Why I am an atheist – Nick Martin

Part of me wants to give a smart-assed answer to this question, because at my core, I am a smart-ass. Something like “because religion is evil” (which it is) or “because the Flying Spaghetti Monster told me to be one” (which may also be true). But, when I look at my core, the only answer I have to give is “because it’s the only position a skeptic can have”.

It’s something relatively recent in my life. I was raised in a conservative Christian household. I had to go to church every week, it was a requirement that I go to at least one service. But at the same time, my parents encouraged my love of astronomy specifically and science in general. And in retrospect, that is where it all started. That love taught me to question everything (which I most certainly did).

But getting out of the other side of my upbringing took time. I went off to college, Missouri State University (then Southwest Missouri State), and hooked up with Chi Alpha (XA) Campus Ministries. This was before they had Skepticon, a FSM church, or really any skeptical movement at all. Again, in hindsight, I feel a bit of shame, because I understand now that prosthelytizing my beliefs had to have done some real harm to people, something I can’t change. I only hope that by speaking out against religion now can undo some of that.

I was a skeptic with most everything else growing up. I didn’t believe in ghosts, ESP, aliens, or anything else in the pseudo-scientific range, but like so many other “skeptic believers,” I was not willing to turn that same scrutiny on my beliefs. Of course, like a college student, and to be fair, most human beings, it turns out I was also a fairly bad Christian, and a fairly normal college student, in liking loud music, drinking, sex, and skipping classes.

That all started to change after some a series of bad events pushed me more into that “good Christian” category again. I went to church, went to small groups, and, dangerously enough, started to read my bible. And for some reason, one I still cannot explain, I started to question why I believed what I did. I looked back at myself, and what I had been crediting god for getting me through, and realized that he hadn’t done shit.

It wasn’t a slow process. I wouldn’t even call myself an atheist until, reading Phil Plaitt’s blog, he mentioned, off-hand, someone named “PZ.” It was some inside joke I wasn’t part of, so I dug. I found out who this “PZ” was… and read enough to understand that, as a skeptic, there is only one position to be had. You cannot dismiss all fairies except the one you like any more than you can deny a color you don’t care for doesn’t exist (otherwise, the world would be rid of mauve by now). I didn’t like facing it at first, but I couldn’t dodge the questions. And when you look at belief the same way you look at ghosts, there is no way you can’t see it for what it is.

In the end, it was my own skepticism that forced me to realize the only thing I could be is an atheist.

Nick Martin
United States

Why I am an atheist – J

I am not a theist because I was born that way. I am fortunate enough not to have been indoctrinated into any cults, brainwashed, or subjugated as a child. I am not a theist because I was born in this time, in this country, and with this brain.

I am not a theist because the idea that I was created by someone who owns me forever is repugnant. I am not superstitious, I am a lover of science and nature, I like things that are logical, and I like to be in control. I have never longed for an inherent purpose to my life; I am here because I was born. I don’t want to worship anything, I don’t want to live forever, I don’t want to be told I’m a sinner, and I don’t find comfort in having all the answers, especially when the answers must be taken on faith and don’t answer anything. I am atheist because I am one of the most fortunate beings ever to have lived on this earth. I am one of the most fortunate beings ever to have lived because I am atheist.

J
, United States

(I put out a simple call for your explanations for why you’re an atheist, and I’m still inundated with submissions. This will be a daily feature on Pharyngula.)

Why I am an atheist – Michael

Why am I an atheist? Such a question would have seemed ludicrous to me just a few short years ago. And if you told me that it was the deepening of a religious belief that led me to such a position, I would have been completely baffled. But that is, in fact, what happened. Allow me to explain.

My earliest memories of religion were quite weird. My parents were not initially religious, and I was left to form ideas on my own. The occasional religious pamphlet, ranging from tattered old Jack Chick comics to slick copies of the Watchtower, was about all I had to formulate an idea of the supernatural. I can remember my father answering a question about god by talking about the energy inherent in all matter. The practical upshot was that I was basically an honest agnostic at a young age. The question didn’t seem relevant or soluble.

