of Christian Love often results in a crisis of confidence and ongoing anxiety. The resulting fallout of lingering anger, pain and insecurity can last a lifetime and even go on into the next generation.
I realized last month that there was a (now defunct, apparently) blog of the same name as mine but without the "The". Since that person's blog seems to be inactive, and the titles were not exactly the same, I decided to go with 'The Timid Atheist' because that name spoke directly to the heart of how I felt.
Last week, one of my daughters briefly thought that a post she saw on a blog I occasionally visit might have been mine. The commenter's nym was Timid Atheist. It wasn't me, but I thought to myself, "OK, this is hardly surprising. There are surely more of us out there!" 'Closeted atheists' is one of my most frequent post topics, after all.
Today, a commenter on a blog I visit daily also had the nym Timid Atheist (it may even have been the commenter from last week). For all I know, that person has had the moniker Timid Atheist a lot longer than I have had my blog.
So, to avoid any confusion, I am changing the blog name to Nifty Atheist. This was my default choice anyway and is actually my blogger address name, so it probably makes more sense anyway.
And, best of all, I don't feel so timid anymore! I feel brave and inspired. Blogging will do that for you!
This deserves its own post. Check out the link here to this morning's program on MSNBC, UP with Chris Hayes. The segment is entitled Atheism, and may have been inspired by the Reason Rally yesterday in Washington DC.
Chris Hayes' guests included Richard Dawkins, Jamila Bey, Stephen Pinker and others, including a Christian pastor, Mike Aus, who came out as an atheist.
This is television that matters. Kudos to Hayes.
The link goes to a page with lots of links and video with the entire program broken up into manageable segments. There are also links to related interviews and stories. I haven't finished it myself yet (parenting duties, don'tcha know), but I look forward to finishing tonight. I did not want to wait until then to post this, though.
This is a documentary about atheists and it looks really good from the trailer. I am not sure when it will be coming out (heh) but as soon as I do know I will post about it!
Several of the people featured in this trailer write blogs on freethoughtblogs.com and they are excellent blogs. There are links to some of them in my sidebar. -->
If you don't BELIEVE then you can't have Christmas anymore!
(This is Part 3 of a three-part interview. Part One and Part Two)
Q. Do you not participate in religious holidays at all?
I definitely do celebrate holidays! I participate in as many religious (and non-religious) holidays as I possibly can, and with great enthusiasm! I try to learn about the mythos and traditions that have developed around each holiday.
All holidays, both religious and secular (and a few which are both!) belong to everyone. They grew out of the non-religious traditions and cultural development of all of our ancestors. Most have their origins in ancient rituals which long predate the modern religions which now claim them. They are my cultural heritage as they are all humanity's.
I love the winter holidays, especially the ones which grew out of my western European ancestry. The fun of Santa Claus and the magical elements of the Christmas story (a giant star! angels in the sky! talking animals! That's magical stuff!) make Christmas my favorite holiday hands down, with the traditions of Yuletide and Winter Solstice included, of course.
New Years Eve is another big holiday in our house (we throw a huge party!). We celebrate the twelve days of Christmas, not just a single day wrapped around turkey and presents. The myth of the magi/three kings is one of my favorites from long ago, and we celebrate Twelfth Night as the Christmas season draws to a close.
I like Chinese New Year because I had friends in school who taught me a lot about it and the traditions around that holiday. I rejoice in Easter/Spring - I celebrate the renewal of the earth (with no human sacrifice necessary). St John's day, Mardi Gras, Memorial Day/Canada Day (July 1), Independence Day, Halloween and Thanksgiving are all marked with special meals, decorations and family traditions. I also enjoy learning about the holidays of other cultures and I celebrate them, too, when I can!
Like most people, I love holidays! One of the nice things about being atheist is that, since I am not forced to regard only some as "true" and declare others "false" to validate a religious belief system, I can appreciate the genuine history of human seasonal celebrations and the myths created around them, claim our common human heritage and celebrate them all!
