Why I'm an Atheist . . . and an Activist

"Why don't you believe in God?" It's the inevitable question, and I'd like to formalize at least part of the answer for anyone curious about it. Yes, I'm an atheist. I've been one since I was fourteen. For the last several years, it's no secret that I've devoted a good deal of my spare time to volunteering in an atheist nonprofit, so not only am I a godless heathen, but I'm also pretty active about it. Chances are, if you don't know me well and you're of the religious persuasion, you've already started making some negative assumptions just from those labels, but hear me out. I invite you to take a glimpse of the world through my eyes for a moment.

In an earlier post, I gave an overview of my history with religion, and how I came to disown a religion that wasn't of my choosing. In the beginning, I found my intellectual curiosity for the way the world really worked in conflict with a belief in the Christian God. I could go into great detail about the logical inconsistencies, the lack of hard evidence, the conflicts between scientific investigations of nature and theological explanations . . . but I and many others have elaborated on these points ad nauseum. I'm always happy to get into the existence-of-gods debate, but that's not the perspective I want to take with this. I want to approach this from a humanistic, quality-of-life point of view.

Before I go on, I should clarify the asterisk that comes with this chosen label. I call myself an atheist because I don't think there's significant proof of gods, or even the supernatural, but it isn't a declaration that deities/spirits/souls/afterworlds don't exist. One way or the other, I can't objectively know 100%, and neither can you, if you'll be honest. I can't disprove it anymore than you can disprove the invisible pink unicorn hanging out in my living room. But I find it so unlikely that I can't in good conscience pick a god to believe in, worship that god, and take on faith whatever that god's followers say I should believe. Therefore, to be technically correct, I consider myself an agnostic atheist.

So, again, why do I call myself an atheist?

The short answer: Penguins.

Yes, penguins. Do you appreciate the bleak, freezing, isolated life cycle of the Emperor penguin? What kind of sadistic Creator would design such a creature with such an unreasonably severe life? It's cruel, downright pitiless.

In all seriousness, though, having a naturalistic world view makes me the best person I can be. In some ways it's really simple. It's the Golden Rule in its purest form: treat others as you would want to be treated. What are the attributes that contribute to our quality of life? Morality, happiness, love, peace, self-awareness, community, contentment, charity. Approaching these subjects from an earthly, observable standpoint, unhindered by dogma and false securities, I'm provided a certain clarity of mind. Without the fear of hell or an angry anthropomorphized god, and likewise without the idea of heaven or a mysterious, patriarchal sense of celestial love, I'm left with the reality of my life and my surroundings as I can observe them. I am responsible for my own life -- my only life -- and for the lives of others, and for the planet I call home. This is all I have, so I best make the most of it.

I have an overwhelming sense of urgency to make this life the best it can be. "But why do you do it?" you may ask. "Why get up in the morning? Where's the purpose? If this is what you believe, then you're on your own, a product of millions of years of evolution, living on a rock hurtling through space around a fiery ball of gas. . . . When you die, you're just gone. . . . Bad things happen for no ulterior, divine reason. . . . God doesn't answer prayers, because there is no God. . . . No meaning is given to you from above. How is your life not depressing, nihilistic, loveless? Don't you feel anything?"

You know, it's a little terrifying when you put it like that . . . but not really. Not when you take a breath, sit back, and analyze where each of those concerns come from. To me, letting go of God was a process akin to growing up. When we're young, and if we were fortunate enough to have had a healthy upbringing, our parents gave us unconditional love and helped us make sense of the big scary world around us. They sheltered us from the bad things, provided for us, guided us in our understanding of right and wrong, simplified or even fudged the truth for us when something was too complicated or too "adult" for our fledgling brains. They gave us stories, for both entertainment and moral lessons. We also learned respect, and obedience. For a young kid who doesn't know any better, parents are larger than life -- almost godlike in their wisdom, their gifts, and their punishments.

But maturing into adulthood meant realizing that we can't expect our parents, or anyone, to take care of us forever, that eventually we must go out into the world and survive on our own. When times are tough, we won't always have that parental safety net. We reach a point when we must find our own answers, rather than waiting for someone to give them to us. And most of all, we realize that they aren't infallible, immortal, all-knowing guardians; they're human, with all the flaws and triumphs that come with it. That doesn't make us love them any less, but we do see those relationships from a new, deeper perspective. And the things we thought only our parents could provide -- in time we realize, step by step, that we can do it on our own, without training wheels.

