I practice what I preach. But what I don’t preach and what I don’t practice is religion. Well, actually, as an atheist, I don’t preach at all. I don’t even practice being an atheist. I just am one. And I honestly I don’t feel it’s my role or mission to try to persuade anyone to embrace atheism.
When it comes to religion and spirituality — or lack thereof — I believe in the notion of whatever floats your boat, whatever helps you make it through the day (or night), and live and let live. If you believe in God, in Jesus, in Mohammed, in Buddha, or in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, that’s your business, not mine.
There is a movement in the United States among religious conservatives whose mission it is to make the U.S. a Christian nation. If they had their way, they would repeal the parts of the First Amendment of the Constitution that deal with freedom of religion. The First Amendment prohibits Congress from making laws “respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” ensuring both the separation of church and state (Establishment Clause) and the protection of individuals’ rights to practice their religion (Free Exercise Clause).
If something like that happened — either repealing those provisions of the First Amendment or having Congress or the Supreme Court or even King Trump declaring it null and void — it could mean that Christianity would be deemed the official religion and favored religion in the States. It could potentially lead to the practice of any religion other than Christianity, or no religion at all, to be illegal.
I know it may sound extreme, but consider how many other things in politics and religion that, before Donald Trump’s inauguration, would have been deemed extreme and have actually happened. Think about it.
I wish everyone would practice their religion until they get it right, and by that I mean recognizing that what works for them doesn’t necessarily work for everyone else.
I’m an atheist. That’s not a secret. But being an atheist makes me misunderstood by many and reviled by some. Most people don’t really understand what atheism is. Some believe that it means you hate God. I don’t hate God. I don’t believe that God exists, and why would I hate something that doesn’t exist? Also, many people refer to atheists as “non-believers.” But that’s not accurate either.
If someone calls those who don’t believe in God “non-believers,” their definition of “believer” is way too narrow. They’re thinking that the word “believer” applies only to a belief system, a religious belief system. A belief in a supreme being, a greater intelligence, a supernatural deity. And for most Americans, that means believing in God, Yahweh, Allah, or whatever they call their deity.
As an atheist, I believe that God does not exist. I believe that Christians, Jews, Muslims, and others who worship God believe in a deity that was created by ancient humans more than 2,000 years ago in the same way that Greeks and Romans, for example, made up Zeus and Jupiter and all the other gods they believed in.
But just because I don’t believe that God exists doesn’t make me a non-believer. Because that would imply that I don’t believe in anything. I believe in a lot of things.
I believe that we, as individuals, didn’t exist before we were born and that we will cease to exist in any form after we die.
I believe that our universe is almost 14 billion years old and that the planet we live on is 4.5 billion years old. I believe in evolution. And I believe that we are working pretty damn hard to destroy our planet’s ability to sustain human life.
I believe in a woman’s right to choose. I believe in free speech, freedom of (or from) religion, in equal rights for everyone, regardless of color or gender, and for those who are LGBTQ+. I believe in common sense gun control laws. I also believe in the separation of church and state.
But wait, there’s more that I believe. I believe that humans are fallible and that we all make mistakes. Some more than others. I believe that most people are good, decent, and moral, regardless of their religious beliefs — or lack thereof.
Consider this. We were all natural-born atheist. We did not come out of the womb believing in God. We were taught about God by our parents and from the pastor, priest, rabbi, or imam at the church or temple we and our parents attended. Our religious beliefs as a child were our parents’ religious beliefs. As with just about everything else, we did what our parents told us. We followed their lead.
But many of us, as we grew up, became skeptical of the religious beliefs of our parents due to the inconsistencies, and in some cases, the outright hypocrisies, of those beliefs. We asked questions and sought evidence. Answers like, “Because it says so in the Bible,” or “You just have to have faith, you just have to believe,” didn’t cut it with us. We grew into pragmatists who think rationally, and logically, and after weighing all of the available evidence, we chose to not believe in any supernatural deity or supreme being.
Don’t Pity the Poor Atheist
Many Christians seem to believe that atheists are a bad, sad, miserable, immoral, lost lot. They feel sorry for or pity us because we have lost our way; we have strayed from the path of righteousness. They can’t understand how we can be moral individuals if we don’t believe in God or an afterlife. It’s so sad that we can’t or won’t allow ourselves to bask in the glory that is God, or to accept Jesus as our savior. Which is why they want to “save” us. How magnanimous of them.
