I have been asked, “Why are you an atheist?” This question has not been asked in a rude or aggressive manner, it has been (I think) an honest request for information. The short answer is, “I see nothing in the universe which cannot be explained naturally.” Fine. But how did I arrive at that idea?
The first source for this idea is my father (who (I think) is a deist and an active member of a Unitarian Church (he was even a church elder for a year (and has given a couple of ‘sermons’))). After a stretch in the Marines (between Korea and Vietnam (smart man)), he used his GI Bill to study geology at Tufts University. Then he joined the National Park Service and became an interpreter (same job I have).
One of the perks of growing up in the park service was, well, growing up in the park service. I lived at Death Valley for three years, and Grand Canyon for five (both places are heaven for a geologist). We were also able to travel widely throughout the southwest and every vacation (at least once per trip, usually once per day) he launched into ‘lecture mode’ (I do this to my family, too). His running commentary (whether driving or backpacking) on the geology immersed me at an early age in the idea that, even if the explanation is hidden, there is a logical explanation for natural phenomena.
I, like most kids, went through a dinosaur stage. Unfortunately, this was back in the days when the library books still focused on the ‘failures’ of dinosaurs — big, slow, dumb, lethargic, etc. I switched to history, but I still read extensively in palaeontology and evolutionary biology. The books that I read have reinforced the same lessons that my father taught me: natural events have natural explanations.
Even though I went from theist, to deist, to universal deist over a period of some 40 years, I never doubted the idea of natural explanations. I have, over the years, had many, many, many run-ins with theists who were (are) neck-deep in the shit of belief.
At Grand Canyon, we had an assembly at the school. A story-teller came in and was brilliant. The last story that he told was a very beautiful (well, I was in fourth (?) grade at the time and I still remember the story fondly) retelling of Genesis. His imagery, his timing, his vocabulary, was perfect. After the show, as we walked back to class, I mentioned that the last story was a fun myth. Oops, I stepped in the shit of belief (first time I can remember getting my feet dirty in that particular type of shit). He told me that that is what actually happened; that’s how the earth was created. I laughed and lost a friend. Of course, he laughed his ass off when one of the Hopi students explained his creation myth. Pot, kettle. Kettle, pot.
In Maryland, in middle school (Marylandese for Junior High), one of our biology units focused on biology. There was a neat demonstration of ‘survival of the fittest’ (and I know that survival of the fittest is a very limited description of evolution) using red, yellow, blue and green toothpicks. We were to scattered them on the ground and then the other three people in the group would, in a short time, pick up the toothpicks one at a time. The idea was that the yellow and red toothpicks would be picked up quickly (a detrimental mutation), and the green and blue would be harder to find. One of the girls in my group said, “We get to be God. Let’s make the red ones survive ’cause I like that colour.” I tried to explain that evolution does not work that way. I got shouted down by my group (and the three around us). It was a good lesson for me, on more than one level.
Then there was the biology teacher who stated, at the beginning of class, “The state says I have to cover evolution. It’s in chapter XX in your textbook. I know evolution is a lie to destroy humanity. If you want to risk your soul and read about it you may, but it will not be talked about again in my classroom. There. I covered evolution.” There were only three of us in the class who, within a week, had read that chapter.
There was a very aggressive Christian on my paper route and he tried, every time I collected money, to convert me. When he found out I ‘believed’ in evolution, he laughed and said that it was all based on a pig tooth found in Nebraska. I was unprepared at the time (I was, like, 13?) to argue that the case of Niobrara man actually shows how well science works: one man made a mistake, other palaeontologists and anthropologists found the error, and it was corrected. In the 1920s.
These are just three of the many, many run-ins I have had with theists (oddly, they have all been Christians (must be a coincidence)). Every run in has only reinforced the lessons of my father.
I am an atheist because I trust in the natural error correction mechanisms of the scientific method. I am an atheist because the natural explanation, being the only explanation which is in any way provable, is the most logical (not necessarily the simplest). I am an atheist because, thanks in large part to my childhood experiences, I see nothing in the natural world, solar system, galaxy or universe which cannot be explained through natural processes.
