I am the confident and comfortable atheist I am today for three main
reasons, among others. These are just common sense notions that
leveled the Catholic faith I was brought up in when I was 14.

1. I do not wish to live in perpetual fear. Christian philosophy,
specifically Catholic philosophy, dictates that everyone WILL suffer
for eternity. You are born that way, you have no chance of escape from
the vile disgusting thing that is you. Only by completely throwing
your life away to a divine tyrant and unquestioningly spreading his
will, whether you agree or not, is the way to not suffer. Being angry:
damnation. Asking questions: damnation. Being born: Damnation.
Religion removes the point of life by making you miserable and
submissive. Religion relies on this loathing of oneself to get what it
wants: obedience and money.

2. I live in reality. Religion lies straight to the faces of millions
and they believe it. Why? Because it’s what the magic desert
scribblings say. So there. Once again they rely on straight fear to
keep people in line, and it is only this fear that keeps them
believing. They simply ignore inconsistencies as trivial because these
inconsistencies prove errors. Everyone knows that dinosaurs died out
65 million years ago. The bible says that the earth is 6,000 years
old, but people still just ignore it.

3. Religion is self-righteous and egotistic. Countless millions have died
because religion told them that their way was correct, as opposed to
someone’s slightly different way. Crusades, witch hunts, jihad, the
Holocaust, and scores of other events are justified only to the
killers because they’re just acting under a direct order from god,
given by man, of course.

Religion is a brutal prison warden on people’s lives. They stop at
nothing to maintain control and recruit new members. Permanent
psychological damage? They don’t care. It tries to destroy
independence, coexistence, and confidence in the name of an
oversensitive, jealous, maniacal, dictator in the sky, and they do no
one any good.

Fralan
United States

I perhaps had it easier than most. Actually, I’m quite sure I did. While my father took me to a Roman Catholic church when I was little- at least from the ages 7 to 10 -I never paid attention. Quite frankly at the latter stages, I was quite uncomfortable with the whole thing. Bored out of my mind for one and having to dress up in cloths that I never cared to wear. In fact, one time I asked my dad if I could bring a book on dinosaurs to read. You know, in case I got bored.

I later figured that my father was doing this solely at the behest of my grandparents. I’m not sure why he stopped going and thus my not going, but it was quite nice. The nightly prayers stopped too- what a bore those were.

My mom on the other hand had become Buddhist or perhaps had been for some time- I’m not sure. She would take me to weekly meetings and would have me sit with her at our home alter. Not only was I already bored with religion in general, but now it’s in a different language. Oh joy.

The weekly meetings were much more fun than the Catholic church. There were kids to play with, I could read whatever I brought with me, sometimes if it was held at someone’s house, they might have dogs for me to pet! Oh and I often had to do my homework. Never seemed to escape that. This too stopped being a common occurrence. Again I’m not too sure when, although I believe I was in the 6th grade. It was also around this time that I started to slowly learn about religion, but it wouldn’t be until High School that I really got into it.

My “indoctrination” into mocking religion came in the form of “No-God.com”. If you’ve never been and wish for a 90s flash-back, I highly recommend it. This website had a great mix of humor and facts. Very dark and twisted humor. Perfect for a high school student engrossed in all things Metal and GWAR.

GWAR, along with Marilyn Manson, led to some new websites and interesting people/ideas. The “Church of the Sub Genius” is one of them as well as the “Church of Satan”. Satanism is just as boring to me as Christianity, although at the time was certainly something fun to heat people up with in a hurry. Aside from cheesy websites and religions, I didn’t much pay attention to it all. In fact, I’m not sure I was too familiar with the term “Atheist” at the time. I believe my standard reply to the question of my religious affiliation was: “I don’t have time for any of that.”

After discovering Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and PZ Myers, it became quite clear to me that Atheism was here to stay in my life. Not only that, but it helped me gain confidence in what I believed in and a confidence to be open and expressive about it. I feel very free about life and much more excited about the natural beauty of the world because of it.

Mike Bermudez
Fnord

Interestingly, one of my friends just pointed me to a question from a pastor he knows, who was asking “why are you not a Christian?” I wrote this up, and felt it would be good to send along.

If you’d like to know why I’m an atheist, its because I am also a skeptic. Atheism is in a way an application of skepticism; I only believe that which has convincing evidence, and there is no convincing evidence for the existence of a divine being. The god proposed by every major religion is a supernatural god; even religions like Buddhism that do not promote a god do promote the supernatural in various ways. But through science, the study of the world around us, the observation of reality, we see absolutely no evidence of the supernatural. Everything fits, everything follows the rules. There is no E that does not equal mc^2, no F that does not have an equivalent MA. The universe appears exactly as it should if the only forces at work were those of the elementary particles of matter responding to the laws of nature. Its possible that there is a god of some kind, but its highly unlikely, and there is no evidence that any god affects reality in any way.

Why I am not a Christian is a little more specific. I was raised as a Christian, going to church every Sunday at the United Church of Christ. But as I grew older, and learned more about the religion I was following, it simply stopped making sense. Every time the Bible, and therefore god, made verifiable statements about the nature of reality, and even most of the time when it made statements of historical fact, it got it wrong. And very importantly, the god being described didn’t actually seem very loving. He demands worship and obedience, he demands that we bow before him, and tells us that we’re sinful creatures that must beg his forgiveness for not being perfect, despite the fact that supposedly he created us. As Richard Dawkins put it in The God Delusion, “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” He set the default state for the afterlife as eternal torture; how could a god who willingly sent most of his supposedly beloved children to hell be good? If there is a god, and an afterlife, and that god sits in judgement, then here is how I see it. If god is just and kind, then he will judge me on my works, not whether I believed in him. If god judges me on whether I believed in him without any evidence, then he is not just and kind, and thus isn’t worthy of worship anyway.

Matthew Prorok
United States

I grew up in poor neighborhoods around people who didn’t value critical thinking and like most people from her generation, my mother had grown up with a smattering of religion. She was a regular Sunday church-goer when I was a boy and she would dress me up and cart me off to sit on the wooden pew, daydreaming about action and adventure while a boring man droned on in monotone from the front of the room. About halfway through the monologue, we small children were brought downstairs into “Sunday school,” a place that I only remember for its truly extensive set of Legos. For all that I wasn’t predisposed to pay much attention to religion, I was as surrounded by it as any other kid. My parents were moderately religious. My grandparents were definitely religious. All of my aunts and uncles were religious. My peers and their parents; my schoolteachers; my bus drivers; my babysitters; friends; acquaintances; playmates; bullies; pretty much everybody I knew was at least a little bit religious and most definitely believed in God. People talked about it all the time. This was 1985, a very WASPy time for my hometown of Everett, Washington.

I was six years old and I was in trouble. I didn’t understand the scope of my dilemma at the time, but I was finding it more and more difficult to believe in God. Every night at bedtime, left to my thoughts, I would obsess about it. I would try to force myself to believe, to have faith in something that I couldn’t see or feel. I couldn’t bring myself to tell anybody about it for fear of what they might say or do. One night, it just happened: despite all of the pressure from pretty much everyone I ever interacted with, I finally had to admit to myself that I did not and could not believe in God, Jesus or the rest of it. At first I felt a terrible guilt, but as that washed over me I began to feel a little bit liberated. The only way to really have faith is to obsess over it, since it has no momentum of its own and is entirely the creation of the imagination. Now, my six-year-old imagination was freed up to explore new ideas and concepts without the underlying fear of some oppressive deity judging my thoughts and actions.

This certainly wasn’t the end of my exploration into religion and faith, as my teen years were as full of attempts to identify as anybody’s, but this was certainly the first time that I’d been that honest with myself and in the end, better represented my actual stance on the matter than my later youthful meandering. I had never heard the word “atheist” before and so I didn’t know that there was a name for how I felt and thought. I felt very alone, a feeling that has been a theme throughout my life probably because of that very event. But there was certainly no going back.

Lucas Parker
United States

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

Growing up in Zimbabwe presented many challenges. Calling anyone “middle class” was a joke – you were either filthy rich, struggled to make ends meet or were so poor words could not begin to describe it. My family was part of that second group – we lived comfortably, but only just. I’m an ex-fourth generation Seventh-day Adventist, which, considering that Adventism has been in Zimbabwe for about four generations is really something. One thing I can truly thank my parents for is that they never compromised on my education. My brothers and I always went to private school, even if it meant we had to cut back on a few luxuries to do so. I was also always very inquisitive, very much a nerd and had a deep love for science that my mother encouraged. I read a lot of books, particularly about physics, astronomy and dinosaurs so questions were inevitable. I was an introspective child, though, so I tended to keep those questions to myself and try to figure things out on my own.

At twelve I was baptised into the church. I think this was the turning point at which I began to come to terms with reality, because it forced me to examine what I believed and why I believed it, where previously I could just drift along and pretend there was no conflict between my faith and my aspirations to be a scientist. It wasn’t an easy journey, but less than eight months later, I came to the conclusion that God as envisioned by any Earthly religion does not exist. I still thought a higher being of some kind was possible, and so became somewhat of an agnostic.