Or if they don’t feel sorry for us, they are angry at us. How dare we question their beliefs? How do we have the audacity to suggest that the Bible isn’t “The Truth,” and that God didn’t create us in his image, or that we evolved from monkeys? (By the way, no atheists believe that humans evolved from monkeys).
We, as atheists, are, therefore, condemned to eternal damnation unless we change our evil, secular ways and embrace God and Jesus. Only then will we be saved. Only then will the light of God’s truth reveal itself to us.
Atheists are not people you should feel sorry for or be angry at. We are not bad, immoral people. We just don’t live our lives built around the God myth.
I must have been asleep at the switch on Friday because I totally missed Jim Adams’ Friday Faithfuls challenge. It was about religion and the challenge was for us to write anything about religion.
Jim warned us that religion can be a very touchy subject for many people, so he asked anyone who responds to this prompt to be respectful of others. I will respect Jim’s wishes.
I am an atheist. Since Jim provided the symbols of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, I thought I’d provide what is generally considered to be a symbol that represents atheism.
But just because there is a generally accepted symbol for atheism, as there are for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, atheism is not, as many religious people like to claim, a religion. Atheism has no holy books or holy grails. Atheism has no dogma, no rituals, no churches or temples, no tithes, no prayers, no hymns, no rules, no hierarchy.
The only thing atheists have in common is that we do not believe that a supernatural, ever-present, all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful God exists. Period. End of story.
I believe that man created God in his image. I believe that Christians, Jews, Muslims, and others who worship God, made up God in the same way that Greeks and Romans, for example, made up Zeus and Jupiter and all the other gods they believed in.
Most atheists are not militant in our belief about the non-existence of God. It doesn’t rule our lives. We just think of it as mythology and if people wish to embrace a mythology, if it helps them get through the days, or floats their boats, that’s fine with us.
But what is not fine with us is how many religious people seem to believe that atheists are a bad, sad, miserable, immoral, lost lot. They feel sorry for or pity us because we have lost our way; we have strayed from the path of righteousness. They can’t understand how we can be moral individuals if we don’t believe in God or an afterlife. It’s so sad that we can’t or won’t allow ourselves to bask in the glory that is God, or to accept Jesus as our savior. Which is why they want to “save” us. How magnanimous of them.
Or if they don’t feel sorry for us and want to “help us see the light,” they become very angry at us when we decline their offer. How dare we question their beliefs? How do we have the audacity to suggest that the Bible isn’t “The Truth,” and that God didn’t create us in his image, or that we evolved from monkeys?
By the way, no atheist ever said human beings evolved from monkeys. We generally accept the evolutionary theory that humans and apes have a common ancestry. And that also means we reject creationism, euphemistically dubbed “intelligent design.” Personally, I have no objection to the teaching of creationism/intelligent design in churches or religious schools. But I do object to teaching it as a science. It’s not science, it’s religion.
I could go on and on about the number of wars that have been fought and lives lost in the name of God or in defense of specific religions. But I think I’ll stop now. I’ll just say that if you believe in God, have faith in God, and accept the teachings of your particular religion, I’m happy for you. All I ask of you is to be happy for me for believing differently than you.
Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.
How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Flashback Friday post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.
If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (16th) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.
This was originally posted on June 16, 2014 on my old blog.
Q&A
I came across a post* at a site called “Today Christian.” Don’t ask why I was reading a website called Today Christian; it’s a long, sad story. The post was titled “10 Questions for Every Atheist.”
As an atheist I thought, “That’s cool. I can answer ten questions. Let me have at it.”
So here are the ten questions and my ten answers:
1 — How did you become an atheist?
I started to think for myself.
2 — What happens when we die?
We die. It’s over. Over and out. Don’t beam me up, Scotty.
3 — What if you’re wrong? And there is a Heaven? And there is a Hell?
Well I’ll be damned.
4 — Without God, where do you get your morality from?
From my parents, my teachers, the people I respect, the society in which I live, my desire to survive and be well, and my belief that everyone else desires and deserves to survive and be well.
5 — If there is no God, can we do what we want? Are we free to murder and rape? While good deeds are unrewarded?
Yes, we can do what we want as long as it is not hurtful or harmful to ourselves and/or to others and is subject to the terms and conditions set forth in my answer to #4, which would, therefore, preclude such activities as murder and rape or needing to be rewarded for doing “good deeds.”
6 — If there is no God, how does your life have any meaning?
Life has meaning through the deeds we do and the people we touch.