So I am a naturalistic atheist, not a philosophical atheist, right? Well, that brings up the second reason I became an atheist: my study of history (well, I guess history is philosophy, right?).
I started college as a computer science/computer engineering/mathematics major. I was good at the math. I understood the math. I hated the math. I couldn’t picture what the numbers were saying. So I decided to switch to something I enjoy (I would worry about a career later) and became a history major.
In my study of history, I have noticed that no war has existed independent of the idea, “God is with US!!” Never mind that both sides make the same claim. Whether it is the “Gott mit unns!” of Gustav II Adolf, or “Jesu-Maria” of Tilly’s imperial troops at Breitenfeld, both sides professed that god had a personal interest in their victory (at least Gustav’s Finnish cavalry were honest about it: their battle cry was “Haakaa Paalle” — Hack them Down!). The Spanish Armada had god on their side (not to mention mediocre ships, few long range guns, no fresh water, and not enough ammunition).
Throughout history, priests (of every religion) have blessed the troops going off to battle and asked the god(s) for aid. The Athenians asked Athena for victory. The Romans asked for help from Mars. Young men going Viking got help from Odin. The Aztecs fought the flower wars to provide food for the gods. The list goes on, ad nauseum.
If the Spartans defeat Athens, does that mean Athena was weak? Or does it mean that the Athenian economic colonialism was a poor economic model? Were the German gods more powerful than the Roman ones in the forests of Germany? Did the Aztecs defeat the Spanish because their gods were so well fed? Or did the Spanish have the advantage because they ate their god?
Even the Communist states asked for help from their ‘god’ — the god of economic and social inevitability through the socialist dialectic (I view communism as a religion because it asks for its adherents to believe in impossibilities — the elimination of greed and government).
The more that I studied history, the more I realized that ‘god’ was just another tool used by the politico-military structure to give heart to the ordinary soldier. Whether the generals and kings believed that god was on their side or not is immaterial. It was still just another bunch of propaganda shoved down the throats to make the victims more willing to kill.
Natural philosophy (geology, palaeontology, evolution) convinced me that there is no evidence for god. The study of history has reinforced that conviction while also making me areligious. When I look at the religious wars of history (and even wars (such as the Hundred Years War) between peoples of the same religion (all Christians) becomes a religious war (you aren’t doing it right, so I kill you!)) I realize that, no matter why religion developed, it becomes yet another tool in the box to convince one set of peons to kill another set of peons.
So, Dr. Myers, you asked for a short piece titled “Why I Am an Atheist.” So I failed the short part, but this really is, to the best of my recollection, why I am an atheist.
Ogvorbis
United States
!!!!!
That was great. Excellent history lesson.
I liked your take on Communism. That paragraph was short.
Thanks, Oggie. Well said.
But I’d hoped you might use this bandwidth and your expertise to answer some of the bigger questions:
A train leaves Baltimore at 5:30. Another train leaves…
Another excellent essay–I’ve enjoyed all of these so far.
Obligatory link to Twain’s “The War Prayer”
I wonder if a knowledge of history kills faith faster than some of the “hard” sciences.
—
Brownian
The answer to that question is “the blonde”.
Excellent! And similar to my own story as well. I became interested in science at an early age and that, coupled with being raised in a liberal protestant church which did not interpret the Bible literally, led me quickly into agnosticism and eventually to complete disbelief.
I will offer, however a really minor quibble:
There are some things which are not explained…yet! But we’re getting there!
I am enamored with your parenthetical eloquence.
Reminds me of Luke Haines’ lyrics in his Baader Meinhof theme:
Don Prothero just recently blogged about this:
http://www.skepticblog.org/2011/11/30/a-tooth-a-myth-and-creationist-lies/
That’s what’s so absurd about various creationists claiming that there are three nineteenth century superstitions that have failed, Freudianism, Communism, and “Darwinism.”
