An Atheist View

Finding life without an afterlife pointless or depressing is as silly as going to an amusement park and becoming so depressed that your visit will end that you sit down just inside the entrance and cry your eyes out. How about running through the gate flushed with excitement and trying to ride all the rides and see all the shows before the amusement park closes for the day? Eat cotton candy until you puke and enjoy your day at the park until the security guard pulls you kicking and screaming out the gates when your day is done.

I believe that what we do is all that matters. Bad will hit you, good will hit you but your measure is how you ride the waves. With luck and hard work and the love of your brothers you can build a good strong boat.

Read more about what gives an atheist's life meaning.

Is belief in God automatic? Or is it something you achieve once you've discovered it and examined and decided that you want it?

There seems to be a disturbing yet strangely common belief. It seems some people believe that everyone is born believing in God, in particular, the Christian God.

At first I thought I was mistaken until someone asked this bizarre question yet again - "When did you stop believing in God and become an atheist?"

Huh? Did he mean to imply I was born believing in God and at some point decided to stop? I never recall believing in God. I mean it's a nice story but I've never thought of it as reality.

Human beings are born believing in the almighty milky teat and the glory of body heat, beyond that everything else it taught to us or learned in the course of our lives. Surely, we have some inborn instincts and desires such as hunger, thirst, and the need for comfort. As far as religious beliefs go I think it's tabula rasa - blank slate. Until someone writes God on it the slate doesn't have a religion printed on it. There's no stamp on a baby's bottom proclaiming "product of Heaven" or "made by God tm". There's no pre-programmed belief in God that falls out of the womb with each baby.

Maybe people believe this because they were fed Jesus with their baby cereal and strained peas? Perhaps they were indoctrinated so young they have no memory of first exposure? They can't really be blamed for thinking they were born with the belief if it was instilled in them before the age of reason and before the dawn of memory.

It seems to me that a belief held simply because your parents told you it was so does not represent an exercise of free will. It is not a choice if you've never known anything else.

I don't think I heard, or more accurately, paid attention to the word "God" until I was four and required an clarification of something I'd read in a book. After listening to my Mom's explanation, I recall asking her, "They don't really think that, right? It's just make-believe like story books, isn't it?" She diplomatically told me that some people thought God was real and some people didn't. She was allowing me to develop my own beliefs without imprinting hers on my psyche before I was capable of such a judgment.

Why do people feel the need to mix up God in babies' formula instead of waiting to teach them about it when they are old enough to remember? More importantly why not wait until children are mentally developed enough to examine a belief?

A question thrown out often in debate between Christians and atheists is "If you can't explain the origin of the universe and the origin of life then why don't you just believe in God?" It is often followed up with, "Doesn't it make more sense to believe in God because all those questions are answered in the Bible. All science has is theories but the Bible has the Truth."

I have answered this question so frequently that I decided to write an article about why the lack of complete, exact and perfect explanations of the origin of life and the universe do not make it seem logical for me to just believe in God instead of seeking the real answers.

I accept the fact that I don't know the answers to the questions of how exactly the universe came about and how exactly, life came to be. There are many good, scientific theories supported by tangible evidence. It seems likely that eventually, scientists will come closer to answering such big questions as the origin of life and the universe with a great degree of accuracy and certainty.

Demanding an absolute answer right now is much like asking a child to explain exactly how a rocket flies to the moon with complete technical details. The child does not know the answer but it doesn't mean he never will or never can. Nor does it mean that if the child said, "God makes the rocket go to the moon" he'd be correct. As a race, we are still children; your question is just a little too far beyond us as yet. So my answer is that I accept that I am not all-knowing.

Only through reason will we find the beautiful truth. Imagination is great but it doesn't compare to reality.

The wonder and power of reality is so great I am a little saddened by those who think they already have the explanations for everything in a tidy package called God. Life isn't tidy and easily understood. It's messy and strange and mysterious. One tiny shred at a time we're figuring it out; tiny bits of truth are stacking up.

I don't think you need to know what caused the universe to exist to say "I don't believe the universe was created by magic." Historically, everything people have claimed to be caused by magic has turned out to have a logical explanation. People used to think that maggots just came out of raw meat and turned into flies by magic. Later we learned that flies laid eggs in the meat which hatched into maggots that turned into flies, no magic involved, just flies laying eggs. People once believed that illness came from demons inhabiting the body or as punishment from God for their sins. We learned that illnesses are caused by germs, exposure to harmful elements, parasites, genetic problems and various other things unrelated to demons or gods. People used to think that lightning and thunder had something to do with Gods throwing temper tantrums; they blamed them on magic. We now know that there are rational explanations (involving no angry Gods) that explain thunder and lightning.

