Why I am an atheist – Peter Wagenaar

I’m an atheist because I see no reason not to be. There is no compelling evidence for the existence of God(s) – and an awful lot to the contrary. Added to which, I don’t need “God” – whatever that really means – to validate the life I have now. Its worth is also not dependent on a future eternal after-party at what you once described so beautifully as a “Disneyland in the sky for dead people”.

I’ve often joked that after 2000+ years and any number of ‘second coming’ predictions, we can safely assume that Jesus is a ‘no show’. But maybe the following innocent comment from my three-year-old niece shows up the sheer ridiculousness of religious belief better than any lengthy treatise I might write: “Why do we have to pray? Doesn’t Jesus have a phone?”

Peter Wagenaar
South Africa

Why I am an atheist – Sophie Davis

Am I an atheist? I guess I am, I have never defined myself and put it in a box, but I guess when an opportunity arises… I am a non believer, that’s to say my thoughts are justified by evidence and theory that, to the best of my knowledge explains the truth. As a child I believed in Santa and the tooth fairy and God. .. Not because of my parents, who are distinctly non-religious. I believed, simply because I thought ‘why not?’ Perhaps I wouldn’t have ever known about God was it not for my Church of England schooling, where prayer and bible studies were a common occurrence. As I grew and with it my curious mind, I began to ask why? And How? And what is the evidence for this? My parents never pressured me to be an atheist but instead encouraged me to question and take nothing for granted. As I questioned the less convinced I became and in the blink of an eye my religious phase was over and in its place a much more long lasting love that has lasted to this day. Science, one great adventure that will take a lifetime to learn.

I will always remember a conversation I had with a Mormon at University, out on one of their recruiting missions. He asked me ‘do you pray?’ I replied ‘no’ to which he said ‘How do you know what God has planned for you? And what the point of your life on earth is?’ I explained to him that I did not long for an inherent purpose to my life and any purpose made would be my own. I told him I was a scientist and that understanding everything in life from the behaviour on animals to the orbit of the planets was my life’s work, and that from each piece of knowledge I gained I found great contentment in life. After a little pause he told me he was happy for me. I felt great sadness, that he would not appreciate the great contentment found in the facts of science and nature and instead would lead a life in fear of God.

I live my life knowing it’s the only one I will have and I live it to the full. I guess that makes me lucky, lucky not to be indoctrinated into a way of life or follow unquestioningly something that is taken on blind faith. I love to live and I live to love. Through great chance this planet has come into existence. Through great chance this planet has evolved to sustain life, through great chance I was one of the millions of possibilities my parent’s genes would mix to make me. Through great chance I was born into a family that does not practice brain washing. By great CHOICE I became an atheist, and that makes me…. one of the lucky ones.

Sophie Davis
United Kingdom

I have a bad feeling about this

August Berkshire is debating a local pastor, Martin Bownik, Wednesday night, on the subject of “Why would Jesus need to die for my Sins?” It’s a dorktastic organization and a ridiculous topic that begs the whole question (my answer: there was no Jesus, blood sacrifice by proxy is barbaric and stupid, so it doesn’t even deserve addressing), but August is a calm-tempered fellow who’ll probably let them hang themselves on their own rope. Here’s where you can go to listen:

26 October, 7pm
The Mann Theatre Maple Grove
13644 80th Circle, Maple Grove, MN

It’s being advertised on facebook, and of course the wacky pastor wrote the copy and is busily recruiting his deluded followers to show up.

Come hear an Atheist and a Pastor share their thoughts on the subject of Christs death. You don’t want to miss this special event! Speakers will be August Berkshire and Pastor Martin Bownik. This is event is being sponsored by KKMS radio 980 am and The EDGE Christian Fellowship Church

Reading the comments (sample: “I pray the Atheist will be saved, in Jesus name”), I’m afraid this debate is simply going to be packed with zombie gomers. Any rational atheists want to show up and give August some backup?

Word is that it will also be broadcast on KKMS, the worst, sleaziest, most dishonest radio station in the Twin Cities. This does not reassure me.

Why I am an atheist – Robert Light

I’m an atheist because I was born that way.

My parents were not church-goers, but I was christened in the local Church of England, because that’s what my family did. My mother, in particular, was quite happy for me to be given enough information about the church to “make up my own mind”. When I was old enough, I went to Sunday School. I don’t remember particularly liking it or disliking it, but I didn’t have to go too many times before my parents let me stop.

I remember being given a illustrated book of Bible stories when I was about 8 or 9. I liked the stories, and read them a few times. But all the time, I had this feeling that said: “But it’s not true. It’s just made up. Why would people believe in this?”

When I got to be a teenager, I had a small Pascal-style crisis of faith (not that I had heard of Pascal, of course). I wondered to myself about what would happen if I was wrong. If there was a God, and I did not worship Him, I would go to hell. Hell was pretty scary. So I considered going to church and going through all the right motions. But I couldn’t. I figured that I just plain didn’t believe, and if a God existed, he would see through any pretend worship. So I decided to just go ahead living without God – because what else could I do?