Yeah, you know, because British Empiricism was such a failure in the economic field. Oh, no, nobody believes that, Adam Smith had basically spelled out what a bunch of nonsense Communism/Marxism, the spawn of German Idealism, was. And Darwin used many of the same arguments that Smith and other economists had in explaining biologic competition and adaptation to the changes produced by that. Freud, another German idealist, with a few good ideas, most not, including the belief that Greek myths are a good source of psychological information.
No, sorry, Smith won in the end because the “nation of shopkeepers” was pragmatic and paid attention to matters like greed. Darwin should win in the end, again because Britain was pragmatic and wanted observable mechanisms and explanations based on competition.
ID is about as non-religious as communism was, a thin cover of secularity spread over a host of superstitions.
Glen Davidson
Excellent!
–
“(I view communism as a religion because it asks for its adherents to believe in impossibilities — the elimination of greed and government)”
My thoughts, exactly. Add to that the unquestionable support for main ideologue’s writings (in the Soviet case — Lenin’s, not sure for the rest) — persecution of any schismatic thought and reverent bows towards them wherever you turn included (say, most Soviet-printed serious non-fiction books have a preface with those mandatory odes to the Party and (at least semi-)relevant quotes from Lenin’s works); also repression of certain branches of science that were somehow seen as contradicting or damaging the ideology (genetics, cybernetics).
Would anyone like a post-deja-vu cookie?
“no matter why religion developed, it becomes yet another tool in the box to convince one set of peons to kill another set of peons.”
It’s all about power, see. Fresh from reading Corey Robinson’s The Reactionary Mind, I can now connect the dots between Christians and conservatism, and exactly what the bait is that the GOP hands out to the 99%:
“Conservatism offers them something Robin brilliantly calls “democratic feudalism.” In other words, dominion over your “lessers” in the private spheres of the workplace (middle-management tyrants) and the home (lockin’ down the wife and daughter’s ladyparts): “the most visible effort of the GOP since the 2010 midterm election has been to curtail the rights of employees and the rights of women.” [pirated from Connor Kilpatrick’s review of the book]
Evil, ain’t it.
Tuesday (and no, I refuse to divulge whether that is a calendarist Tuesday, or a Tuesday in the Ogvorbisverse (by the way, happy Tuesday!)).
Not sure. History is like any other subject — no matter how deep you go, you just keep discovering more and more that you do not know. And, like any other subject, the more education, the more you know about less. And (aside from some short excursions into medievel heresies and early Christianity), religious history has been low on my priorities.
Even if I do not know the answer, either someone else does know, or someone is working on finding the answer. I know the answer is out there even if we are never able to find it. The answer to why is always a natural answer.
For a while, I blogged as either The Parenthetical Atheist or as (((Billy))) the Atheist. And I tend to speak in public in much the same way — excursions in the middle of my sentences.
I seem to remember having one of those before.
Talk about great storytellers. You had me at “Grand Canyon”.
Awesome. And extra-nice to have a big, long, interesting story from one of my very favourite people here.
Glad to see you contribute, Brother Og! It really does feel like more knowledge and understanding tends toward atheism; as a social species, we don’t need myths anymore, just some socialization for good ethics.
But I never understood people who were afraid of science either. How can you doubt geology or evolution? They make so much sense.
The best Why I am an atheist testimonial so far. If I wanted to convince theists to grow up, I would show them this post.
What incredible luck to have parents like your father and to actually live at the Grand Canyon.
That’s not unusual for anyone who lives in Idiot America.
— Human Ape
Well said. thanks for writing.
Thanks. I think the reason I have become good at that is through sheer practice. I present on the order of 300 formal interpretive programs per year, and using a story to illustrate the facts, sometimes obliquely, works for me. I try to model my interpretive programs on Jame Burke’s ‘Connections’
Happens to a lot of people.
Thank you.
I know PZed asked for short, but (as I have proven again and again and again) I tend to keep going.