We have yet to reach the pinnacle of knowledge and I doubt there even is such a thing. We don't know everything, we probably won't ever know everything but we are learning. Just because we don't have all the answers it doesn't mean we have to accept an illogical answer like "it's magic" or "God did it." Just because there is a question there is not always a ready answer and even if there is an answer it may never be found in our lifetimes. It's OK to admit ignorance, especially when every human that ever lived shares that ignorance.

Most folks require something more than, "I can't answer all the questions in the universe" to convince them God is real. Of course we can't answer all the questions in the universe, we're only human.

This may sound like an outdated law that no one enforces anymore because it is unconstitutional but it is still relevant. Atheists applying for government offices or accepted into public office can go through years of legal battles just to be able to fulfill the duty they were either elected or appointed to.

One such case in 2009 involved a North Carolina man, Asheville City Councilman Cecil Bothwell. Area conservatives threatened to sue the city because they swore in an atheist as a councilman.

A similar action taken against atheist notary Herb Silverman of South Carolina took eight years of legal battles to finally be settled.

I believe that morality in its most basic sense, empathy, is not just a social construct but a product of evolution as well. In extended families or tribal clusters as our ancestors must have lived co-operation would have been paramount to survival. Feeling a desire for your tribal members' survival and well-being was a survival trait in and of itself.

Millions of years ago our ancestors started walking upright at first moving a bit more slowly than other primates until the Achilles tendon came into the picture. Imagine you are a slow-moving, four foot tall person with very little defensive equipment in the way of sharp teeth, strong jaws or razor sharp claws. You aren't even strong enough to kneecap a lion even if you were large enough to pick up a big enough club. Your children are born quite helpless, unable to cling to their mothers' upright backs. While standing tall allows you to see predators from great distances away you really aren't as great at climbing trees as your distant ancestors may have been. You could probably yank loose a prickly branch from a thorn bush and wave it in a big cat's face but she or her family could easily circle behind you and your mama's contribution to the gene pool would end up as a light meal.

So how did something this frail and dare I say paw lickin' good survive or even evolve in the first place? Team work. The little fellows learned to look out for each other both from a budding advancement in empathy and blatant self-interest. A lone pre-human ( even a sturdy and healthy male massing perhaps as much as a young German shepherd dog ) would not do so well on the African plains amidst large predators. Every man for himself just doesn't work when every man is three feet tall and delicious.

Those little mothers also had to be very delicate with their large-headed, weak infants. Big brains made early hominids feeble, floppy fetuses even after birth. Those proto-human women had to coddle and cuddle their immature infants or they would have lost them soon after giving birth.

Everybody knows dead babies don't pass on their genes. Even early hominids likely had a long childhood requiring extra protection and help acquiring food long after most animals would have been self-sufficient. Thus empathy and even love were survival traits. As we evolved, so did our society. Survival, enlightened self interest, and love of family - even distant family - these are the roots of morality, conscience and civilization. They are part of our evolutionary makeup both from a social and biological sense (as empathy appears to be inborn). I believe evolutionary psychology explains the origin of morality quite well.

Love really is all you need.

Some conservative Christians hate atheists so much that they are calling for a National Atheist Registry to register every atheist in America the same way convicted pedophiles are registered. One blogger calling for such a registry list asks why atheists would object to such a registry but limits comments to members of his blog.

Well, clearly, atheists don't want to be treated like criminals but there's more to it than that. The United States claims to have freedom of religion and such a registry would be an infringement on that liberty. Also, such a list of atheists would make us prey for deranged individuals, exactly as the national sex offender registry makes convicted sex offenders prey for vigilantes. Although most bloggers supporting the idea claim it's only to be used to find people to evangelize to or businesses to boycott or atheists to discriminate against in the workplace there's no guarantee that such a list would stay out of the hands of sociopaths, schizophrenics, or others with mental illness and a hatred of atheists.

I am an atheist. I don't believe in God or an afterlife. I may not believe in life after death but I wholeheartedly believe in life before death.

Life is truly amazing. Making it a good life is all the reward I need. It's a shame so many people think that this life is just some kind of dress rehearsal or test for what comes next. But I do understand why people want to believe in life after death.

I understand how the yearning for justice can make people desire an afterlife. So many people live good lives, full of kindness and compassion, full of giving and love but they suffer, often worse than those who lead lives of cruelty. So many people lead cruel lives, preying on others and reap rich rewards in this life, never seeing worldly punishment for their evils.

It seems like it would be fair that those who do good and avoid harming others would ultimately be rewarded. It seems like it would be fair that those who do harm and prey on others would ultimately be punished.

Sadly, life just isn't fair. Good people suffer and bad people get ahead in the world. A lot of that is our fault.

Much of this problem comes about because our society as a whole believes that justice will be meted out by a higher power so we spend far too little time righting wrongs and making life good for good people. We also spend far too little time intervening in the lives of people to save them from taking cruel roads and turning to evil means.