Q. Were you brought up as Athiests or did you decide on your own later in life?
No, I was not brought up an atheist, I was brought up a mainly cultural Catholic in a fairly open-minded, tolerant, book-stuffed household. I attended Jesuit/Catholic school right up to university, not by my parents' choice but by necessity: where I grew up, all schooling was religious. To my parents' dismay, my dream and my plan for most of childhood and teen years had been to become a Maryknoll Sister. Those nuns were adventurous and heroic - doing important work! - and I longed for a life of purpose like that, too. I even spent a year in a convent boarding-school preparing to enter the novitiate after high school.
Growing up, my identity was intricately entwined with my religion, but only in a cultural sense. The people I knew were not fundamentalists, nor social conservatives, nor did religion or god-belief figure in our daily lives much at all - it was just who we were. My siblings and I walked to our Catholic schools with our Catholic neighbors and the Protestant kids on the street walked to their schools with the other Protestant kids. We all shared generic Christian holidays, but had different denominational holidays - we had St Patrick's Day off; the Protestant kids had St George's Day off.
Religion provided the calendar of our lives and the cultural community to which we belonged, but religious belief was not something that was in our lives every minute or hammered into us every day. I barely gave God a thought. I never connected god-belief with fear. Nobody I knew behaved as though a judgmental god was in any way a real thing. At most, people seemed to regard God as an invisible pal who agreed with their gripes and who sympathized - silently and apparently impotently - with their troubles. We did have a religious denominational school system, but in spite of that the society was largely secular and one might even say almost irreligious.
The only obvious difference between our denominational public school system and the secular public school systems I have seen elsewhere since then was that we did have religion classes in school a few times each week. I remember catechism as dry and boring (except when I was thrown out of class - once for declaring that I was not a sinner and another time for insisting that I did so understand the "'mystery' of the Trinity"- I was in second grade). In middle school and high school, catechism gave way to world religion classes which I remember as interesting and illuminating. Outside religion class, we had a completely secular education in our so-called religious schools, learning about evolution in science classes, ancient mythologies in literature classes and even an objective study of the Reformation in history classes. As far as I can tell, there was no redaction or revisionism of inconvenient history to suit a religious agenda in my school in the 1960's and 70's, unlike what we are seeing today. I loved my schools and church and I was enthralled by the sacred music, the mythology and the ritual.
I never believed that the Biblical mythos was literally true nor that the Biblical god was a literal being (at least not in my conscious memory) so in that sense I appear to have been born atheist. The Biblical god was roughly equivalent to a story character in my mind - not a real thing, but an idea - a caricature with a purpose. I had a vague sense that everything we discussed and did in church was deeply meaningful ritual and poetry and art which was symbolically pointing us toward some kind of ineffable, supernatural goodness. To me, the religion and the Bible and the beautiful Church rituals and glorious music and liturgies were reaching toward so much more than the literal interpretation of them. My understanding of that ineffable goodness gradually morphed into a belief that the purpose of religion was to work toward the fulfillment of human potential for good- ie as stewards of the earth, as peaceful co-inhabitants of the earth with other people, animals and other living things, as intelligent beings seeking greater understanding of the universe and our place in it - no gods required. God was simply a metaphor.
The truly funny thing is this: I thought that was what everyone else thought, too! I thought I was completely normal in my church and that what I understood to be pointing to the greater meaning of it all, was in fact, what everyone else thought and believed! I thought that everyone else considered the Bible readings and lessons to be simply our ancestors' best acknowledgement (through centuries of wonderful effort and tradition) of our role as human beings and our duty to continue to strive toward fulfilling our role to the best of our ability. This was probably true in my hometown in that era (late 1960's- 1970's). I received all of my sacraments blissfully, joyfully convinced that I was completely in line with the Catholic Church's teachings.