Indocrination and fear can be very effective at steering people away from ‘bad’ thoughts (in this case, thoughts that would upset the extant power structure).
I’m glad you think so. I reread it on the post and realized just how many places I could make it better (and longer).
I lived there for five years and have seen, maybe, 1/3 of the canyon. It takes a while for the scale to make sense. And the time (Precambrian through late Permian) is mind-blowing.
That was wonderful, Padre ;)
Heh. ‘Indocrination’ should actually be ‘Indoctrination.’ All Hail Tpyos!
Again, I would like to thank PZ for inviting these testimonies, they have all been interesting.
As an English person I would add that the Spanish Armada was up against one of the best navies in the world at that time. Every Spanish ship was carrying a load of priests who were fervently praying for victory. The English ships were small and compact while the Spanish ships were very tall, this meant that it was very easy for the English ships to hole the Spanish ships below the water line and very difficult for the Spanish ships to do it back. After the actual sea battle, the surviving Spanish ships were battered by severe storms and mostly blown off course and shipwrecked. I am basing all this on hazy memories of school history lessons from an obviously biased source but I think that it is fairly accurate. The whole point of this failed invasion was to bring England from protestantism back to the true faith of Catholicism. Why after this defeat the Spanish didn’t change sides I don’t know. Surely it was pretty obvious whose side God was on.
DLC:
Thanks.
jamesmery:
Thanks, but I’m back to Frere now.
stonyground:
The Spanish Armada was already weakened by poor ship design (too large to maneauvre), worms (and the delays before the armada set sail added even more deterioration), lack of water, incompetent leadership (the English, of course, had nobles in charge of the fleet but were smart enough to actually listen to the men who were experienced sailors), ammunition shortages, and a muddled command system. All the English had to do was keep the Spaniards from either landing in England or in Flanders and the fleet was doomed.
And the Spaniards viewed the defeat as proof that they weren’t being thorough enough in rooting out the secret Jews and secret Moors. If anything, the defeat reinforced the Spanish nobility’s extremism.
Thanks. That was good reading.
I’ll just pick a minor spelling nit: the battle cry of Hakkapeliittas’ was “Hakkaa päälle!”. As you might imagine it’s not unheard of in international sports in any event Finns might attend.
I know. I could have sworn the umlauts were there. And the extra ‘a’ and missing ‘k’ in Hakkaa? They are on the field at Breitenfeld.
I hate to outsource, but I have a backlog you might be able to help me with.
The ships of the Spanish Armada were not intended for doing battle, rather for transporting troops from the Spanish Netherlands to England to fight with the English. The ships needed to be large to transport 30,000 soldiers. They’d likely have been all right, too, had they been able to hold their formation together, but with the burning ship sent their way they had to scramble to escape the fire.
Then they had to fight, and, quite unsurprisingly, were defeated. Would have lost everything, too, had the winds not shifted at the last minute, keeping the remaining ships from grounding. So the priests hailed that “miracle,” only to end up losing a lot more ships and men in the North Sea.
Glen Davidson
@Stonyground #24:
It took the Spanish a further 217 years to be left with no choice but to change sides.
But…but…but…there is no fire story! :(
;)
Lovely piece, Ogvorbis. :)
Having seen the results around me, I know this is true, but it’s one of those odd things that I (and probably many others who loved science as kids) almost can’t wrap my brain around in a tangible way. I can understand it descriptively, but can’t imagine thinking that way myself, if that makes sense.
I still am amazed by how such a large portion of people can misunderstand evolution because I had such a strong and thorough education. I kept struggling to understand why peers who went to public schools here could act as though say, intelligent design, was a viable option given what we know. There really is no substitute for a dedicated teacher who is unafraid to explain how the foundation of all biology is both fact and theory, then back it up.
Thank you for the story, Brother Ogvorbis.