The biggest problem I had at this stage of my life was that I had nothing concrete to fill the gap my faith left behind. One practical upshot of my country and my family’s financial state was that I had no access to the solid facts I needed – I had no access to the internet and what little I did know came from the now too vague books I could access from the kids’ section of the library. I was growing ever more hungry for knowledge, and would gobble up any little morsel I could get, regardless of quality. In time, this led me to a brush with pseudoscience no better than the faith I had recently forsaken.

Rifling through some old books at my grandmother’s house, I found a bunch by a certain fellow called Erich von Daniken. They had the words “stars” and “space” in them , so reading was a no-brainer. What I read had me instantly hooked. Soon, I was proclaiming to all my friends how aliens had visited us in ages past and imparted us with intelligence. I was rattling off every single piece of “evidence” E vD presented – the Piri Reis map, the Ica stones, the Nasca lines, Puma Punku – with the utmost confidence that I’d finally found the truth. E vD did an excellent job of pretending to have that which I had been looking for all along – good, solid facts. His book “Miracles of the Gods” also fit in with the pseudo-mystical approach I had taken, and this led into a brief but retrospectively embarrassing flirtation with the Law of Attraction.

It was this phase, in which I wholeheartedly accepted such nonsense as is contained in “The Secret” and “What the Bleep Do We Know” that led to me taking another deep look at my beliefs. I noticed that all my “positive thinking” and meditating on the things I desired was getting me nowhere, and I started really thinking about how this actually worked. I realised that all this talk of “qantum-this” and “quantum-that” was simply a different term for the magic I used to believe in when I was still Christian. It did not take long for the rest of my belief in the supernatural to disappear, and eventually any concession of the possibility of the existence of a deity went down the drain as well.

I remember the first time I ever referred to myself as an atheist. I had just moved to a new school in Botswana. We were in a class Guidance and Counselling session and the counsellor asked me what religion I belonged to. Right there and then, I realised – much as I had once reviled those who were so “close-minded” as to outright deny the existence of a god, I had become one of them. With newfound conviction in my voice, I proudly answered, “I’m atheist.” This was early in 2009, and I was 16, going on 17.

Perhaps not very oddly enough, I still lent some credence to Erich von Daniken’s hypotheses. I would think to myself, “Okay, maybe he got the metaphysics wrong, but some of his facts must be right.” I was also very critical of vocal atheists, even once writing a letter bashing Richard Dawkins over his hope that creating a cross between a human and chimp would end religion to the South African edition of Popular Mechanics. The Internet changed both these things, however. The Skeptic’s Dictionary in particular demolished von Daniken’s hypotheses, while reading of all the abuses to freedom that religion continues to perpetrate underscored the importance of activism to me.

I take a pragmatic view of the circuitous route I took to becoming rational: if it weren’t for it I wouldn’t be who I am today. I wouldn’t have experienced first hand how harmful and limiting believing in lies can be, and wouldn’t be so passionate about eliminating them. It’s not my lack of belief in gods that I count as my most important trait, though. I value being a rationalist because I choose to think, a skeptic because I choose to question, a humanist because I have compassion for my fellow man and have an unbridled love for the cosmos that drives me to achieve my dream of becoming an astrophysicist. It is from this dream that I draw the deepest meaning for my life: that of discovery, and questing to understand the universe we live in.

Jabu M
Botswana

Between making a couple videos on the Creation Museum following the 2009 trip to the Creation Museum with the SSA and running the largest atheism group on Facebook with 10,000 members, I believe I have question to answer: why I am an atheist.

I suppose it begins with nothing short of nature itself. I grew up in the hills of Kentucky. I shan’t hesitate to say that the hills of Kentucky are a lovely place – in stark contrast to everything else in Kentucky, which is pretty much the exact opposite of lovely. I spent plenty of time in the wilderness, observing the various forms of life, taking in the smells and the sounds, laying down and watching the sky. It was always regrettable when I had to put down the science books as a young child to attend the churches, which never felt quite right to me. Regardless of what I was told, something was critically wrong with the things they said. The loving Jesus message was nice, but the not-so-loving message of hell seemed a drastic affront to the idea of love.

The explanation that a loving Lord would punish people like me, who had done no other wrong than existing or doubting, seemed contrived, to say the least.

My parents were loyal southern Baptists and still are. One morning in my youth, prior to the age of ten, I was looking out our sliding doors, taking in the amazing sights of a Sunday morning. The birds could be heard loudly chirping, deer could be heard walking the hills, the sun was just about to break free from the hills and show itself to everyone. My admiration of nature’s overwhelming beauty was thoroughly broken when my father leaned a hand against the glass and mentioned some jazz about the beauty of god’s creation. Of course, something about the beauty of god’s creation seemed off. In my time, I had found dead birds, miscellaneous animal carcasses in the woods, and seen with my own eyes bugs fighting it out as a matter of life and death.