7 — Where did the universe come from?
Long ago and far away there was a big explosion. I think. I don’t know for sure. I don’t really need to know. Do you really need to know? How will knowing or not knowing where the universe came from make a difference in your life? (Sorry, I’m supposed to be answering questions, not asking them. My bad.)
8 — What about miracles? What about all the people who claim to have a connection with Jesus? What about those who claim to have seen saints or angels?
Miracles? You mean Smokey Robinson and the Miracles? Great group. As to all those people who claim to have a connection with Jesus and who claim to have seen saints or angels, I think they’re pretty much like those people who claim to have been abducted by aliens or who claim to have seen UFOs or ghosts or seen Jesus in their grilled cheese sandwich.
9 — What’s your view of Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris?
I haven’t read everything they’ve written or heard everything they’ve said, but from what I have read and heard, I generally agree with them. Not about everything, but about most things.
10 — If there is no God, then why does every society have a religion?
We, as humans, tend to seek answers. If we don’t know the answers, we create these supernatural deities who supply us with answers to the questions we can’t answer. And then we worship these deities — these gods — we’ve created. And we build a hierarchy and develop dogma and rituals around how we worship these deities and we call that religion. Every society in human history has created gods. Some have created a bunch of gods. Some have created just one super god. And everybody believes that their god is the one true god and that their religion is the one true religion. Nobody likes to believe that they don’t know the answers to the big questions. So God becomes the answer. How convenient.
My father was Jewish, my mother was catholic. Or vice versa, I don’t remember. Neither of them practiced their religion religiously. However, I was exposed to both religions. My father wanted me to read the Bible, the Old Testament. My mother pushed the New Testament. I thought the older books were more interesting and exciting, but the God character was a mean and vindictive son of a bitch. The New Testament wasn’t as exciting as the Old Testament, and the God character there was all peace and love.
I asked my parents how, if God wrote the Bible, he was depicted very differently in the two testaments. They hemmed and hawed a bit, but then said that, like everything else, God evolved. That confused me too, because these religions, along with many of the others I was exposed to, denounced and ridiculed evolution. God created us in his own image
By the time I reached high school, I came to the conclusion that God was created by humans, and not vice versa, as my parents claimed. And most of the stories in both the Old and New Testaments were stories written by human beings, not by some omnipotent, omnipresent, supernatural being. And the Bible and its stories had about as much credibility as those written about the Greek and Roman gods. That was when I realized that this whole religion thing, regardless of which specific religion you’re talking about, is all based upon manmade mythology.
So I stopped believing in the existence of God. I was labeled an atheist, a label I embraced.
Some have insisted that atheism is a religion, and because I’m a practicing atheist, I am practicing a religion. But atheists don’t “practice” atheism. We are atheists solely because we deny the existence of a supernatural god. There are no books that we are expected to read and to hold holy. There’s no dogma that we must adhere to or rituals that we must perform. No services that we must attend. I don’t proselytize about atheism or attempt to persuade others to believe as I do.
Atheism has only one tenet: God does not exist. Period. End of story. So for those of you who insist that atheism is a religion, I guess I would simply say that I do not practice that religion.
I’m an atheist. That’s not a secret. But being an atheist makes me misunderstood by many and reviled by some. Most people don’t really understand what atheism is. Some believe that it means you hate God. I don’t hate God. I don’t believe that God exists, and why would I hate something that isn’t real? Also, many people refer to atheists as “non-believers.” But that’s not accurate either.
If someone calls those who don’t believe in God “non-believers,” their definition of “believer” is way too narrow. They’re thinking that the word “believer” applies only to a belief system, a religious belief system. A belief in a supreme being, a greater intelligence, a supernatural deity. And for most Americans, that means believing in God, Yahweh, Allah, or whatever they call their deity.
As an atheist, I believe that God does not exist. I believe that Christians, Jews, Muslims, and others who worship God made up God in the same way that Greeks and Romans, for example, made up Zeus and Jupiter and all the other gods they believed in.
But just because I don’t believe that God exists doesn’t make me a non-believer. Because that would imply that I don’t believe in anything. I believe in a lot of things.
I believe that we didn’t exist before we were born and that we will cease to exist in any form after we die.
I believe that our universe is almost 14 billion years old and that the planet we live on is 4.5 billion years old. I believe in evolution. And I believe that we are working pretty damn hard to destroy our planet’s ability to sustain human life.