I remember the first time I had the “Nebraska Man was a pig” argument presented to me. I asked: “Who determined the tooth belonged to a pig?” Naturally the creationist didn’t know. The next time I saw him, a week or so later, I told him about W.K. Gregory’s 1927 paper “Hesperopithecus apparently not an ape nor a man” (Science, 66:579-81). It wasn’t a creationist who corrected Osborn, it was another paleontologist.
Thank you.
The fire story is on TET episode CCLXXXI. A two-year-old girl and a chile pepper.
Standard religious response to the failure of a religious idea: the belief wasn’t wrong, we just didn’t believe it hard enough.
Brother Ogvorbis, OM, Demoted #21
I can’t imagine a finer choice!
Good story, Brother OgV, like all your stories.
This seems a good time to mention how much I enjoy your writing style, even in casual posting. Very comfortable and conversational. I imagine your ranger presentations to be fascinating, with lots of little (parenthetical) side trips and tangents to pursue interesting historical and technical details.
I like this whole series very much; as a lifelong atheist, I hadn’t thought much about the process(es) of how people get there, and people processes are so interesting.
Oh my…FSM. This is very bizarre. Are you me? Seriously – my father was a Unitarian who became a geologist after returning from active duty military service and worked as an Interpreter for the National Park Service, where I now also work. And I grew up partly in Death Valley…
“communism as a religion”
With that definition, most systems of government could be termed a religion. But then the functional use of the word become blurred. I’ll stick with the classical definition (Obama stimulating the economy and asking to fix the antiquated high-profit health industry. Just kidding).
Excellent piece – thanks.
My rant – any “-ism” most probably is religion-like. The bigger the presence of the “-ism” the more it will be such. Communism a good example.
Anything that makes up myths and fantasies/lies to support its premises, and then demands unquestioned allegiance, deference, and faith from followers/subjects, especially when laws, infrastructure, and hierarchy are instituted to propagate and enforce such, is religion.
Atheists can be as religious as anyone. It all depends on the nature of their favorite “-isms” and their relationship to them. Our RWA natures – to extent we have them – need a substrate(s) – we will seek them.
That is why the godiots want so much to cast our recognition that the T of E seems (because of direct and indirect real evidence) to be the most likely explanation for a host of biological phenomena into just “Darwinism”. The implication being is that we are no more justified than they are when it comes to beliefs and allegiances. Indeed they want to cast us as simply in another socially outvoted delusion bubble – like Hinduism in the USA.
[OT]
concernedjoe:
Atheism. Empiricism. Rationalism.
This is also the neoconservative response the the abject failure of supply-side economic policy.
His eliptical style captivated me as a teen.
Thanks.
When were you at DEVA (I was there ’69 to ’72 (then we moved to GRCA))? And I knew a guy named Muir when I lived at GRCA.
Not really. Most forms of government, to some extent, work. Even dictatorships and monarchies tend to be either pragmatic or short-lived.
That paragraph was included precisely because of the constant drumbeat about atheism being a religion coupled with the conflation of communism and atheism.
You claim to be ‘just kidding’ but, in relation to the first sentences of your paragraph, I wonder. There is a big difference. Stimulating the economy in a recession via government spending does work. And in 2009 it did work (not big enough to force a full-scale recovery, but I blame the conservatives who suddenly discovered that (when there is a Democrat in the White House) deficits are bad)). And I fail to see how trying to update a health care system which is, by almost any metric, a drag on the economy is asking people to believe in the impossible. Other countries have universal health care which shows that it does work.
Really? Evidence-based systems (empiricism, naturalism) are faith-based? How does the expectation of evidence and/or replicable experiments require faith?
And you just did a good job of defining fascism, communism and modern US conservatism.
Citation needed on that one. I am not only an atheist, but I am extremely areligious. And many on this blog have either never been religious or have deliberately turned away from religion due to such things as misogyny, money-grubbing, hypocrisy, and just plain incoherency.
But don’t you claim that atheists can be religious? I may be misreading you, but to claim that atheism is a religion, or is religious, and then decry the attempts by theists to pigeonhole the acceptance of the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection as a religion seems, well, odd. To me, anyway. Maybe I just need more coffee.