Until I was away from home poised to enter the pre-novitiate, it honestly never really occurred to me that other people in other communities (other than rare cults) actually have a very different - very literal and illiberal - view of religion. But there is a whole other world of religious conservatism out there, which I discovered when I traveled far from home to a convent boarding school. I had come from a community where the fatherly priest at my school had enthused that I might become one of the first women priests if I wanted to be, to a place where the aloof young convent pastor made it clear how subservient I was to remain as a female Catholic - he represented a renewed wave of reactionary conservatism in the Catholic Church.
The hopes of progressive Catholics in the 1960s and 70s were soon to be decisively dashed, though I did not understand all of that in that one year. I just knew that the changes I had heard about growing up were never going to happen quickly enough for me to be able to participate fully in the Church. Of course that realization was the main reason why I did not enter into religious life. It was in the convent that I gave up my dream of becoming a Maryknoll Sister. I was not conflicted about it or upset; life is full of surprises and adventure and my realization only made me even more interested in religion as a social force, while saving me from a mistaken turn in my personal pathway.
I loved my Church. I grew up always believing that my beliefs were perfectly in line with everyone else's. To this day, in spite of that disconnect, I feel at home when I visit a Church. I guess that is the power of "belonging" and "community" that so many people seem to be seeking in a church. However, both time and geography have revealed to me a far less beautiful Church than the one I grew up believing was a force for justice and goodness in the world. I don't attend church anymore, and I am very happy to be recovering, but I do miss that sense of belonging.
Q. Can you share more about your non-beliefs?
What are non-beliefs? That is a question I am not sure how to answer. How about if I share a few more things I do believe?
I can tell you that I believe very strongly in the power of humankind to grow and learn and to become better people. I think that our emotional development will surge forward as we understand our environment better and can learn to manage our resources so that physical survival is not the main concern of the majority anymore. I believe that once survival for a reasonable lifespan is reliably ensured for most people on the planet, cognitive and emotional development will increase at a faster pace, allowing humankind to gradually approach its eventual potential. I am not talking about overnight, obviously.
As long as human survival is still precarious for a majority of human beings, the primitive pre-occupation with individual survival - with competing for food, territory and mates; with controlling other people to ensure reproductive success - and the survival and dominance of the tribe or nationality will continue to be a dominant trait in our species. These are all concerns which are instinctive to all living things and which, to me, are very convincing evidence of our evolutionary nature. We share this preoccupation with survival and reproduction, and the fierce competition which has its roots in these, with every living organism on the planet, from the smallest one-celled organism, to the largest animals on earth.
The interesting and amazing thing is how human beings began to develop more complex concerns as tiny pockets of them settled into relative prosperity and began to enjoy freedom from extreme want. Enter: confessional religion.
People were still strongly influenced by the ever present concerns about survival, but the small comforts and privileges of small pockets of settled humanity allowed people to begin to think about issues other than killing or being killed, starving others or starving themselves, winning land/food/mates or losing them and losing the battle for survival. With the stress of these constant concerns easing slightly, they were able to begin to think about how to make societies better, how to treat their fellow humans better and so forth.
Obviously, even this step forward was hampered by many of the more primitive concerns of humans (thus the elaborate rules and strictures around reproduction, for example). Still, it was a significant leap in a relatively short space of time and with only slightly eased circumstances! Imagine how far we could go if the majority of humankind could enjoy freedom from extreme want for several generations! I have great faith that humankind will reach that happy point, maybe not in my lifetime or my children’s or even my grandchildren’s, but it is coming.
This is a huge subject and it would take days to type even a brief overview, but the above is a small sampling of what I believe about the development of humanity and religion.
(This is the second part of a 3-part interview. Part One is here)
Q. Do you believe we all have a spirit/soul?
No, not in the accepted Christian sense. I do not believe in a god-given, inborn, supernatural "soul" which is supposed to be the key to a mythological eternal life but has been already besmirched by the actions of prehistoric, mythical people. The repugnant idea that right from birth one is stained with "sin" not of one's own doing is one of the most sad and self-loathing aspects of Christianity. I do not share that belief and I never have.