I believe in a woman’s rights to choose. I believe in free speech, in freedom of (or from) religion, in equal rights for gays, and in gun control. I also believe in the separation of church and state.
But wait, there’s more that I believe. I believe that humans are fallible and that we all make mistakes. Some more than others. I believe that most people are good, decent, and moral, regardless of their religious beliefs — or lack thereof.
Consider this. We were all natural-born atheist. We did not come out of the womb believing in God. We were taught about God by our parents and from the pastor, priest, rabbi, or imam at the church or temple we and our parents attended. Our religious beliefs as a child were our parents’ religious beliefs. As with just about everything else, we did what our parents told us. We followed their lead.
But many of us, as we grew up, became skeptical of the religious beliefs of our parents due to the inconsistencies, and in some cases, the outright hypocrisies, of those beliefs. We asked questions and sought evidence. Answers like, “Because it says so in the Bible,” or “You just have to have faith, you just have to believe,” didn’t cut it with us. We grew into pragmatists who think rationally, and logically, and after weighing all of the available evidence, we chose to not believe in any supernatural deity or supreme being.
Don’t Pity the Poor Atheist
Many Christians seem to believe that atheists are a bad, sad, miserable, immoral, lost lot. They feel sorry for or pity us because we have lost our way; we have strayed from the path of righteousness. They can’t understand how we can be moral individuals if we don’t believe in God or an afterlife. It’s so sad that we can’t or won’t allow ourselves to bask in the glory that is God, or to accept Jesus as our savior. Which is why they want to “save” us. How magnanimous of them.
Or if they don’t feel sorry for us, they are angry at us. How dare we question their beliefs? How do we have the audacity to suggest that the Bible isn’t “The Truth,” and that God didn’t create us in his image, or that we evolved from monkeys?
We, as atheists, are, therefore, condemned to eternal damnation unless we change our evil, secular ways and embrace God and Jesus. Only then will we be saved. Only then will the light of God’s truth reveal itself to us.
Atheists are not people you should feel sorry for or be angry at. We are not bad, immoral people. We just don’t live our lives built around the God myth. But hey, whatever floats your boat.
There is a new (to me, anyway) Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie prompt called Sunday Confessionals. I suppose, like confessions, it’s meant to be an opportunity for us to get something off our chests. For this week, we’ve been asked to share something that we have felt like yelling into a hole; a secret, an unpopular opinion.
I am an atheist. That’s not a secret. But being an atheist makes me misunderstood by many and reviled by some. So consider this VERY LONG POST (for me) to be me yelling into a hole about my unpopular opinion. If you don’t feel like reading my atheist rant or will take offense at my rejection of your religious beliefs, you may want to stop here.
So let’s do this.
You were a natural-born atheist. You did not come out of the womb believing in God. Religion is something you were taught. Your religious instruction was dictated by your parents. You learned about religion and about God from your parents and from the pastor, priest, rabbi, or imam at the church or temple you and your parents attended. Your religious beliefs as a child were your parents’ religious beliefs. As with just about everything else, you did what your parents told you. You followed their lead.
But like all children, you were naturally curious. You were always asking the “why” questions. So much so, that sometimes your parents, tired of hearing you ask why over and over, would say, out of frustration, “Because I’m your father [or mother] and I said so.”
An unanswered question is better than an unquestioned answer
When you asked the really tough questions, the ones even your parents didn’t know how to answer, it was just so much easier for them to say to you, “Because it says so in the Bible,” or “Because God made it that way.”
As you began to grow a little older and to think for yourself, you discovered that Santa Claus was not real. The Easter Bunny was not real. The Tooth Fairy was not real. Monsters hiding under your bed or in your closet were not real.
But God? Yes, God is real. Of course God is real.
Wait…what?
And then you got to high school and took some science, math, biology, chemistry, and physics classes. You thought about all of the things your parents taught you about your religion, about God. You thought about the Bible stories you were taught. And then you thought about what your science teachers were teaching you. And it dawned on you that something wasn’t right.
How can the earth be less than 10,000 years old when geologists, archaeologists, and paleontologists have uncovered rocks and fossils and bones that are millions of years old? Was Eve really created as a full-grown woman out of one of Adam’s ribs? Did she really succumb to the evil will of a talking snake?
Did God really instruct a 480 year old Noah to build an ark that took him 120 years to construct? Did Noah really collect one pair of every living animal on Earth while God flooded the entire planet and destroyed every other living creature besides those on Noah’s ark?