Poverty, suffering, and ignorance create a breeding ground for more of the same. Most people turn to good when treated with kindness and when their needs, physical and emotional are met. We can apply kindness and compassion to the problem of evil and achieve goodness and a modicum of justice in this life.

We can't make all life good. Chance is capricious. Bad things happen. All we can do is make the best of what we have, especially when we believe that it is all that we have.

I can understand how living in conditions that seem to hold no real world chance of hope could make a person desire something more. But there is hope in this world, and there is help in this world we just need to turn to each other to find it.

People often say, "It takes a lot of faith to be an atheist." This is usually followed with a statement like, "After all, you can't be 100% certain there is no God."

As an atheist, I can say that it has never taken me any faith at all to be one. Saying that being an atheist requires faith requires one to accept the idea that everyone thinks God is real, when in fact many people (called atheists) do not. It is the very definition of atheism. Atheists are people who don't think God is real.

The average person doesn't think the Chupacabra is real. How much faith does that take? It's an unlikely creature which can't be seen, heard, smelled, tasted or touched by those who look for it. It hasn't been caught on film. All information about it comes from legend; all reports of its doings come from speculation and lack of real explanations. The things people attribute to its actions can generally be traced to natural phenomena. The modern-day accounts of it come second hand from people who deeply wish or fear that it exists.

Does that indicate something that you need to have faith to not believe in?

That is how I, as an atheist, see God. To me, it's not 100% impossible that some kind of superior being or universe creator exists, it's just extremely unlikely. In my opinion, it is even less likely that God exists than that the Chupacabra does. After all, we've actually seen an amazing variety of life forms, speculating that another might exist isn't going quite out as far out on a limb as speculating that a being, the likes of which we've never seen anything even remotely similar, may exist.

So, no, I'm not one hundred percent certain that God doesn't exist or one hundred percent certain that the Chupacabra doesn't exist but I'm not going to take that lack of certainty to mean that either God or the Chupacabra must exist.

To me, both concepts are just colorful stories from ancient cultures which persist today; thousands of years after the original storytellers have turned to dust. Simply because these myths have lasted so long and because so many believe in them it does not indicate that they are realities. It only means that humans are similar to each other in thought as well as in form. Myths and legends are fascinating insights into the human mind, to those things we have in common. They don't represent literal reality but the nearly boundless creativity and sense of wonder shared by members of the human race.

So while I recognize that the concept of God is part of our rich cultural heritage, I don't think that God is something real, and that takes no faith at all.

My parents raised me free to choose my own beliefs. I was allowed to investigate whatever religious options I chose. Repeated religion based attacks both physical and emotional by peers, teachers, and adults in my community gave me a cynical view of religion early on.

As an adult I am aware that religion can inspire great works of good as well as the everyday abuse and bigotry it fosters.

Many Christians and other theists will insist that atheists are immoral people who have decided to become atheists so they can behave immorally without guilt. I don't believe this to be true but I have a few ideas as to why some Christians and other theists believe it to be so.

First, there seems to be some confusion about what atheists are. Atheists don't believe in God but more than that, they don't think that God is real. So being an atheist really isn't a choice, once you don't think something is real you can't really believe in it.

Until or unless something occurs to change your mind such as evidence or a personal epiphany you simply can't believe in things you do not think are real.

You may think that an atheist can just decide to believe in God because it wouldn't hurt anything if they just believe in God and it turns out that belief is wrong. It just doesn't work that way. Some atheists want to believe in God at some point in their lives. God is such a lovely concept, what with the afterlife and unconditional love, so who wouldn't want to believe in God? The problem with that is that for most atheists, belief is not about what they want but about what they think is true and not true. Most atheists are people who only believe what they think is true and real.

Since atheism really isn't about what an atheist wants but what an atheist believes is true it's not really likely that a person who thinks God is real could just decide to be an atheist. If a person thought God were real, they would still worry about the consequences of disobeying God. A believer cannot decide to stop believing in God unless they first stop thinking of God as real or suspect that God is not real.

Some Christians and other theists will argue that atheists don't need to behave with compassion or ethics because they have no fear of burning in Hell forever. I really don't think that religious people behave morally and compassionately because they believe in God. I think they behave morally and compassionately because they have emotions like empathy and they have the power to reason. Atheists also have emotions like empathy to guide them to do what is kind and the power to reason to guide them away from that which is harmful.

Both atheists and theists are products of a society which has thousands of rules, spoken and unspoken, which they are trained to obey from the time they are children. These rules embody a structure created through thousands of years of trial and error. If morality were immutable and all who followed God were moral, society would not have changed so drastically and become so much more humane over the centuries. For instance, slavery and witch hunts might still be widely accepted if religious people didn't also change with the times.