I do believe, however, that some sort of entirely natural "spirit" is possible. There could be a spark of energy which animates our bodies and fires our minds while we are alive. I could call it a "soul", especially since that word seems to be in general usage meaning the parts of ourselves that we cannot yet explain easily. I imagine that such a spirit or soul would be pure and bright and joyful. It could be a spark of the source of life itself, whatever that was.
My beliefs and imaginings about spirits and souls are completely subjective. I recognize that these ideas are just my own pleasant musings on the subject, often inspired by books I have read or the insights of others. My fantasies have no basis in reality nor any hard evidence to support them. In that sense, my ideas have exactly the same weight and validity as the ideas about an afterlife held by theists.
Q. If so, does it live on after bodily death? If so, where does it go?
Perhaps the spirit becomes one with the universe when we die. Maybe it leaves our bodies and joins the energy in the living things around us. The most likely answer is that "it" - if there actually is a soul or spirit - goes nowhere, but simply ceases to exist when bodily death occurs. If that is the case, of course, none of us will know or care when it happens to us.
Obviously, though, the idea that people we love (including ourselves) will simply cease to exist anymore one day is really hard to handle. Emotionally, this is not a concept that sits comfortably with self-aware human beings. Most of us would like to think that some part of us continues after we die. I recognize this wish in myself and in others. I don't confuse wishing with reality, though.
We are star stuff!
So, like most people, when painful loss occurs I indulge myself in fantasies about what I would like to think could possibly happen if there is a special spark of life energy inside living things. I don't see the harm in doing so, and who knows? Maybe something wonderful does happen! It is nice to let oneself daydream - to feel that departed dear ones might still be somewhere close by. To relieve the pain of grief, I am as apt as a theist to invent stories to comfort myself about my loved ones' "souls" or spirits living on in some form after death.
I know that my ideas are pure fantasy and I expect that other people will have their own, probably different, fantasies. It is a coping tool, not dogma. I remain aware that most of what I let myself believe on this subject is what I want to believe. I think most people tell themselves what they want to believe when contemplating an "afterlife", but religionists tell themselves it is the objective truth - based on dogma not evidence - instead of accepting what it really is: a psychological coping tool.
None of us knows what really happens after death but if the stories people believe sooth the pain of losing a loved one (or soothes the fear of where we are going ourselves after we die), I have no quibble with any of them, as long as the concept of soul is only used to ease private emotional pain. I believe that is one of the purposes of the mythos of afterlife. And a perfectly sensible one it is, given our human fear of death. You have to marvel at the resourcefulness and creativity of our ancient ancestors!
Unfortunately, most religious traditions do not use the soul concept or the idea of afterlife simply to cope with grief and loss. I reject totally the usual religious imaginings about what happens after death - ascension to some sort of Valhalla/Paradise/Heaven to live among the gods or else condemnation to a Uffern/Hades/Hell to suffer for eternity. Those fantasies strike me as naked revenge fantasies and nothing more. However, codified into religious dogma, these fantasies cause real harm to people.
The fundamentalist Christian idea, for example, is that one's eternal destination is completely dependent upon belief. This means that the concept of sin - though used by religionists to cause untold misery to their fellow humans - is, in fact, just a red herring: eternal joy or eternal damnation depend completely upon something which a person cannot actually control - whether or not s/he can believe in a deity - so sin and morality are actually irrelevant to Christian "salvation", making their theology amoral at best and (if you think causing suffering to millions of people all over the world is immoral, as I do) evil at worst.
I feel that only people who have swallowed the entire theist mythos could ever accept these ideas at all, let alone consider them just or good. It is a psychological tool used for ill, in my opinion, and is yet another reason why I dislike religion.
Q. Do you absolutely believe there is no God/Higher Power?
Absolutely not. Unlike some theists, I don't pretend to be absolutely sure about anything for which there is inadequate evidence or - as in the case of gods - no evidence at all. However, like Bertrand Russell famously said in his book of essays, Why I Am Not A Christian, neither can anybody say for certain that there is no teapot orbiting the planets, invisible to the naked eye...but I do think it is reasonable to believe that a teapot in a space orbit is so unlikely that we probably would all call ourselves "aorbitalteapot".
Proof for teapot-belief!
I feel as certain as most people feel about orbiting teapots that there is no Biblical God, whom I consider to be exactly like - and as real as - the gods and goddesses which preceded him. They are all human fabrications used by humans to explain natural events or to provide themselves with the comfort of imagining a higher power watching over them in times of crisis - sort of a parental figure, which is what most of us long for when we are in trouble or afraid - so I think the fact that people assigned this role to a supremely powerful God is perfectly understandable and its genesis is not difficult to figure out.
I think the most important (and least defensible) reason why gods were invented was to provide a supreme, supernatural power upon whose authority ancient peoples were able to base justification for their own political and social and cultural ambitions. This is the aspect of god-belief that disturbs me the most and continues to cause the most trouble to this day. I don't know if it should be surprising, though.
In prehistoric times, when god-belief is thought to have developed, life was a constant struggle for survival. As humankind began to evolve more complex brains and critical- and creative- thinking ability, it stands to reason that people would begin to use these new skills to augment their physical survival skills. Standing thousands of years in the future, and out of harm's way so to speak, I can appreciate that inventing monotheism was a pretty creative and resourceful hammer in the survival toolbox of ancient peoples.
As for some kind of higher power that may be suggested or pointed toward through god-mythos: that, I feel, is more likely than a literal god-being, though not at all in the way people usually mean by "higher power". I believe that whatever higher power there might be in our universe is likely within all of us and, if it is unconnected with self-consciousness, then it is probably within all living things. However, it is power we are probably several millennia from understanding or being able to harness for good, because I don't think we've evolved enough yet to overcome our more primitive urges and needs.
Nevertheless, my completely imaginary concept of what a real higher power might be gives me tremendous hope for humankind when nothing else is cutting it. I do believe that a transcendent impersonal energy probably does exist. I do not believe in any anthropomorphized gods; at most I think it is possible that we are all small parts of a universal energy. But with or without a higher power, the growing moral power of the human spirit is evident to me in the striving of more and more individuals for justice and peace. While we have not yet come anywhere close to realizing our full human potential, I think we are evolving steadily toward it.
It will be a long journey, but I think we will get there.
Five or six years ago, I participated in a discussion about religion on an online parenting forum. In one of the discussion threads, a religious person decided to pose a series of questions to the atheists on the board in order to try to understand an atheist point of view a little bit better. She trotted out the usual atheist tropes which so many theists seem to think are shiny, new ideas with fresh "gotcha!" potential. The one small mercy was that she didn't ask the time-tested and tiresomely repetitive, "Without a god, where do you get your morals?".
It was a useful exercise, though. My participation in that discussion spurred me to try to further flesh out my answers so I copied the theist's questions verbatim and I wrote the responses which follow. My views have evolved since I wrote these but much of this is still true. Looking at religion from a purely rational perspective, I still see it much as I describe below. The main difference is that I am not as soft on religion anymore. It doesn't get the "purely rational" free pass anymore.
The fondly delusional delight I once felt about the "creativity" and "resourcefulness" of humankind has been rudely shoved aside by the reality that religion was created and continues to be used for far darker reasons than I was prepared to confront back when I was so tentatively coming out as an atheist. I was raised in a culture so thoroughly divided by religious affiliation that, while overt conservative religiosity was rare (and even frowned upon) in my birthplace, my whole identity - like that of everyone else I knew - was intimately entwined with my identification as a Catholic. Letting go of one's identity as part of a religion community is probably the hardest part of the process of coming to terms with - and coming out as - being atheist.
I will discuss that aspect - the reaction from the community to an atheist coming out - in greater detail in another series of posts. I only mention it here because fear of rejection by my community was very much underneath the answers I wrote to these questions, so I wanted to explain that. It turned out to be completely justified fear, by the way, which is something which I suspect all closeted atheists know deep down, and is probably the single most powerful reason why many atheists remain silent.
Ultimately, however, the shunning and rejection I experienced after even the most carefully chosen and respectfully delivered words explaining my atheism proved to me that Greta Christina, PZ Myers and others are absolutely correct. There is no accommodating the religious majority. There is no language gentle enough, no phrasing respectful enough. It is disbelief itself which enrages and threatens them. Be "nice" or be "confrontational", the result is the same: you're out.
With a few revisions (the more "confrontational" stuff is newer ;)) here’s the question and answer essay:
Q. I was just wondering what it's like to be an Atheist?
This is me
I can't speak for anyone else, but I think it's wonderful! Literally. :) Every day is full of wonder for anyone who dares to look beyond a religious tradition that insists that everything one needs to know has already been written in one set of iron age books. There is a huge universe out there full of mysteries to unravel and discoveries yet to be made.
There is a useful argument that comes up in debates about atheism that goes something like this: I believe that everyone on the planet is actually atheist and that I am not really very different from modern theists. What I mean by that statement is that most modern theists do not believe in most of the ancient gods, such as Zeus, Jupiter, Odin or Freya (though many are on the fence about Yahweh, since he is mentioned confusingly in the Jewish Bible/Christian OT: I suspect that many modern Christians are not aware that Yahweh was actually one of a pantheon of ancient gods who was elevated to prominence by the early Jews who wrote the OT... but I digress) so in a sense current religionists are all undeniably atheist. I totally agree with modern theists that the ancient gods and goddesses never literally existed, and I also believe that the Biblical god(s) likewise never existed.
So, "what it's like to be an atheist" for me is very much like what it is like to be a theist, except that I disbelieve in one more god than theists do.
I do however, believe that the mythos surrounding all of these gods does point to a vital aspect of being human; I think it is reasonable to call it spirituality, for want of a better word. I value the Bible and the Christian New Testament and all ancient/sacred books, including those which pre-date the Bible and those that came after it (such as the Qur'an and the Book of Mormon) as well as books which were excluded from the sacred canon by men (such as the Gnostic gospels), the Dead Sea scrolls and any other ancient texts which have been or have yet to be discovered. I think they have both historical and cultural value.
Proof for god-belief!
Most of these "holy" books were written for a variety of purposes. Biblical scholars say they were composed primarily to share history and culture with future generations, but also (somewhat unfortunately) to cement various peoples' claims to superiority and entitlement, as human societies developed. It seems to me that there is contained in these books a mixture of high-minded philosophy, rich cultural stories of deep human significance and clumsy attempts to explain the natural world. The overwhelming focus and purpose of these books, however, is to enshrine political, social and territorial goals into some sort of permanent record, and to justify, through claims to a supernatural authority, the actions which people took to achieve these goals.
As works of human creativity, they deserve a place among our historical treasures along with the other works of art, literature and music which have survived down through the centuries. As a blueprint for something divine, I think - not so much. I think all creative human endeavors point to something which is transcendentally human - this reaching toward and beyond literal understanding of the universe and our existence within it. It is something that seems to be important to all of us, to varying degrees, whether we seek to understand through religion, philosophy, science, art or something else, and I believe we should continue to celebrate the rich history of humanity through preservation of these treasures.
The history of human development, especially the development of human societies and ethics, is fascinating to me. It's pretty much been my lifelong avocation to study religion, holy texts, and scholarly books discussing religion and its importance to human beings and the power that religious influence has exerted over societies.
It may sound corny, but being an agnostic atheist is one of the greatest joys of my life. I feel extraordinarily privileged to have the intellectual and spiritual freedom I enjoy as an interested and enthusiastic amateur philosopher.