Nicely told. And it’s ad nauseam.
Thank you. And that was my homage to Tpyos.
Or were you implying that it made you feel nauseated?
Well, Concerned Joe, thanks for at least being up front about it.
Brother Ogvorbis: Terrific essay. I’m another who tends to use a lot of parentheticals, though I almost never nest them. I was once told by someone that I “speak in footnotes.”
.
John #41 and Bro. O #42
Think you are misreading me or are you?
“-isms” that require FAITH or make up shit/claim evidence that does not exist in any practical way, especially if they have infrastructure that promotes and/or protects them, are religions – no gods required but obviously not precluded.
Naturalism, etc. are true EVIDENCE based philosophies/approaches; they are methodologically skeptical and demand objectivity, are irrelevantly individualistic (no grand infallible poohbahs), and have no dogma/no doctrine that is dictated as opposed proved or that effectively really works. These “-isms” are “-isms” only a semantic way of describing things like a school of ideas and knowledge.
The key is what I said: “Anything that makes up myths and fantasies/lies to support its premises, and then demands ..”
None of the “-isms” you act surprised about fit that bill. I hate the use of “-ism” but semantics allows the use the I guess (connotes doctrine, belief) – but saying I believe electricity can kill and in the “doctrine” of Ohms Law as a Naturalist is not synonymous with belief in social/economic systems (like Communism, Catholicism) that require FAITH or utter naivety, indeed force to exist in the marketplace of ideas.
I say atheists can be religious! .. have atheists been good Communists? Have they lived, killed, and died for their religion? Have they ignored evidence – worse lied, etc. – to preserve their dogma.
Sorry it seems so clear to me but I may not be explaining well.
Addendum: I think (and have ranted about it before) that Atheism does not really exist – being an atheist is not a school of thought.
Atheists exist – people who do not believe there is a supernatural (gods). Do babies come out believing in god?
A one off belief is not an “-ism”. That is simply a thing an individual believes. Anything more highfalutin we say about it is stretching the point.
Now if I justify my believe I might reference a methodological school (of which BTW many THEIST can and do prescribe) – or I may not – I may just say “never thought about it and doesn’t interest me to think about it — now those damn vaccines that are killing our children by the millions every day – now that I will talk to you about!”
I read this:
and responded. Apparently I did misread you.
And where the fuck did the vaxxer stuff come from? Or am I mistreading you again?
Sorry Brother
My points last paragraph were:
(a) some atheists come by it through some form of philosophical “-ism” thus their atheism has a look and feel of the underlying “-ism”.
(i) at one end an atheist for example may be an atheist because they adhere to Ayn Rand-ian Objectivism and the primacy of her works. That underlying “-ism” package has many characteristics of religion thus their non-belief has that taint of being dogmatically directed and associated with doctrines and “life-styles/actions”. Communism directed atheist another example.
(ii) at the other end some are atheists because they embrace philosophies that empower true methodological skepticism. These “-isms” are the antithesis of religion-like packages and though godiots want to scream “scientism” see the religion – they have some major criteria and evaluation failures.
(b) some atheists are just atheists because they simply ARE (no “-ism”). Maybe they are just contrarian by nature for example – hardly religion-like underpinning. Others may simply have had no impetus/indoctrination to believe in gods – again hardly religion-like underpinning.
(c) some atheists are just as irrational and dishonest about some things as godiots are about some dogma they hold. There are vaxxers that are atheists for example. Being atheist does not inoculate you from your own stupidity, herd mentality, poor reasoning, lack of knowledge, prejudices, etc.
I’m guessing you’re also a Lisp programmer.
@Nemo #51:
He probably is. And that reminds me of the old joke: what does LISP stand for?
Lost In Sodding Parentheses.
Interesting deduction but if you are referring to me well alas no.
Nope. Public historian. I write the way I speak. Though I did start out as a math/computer engineering major. From my comment #15 above: