| Why are you an atheist? |
[Jun. 10th, 2009|05:44 pm] |
The subject of religion came up at work and one of my co-workers made it apparent that she thought I was, as a matter of course, a Christian. It was an unspoken assumption on her part: whether I went to church or not or read the Bible didn't really enter into her assessment, but the implication was clear: unless you've said different and you're not visibly from a different culture entirely, I'm going to assume you're a Christian. I gently corrected her on the point: 'I'm an atheist, but yes, I'm familiar with the Bible.'
The first question she asked was 'Why are you an atheist?' We'll come back to that one later. The second question she asked was 'So when something bad happens, something terrible, then you don't pray or ask any god for help?' My answer was no. I went on to explain how that's one of the things that sucks about being someone that was raised Christian and later became atheist. The whole time I was growing up, when something bad happened and there was nothing I could physically do to change what would happen, there was always this comfort I could retreat to. Put your hands together, ask God to help. When you said 'amen', then no matter how crappy things were before, you could at least feel like you'd done something. You weren't helpless.
Later on I was asked, when explaining this to another co-worker, why I don't just start praying. If it sucks so bad to know that I can't do anything now that I'm an atheist, why not just become a Christian again? My answer was that it's not that simple. Even if I wanted to become a Christian again, which I don't, then I can't just suddenly start believing in something that I don't believe in. I'd be saying words to an empty sky.
A better analogy is this: the reason I don't pray for help when things go wrong is the same reason I don't call to Superman. I can read books from before I was born that tell me how Superman is able to leap tall buildings in a single bound (and later, fly), how he can stop bullets with his body, how his father sent him to Earth and how he grew to love and embrace humanity before eventually, in 1996, dying to save the world from evil before miraculously being born again. And I can see the power of Superman doing good through his followers. I've heard about how the Superman radio show brought the secrets of the Ku Klux Klan out into the open and revealed them for the silly, superstitious idiots they were, effectively ending any kind of degree of seriousness that people placed upon them. I know these things, and yet I don't call Superman for help because I know he isn't real.
The big difference is, of course, that Superman was created in 1938. We know who invented him, we know all the various creators that have written and illustrated his adventures. The Bible goes back a lot further. It contains a mixture of historically verifiable fact and more dubious narrative. (By comparison, we know there was a historical Adolf Hitler, but are pretty sure Superman never punched him while hawking war bonds.) Evidence that parts of Biblical stories are true does not necessarily mean that the whole of the story is true. And that's all an aside anyway. It doesn't matter if I believe that the narratives of the Bible played out that way in real life, because I don't believe there's a God. That's a major sticking point no matter which of the big three religions I go into. That's where this Superman point came in: I don't believe in Superman. It doesn't really matter why I think Superman isn't real, bottom line is I'm not likely to suddenly start believing Superman is real and entreating him for help.
All of which makes me sound like one of those militant atheists fucks like Bill Maher, Christopher Hitchens, or Richard Dawkins. I don't want to convince people to become atheists. I firmly believe that I have no more right telling someone what they can or can't believe in than I do in telling a woman what she can or can't do with a parasitical clump of cells that's taken up residence in her uterine wall. If you don't like abortions, fine. Don't have one. If you don't believe in God, ditto.
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all perfectly good belief systems. They're built around books that have historical narratives and little stories about being nice to people and not being a dick and how people should behave to each other. The problems come in when people get involved and want other people to follow the rules in their books. Medical, legal or fiscal policy should no more be made on the strength of one religion's storybook than it should on a Superman comic. To me, this seems like common sense. To a lot of religious people, this also makes perfect sense. It's only the people who want to make laws based on their own dogma that I have a problem with, be they Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, atheist or any of the other many, many, stances you can take under the umbrella of 'personal beliefs'.
The fact that I don't believe in your God does not mean I think you're an idiot, which is perhaps where the Superman analogy falls flattest. I don't believe. You do. But neither of us know. If either of us says that we know - 'I know God is real and loves me'/'I know there is no God and life is essentially meaningless' - then that makes us fools. You believe you know there is a God, at most.
No-one can say for certain that there is or isn't a god, they can only attest to their own belief on the matter. The important thing is that you have that choice: to believe, or not to believe. If you're basically a decent person and aren't trying to impose dogma on people based on the Bible or the Torah or the Qu'ran or the Superman 80-Page Giant, then I'm just glad you have something that lets you be that decent person.
And that brings me back to the first question I was asked: 'Why Are You An Atheist?' There's not really a good answer, just bits of answers. I'm an atheist because I don't believe in a deity, that's a pretty big one. Because I was a Christian for the first sixteen or seventeen years of my life and in that time there was enough that didn't add up or make sense or hold together with catch-all proverbs like 'God has a plan' that it finally made more sense that there is no god, never was, never has been. Because I learned, probably most importantly, about stories, and about the power of stories, and the value of truth in stories whether the story itself is true or not. It's not my lack of a cohesive answer that is flawed; it's the question.
I can't imagine myself, with a straight face, asking someone 'Why are you a Christian?' The question itself seems geared towards making someone apologise for something, justify something that's essentially a personal choice you shouldn't really have to justify to anyone outside the darkness of your own skull.
Why am I an atheist? I am that I am, that's why. |
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