That all started to change around the time I was eleven or twelve. My father would occasionally take us to this strange ceremony being held at a local Catholic church called a Mass. I didn’t understand a bit of it, and found it completely boring. I was even signed up for an odd event called a “lock-in,” where I was literally locked into an apartment with a group of children I didn’t know. All very strange, but I wasn’t yet tutored in Catholicism or required to participate in their rituals.

That all changed when we moved across states and into my grandmother’s house. Immediately, I was enrolled in catechism classes, and the indoctrination began in earnest. I discovered that I had been baptised as a baby. I was forced to pray the Rosary with my family in front of the Marian shrine my grandmother had built. Attendance at Mass became mandatory. I was brought to Confession, and forced to tell these strange men what I thought I had done wrong that week. I argued with my father that I didn’t believe in a god, so I shouldn’t be forced to do this. His only reply was that until I could disprove the existence of god, I was going to go. During this time, my otherwise moderate mother, raised a Baptist, became a Catholic. My younger sister was also baptised and forced to participate.

This went on for several years. As I left home and entered college, my father racheted up the pressure. He began telling me about how I was going to be damned for all eternity. In addition, I felt an increased desire to connect with my father as I entered adulthood, but given his focus on religion, this was increasingly difficult. The two pressures seemed intolerable, and it was at that time that I enrolled in an introduction to philosophy class. The teacher of this class was pushing C.S. Lewis’ arguments, and I fell for it. Within a short time, I succumbed to the pressure and started acting more religious. I embraced the idea of apologetics, and quickly became one of those obnoxious evangelizers with whom we are all so familiar. By this time, I was married, and I inflicted these arguments on my wife until she, too, converted.

This went on for several years. My faith was only deepening, and I was beginning to think that I was being called to a life of ministry. I watched 9/11 happen, and my faith was unshaken. I was proud of the fact that MY beliefs were grounded in rational thought, not like those other religious people. I integrated myself into the local Catholic church, and was on my way to a typical unthinking lifelong acceptance of Catholic dogma. Ironically enough, the thing that made me reevaluate my beliefs was my father’s deepening religious feelings.

He began to think that the Catholic church was wrong, and that the Eastern Orthodox religion was correct. And he and I began to fight in earnest. I arrayed every argument I could think of against this apostacy, and I thought that I was winning him back to the True Faith. But, he kept going back, and eventually declared that he was leaving the Catholic church.

At this point, I realized that I was deeply offended by this, and that realization struck a nerve. I thought that I was a Catholic for logical reasons, not simply because I felt that it was right. Maybe I was the wrong party here. I had not given either side a chance to stand on its own, having always argued from the premise that the Catholic church was correct. So, I took a step back. I consciously tried to ignore my bias, and to evaluate the claims of those competing religions from a neutral standpoint.

The problem was that neither side stood up to the scutiny. When I subjected both to the same level of proof that I demanded of other truth claims, and especially other religious claims, they both withered. I was devastated. I spent many hours wrestling with this problem alone. Then, I told my wife of my doubts. Finally, I admitted to my father that I was no longer a believer. This has been a constant source of discord between us, but it can’t be helped. My wife and children were all too happy to shed their religious personas, and we quickly became a happy little secular household.

If my sojourn in the Catholic faith had any positive effect, it would be that I was immersed in various religious arguments, and it makes it a lot easier to recognize and undermine the various tactics that religious evangelists like to use.

Michael
Midwest, United States

(I put out a simple call for your explanations for why you’re an atheist, and I’m still inundated with submissions. This will be a daily feature on Pharyngula.)

Why I am an atheist – Gary Roberts

Easter Sunday was a good day for us when we were kids, second only to Christmas Day. We couldn’t wait to get home after Mass to unwrap our chocolate eggs! We’d remain in our Sunday best most of the day, as family and friends filed through my parents’ house for tea and biscuits. The religious significance of this day wasn’t lost on us either, especially after having just sat through an interminably long sermon by the parish priest about The Resurrection. A scattering of palm-leaf crosses could still be found on the tops of cupboards and shelves, or tucked away behind a picture of Pope John Paul II; souvenirs from our visit to church on the Palm Sunday the week before.

But that was back then. Things are different for me now, as far as church and religion are concerned.

