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Back to Subjects - Religion

Athesim

Athesim It is remarkable how many people insist I am not an atheist. It seems obvious to me that I do not believe that any god exists, and that makes me an atheist. Nevertheless, here these people are, so insistent that I cannot possibly be an atheist. "You really believe, you just don't know it." (How's that again?) Sometimes I hear something like "You believe in something, and that is really God" or "you are still looking, but you'll find Him." (He is invited to stop by my house at any time.) When I have the time to converse with these people, however, it usually comes down to this: I am really an agnostic, they say, because I am willing to admit that I do not know there is not any god. It is apparently so important for people to believe that I am "really just an agnostic," that I find this to be a haunting sign of the hold religion has on people. It is tragic that the mere thought of a good friend or relative being an actual, avowed atheist is so horrible that it must be denied. Sometimes I have the chance to explain that I am an atheist not because I know there is not a god, but because I do not believe there is. If someone insisted that their pet fish could talk, I really couldn't say I knew it didn't, especially if I could not go and see for myself, but it would still be fair for me to say that there are no talking fish. The relevance of this is that I do not believe god exists any more than I believe fish can talk. Certainly, I have not examined all species of fish, nor every single fish for that matter, nor could I ever accomplish such a feat, but the claim that they exist is so contrary to my own personal experience and reliable facts that I simply will not believe it unless very definitive proof is provided. Of course, if I visit someone's pet fish and it talks to me, I am still wiser to test the possibilities of trickery or insanity before believing it can really talk. But if I found many fish that talked, trustworthy people confirmed it, scientists published carefully researched papers about them, and newspaper headlines read "INCREDIBLE DISCOVERY: TALKING FISH!" then it would be more than reasonable to believe that they existed. No one really disputes such common sense, until it is applied to religion. I have never seen or talked to a god, nor seen a god do anything unmistakably godlike. People insist that they know one exists, but most of them really say they only feel it, and do not offer any other proof. Indeed, it is odd that even the believers brand those few who honestly offer the more genuine proof of actually hearing god talk insane, Believers are probably right about that, but their own "feeling" that a god exists isn't any more convincing to me. Anyone might "feel" that fish could talk, but that wouldn't mean it were so, nor would that be a very reliable way to know it was true even if it was. People also say that the Bible says a god exists. The Bible also says that a guy lived inside the belly of a giant fish for three days, somehow failing to be digested in its stomach acids, and there was a flood "so great" that it covered all the mountains with water for the purpose of fulfilling a genocidal whim of an apparently uncreative god. (Why not just make everyone vanish instantly and save the world's people and animals the suffering of being drowned?) Since these all sound like tall tales to me, I think god is probably a tall tale, too. If the Bible said there were talking fish, I would not believe it until I saw one myself. (The bible does fittingly claim the existence of a talking ass.) Likewise, the Bible may say a god exists, but I still will not believe it until I see one myself. It also seems reasonable to me that if people lived by reason instead of faith, a great many tragedies would be averted, and an equal number of advances would be made, especially in human behavior. I do not claim this as a recipe for utopia, only for significant improvement. How many times do we find ourselves saying of a criminal or a politician, "They are just so stupid! Any rational person would have acted entirely differently." A criminal or politician can have all the faith we want them to have, but they will still do stupid things--and that is the problem. Thus, we only need people to act intelligently. We can do without faith. In fact, the "faith" of Islamic suicide bombers and abortion clinic murderers is actually a real threat to humanity, as was the "faith" of Red Party members in their belief that communism would lead to utopia. People can do without faith. They cannot do without reason. It is usually argued, of course, that we need religion in order to get humanity to behave and work together. All evidence is to the contrary. Religion has not notably improved human behavior. The Roman pagans were far kinder than the Inquisition Christians were. Nor has religion united Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, or Jews. It has quite unmistakably divided them. In fact, religion will never unite them, because a religion requires that they all share the same beliefs, without offering any reliable evidence that their ideas are more correct than anyone else's. Reason, on the other hand, is the only thing that can actually unite people of diverse opinions. Reason, by definition, bases its decisions on evidence available to everyone, and allows people to disagree when this evidence is lacking. Religion will never do that, and that is the problem with it. It is also often argued that we need faith just as much as we need reason. Usually, this claim is based on a very loose definition of "faith." Many have said that atheists have faith like everyone else, and that no one can do without having faith in something. However, this is misleading. If you mean by "faith" nothing more than "belief" then you can dispense with the word altogether. In reality, faith is usually employed to describe a particular justification for believing something, rather than simply to say you believe it. If I say that I believe there are no talking fish, it isn't very productive to say that this proves I have "faith" that fish don't talk, because I don't believe it on faith. I believe it because of the evidence of my senses and the evidence presented by people employing a reasonable method of getting at the truth about things. However, to say you have "faith" that God exists means more than just saying you believe it. It means that you believe God exists because you have faith that He does. It is this meaning of faith to which reason stands opposed. I do not believe anything on faith. I only believe things because I have good evidence to support them. That is what reason means: basing all beliefs on the evidence of the senses, and on nothing else. Of course, some try to take issue with this. For one, they say that I have only replaced faith in God with faith in reason, but I only believe in reason because the evidence of my senses has always confirmed that reason is reliable. Why do I think this way? It seems almost silly to ask such a question. Does it really make sense to base your beliefs on things for which you have no good evidence? "Faith in God" is not the same as belief in science or friends or even everyday assumptions like "a fish did not write this essay." Having faith that you believe in something astoundingly incredible that is both unproved and unprovable is true. That is simply not reasonable to me. I will never base my beliefs on such stretches of imagination, because it so easily leads to error and self-deception. Though my heart may tell me many useful things about me, only my mind has anything useful to say about the outside world. Moreover, it tells me that God, like talking fish, is the grandest of fictions. Since I have always lived my life with meaning and joy, without needing a belief in God or an afterlife, I know that such beliefs are unnecessary. And I have also personally encountered hundreds of other people who find ample meaning in life without needing to believe in God or Heaven, so I know I am not just a fluke of nature. So when anyone asks me why I am a freethinker, I usually start off with the short answer: it is not necessary or reasonable to think any other way. As a freethinker, if any believer tries to argue that you cannot prove a god does not exist, simply ask them to prove this essay was not written by a fish. Maybe then they will begin to understand. 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Word Count: 1525