I worried less and less about it, but it took me until my early twenties until I finally got rid of the last vestiges of doubt. That happened when I was speaking with an atheist guy I worked with about life after death. He brought up the topic of religious belief in the afterlife, and I jokingly said something about “just in case they’re right”. He looked at me and said, “No – they’re wrong.”

Something clicked when he said that, and I realised that of course “they” are wrong and “we” are right.

Now, I can back up my feelings with all sorts of logic and rationality, and lots of information that I have learned at Pharyngula and through the writing of Dawkins, Hitchens and so on. But I still think that I was just plain born as a non-believer.

Robert Light
Australia

Stand for Science: Confront Homeopathy

Aww, the students of Campus Atheists, Skeptics, and Humanists have warmed the frigid, friable cockles of my black heart. They’re having a protest of homeopathy on the Twin Cities campus this Friday! They’re hosting a lecture debunking that nonsense, and are planning to poison themselves with homeopathic dilutions.

Take that, Center for Spirituality and Healing! We all see right through you.

Homeopathy is renowned for both its popularity and the overwhelmingly incorrect pseudoscientific tenets it purports. In the UK, the growing 10/23 protest has called for the end of government support of such unsupported blather. It’s about time the United States joined her sibling. This October 28th, join CASH at the University of Minnesota- Twin Cities and the Center for Inquiry at Michigan State in protesting the pseudoscience of homeopathy and its faulty ‘regulation’ by the FDA.

The Food and Drug Administration regulates the homeopathic industry not to lend credibility to such products, but to supposedly protect consumers from products that can kill them. This is not enough. Just like with actual medications (as homeopaths liken their products to), testing of the claims made by such companies must be both accurate and rigorous. Without such standards, homeopaths openly use the stamp of FDA approval to advertise for the effectiveness of homeopathic remedies.

Join the growing numbers who are taking a stand for science-based medicine. Join us on October 28th in confronting homeopathy and demanding that the FDA require peer-reviewed, scientific research in order to garner its approval. Participation is easy!

Protest on October 28th at your local university, hospital, or drugstore that dispenses homeopathic remedies. Conduct an ‘overdose’. Give a statement to your local media. Write a letter. Sign the petition. Take a stand for science.

The following materials may be of interest as well:

CFI’s industry-wide petition (no signatures):
http://www.centerforinquiry.net/media/newsroom/pdf/petition_to_fda_re_standards_for_homeopathic_drugs.pdf

CFI’s Walmart-directed petition (signature-based):
https://secure3.convio.net/cfi/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=251

Secular Student Alliance activity packet:
http://www.secularstudents.org/node/4015

More information from CFI:
http://www.centerforinquiry.net/news/cfi_and_csi_petition_fda_to_take_action_on_homeopathic_drugs/

Updated information from CASH:
http://cashumn.org/main/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=146&Itemid=100167

Join CASH and CFI in taking a stand for science-based medicine on October 28th. Making evidence-based thinking a movement and not a counterculture requires effort, and the efforts of many hands can move more mountains than the faith of a few.

Sincerely,

Chelsea Du Fresne
Campus Atheists, Skeptics, and Humanists
University of Minnesota- Twin Cities
cashumn.org

(Also on Sb)

Why I am an atheist – Kristen G

When I was 13 years old and still interested in being a good
Presbyterian, I came across a few issues with my Bible that no one was
willing to discuss with me. I kept finding lines telling me that I was
inferior to men, that I should submit to their instructions and
desires, that I should accept and learn from my father’s or my
husband’s punishments, like a child should from its parents and a
slave should from its master. I told my youth group leader I could
never tolerate that, that no man would ever be the boss of me and
would certainly never punish me. If I ever got married it would be as
an equal partner in a loving, mutually-respectful pairing, and I would
file for divorce at the first inkling that my husband thought our
family had a hierarchy. He tried to pull the same old bullshit that
you hear again and again–yes, wives are to submit to their husbands
and men are the default heads of households, but husbands are required
to love their wives as Jesus loved the church, so see, it’s all fair.
Moreover, in the rearing of children it is necessary for someone to
have the final say in any decision, so see, you need your husband to
be in charge. I refused to accept that–I would never worship my
husband as the church worshipped Jesus, and didn’t think having a
willy justified the overturning of my own decisions–particularly if
my decision was better. I was eventually told “well too bad, that’s
God’s will,” to which I retorted “well I’m terribly sorry but God is
wrong.”

The realization that many religious rules were written for the express
purpose of repressing me unclouded my vision regarding the church.
After the credibility of their central text collapsed it was then
really only a matter of time before the rest of my mind found peace
and sense in atheism. I was doused in religion from infancy, and a
good deal of the bullshit regarding omniscient beings reading my every
thought had already taken hold. It was hard to shake free of this
Thoughtcrime training, and led me to feeling unhinged for many years.
I’m sure many would-be rationalists have eventually caved under the
nagging sensation that Santa Claus is reading along and does not
approve of what you’re thinking. Religion is brain damage, a type of
forced schizophrenia–church leaders carefully insert another voice in
your head to constantly judge you against their bizarre rubric. A
voice which can be difficult to silence until you learn that it is not
your conscience or the voice of God–it is a result of brainwashing,
and it should be a crime.

I met with plenty of resistance on my way out of religion–from
screaming matches with my mother to physical abuse from my father to
other children shunning me for my views on evolution, women’s rights
and contraception (this was South Carolina in the 90’s, after all). I
had always been an astronomy geek, and when I pointed out in school
that the mere existence of other galaxies pretty much debunked the
whole “our group of our species on our planet was created specially by
the master of the whole universe in his image” bupkis, I discovered
just what it feels like to be alone.

Even now, getting toward twenty years later, relations with my family
are strained. I moved to London in 2009, after spending an Erasmus
year in Canterbury in 2004 and discovering just how happy and sane
secular British society is compared to where I grew up. I’m engaged to
a man who never had to fight his way out of theism, something I’ve
always envied. He wasn’t rebelling or atheistic to be cool, as there
was no familial or cultural precedent for him to rebel against. The
issue just never came up. In his company (and country) I stopped
hearing the garbage, stopped having to fight for quiet from the
hate-based tribalism that chokes rational thought and prevents peace
among cultures. When my fiancé’s aunt asked if there were any nice
halls or historic buildings in our borough for us to get married in I
felt positively dizzy with happiness–no one assumed we were going to
a church, and no one expected us to do it “just to keep up
appearances”. For the first time, here in the UK, I’m not living a
lie.

I am free and it feels wonderful.

Ms. Kristen G
England

Lavender becomes us

Minnesota Atheists are highlighted in Lavender magazine. The reason? Gays and atheists often find themselves fighting on the same side in battles against the Religious Righteous, and Minnesota Atheists recently filed a friend of the court brief in a pending argument against the odious “Defense of Marriage Act”.

The amicus brief filed by Minnesota Atheists supports the couples in their effort to get rid of the law and argues the unconstitutionality of DOMA, noting the law’s theological basis.

The Minnesota State Constitution, with clauses guaranteeing freedom of conscious and freedom of religion, and the U.S. Constitution, which establishes freedom of religion in the First Amendment and equal protection for all in the Fourteenth Amendment, are violated by DOMA, according to the brief.

Berkshire said the religious roots of the law are grounded in “conservative Christian” views and leave those who have differing beliefs out in the cold.

“[DOMA is] a religious law that’s not just a difference of opinion,” Berkshire said. “It’s a religious law that’s harming people.” The amicus brief gives several sectarian arguments why same-sex marriage is considered unacceptable by some religious institutions, but says there is no secular reason to bar same-sex couples from opportunities given to heterosexual couples.

There those atheists go, making the world more tolerant and wiser one step at a time.

Why I am an atheist – Julia

For the first twelve years of my life, my mother frantically tried to bring me up in her Baptist church. She was elated that one of the first words I learnt to spell was “Jesus” at age 2. My father (who I found out to be an atheist last year) is a pilot and would conveniently bring me on fishing trips every few Sundays. It struck me as odd that he never had to go to church, but I didn’t really ask about it.

It wasn’t very long until I started questioning. When I was 5, my Sunday School teacher “disproved” the big bang by throwing a bunch of hard plastic animal toys into a plastic bag and shaking them up together. “See?” he said. “Everything is the exact same as when it went into the bag. This means that the only way the universe could have started was through god!”

Well, I was 5. It was the ’90s. I was irrevocably in love with Bill Nye. I told my Sunday School teacher that actually, no, he had done nothing to increase the entropy inside the bag, and how on earth can you perform nuclear changes by banging a bunch of polymers together?!

This would mark the first time I embarrassed my mother in church. I’m sure it wasn’t the last. There was so much they taught that just never made sense to me—How can everyone in heaven be happy if they know people they love are in hell? Why didn’t this all-powerful god hint to my aunt who died of rare duodenal cancer that she should get an endoscopy earlier? Moreso, why is this god such a jerk in general? Why is every religion “right”? What if religion is a farce and I waste my entire life—all that I have to live—following obscene rules instead of doing what I want? Why do these people say that without god, they would just be out raping and murdering all day? And why on earth do my Sunday School teachers keep telling me I’m going to burn in hell for listening to Queen?

By the time I was about 12, I didn’t have to go to church anymore. Whether news of my questions reached my mother and she decided I was too much of an embarrassment, or she decided that if church and years of bible camp couldn’t sway my mind, nothing would, I don’t know. I’m now involved in an atheist club in my university where I’m studying biochemistry—a combination she’s not pleased with, but has learned to accept.

So, why am I an atheist? Bill Nye helped me how to think and introduced me to science before my anyone else did. My childhood curiosity refused to take “Goddidit” as an answer. My amazement for the universe and how it works grows each year, and I refuse to stop at such superficial answers and instead look for the elegance of what truly goes on. I’m an atheist because I’ve always been an atheist, and can’t imagine being limited by believing in magical sky fairies.

Julia
Canada