Unimaginable?
Q. From a Christian POV, it (atheism) is just unimaginable to me.
I can't really help with that. It took me a long time to understand that other people don't see religion as I see it, but their POV is not unimaginable to me. It's just that, to me, modern theists seem to settle for such a small part of the entire amazing picture while I prefer the huge potential of a subject I can hardly contain in my thoughts all at once. I cannot contain it, because the subject is too vast and splendid.
I know many people who speak of their belief in God in this manner, and I totally get what they are saying. For me, there is no conflict with this, because I consider the use of God as the word to try to describe the indescribable to be perfectly valid and historically traditional. Agnostic writers and scholars and philosophers down through the ages used the term "God" to refer to the ineffable in spite of their unbelief. I'm fine with that. People today use the word "God" to refer to as many different ideations of the divine as there are believers. Where our thinking diverges is that I think of God as a mythical concept that, at best, may point toward some universal truth whereas my theist friends think of God as a literal Being. I understand that most people prefer things that way and I respect their feelings. It isn't unimaginable to me that they would feel or think like this, it is just not the way I feel or think.
If you have not already started reading Pharyngula for the excellent science posts - or for the searing commentary on current events, or for the feisty take-no-prisoners commentariat - then I hope you will start to read Pharyngula for posts like these:
"I am a religious agnostic because of science, an atheist because of probability, and an anti-theist because of religion." Matthew Cook. United States.
It's not going too far to say that Pharyngula - and the energetic commentariat there - was the connection to other people like me 'out there' that has given me the courage to come (mostly) out of the closet myself. PZ Myers is no-nonsense about supernatural woo of all kinds. His witty and often stinging posts pull no punches. The commentariat offers further bracing remarks on the topics discussed which nearly always echo what I have often thought but rarely have had the guts to say.
The challenge for the essays - some lengthy, some brief, all wonderful - was a stroke of genius. Myers was flooded with essays. He posts one daily and they underline for every reader just how various our stories are, yet how similar at the core. Some of those essays nearly brought me to tears. Many made me laugh. A few made me shudder. In a world so overwhelmingly dominated by religious power, it is an enormous comfort - and bracingly invigorating - to read the words of other atheist voices out there.
Atheism is about intellectual honesty. It is simply the result of honest thought about the evidence - or rather the lack of evidence - for the existence of gods. It is sometimes difficult to fight through the accumulated detritus of thousands of years of cultural god-belief in order to see that the presumed "evidence" does not exist, but a hallmark of the atheist mind is the ability and the determination to do just that. Even when there is enormous social pressure to conform, the honest mind cannot ignore the truth.
There are many other excellent blogs on Freethoughtblogs.com, too. I've provided links to some of my favorites on the sidebar here -->. I have also added links to other atheist and feminist blogs which I follow. Pharyngula is already a hugely popular blog, but if you are like me and have been slow to catch up with the world of internet communities, you may have missed it.
I think it is important to spread the word about these excellent blogs and the scores of atheist and agnostic people whom they represent. Too many atheists and freethinkers remain silently in the closet because they feel so alone, not to mention vastly outnumbered by theists who are often very hostile to unbelievers. These bloggers send up a signal that we are not alone in this religion-dominated world. There are brave, intelligent, honest and caring people out there who have carved out spaces to discuss ideas.
Yes, we are outnumbered but we have honesty, integrity and science on our side! It's just like David and Goliath. (Heh. See what I did there?) Unlike poor David, though, a horde of intelligent, fiercely frank, real people have my back. I'll take them over a fickle, vicious, fictitious deity any day.