Christians and other theists may consider atheists immoral because some atheists may indulge in activities not prohibited by law but proscribed by their interpretation of their own religion. Even by this measure, atheists are no less moral than theists. Religions and religious beliefs are so incredibly varied that the range of behavior atheists indulge in which some Christians and other theists consider amoral are considered perfectly harmless or moral by other theists' and other interpretations of religious beliefs. These religious beliefs vary so greatly that even in the Christian religion alone there are intense disagreements between denominations as to what is moral, what is a sin.

Atheists can't help but seem immoral to some people. There are so many religious rules that any given person, religious or not, is breaking one or more at any given moment. Rules such as believing in a certain God or tithing a certain amount of one's income to a particular church are automatically going to be 'broken' by atheists and other people not of that particular religion. Just try to remember, that right now, you are immoral by someone's standards.

To me, "faith" is a belief without proof that none are allowed to question much less disagree with. I know that isn't the literal definition, but that is what I often see in practice as an atheist in America.

I've heard it far too many times, I think, the assertion that to be an atheist a person must first think God is real and then hate, or deny God.

By the logic that a person must first believe in something to think it isn't real every fundamentalist Christian believed evolution occurred before they denied it. That's not very likely; the fundamentalist Christian never believed evolution happened in the first place. People walk around every day not believing in things they've never believed in. I'd say it's far rarer to find someone who once believed in unicorns than to find someone who has never believed in unicorns.

Perhaps this misunderstanding comes in because some religious people think they were born believing in God. Rather, I think they were taught that God was real before the age of memory and reason and simply don't recall their instruction in the matter. Most people can't recall being taught to use the toilet, but it's a well known fact that no one is born with that skill. I've never thought God was real.

Another possibility is that believers in God can't imagine why anyone wouldn't want to believe in God as they do. The idea of a loving God is sweet. The idea that a person will never truly die and will someday be reunited with every soul of everyone he's ever held dear is incredibly desirable. The idea of never being alone, always having someone who loves you is enchanting. As you can see, I don't hate the idea at all. Who wouldn't want that? I know I would. But the problem is this - wanting something, no matter how much, doesn't make it real. Nor is wanting something enough to make everyone believe in something or to think that it is true.

Believers may say that belief in God comes from faith but I don't think so. I think that belief in God comes from thinking that God is real. Otherwise, if believers didn't think God were real, why would they have faith in something they thought was make-believe?

On several sites I am well known as an atheist writer though I write stories and articles about a wide variety of topics. I write how-to articles about fish care, floral design, cooking, and sex. I write editorials and memoirs. I also write fiction, poetry, and erotica.

You'll see where this becomes relevant soon, I promise.

I have been repeatedly messaged and occasionally emailed by readers for (what seems to me) a very odd reason.

In my fiction, poetry, and erotica I sometimes use the words God, Jesus, demon, devil, Jihad, soul, spirit, ghost or other words which refer to supernatural concepts either as literary devices or in dialog. I have been told by a number of readers that the use of such words means that I can't possibly be an atheist, that it means I must believe in God. I even got one such email regarding an erotic story in which a character moans, "Oh, God, yes, (bleep) it!" After I stopped laughing uncontrollably, I paused to ponder what thought processes are behind such reasoning.

To me, the use of words relating to belief and supernatural concepts is just part of fiction writing and their use falls under the umbrella of poetic license. These words evoke strong and complicated emotions in readers. It would be a waste to not play with them in creative writing sometimes. I find the idea that the use of such words in fiction implies belief to be strange. One does not need to believe in something to include references to it in fiction, otherwise fantasy novels would be nearly non-existent.

Our culture is saturated with supernatural words and references, to cut them out completely would affect the natural flow or feeling of normal conversational English. Also, 90 some odd percent of Americans believe in God - spiritual references are bound to come up in dialog unless, for some reason, I decided to only write stories about atheists, specifically atheists who are not spiritual.

I've written faux Native American myths and fantasy stories with mythological beasts as characters. Obviously, I don't believe in mythological beasts or aboriginal magic and no one has suggested that I do. However, I'm not sure why that would lead people to believe that I believe in God.

Any thoughts on why people would come to the conclusion that anyone who includes words pertaining to the supernatural in their writing must believe in God?

Evolution is just a process by which change occurs in nature. The process of evolution was deduced by interpretation of evidence that holds up to empirical scrutiny. Evolution is like many other natural processes which are deduced by interpretation of evidence. A couple of other processes we have deduced from evidence found in the natural world are erosion and eutrophication.

Read more about What Evolution Isn't.

A few years back I got a message from a reader who was upset by one of my atheist articles. In it he said, "Are you that atheist (censored) from TIBU*?"

At first, I was a little upset. But then, I decided that at least it meant my writing had been memorable. That was when I decided to name my atheist blog That Atheist (Censored).

*A now defunct writing website on which I had previously posted atheist relevant articles.