In order to properly address why I am an atheist, I think it might be helpful to first deal with those common misconceptions about why atheists don’t believe in god.
I am an atheist because I see no effects of God, god or gods in my interactions with the world.
The defining moment in my search for religious truth came when I took a step back and looked at all the world’s religions. I realized that many of them make claims that contradict other religions, which means they can’t all be right. I also noticed that, if you’re not predisposed to think one of them is right over all the others, they all look about equally believable–which is to say, not very. I’m open to the possibility that there might be a god (or gods) out there, but I’m going to need a very good reason to think that’s true. So far, no religion has been able to offer any solid evidence that it’s right over all the others, so I see no reason to give any of them special treatment…even the religion I happen to be surrounded by here in the US.
Leon Baradat
United States
I got all my religion from school, friends and cousins- that is whatever I got of it, which by the way things have turned out is not much. Though I did turn out to be very multi-culturally respectful of whatever everyone else believed in. I suppose it was a “They do god, we do math” thing. Or at least it seemed that way.
Much like any child with a loving mother, I was often lulled to sleep by her gentle and comforting voice as she read me a story. Unlike most mothers though, she rarely read from the newest selections of the public library, instead delighting me with tales of Samson, King David and of course Jesus Christ himself. I was a young Hispanic Catholic boy and she was smart enough to sprinkle the adventure-laden stories and parables in with the more philosophical readings to tug at my boyish tendencies. Not that she needed to trick me into belief in a God, Hispanic culture being one of the last enduring bastions of Catholicism. And being a 1st generation immigrant from Ecuador, for her belief was simply the default option.
Why am I an atheist? A year or two ago I had to find a concise answer to this question when my wife mentioned my atheism in passing at a family gathering. I haven’t hidden my non-belief, but I haven’t invited trouble by going out of my way to bring it up, either. My mother was in the room, though, and apparently she had never even suspected. (Apparently my refusal to send the kids to church with her and the “Blessed are the Lesbians” speech she’s heard me launch into in the presence of a homophobe were not sufficient clues.)
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When I was nine or ten I asked my Dad what caused the universe and he bought me Carl Sagan’s book Cosmos. It was a wonderful book that answered some questions and got me wondering about a whole lot more. Sagan conveyed the majesty of the real world(s), the world(s) we can observe, with such dazzling eloquence that I could not help but embark immediately on a lifelong journey of discovering the secrets of the cosmos through the books, TV programmes, and (eventually) blogs of astronomers and cosmologists. It was only natural that my interest should then extend to all of science (and so eventually lead me to Pharyngula).
When this series first started, my answer to why I am an atheist was pretty simple: I read the Bible. It’s a quick 2 second answer I can give any time. And so I have, at least occasionally getting a laugh in return. But after several weeks of reading others’ responses to the question, and reflecting on root causes, I’ve come to realize that my reasons are much more complex. Ultimately, however, I’d have to say that I’m an atheist because of my father.
Being someone who is deeply interested in history and who is trying very hard to find a job as a history teacher, my tale o’ atheism is essentially historical, with the subject being myself. When I was little my mother tried very, very hard to convince my younger sister and myself that her liberal Methodist faith was an integral part of being a good and wholesome person. We all went to church, we went to Sunday School, mom ran the Children’s Church program, we sang the songs, we missed NFL games on Sundays so we could help clean up the kitchen on communion days, and so on and so forth. I can’t say any of it was ever super-intense, in your face, be-saved-or-be-damned like many churches seem to be, and all in all it wasn’t too bad. I heard over and over again that it was a good thing to do good things, and I figured that wasn’t a bad idea at all. It wasn’t until I got older and started to think seriously about making the religion plunge that I began to see that “doing good things” included doing a lot of things that didn’t seem particularly good at all. I learned it was a good thing to go vote for the anti-gay, anti-abortion, pro-gun, pro-death penalty, borderline racist candidates with R’s next to their name. I learned it was a good thing to help buy the church a new jumbo-screen and a fancy new building (with a gift shop!) with a giant sign, even though there wasn’t a thing wrong with our building.
I was talking with a couple of Christians after a band practice one evening. It dawned on me how primitive but totally defended their ideas were. Of course if they were rational they would not be religious. I noticed the religious invoke God or the supernatural (capable of something illogical or inexplicable) whenever I have cornered them or their arguments and was able to show their views were wrong, self contradicting or baseless. They use invoking the supernatural as a ploy in any argument they are losing. They also use a supernatural claim when they do not know, understand or accept evidence.