God’s creation, while beautiful, also struck me at times as particularly brutal and outright dangerous, depending on what you are. As a human, you don’t have many problems – bears and snakes – but as an animal or insect, you had a great many problems day by day. The contrast of such striking beauty with suck striking brutality was not, and is not, lost on me. Quite the opposite: there was more brutality than beauty, and the beauty was often a superficial facade which seemed to protect us from the reality of the other creatures in god’s creation.

Increasing scientific knowledge did nothing to quell my views on god’s creation. Seeing as my favorite star was eight thousand light years away, knowing that a light year is how far light travels in a year, knowing that my favorite star was at least eight thousand years old – and most likely far, far older – only made this doubt of god’s creation grow. Especially in a world where creationists and fundamentalists, a great part of the United States population (40%, as late), tend to believe the world is six thousand years old. If my favorite star were eight thousand light years away, and the oldest known sources of light were over thirteen billion light years away, what was the rationale for believing that the world were six thousand years old?

Only a book written by bronze age goat herders.

Noah’s ark I viewed as especially unlikely. Knowing the vast amount of species that exist, knowing that there were many more than I could ever know about, one hundred plus year old man and his family were unlikely to collect them all, build a boat the size of the Titanic that could last forty days on the water or hold all of these animals, how likely was this event to have occurred? Not at all, I came to realize very quickly.

So by twelve, the seeds of doubt had been well sewn. Before too long, I was headfirst into scientific research on every major topic I could cover. I saw vast amount of evidence for the science, and with that, less and less for creationism. By thirteen, I was an atheist in every aspect but title. It took two additional years to come out of the closet, but in the six years since (I’m twenty one at present), I have learned much more than I could have dreamed about how the universe works. Much more than my peers, much more than my family. I grew to realize that creationism held one back from reality as it was, and I grew to loathe it more and more as I went. I suppose, though I leave people to themselves, generally, I have become a stern anti-theist. 9/11 and the hysteria surrounding it certainly didn’t help keep me on the so-called ‘righteous’ path, and I wouldn’t have life any other way. There is no amount of ignorance that could satisfy my sheer lust for knowledge, and ever more of it.

While I learned much about willful ignorance from the Creation Museum, I can’t help but wonder how this life, a life of unknowing, is satisfying for anyone who has a great lust for knowledge, information, science, and truth. I cannot look at creationists with a sense of hatred, dislike, or what have you, but I do look at them and their kind with a great feeling of sadness and pity. I pity creationists. They deserve it.

In addition, my whole life I’ve had one key struggle that was in drastic opposition to my faith and the faith of my parents. My whole life, I have been well aware that I didn’t feel like the other boys I knew. That when I looked in the mirror, I was different. That I was wrong. My body was wrong. Some of my greatest early Christianity struggles, going back as far as I can remember, took place as the result of my feelings that I should have been born as the opposite sex.

As a male to female transsexual, I always pondered how I were supposed to be a Christian and live a life directly opposed to the gospels. How was I supposed to live happily as a female if the Bible condemns something such as the simple act of wearing the opposite gender’s clothes? I wouldn’t think it far out in the least that a good bit of my Biblical skepticism came from knowing that the way I felt was condemned, yet I never made a choice, nor asked for anything like what I had received from my earliest memories on. It had always been there, known to me, accepted by me, yet condemned by the religion I was raised into and by the people I had grown to love.

I still struggle with transsexuality, though on the basis of my family’s beliefs being in direct contrast to it. I will not be stopped by the faith of my fathers, but the pain caused by them is indeed very considerable. I hold religion itself in contempt for marginalizing people like me. My growing sympathy with homosexuals didn’t help their case, either. I figured out that if I felt this way naturally, so did the homosexuals, who were so demonized and hated… and that is simply unforgivable.

So why am I an atheist?

Nature. Science. Reality. Skepticism. Transsexualism. Lust for knowledge. A critical mind. No satisfaction in ignorance.

And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Michael Baizley
United States

I was 12. Attempting to rebel, I declared that I didn’t believe in God. My parents didn’t really care, given that we were only Buddhist at funerals. I went through a New Age-y phase where I believed in astrology, the paranormal and spirits. But as I got older, I got wiser. I was a voracious reader, and came upon the multitude of crimes against humanity committed in the name of religion – its effects on women, sexuality and science. However, my turning point came in a grade 12 biology class. A girl who I couldn’t stand, who became brainwashed when her parents accidentally sent her to Christian camp, got up to do a project on evolution. She prefaced her presentation by saying she didn’t believe in evolution because of her religion, and then proceeded to talk about Australopithecus afarensis. That kind of dichotomy astounded me. Partially because I hated her, and partially because it was the only conclusion based on reason and logic, I became non-religious. But it wasn’t until I stumbled onto Pharyngula, that I realized that there was a name for it. Atheist.

Anna Yeung
Australia

Dave Niose, president of the American Humanist Association, posted recently over at Open Salon a copy of a letter he received from an atheist friend. The friend wrote the letter to his own 11-year-old daughter, who was “very upset about her father’s non-belief” — particularly his refusal to pray for her (something apparently advocated by the friend’s wife, who is a Christian).

I won’t comment on a family situation I know next to nothing about, but it did remind me of the very issue that began the unraveling of my own faith: prayer. About 20 years ago, I was on a path to ministry. I was in the middle of co-founding a fellowship organization on my college campus and had just finished drafting the group’s constitution (as required by the school to be an official student organization and thus receive activity funds) when I had a moment of clarity while praying for guidance. Yes, I appreciate the irony.

The path I was on would have led me to fervent proselytizing. I was 19 years old, post-Catholic and in training to present the Word to non-believers. I studied the Bible with an ordained mentor and doggedly researched apologetics. I was going to provide irrefutable answers in defense of Christ in debate.

But there were no irrefutable answers.

I decided to keep on it — after all, I was just getting started and I had faith more would be revealed as I continued in my studies. But each revelation was more suspect than the last. Every question I had was answered with circular reasoning (e.g., why believe in the Bible as the inspired word of God? Because the Bible says so.). Finally, while praying to understand God’s will, a giant hole ripped in the fabric of my belief: Who am I praying to? Why? Why does God require me to pray when he is supposedly omniscient? What does that say about the nature of the god I’m praying to?

The God I believed in was supposed to be perfect. Too perfect, in fact, for mortal minds to fathom. Ultimate love. True goodness. Omniscient. Omnipotent. Omnipresent. The whole nine yards and then some. Whenever something about God didn’t make sense to me, I countered myself by saying my definition of God must simply be too narrow. But because of that, God soon became just an infinitely broad but paper-thin abstraction. It was then a very small step to the realization that the concept of a personal God was absurd. Eventually, I came to understand the fallacy of the “God of the Gaps“. There was no chance I’d turn to another religion; it was clear they’d all fail the litmus test instantly.

I claimed to be an agnostic throughout my 20s. I left open the door to the idea of a higher power but, again, was pretty sure the matter was too complex to be comprehended. It wasn’t until my 30s that I faced the issue head on and realized I had been making the same weak excuses.

A sequence of events and introspection ultimately left nowhere for my intellect to hide. Once I allowed myself to practice skepticism honestly, the absurdities appeared everywhere I looked. There was no God. And it quickly became clear that many of civilization’s messes — either directly or indirectly — were catalyzed by some form of religion. My eyes were opened, and I was faced with one big question: Now what? It didn’t take long to understand that the only sane response to an insane world was to roll up my sleeves and try to make it a better place. All alternative responses were (and remain) unacceptable. Ultimately, I discovered my ideals matched those of organized Humanism.

So yes, you could say that prayer accidentally provided me with guidance. It was exactly the spark I needed to put me on the right path.

David Spero
United States

I’m an atheist because I don’t “believe in” God. Yes, it’s as simple as that. I don’t see any evidence that such a being exists (or plays an active role in the world, which amounts to the same thing).

That’s actually stating things too narrowly: the truth is, I don’t believe in gods. Or spirits, or the supernatural in any form, really. If something is genuinely supernatural – truly “beyond” or “outside of” the natural world – then by definition it can’t affect us. If it can affect us, it isn’t supernatural; it’s just a part of nature we don’t understand (yet). So it’s fair to say that I’m an atheist precisely because I’m a materialist.

There’s a classic accusation leveled against people who’ve left their faith. “You were never a Christian (or whatever) to begin with!” That’s… actually kind of true, when it comes to me. I was raised Christian, but it was never a big part of my identity. It was just one more item in a long list of things that didn’t make much sense to me, but seemed to be very important to everyone else. As I got older, and looked at it more critically, I quit identifying as Christian at all.

The big turning point for me wasn’t realizing “I just can’t believe this” so much as realizing that the fact that I couldn’t believe it didn’t necessarily mean that something was wrong with me.

Cat
United States