Just to give you a backgrounder, I was raised a Catholic. In the Catholic schools I attended—particularly junior (or middle) school—Religious Education featured prominently in the curriculum. I remember learning the Catechism by rote then having to recite it in class along with my fellow pupils, or having to say the Lord’s Prayer and the Hail Mary as a group when we were gathered in the assembly hall each morning.

R.E. was definitely an important part of the curriculum and we sometimes had drop-in visits by the local priest, who’d test our knowledge of the bible by putting us on the spot with his many questions relating to the Old and New Testaments.

The headmaster at our junior school, Mr. McGowan, was fond of interrupting our regular classes in order to stage an impromptu Q&A session about the Catholic faith. Mr. McGowan had a predilection for confusing us when asking such questions. One of his favourite methods was to stare at one pupil and call his or her name before asking his question, while actually pointing at someone else sat on the other side of room as he posed his question. The unlucky subjects of both gaze and finger would stare at each other, dumbstruck, as they each waited for the other to answer first. Neither pupil could know for sure who was actually required to answer. Of course, the two would then receive a reprimand for not being able to read his mind.

It was a ridiculously inane way to teach and its sole purpose was to stoke a power-hungry ego, I’m sure. It also had the effect of instilling a sense of dread in our young minds whenever he entered the classroom.

My parents were practising Catholics, my father having converted to Catholicism from Protestantism in order to marry my mother. My mother’s side of the family, being Irish, were fervent followers of the Catholic faith. We had lots of cousins on the distaff side, some of whom were nuns or missionaries.

As children, we were expected to attend Mass with our parents every Sunday until we reached 16 years of age, at which point we were allowed to go to church with friends and cousins. We often skipped Mass, however, and would hang around outside St. Gregory’s church, making sure we weren’t discovered until it was over. When Mass was finished and the congregation began to file out of the church, we’d make our way home with the rest of the crowd; at this point, we were usually seen by friends of the family, who’d then be able to attest to our presence there, should our parents ask.

We were also expected to go to the Confessional at least once a month to unburden ourselves of sin. I never really thought I did anything bad as a child, so I used to have a whole list of trivial and not-so-trivial sins on standby, which I’d mix up every now and then when I was in the Confessional, just to make it sound more authentic.

Moral Lessons

I’d have to say that throughout my childhood and teenage years I did believe in God, Jesus, the Virgin Mary, the importance of absolute faith, the perils of sin, the horrors of hell. I remember at times having a feeling of being watched, or judged, and of having a sense of dread at what would happen to me if I should die. Would I be saved? Would I go to heaven? Would I end up in hell? This feeling of being watched was constantly reinforced by the amount of Catholic paraphernalia, either hanging on the walls or standing on any available flat surface in our house and the homes of our aunts and uncles, whom we visited regularly. Pictures of the Virgin Mary, the Holy Family, past and present Popes, crucifixes and statues of saints could be found in most rooms of the house in which I was raised. There was no escape. You just couldn’t get away from the disapproving frown on the face of some old pope, which would be hanging near a picture of a saint, for example, wearing an expression of beatitude and love.

This was my childhood. The meanings and moral lessons associated with these religious icons were constantly reaffirmed in our day-to-day interaction and conversations with older aunts, uncles, friends of the family and whatever priest happened to be overseeing our parish at the time.

I remember, one time, lying on the bed beside my mother as she rested during the day and Jesus, Mary and Joseph stared down at us from her bedroom wall. I was about 8 or 9 years old and we were talking about baptism, the bible and the Catholic faith. I asked her what would’ve happened to all those people born throughout history before the coming of Christ. I was surprised to hear her say that these people—which included innocent children and babies—could never attain salvation, simply because they hadn’t been baptised into the Christian faith. I’m not a hundred per cent sure if this was actually true according to the Church’s teachings or not, but I remember how horrified I felt for those unlucky, unbaptised masses. I tried putting forward naive arguments, such as its not being their fault they were born when they were, before the coming of Christ; or that they may have led good, honest lives.

But my pleas on their behalf just didn’t cut the mustard—these people were toast.

I believe that was a major moral crossroads in my life, one which led to skepticism regarding the tenets of not just Catholicism, but any religion. Skepticism, in fact, not only for an unjust religion in general, but eventually anything supernatural. It all just started to seem like nothing but myth, with no basis in fact.
Enlightening Times

I would say I have a very down-to-earth personality, one which responds well to logic and reason. I was always interested in science, particularly biology, physics, and astronomy. My putting aside of religion came about slowly, over a long period of time, I now know, in which I wasn’t really aware of what was happening. The process followed on the heels of my skepticism and I just began to believe less and less in any type of religious teachings, without thinking too much about this sea change in me. Any kind of faith that required unconditional belief in supernatural beings—simply because it was written in a book—seemed puerile and lacking. Anecdotal evidence based on revelation and dogma just wasn’t good enough for me.

Throughout history, many disparate and diverse societies had believed in one god or another, worshiping them and even sacrificing to them on a regular basis. There was a time when people believed in Odin and Thor, Zeus, or Apollo. The Ancient Egyptians believed in the sun god, Ra. Reams of literature had been written about each of these deities. I began to realise that if you used the premise that there’s only one god, that your religion is the truth and that all others are false because it’s written so in your sacred book, then the same premise can also be used to explain a whole pantheon of gods (as was the case for pre-Christian Roman society, and even some extant religions such as Hinduism). How could one claim a monopoly on the truth, based on questionable revelation and dubious translation of ancient texts, when other religions could make an equally valid claim? This way of thinking seemed somehow intrinsically flawed.

Aside from these discrepancies I associated with religion, I came to realise I had a problem with how divisive it was, how inhumane and uncaring many of its practitioners were in contrast to the central thrust of its teachings. If anything, religion and its followers were—in the main—more tribal and protective of their beliefs, rather than tolerant and compassionate towards others who held different, or opposing, views. And yet the basic tenets of these beliefs were supposedly based on compassion, and an adherence to a set of high moral standards and guidelines.

As a gay person trying to lead as good a life as possible and to help people in any way I could (not because a book told me to do so, but because it was in my very nature), I had a lot of trouble reconciling religion with basic human rights, to the extent that religion lost out in my eventual philosophy and interpretation of the world. In short, I finally realised that I was living my life without religion or faith, and that it was okay to be that way. In fact it felt good, if not downright liberating, to be rid of the side effects of religion and dogma. Effects such as guilt or fear at having sinned. Not to mention the mind-numbing, expected obeisance to the Church in general and to God in particular. Independence and freethinking weren’t desirable traits amongst the flock, and certainly weren’t encouraged in any way, shape, or form by the priests in my childhood.

My way of thinking and eventual freedom from religion led me to the belief (if I may use that word) that this life is all we have. Nothing else. Just this one shot at happiness and enjoyment of the world and all it has to offer. This understanding makes faith in any of the major religions, or belief in any of the lesser known world views, seem so trivial. But that’s just my own point of view, something we’re all entitled to—be it religious or not. That’s something I’d like to emphasize here. I know this isn’t how holders of such beliefs would see it, and that to them my way is anathema. But, however firmly they believe in their religion there are many millions of people who believe just as firmly in another, opposing religion.

And the basis for their faith is almost entirely dependent upon the culture into which they were born and raised.

Nowadays, religion fascinates me from a cultural and sociological perspective. It still has the power to shape whole societies and influence the decision-making processes of reasonable, rational people in the 21st Century. Other than that, it holds no sway over me. The only awe I feel at being inside a church is for the architecture of the place, or its historical importance. I appreciate the aesthetics of magnificent buildings, and churches and cathedrals always seemed to be the jewels in the crown of human architectural achievements.

Gary Roberts
Canada

(I put out a simple call for your explanations for why you’re an atheist, and I’m still inundated with submissions. This will be a daily feature on Pharyngula.)

An irrefutable argument

Jessica Ahlquist is suing her school district to have a prominently posted prayer removed. It should be an open-and-shut case — it’s a freakin’ prayer in a public school, for pity’s sake — but I noticed one peculiar argument in a profile of the case.

Her frequent appearances, say the lawyers for the city and school, show that she does not fear harassment, as she claims in her suit. “These are not the actions of a frightened student, but of a zealous advocate.”

If the prayer were a problem, students would be cowed and fearful, and would not be complaining. A student is complaining, therefore she isn’t fearful, therefore it’s not a problem.

That’s some catch, that Catch-22.

(via Cuttlefish)

I get email

This one isn’t crazy. It’s from an atheist, so it’s also properly spelled and punctuated, with good grammar.

The point is that many (sophisticated) religious advocates would argue that if everyone dedicated themselves to following certain religious codes of conduct, this would improve the world, and whether a God actually exists is largely irrelevant. Terry Eagleton discusses this position in Reason, Faith and Revolution.

This leads on to an interesting philosophical question: if the world could be a more peaceful and fulfilling place because people acted in accordance with strictly false beliefs, whereas if people only held true beliefs the world would be more conflicted and painful – then which scenario is preferred? This question is philosophical and I can’t see how science alone can adjudicate on the answer.

Science can’t, directly. This is a matter of values, and I, for instance, value truth very highly — so highly that the world logically cannot be a more fulfilling place for me if I were driven by false beliefs. That, I would admit, is a personal idiosyncrasy and I can easily imagine people who don’t give a damn about the truth of their beliefs. Picture the Joe Pantoliano character in The Matrix, Cypher, who sells out his friends in order to be reinserted into the computer fantasy simulation. Notice also that he’s portrayed as a bad guy.

You see, living a lie is nearly universally considered a bad thing. Even the people who most devoutly believe in the most wacky fundy beliefs, or scientologists, or Mormons, do not argue that their ideas are false but that they believe in them anyway — they all argue that they are literally true. The truth of Christianity or Islam or Hinduism or whatever is considered very important, but they’ve simply deluded themselves into believing that they are true (and we know that they can’t all be true, since they’re mutually contradictory).

I would also argue that an intellectual foundation built on false beliefs is inherently less stable than one built on true beliefs, because there is the continual risk that the falsity of that foundation can be found by its proponents, reducing their confidence. I presume that stability contributes to “peaceful and fulfilling”, although maybe some kind of chaotic anarchy would form a stable attractor in the great state space of possible social worlds. Unfortunately, my personal values intrude again: I don’t want to live in an anarchic state built on lies. I want to live in a totalitarian Dominionist state built on lies even less, though, so maybe you could make a “lesser of two evils” argument.

Why I am an atheist – Gwen

Simple. I read the bible. At 11. After reading through Norse, Roman, Egyptian and Greek mythology. I recognized they were the same. My mother was ecstatic, My father not so much. Oh, and I am African American. My mother was an atheist, and so are my children…they also came there with some guidance, but of their own volition.

Gwen
California

Deepak Chopra reviews Richard Dawkins

Shorter Deepak: “Richard Dawkins didn’t endorse my quantum bullshit, therefore The Magic of Reality sucks!”

Deepak Chopra actually sounds quite upset — his review of the book reads more like the indignant squawk of a charlatan furious that the presence of a skeptic might cut into his take. It’s largely an exercise in name-dropping and the profession of bleary, vacuous misinterpretations of science on his part, which he then turns around and uses to accuse Dawkins of error because he doesn’t share his inoculation of the ideas with pseudoscience. Like this:

What is obnoxious about Dawkins’ version is his tone of absolute authority about matters that he shows complete ignorance of. Respected physicists like John Archibald Wheeler, Sir Arthur Eddington, Freeman Dyson, Hans-Peter Dürr, Henry Stapp, Sir Roger Penrose, Eugene Wigner, Erwin Schrodinger, and Werner Heisenberg suggest a fundamental role for consciousness in quantum theory and a mental component at the level of biological organisms and the universe itself.

I notice that 56% of the people he names are dead, that none of them are biologists or psychologists, and that several of them, while authoritative in their fields, aren’t actually known for their views on consciousness. This is a common pseudo-scientific con, roping a few famous corpses into agreeing with wacky interpretations.

But even the ones who’ve pontificated on consciousness and physics, like Dyson and Penrose, don’t help. Those guys don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. Quantum effects matter in that they’re fundamental to how all matter behaves, but cells are big — any counter-intuitive weird quantum effects are going to be negligible in the large-scale bulk activity of a synapse. This is a world where the laws of thermodynamics and electromagnetism rule: the Goldman-Hodgkin-Katz equation doesn’t need any quantum handwaving to accurately describe the potential across a cell membrane.

Bringing these guys into the argument is as silly as if I were to charge into a discussion of how the tides go in, the tides go out by insisting that we have to take into account the effect of the presence of schools of squid. Sure, they’re real and they’re there, but they don’t affect the tides. This simply is not where neuroscience is going: if you want to understand how the nervous system works, learn math and the physics of electrochemistry, and in particular learn about biochemistry, pharmacology, and molecular biology…but studying quantum physics won’t help you at all.

I won’t even get into his absurd ideas that the universe itself is conscious. Dawkins’ book is about reality, not fantasy.

So Deepak then gets off his quantum bandwagon and tries to discuss biology. He fails.

Dawkins bypasses evidence from his own field of genetics that might upset his hobby-horse. He ignores, either willfully or through ignorance, the evidence for directed mutagenesis first put forward by John Cairns of Harvard in 1988. John Cairns showed that if you grow bacteria with the inability to metabolize lactose, they evolve that ability in petri dishes tens of thousands of times faster than would be predicted if mutations simply occurred randomly. Professor Rudolph Tanzi of Harvard Medical School further points out that mutations in the human genome do not occur randomly but cluster in “hot spots” that are hundreds of times more likely to undergo mutation.

Dawkins is not a geneticist: he’s an ethologist and evolutionary biologist. Of course, he knows far more about genetics than does Deepak, so his confusion is understandable. Deepak would have to stand awed before the depth of knowledge known by my undergraduate students in comparison to his.

The Cairns results were interesting, but I don’t know of anyone who still claims that they are the result of directed mutagenesis, other than woo-peddlers. The fact that bacteria produced viable mutations more rapidly than predicted is explained by the observation of hypermutability in bacteria under stress. Basically, if you measure the error rate of replication in normal, healthy bacteria under growth promoting conditions, and then use that same rate to predict the frequency of mutations in a population under stressed conditions, you’ll underestimate the frequency.

The observation of hotspots for mutation in the genome is also well-known. It’s not magic, it’s not because these regions are well-liked by the mutation fairy, it’s because of chemistry. Some areas of a chromosome are more prone to breakage or error because of their structure or sequence.

This does not defy the observation that mutations are random. It merely means that the probability of mutation is not uniform across the entire length of the genome. Deepak’s argument is like claiming that because, when shooting craps, you’re more likely to roll a 7 than snake-eyes, throwing two dice generates a non-random result. Deepak doesn’t understand physics or biology, and he also doesn’t understand elementary probability theory.

Dawkins does. I heard him talk about this book on Sunday, and Deepak’s baseless complaints to the contrary, he did take a moment to explain what he meant by “random”, and it wasn’t the cartoonish nonsense Deepak Chopra babbles about.

I could go on and on about the stupidity of Deepak’s review — every paragraph is like the evacuations of an elephant with diarrhea — massively feculent and slimy, of a quality that will not even appeal to the neighborhood dung beetles. But I do have to mention one more sentence that left me laughing.

One doesn’t ask for advanced genetics in a primer for young adults, but one does ask that the writer know his field before adopting a tone of authority.

That’s rich coming from a quantum quack who is demonstrably deluded about medicine, biology, evolution, physics, chemistry, and the entirety of science, yet manages to pretend to be an authority every day.

(Also on Sb)

Why I am an atheist – Frederick Sparks

I am an atheist because I have never seen any real evidence of any gods of any kind. I was raised Catholic and later converted to Baptist as an adult. Even as a child it bothered me that god did not act in obvious and public ways as depicted in the Bible. The liberal interpretation that the supernatural events in the Bible should be interpreted metaphorically only begged the question why the god entity shouldn’t be interpreted metaphorically as well. Also, as an African American I can’t reconcile accepting a religion that was used to enslave my ancestors.

But seeing George Carlin’s routine Religion is Bullshit sealed my atheism.

Frederick Sparks
United States

(I put out a simple call for your explanations for why you’re an atheist, and I’m still inundated with submissions. This will be a daily feature on Pharyngula.)