I'd argue that the question of whether or not god exists isn't even that important in the grand scheme of things; it's where we go from there that matters. I understand the emotional comfort that some experience through religion. It speaks to their needs and provides easy answers to life's big questions. But for me, it was an emotional need that I outgrew. The meaning of life is whatever I make it. Sometimes bad things just happen, without an overarching divine reason. My desire to do good, to help others, to seek justice, is without fear of punishment, adherence to blind obedience, or the hope of eternal reward; it is wholly for the sake of goodness itself. Because it's just right. I think we all feel this, even if we don't admit it. We all have an internal sense of morality that guides us, and even if your holy book never existed, I'd argue that you'd still have morals. I guess that's my faith -- faith in humanity. Chances are you've already abandoned certain commands of your religion -- you reject slavery, believe women are equal to men, do not condemn homosexuals, have no problem with wearing clothing of mixed fibers, believe in proper sex education, or don't consider shellfish an abomination, among other things. The point is, you've already trusted your internal moral guide to select what parts of your religion's beliefs are important, and which should be discarded.

When it comes to spirituality, though it may be a word I have trouble using for myself, if only because of its wide array of definitions, I still seek to experience the awe and the joy of life. I don't have all the answers, but I'm comfortable with the not knowing. I don't need to fill the void with a fantasy, but accept with an open mind that we just don't know yet. But I will investigate this world around me, to understand it, even when it provides truths that are difficult to swallow. Nature is my religion, if I can be said to have one. I have a deep and abiding respect for this earth, and for the creatures I share it with. We have to work together for our survival and our higher sense of wellbeing, and that means questioning, observing, taking responsibility, learning, adapting. I'm privileged to have this brain that's capable of self-awareness and complex meta-thoughts, and I intend to use those faculties to their fullest extent. There's so much to take in! Thinking rationally about the mysteries of life only adds to the experience. As Carl Sagan so beautifully put it, we are the way the universe can know itself. I owe it to the entire cosmos to learn as much about it as I can before my atoms get recycled back into the earth.

I'm an activist because atheists are so often misunderstood, and feared, and hated. We've got some really harsh stereotypes applied to us, and it's time to come out of the closet and show the world who we are. I want to educate, to open a dialogue, to answer your questions -- please, ask me anything! I want to form a community, and to support those in need. I want to fight discrimination on all levels, and to work toward peace and enlightenment. I may not believe in your god, but there's still a lot that I do believe in, just like you. I don't wish to "de-convert" people, any more than a gay-rights activist wants to turn straight folks gay; I only mean to show you that there are those who do not have a god in their life, and I'm one of them. It's not a life of depravity or lawlessness, but one that's wholesome and gratifying and meaningful.

Survey: Americans don't know much about religion

"A new survey of Americans' knowledge of religion found that atheists, agnostics, Jews and Mormons outperformed Protestants and Roman Catholics in answering questions about major religions."

