Why I am an atheist – anchor

I am an atheist by necessity, only because religious superstition exists in the world.

I would be delighted if, upon one happy day in the future, that priority sank to the level of historical novelty and I could devote my energies exclusively to more pleasant and constructive and progressive pursuits that do not resemble the burdensome toils of janitorial maintenance.

Helping to clear the world of the pestilence of religious tyranny is a duty I do not shirk and I am proud of what modest help I can bring to the effort. I remain ever vigilant to find ways of increasing the effectiveness of my activism, but I would gladly part with the “atheist” identification if religion and superstition disappeared and rationality and critical thinking became the default attitude in the world.

As long as superstition enslaves people and makes life miserable if not unbearable, I must be an atheist, but I’d much rather be, simply, an artist and educator, and be able to build upon the foundation of knowledge already established, introducing the marvels of natural reality to young people and those who sincerely value their curiosity of the real world without having to give my time to religion for ANYTHING, including the reason for being an “atheist”.

Unfortunately, we don’t yet live in such a world (far from it) but my idealism doesn’t trump my practical realism either, and so I must be an “atheist”. So be it. Let the conflict roil on and evolve inevitably into one or another outcome.

Meanwhile, I will continue to remain optimistic for the prospect of a superstition-free world as long as I see light on the horizon and can cherish an entirely HUMAN hope for a better future, virtues which the grubby, greedy hands of religious authority cannot take from me, let alone assume credit for.

anchor

Wait, I’m not recovered yet!

I woke up still achey and worn out from a long long day standing in the rain yesterday (but it was worth it!), and you know what I have to do next? The American Atheists National Convention. It’s going on today and tomorrow, and I speak tomorrow (on “Scientists! If you aren’t an atheist, you’re doing it wrong!”) The talk is mostly in the bag, but man, I will sleep soundly on the plane home, I think.

Me vs. Chris Stedman

How do I get myself talked into these things? I have two events with the slithery Chris Stedman coming up: first, he’s speaking at the Midwest Science of Origins Conference in Morris next week. He’s scheduled for April Fools’ Day, so I’m hoping the student organizers are just going to hand him an exploding cigar and then put out his flaming hair with a swirlie…but I suspect they’re actually going to take him seriously and give him time to annoy me.

Second, the day after the Global Atheist Convention, as part of their fringe events, I’m speaking at this event: PZ Myers, Leslie Cannold, Chris Stedman – The Road Less Traveled, in which I’m supposed to talk about whether believers and atheists can work together for the common good. My answer is simple: sure they can, but faith isn’t in the common good, and we have to work against it.

You know, one of my concluding lines in my Reason Rally talk was that I want to be bad without god. And by bad, I mean defy the bogus religious morality that the majority want to impose on us, and fight against the status quo.

Why I am an atheist – Clare

I was raised as a Christian by my mother, whereas my father was an atheist. I never really understood what that meant because no-one ever taught me that there are people in this world that don’t believe in God. I loved science from a young age, and it all made sense to me, except that it just wasn’t compatible with what people told me to believe. I began to doubt christianity around age 8, and began to research how the world works – needless to say, I started noticing the immense amount of bullshit I’d been force-fed. When I got to high school (here, that’s age 11) I completely left christianity and began to look at my other options – I still didn’t know that it was ok to be an Atheist. I experimented with Wicca and Paganism for about 2 years, but I still had the same problem – no scientific evidence to back them up. But with a little research, and making some great friends who are Atheists, I figured out that Atheism was the path for me. Now, I’ve been an out-and-proud Atheist for 3 years and I’ll never look back. People say that religion gives you answers because you can ‘fill in the blanks’ but that’s not good enough for me. When I get an answer to one of life’s great mysteries, I want it to be the correct, scientifically proven one. I want to be as sure as possible in my beliefs – and what’s more sure than scientific fact?

Clare
Australia

The reports are trickling in

Take heed, world: despite miserable weather, the Reason Rally drew a good-sized and wonderfully diverse crowd, exactly what we all wanted.

"We are here to celebrate our belief in reason, science and the power of the human mind," comedian Paul Provenza said from the podium as raindrops fell. "We are here to say to elected politicians … that there is a base for them to stand on to stand up to the religious right."

That brought a cheer from the crowd, estimated at between 8,000 and 10,000 people — a sharp increase over The Godless March on Washington, another atheist-themed rally held 10 years ago in the same spot that attracted about 3,000 people.

Also visibly different was the composition of the crowd, which was largely under the age of 30, at least half female and included many people of color. Ten years ago, the crowd was mostly white, over 40 and predominantly male.

You missed it? You can watch Richard Dawkins, Greta Christina, Taslim Nasrin, and Tim Minchin already, thanks to all those gadgets people were aiming at the stage.


The Washington Post has a reasonable review, while that goofy clueless babbler Cathy Lynn Grossman has an awful one, although it does have a nice picture of Jen.

Why I am an atheist – Torsten Pihl

I am an atheist simply because I don’t believe in God, gods or anything supernatural. I cannot prove otherwise but the onus is on the claimant to present credible evidence, not just arguments from ignorance (complexity, beauty, science doesn’t know everything, etc.) and other logical fallacies.

I never believed in gods, even during the years that I attended Christian kindergarten and elementary schools. I took the Bible stories as just that — stories. And classmate’s claims that God wrote the Bible made no sense to me. God was just so…not there.

I went through a supernatural phase though. In the 1970’s, I was intrigued by Leonard Nimoy’s In Search Of, pyramid power, the Bermuda Triangle, Nostradamus, and other pop pseudo-sciences and pseudo-profundity. And Disney’s Escape from Witch Mountain had me trying to fly with the mere power of my thoughts. I could feel myself flying with my eyes closed but not when opened. Darn reality.

Also, it took some time for me to completely reject superstition. I had to be careful of my thoughts lest the universe use me as an ironic example, like choke to death on a vitamin pill, or instill cancer if I got too happy or full of myself. Perhaps it was due to residuals from Christianity and/or cosmic karma crap. I got over it. Now, there’s no more universal score keeper. Exciting! Now I can simply be responsible for my actions, not thoughts, and balance my personal needs and desires with social responsibility and environmental stewardship. No gods required.

Torsten Pihl
United States

You realize #reasonrally is going to suck FtB dry?

I’m about to depart lovely Morris for a long day of travel to Washington DC. Several other FtB bloggers are already there, or on their way. We may experience a shortage of content! I guess you’ll have to go read all the stay-at-homes this weekend, although even that bunch may just be weeping over how they’re not at the Reason Rally.

I’ll try to post the occasional blog entry or tweet from my privileged position in the speakers’ stands, but I understand that tens of thousands of technophilic pro-science godless people in one place may strain the capacity of the cell towers in the area.

Why I am an atheist – Michael A Pipkin

My journey to atheism started with a discussion with a coworker who also happened to be a Christian minister.

Although I was raised Catholic, I had long ago grown out of much of the dogma. I had no problem accepting science that conflicted with church teachings and I generally tried to be a good person without appealing to the Bible for instruction. However, I still clung to the belief that there must be a god, and that I needed to believe certain things or behave in a certain way in order to get my eternal reward after death.

One evening, I watched a fascinating documentary on the Discovery Channel about some of the creatures who were direct ancestors to the dinosaurs. The next day, I mentioned it at work, specifically bringing up how the show talked about the eventual evolution of the creatures of that period into the dinosaurs. I had no idea what kind of reaction it would bring. My minister-coworker retorted with “Oh, you mean how it never happened?” He then launched into a whole tirade about how we have no evidence for evolution, and the earth is not old enough… It was basically a lot of the nonsense from AiG, although I didn’t recognize it as such at the time.

Even though I was still religious at the time, I fully accepted an old earth and evolution. To be honest, I probably would have considered myself an intelligent design proponent, had I known the term, because I still believed that humans were somehow special. The most annoying part to me was that I had nothing with which to fight back. I just flat out didn’t know enough about evolution to make a solid argument. I decided then and there that I would not be caught in that situation again. I went out and bought The Blind Watchmaker (Dawkins).

I was enthralled. I could not put the book down. I had no idea that we had naturalistic explanations not only for evolution, but for all of the processes that allow it to happen — all without having to appeal to any supernatural being. After finishing Watchmaker, I read Your Inner Fish (Shubin), and The Selfish Gene (Dawkins). I kept thinking to myself, “If we can explain how life evolved through purely naturalistic processes, what else can be explained in that way?” The next book I read was Atom, by Lawrence Krauss. Wow, we can explain just as well the evolution of the universe from the Big Bang through today as we can the evolution of life on Earth! That pushed me over the edge. Something hit me. I realized that all of my coworker’s arguments for the existence of god were appeals to the unknown. He didn’t understand these processes, so he used his god to fill in the gaps. Once I better understood how the universe worked, there were no (or at least far fewer) gaps to fill. We don’t need gods to explain any natural processes in our universe. That one single fact is so liberating!

There was still the spiritual side of things, but I was already rather thin there anyway. More reading, more walls falling. I read The God Delusion (Dawkins), The End of Faith (Harris), God Is Not Great (Hitchens), and Breaking the Spell (Dennett). The spell was, indeed, broken. For the first time, I truly saw religion as a curse, rather than a blessing. It was during that time that I decided that I was a good person regardless of my beliefs, not because of them. Truth be told, I am probably a better person today without any of that nonsense filling my head.

It makes me a little bit sad when I see or read interviews with prominent authors like those above, in which they bemoan that their works are primarily read by people who are already of like mind, and that they aren’t really making a difference. If I could say just one thing to them, it is that I am proof that they can make a difference, and I hope they never give up the fight.

Michael A Pipkin
United States