Did Jonah really live for three days and three nights inside the belly of a big fish? Did Moses really climb a mountain and come down from that mountain carrying two stone tablets with ten commandments etched by the hand of God? Was Jesus really born of a virgin mother? Could Jesus really walk on water?
Did all those things in the Bible really happen, or are they fairy tales and fables? Why do we give any more credence to our one God and to the Bible stories than we do the Egyptian, Greek, and Roman gods and their stories? Why is the God my parents believed in and the religion they practiced any better or more “right” than the gods and religions of others around the globe? Talk about a serious case of cognitive dissonance.
Pity the Poor Atheist
A lot of people believe that atheism is borne out of suffering or some traumatic event — some tragic, horrific experience — that caused these poor souls to lose faith in God. There must have had an abusive parent or relative who emotionally or physically tortured or sexually abused them.
These poor atheists must have thought that God can’t exist because, if he did exist, he wouldn’t have allowed them to suffer that way. “How can I believe in a God who would let this happen to me, who would abandon me?”
But I’ve found that not to be the case when it comes to any of the atheists I know. We ask questions and seek evidence. Answers like, “Because it says so in the Bible,” or “You just have to have faith, you just have to believe,” don’t cut it with us.
We weigh all of the available evidence and, having done so, choose to not believe in any supernatural deity or supreme being. We tend to be pragmatists who think deeply, rationally, and logically. Most of us were raised in the religion of our parents, but became skeptical by the inconsistencies, and in some cases, the outright hypocrisies, of our religions.
Many Christians seem to believe that atheists are a bad, sad, miserable, immoral, lost lot. They feel sorry for or pity us because we have lost our way; we have strayed from the path of righteousness. They can’t understand how we can be moral individuals if we don’t believe in God or an afterlife. It’s so sad that we can’t or won’t allow ourselves to bask in the glory that is God, or to accept Jesus as our savior. Which is why they want to “save” us. How magnanimous of them.
Or if they don’t feel sorry for us, they are angry at us. How dare we question their beliefs? How do we have the audacity to suggest that the Bible isn’t “The Truth,” and that God didn’t create us in his image, or that we evolved from monkeys?
We, as atheists, are, therefore, condemned to eternal damnation unless we change our evil, secular ways and embrace God and Jesus. Only then will we be saved. Only then will the light of God’s truth reveal itself to us.
We are not people you should feel sorry for or be angry at. We just don’t live our lives built around your myths.
Welcome once again to Fandango’s Provocative Question. Each week I will pose what I think is a provocative question for your consideration.
By provocative, I don’t mean a question that will cause annoyance or anger. Nor do I mean a question intended to arouse sexual desire or interest.
What I do mean is a question that is likely to get you to think, to be creative, and to provoke a response. Hopefully a positive response.
Those of you who read my blog know that I’m an atheist. Just to be clear, an atheist is someone with an absence of belief in the existence of supernatural deities. It’s essentially a rejection of the belief that any such deities exist. That’s about it. There is no book, no dogma, no rituals, and no set of rules to being an atheist.
About a week ago, a blogger I follow and enjoy wrote, “Atheism is the religious belief held by those who don’t believe in religion.” I know this blogger was being tongue-in-cheek in that wordplay, but I responded in a comment that, “atheism is not a belief system nor is it a religion.” I added to my comment, also being a bit tongue-in-cheek, “Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.”
Anyway, that exchange sparked a series of comments back and forth where that blogger continued to argue the position that atheism is a religion, while I continued to state my position that atheism is not a religion nor a defined set of religious beliefs. We finally ended with that old “let’s agree to disagree” discussion ender.
For this week’s provocative question, I’m not asking if you do or don’t believe in God or any other deity. I’m also not asking whether or not you practice any religion or are a religious person. My feeling, when it comes to a belief in deities and religion is, hey, whatever floats your boat. That said, my provocative question today is this:
Do you believe that atheism is a set of religious beliefs or is a religion in any sense? If so, why? If not, why not? Or, do you have no opinion on the matter or just don’t care one way or the other?
If you choose to participate, write a post with your response to the question. Once you are done, tag your post with #FPQ and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments. But remember to check to confirm that your pingback or your link shows up in the comments.
Note: Because I will be participating in the A to Z blogging challenge in April, I will not be posting any new provocative question until May. Instead, I will be revisiting some previous provocative questions that you might have missed. Please feel free to respond to them if you haven’t already.
Facts, Fictions & Fantasies 