I wish I found this surprising. It's not that I wish to sound self-righteous or anything; I actually wish people would study the religions to which they devote their lives. As a friend of mine pointed out, religious texts are like end-user license agreements. People either skim or don't read them, scroll to the bottom, and click "I accept." You owe it to yourself to at least know the details of your own religion.

~~~

A few years ago, I was on vacation in Ohio, visiting my mother. It was the first time I'd been back to Ohio since moving to the West Coast, and it was also the first time I'd seen her face-to-face since coming out. We had several less-than-pleasant conversations about my sexuality, along with my participation in an atheist nonprofit. As you can imagine, god was used a reason to alter my behavior. I left feeling bitter and misunderstood.*

For her next birthday, I decided I'd get her something meaningful, rather than the standard assortment of mom gifts. So...I got her a copy of Julia Sweeney's "Letting Go of God" monologue. A bold move, for sure, but my point was to show her one woman's spiritual journey, and how it eventually led her away from god. This wasn't to change my own mother's mind, but simply to make her understand a bit of my worldview. And it's hard to get offended from Julia's story--she's funny, honest, but never rude or aggressive.

My mother called me one day after she'd started listening to it, and her major criticism was Julia's discussions of the Bible stories. She actually had no idea whether or not these (what I would consider common) stories were true, like Abraham being commanded to sacrifice Isaac, or the story about Sodom and Gomorrah. It was interesting that I, the atheist, ended the conversation by seriously suggesting that she read the Bible. She's been a Christian for 60 years, and yet she's never actually read (much less studied in depth) the one book that supposedly means so much its followers. I don't mean to pick on her, but this mentality, this lack of education about one's own religion, is frightfully common in this country. If this is your belief system, you owe it to yourself and to others to learn everything there is to know about it. Especially if you're going to use that book as a justification for discrimination and moral decisions. Know what the whole thing says, not just the cherry-picked parts that are convenient for whatever statement you're trying to make.

*Since that time we've come to a better understanding about these topics, even if we still do disagree.

My History with Religion

Given my beliefs and worldview, it’s inevitable that someone will ask me how I came to them. And yes, atheism is a big part of that, and will undoubtedly pop up quite a bit in future posts. So here’s a bit of my history with religion.

I come from a suburb in northeast Ohio, where my family and peers were by and large of the Christian/Catholic variety. My family was Methodist, and besides of few church attendance spikes here and there, they mainly preferred making C & E (Christmas & Easter) appearances. As a young child, I dutifully memorized the Lord’s Prayer and recited it when my father tucked me in at night. I accepted God the way children accept many truths before they have the capability or motivation to question them. I was Christian in the same way I was an American or a carrier of my father’s last name. I was largely indifferent to my parents’ religion, but what can you expect from a child? I wasn’t asking the sorts of moral and existential questions that Christianity attempts to answer, so it didn’t really serve a purpose to me.

The way that God was presented to me, in church and by my parents, didn’t seem so bad on the surface. The idea of a loving God, watching over me and everyone else, seemed quite pleasant. The stories were entertaining and usually had a good lesson about morality. Heaven seemed . . . nice, though even as child, that was one notion I could never wrap my mind around. I remember trying to understand the concept of the afterlife, more than anything else, and I could never imagine Heaven. Every time I tried to feel that sensation of my spirit moving outside my body and into a kingdom free of pain and suffering, I was faced with frightening darkness, a void. It was the first time I recall trying to understand the things that I normally just accepted as true, and it didn’t go well; it scared me to the bone. Of all the things to try to understand, I picked the afterlife, and after failing to grasp any hopeful glimpse of God’s Heaven, my seven- or eight-year-old brain was left to contemplate mortality for the first time. I stumbled upon something I wasn’t ready for, and I remember crying myself to sleep for many nights as I tried to accept my inevitable non-existence.

It was an episode that stuck out in my mind, but I eventually stopped dwelling on it. I found a way to compartmentalize my strange experience and went on with my prayers and my unquestioned belief in God. At the time, there wasn’t an alternative to belief, so I didn’t even entertain the notion.

To become a confirmed Methodist (at our church, at least), one needs to take Sunday school classes during one’s seventh and eighth grade years, along with participating more in church and youth group activities. My parents must have forgotten this requirement, but they remembered by the time I was about to enter eighth grade, so I was allowed into the program as long as I had very good attendance. I wasn’t ignorant of the Bible by this point, and I can’t say I learned that much during Sunday school, but it was a time when I took religion quite seriously. I wanted to “get” God, and I wanted my prayers to be more than recited words at night.

By the end of that year, I probably had more questions than answers, but it was time for confirmation, and despite my confusion, I wasn’t about to rebel against my parents and community when it came to religion. I wasn’t yet at a point where I doubted the existence of God, yet I didn’t feel the powerful certainty and faith that I thought I should on such an important milestone in my religious maturity. As a residual part of my confirmation, I continued to go to church into my high school years, if only to serve my occasional obligations as an acolyte.

In a nutshell, that’s my blasé, mostly passive background with Christianity. Unlike those who come from more severe fundamentalist religions, I had no particularly bad personal experiences with it, and one could rightly say I was never a “true” Christian to begin with. In some ways, I probably took the study of religion more seriously than my peers, since my forced attendance at the church prompted me to start thinking about religious belief systems, the meaning of life, death, faith, values, consciousness, the supernatural, good versus evil . . . mind you, I wasn’t finding a lot of answers, but it was the start of a journey that would take me in a direction I hadn’t quite anticipated.

Enter high school. Different people, more subjects, expanded ideas, a few classes that promoted critical thinking . . . I remember my high school days as the period when I finally started waking up and taking an active part in my education. Without a lot of fanfare, my epiphany struck while I was reading a 1985 National Geographic series of articles about human evolution. It just made sense, and it was the tipping point that allowed me to seriously evaluate the implication that maybe God’s not in charge after all. Maybe, just possibly, he doesn’t exist at all.

Well, if you were expecting an explosive period of shouting and shaking my fists as I grappled with the idea of God and cursed everyone who wanted me to continue down that path, I’m sorry to disappoint. It wasn’t an easy realization by any means, nor did it go over well with the few religious friends and family who knew. Sure, I had my hot-headed moments of frustration, like many who feel they’ve been blindfolded for a long time and can finally see things clearly, but it wasn’t traumatic, either. I simply realized that Christianity didn’t satisfactorily answer the questions I was asking. I wanted to know about history, culture, biology – how we came to exist – and I felt that religion didn’t encourage the type of rigorous investigation I craved. I was on an honest knowledge quest, and using the tools of rationality and the scientific method made more sense to me. I had no need of religion, so I abandoned my days of banging my head against the wall in favor of something that worked better for me.

So those were the early years of my quest and the beginnings of my, er, atheism, if you will, which has since been refined and continues to mature. There’s so much more to add, but I’ll save those for future posts. ;)