The Friendly Atheist discusses just one example of the hard reality for openly atheist people in the world. A bus advertising campaign to let atheists know that groups of like-minded people actually exist made headlines last year in the UK and in North America. There was a furor as angry religious groups protested that the atheist ads should be banned because they were "offensive". Here is one of the ads:
Several weeks ago, psychologist Richard Wade hypothesized that the reason why advertising campaigns for secular, humanist and atheist groups have sparked such heated "controversy" - both in the real world where the ads are displayed and on the interweb where they have been discussed - is not because the ads themselves display any objectively "offensive" content, but because the very idea that atheists existat all and dare to make that existence known is what offends the religious majority.
To test this hypothesis, Richard challenged atheists to come up with an ad that is as inoffensive as possible, simply signing it "brought to you by local atheist group" or similar. He provided some helpful (photoshopped :)) examples like this one:
In the ensuing discussion, some people pointed out the depressing fact that even an inoffensive billboard featuring puppies would likely be twisted by religious critics into something else. Most likely any attempt at making an obviously inoffensive, appealing billboard would be decried as yet another "example" of atheist sarcasm or trickery.
The NEPA Freethought Society seems to have agreed with this concern and in an attempt to avoid any misunderstanding, they submitted the billboard design below:
It merely names their group. And yet, COLTS (the County of Lackawanna Transit System (COLTS) in Pennsylvania) rejected the ad. The same bus company runs regular ads for local religious groups and churches, but refused to accept an ad from an atheist group which simply says "Atheists."
Is it any wonder that there are so few people who are openly atheist in a culture which rejects the very notion of our existence? A recently published study found that the most distrusted group in America is atheists - we are considered even less trustworthy than rapists in some circumstances! A New York Times poll taken in 2007 shows that the most unelectable group in the country is - you guessed it - atheists. A whopping 63% of people polled said they would not vote for anyone who does not believe in a god.
But never mind polls and studies (after all, who ever believes that musty, dusty studies and research have any bearing on their reality?). In spite of this evidence of real and growing discrimination against atheists, any theist will tell you that there is no problem at all for atheists in our culture. More important, if the damned atheists would only shut up and stop being so arrogant and pushy, there would be far less division and social unrest right now!
Atheists are so universally reviled that even an American president, representative of all* of the citizens of the United States, felt free to publicly castigate atheists. We are the one group that anyone can discriminate against with impunity. Atheists are accused of being arrogant, pushy, divisive and responsible for all the ills in the world: why would any reasonable person be eager to come out and be plastered with all of these labels?
* According to George H W Bush, atheists should not rightly be citizens. See what he did there?
Over the years, I've written a few essays entitled "Why I am an Atheist" or something along the same lines, but after making numerous attempts to start the one to answer PZ Myers' challenge, I realized that I am no longer comfortable with that phrasing to describe myself. Not because it is not useful and not because I do not like it (I do - and I think those essays are enormously helpful and inspiring), but because myown earlier efforts under that very title were so embarrassingly accommodationist, so desperate to be accepted (and therefore so dishonestly flattering to theists), that I simply must do something a little different now.
The road from shrinking, fearful accommodationism to bold, brave honesty has been rocky, lonely and often frightening. I am still standing in the shadows at the last turn in the path, uncertain if I am ready to step out into the light. But, I am certain that my days of explaining myself and begging the community to understand and accept me are over. I may quietly reveal my true thoughts to a few trusted friends and family members or I may choose to remain silent for a few more years, even with them. Whatever I do say, however, will be stated with simple positivity.
I am atheist.
I am female, I am someone's mother, wife, sister, friend. I think, I write, I breathe. I am atheist.
Being atheist is just one part of who I am, and it is only significant because of the culture in which we live. Humanity's obsession with deities makes an outlier of one who does not share the obsession. And outliers make the majority feel uneasy. Atheism is far more significant and noteworthy to theists than to atheists, I think, and the constant cultural pressure to justify our apostasy - our freedom from god-obsession - mostly explains our need for some sort of community with other atheists. We are not really "like-minded"; we are as individual and varied in our interests and our philosophies as theists are. What we share is that we are not theists. But, in this religion-cursed world that is a huge thing.
