Many who attack religious people know little about them or about why people come to believe things in general.  Educating yourself before labeling a group of people is important. 🙂

I can see why modern atheism gets a bad rap.  Part of it of course has a lot to do with the fact that for a very long time in human history, religious beliefs could not be safely challenged.  People who hold religious beliefs are not used to being challenged in public forums.  If one completely believes that something in society is right because of some book they believe to come from the divine and you challenge that belief in addition to trying to prove that the divine law is actually unjust, people lose privilege in addition it simply doesn’t make sense in their brain.  Once beliefs in our brain are well formed we actually get dopamine released in our brain when those beliefs are reinforced.  Neural pathways become forged and your brain is so used to that dopamine release, that trying to forge new beliefs actually becomes physically troubling and is cause for being unhappy and upset.

That being said there are a lot of assholes out there, and atheists comprise of piece of that asshole pie.  I see many atheists who ridicule and mock those with religious beliefs and it annoys the crap out of me for several reasons:

1.  It’s not nice.  Any time you really don’t know a person, what they’ve been through, and try to understand why they believe what you believe then it is just cruel to attack them by name calling.  Even if they attack you.  It’s the old “why go down to their own level”.  It’s your responsibility as a good atheist to show the world that morality is not contingent on the existence of God, and when you are not kind to all people even in the face of personal attacks you reveal yourself as to be no better than the typical eye for an eye religious person you claim are foolish for their beliefs.  How can you ask for tolerance when you demonstrate intolerance?
2. It’s not smart.  If someone says “Abortion is wrong because you are killing a child and God says murder is wrong” and you respond “You are an idiot”.  You have actually just taken the intellectual low ground.  If you feel an intellectual argument will have affect on the mind of the pro-life person, then all you’ve done is been “not nice”.  This person has at least given you their view and given a reason for their view.  In your name calling, you appear not only to not be nice, but you also appear to not have any reason for your opposing view other than you don’t like religious people.
3. It’s a waste of time. Do something useful.  Help somebody.  Even if it’s another atheist because you can’t stand religious people.
4. It hurts other atheists. If you have no love of religious people you could at least show love for your fellow atheists who actually want to try to get along with people and help make this world a better place for all.  Even if you think you are making a comment on a thread in which only atheists or similar minded people might be reading it, you reveal a pettiness in your intellect that weakens all atheists.  Grow up and be a part of the world and not try to remove yourself from it.

The world has religion.  The world has believers.  We are all naturally evolved to hold beliefs.  It is better to understand why people form beliefs.  While I think it is reasonable to think that beliefs have a great potential for danger when differing beliefs collide and that we should look to a way of thinking critically and investigation that can lead all people to a more unified understanding of how the universe works.  Beliefs are not tore down through name calling and abuse.  They are tore down through education, they are torn down most strongly by being a good citizen of this world.  Be kind and respectful, be loving and generous, be reflective and forgiving, be courageous yet humble, and demonstrate compassion as often as humanly possible.

Many who attack atheists know little about them, or about atheism in general.  Educating yourself before labeling a group of people is important.

Atheists have no moral guidance

Well I am not going to go into too much detail here.  You can watch the qualiasoup video on YouTube called “Good without Gods” if you want some excellent explanations for how morality is self-evident without God.  If being good didn’t have its earthly rewards and benefit our survival we probably wouldn’t do it.  Or perhaps a better way of saying it is that the increased chance of survival and increased happiness we experience from our morality is what defines what good morals are.  Dawkins refers to it as reciprocal altruism which is the more scientific way to look at it.  If we look at our actions in terms of the harm they cause in this existence, what does commandments from another plane of existence matter?  If only the threat of punishment from a plane of existence that only exists due to faith is the reason for you being good then to me that sort of cheapens humanity and is sort of worrying.  Does the smile on people’s faces not mean something to you?  Does the love you get in return for putting love out into the world not give you pleasure?  Does the quality of your life not increase when you treat other kindly and with respect?

If you’re an atheist you must have no purpose in life

Many people feel that with a hierarchal structure to the universe with a creator on top means that all this is for some reason.  That there is a purpose to the universe and thus it makes your daily life filled with purpose.  Once again, as a species that has evolved to benefit from having compassion for my fellow species, purpose can simply be derived by not only the need to survive, but to survive well.  The best chance for me to survive is to work to increase the quality of life for all my friends and family and hopefully beyond if I can.  The world is fascinating and amazing and I am extremely fortunate to even exist for a short time in this universe to appreciate some of it.  What difference does it make if the universe itself is indifferent?  What matters if there is no intentionality to it?  What does it matter that no supernatural being cares about whether I live or I die?  I experience love now.  I experience existence now.  I experience.  I have wandered no longer for purposes than anyone else in the world.  It takes time to find that…for anybody.

Atheists are empty spiritually

This is simply untrue.  The dictionary describes spirituality as being mostly being tied to religion, but this I believe is simply because religion has taken a hold of the definition of spiritual.  A secondary definition describes spiritual as something that is incorporeal which means having no material body or form.   Do I have feelings or moments which are unexplainable, or in which I am overwhelmed with emotion for which no expression captures that moment?  The answer of course is yes, and when people of faith describe “spiritual experiences” the essence of those experiences makes me feel like I have those similar moments.  I may not feel the presence of an angel or God but I feel like there is some presence so strong I could almost touch it.  I can even feel this knowing it is a conjuring of my own mind, because it is very human to have these moments and experiences.  People have them of all different faiths, so why can’t an atheist have them too?  Because I can explain the chemistry of love does not make me feel it any less.  Because I know why I cry, doesn’t prevent me from crying.  Being overwhelmed with emotion is natural, and very often a spiritual event.  For the record I don’t believe there is actually a spirit, but rather it is a good word which encompasses these moments I have tried to describe.

Atheism is a belief just like any religion

This one bothers me more than any other.  As the definition I put part I clearly demonstrates atheism is a lack of belief in a God.  Now this of course doesn’t mean that atheists don’t have beliefs.  We all do.  What it does mean though is that I live my life as if there was no god.  The idea of believing in the absence of something that only exists because people believe in it seems strange to me.  Let’s use an analogy:

                Me:  I believe there are mermaids

                You: I believe there are no mermaids.  Do you have proof of your belief?

                Me:  Well they are in books, and other people believe in mermaids too.

                You:  But I’ve never seen a mermaid.

                Me. Neither have I, but they are definitely real.  I know it.

Truth has to be evident from observation.  It shouldn’t require belief.  If we took the books about mermaids out of the situation you would just have two people who had never seen mermaids and thus have no reason to believe in their existence or believe in their non-existence.  There are no observations of mermaids and therefore one can conclude that there is no such thing as mermaids.

I for instance can believe that gases expand when heated.  I need never have experienced it myself, but I could believe that, but still we don’t know if it’s true.  Now if you come along and say you don’t believe that, well now we have something that we can actually observe and measure.  We would find that my belief is correct and yours was incorrect.  Furthermore someone with no beliefs about the subject of the behavior of gasses when heated could walk into the room during our test see what happens to a gas when heated and conclude based on his/her observation that gasses do in fact expand.

An atheist can have a belief about something, but a good atheist will seek out knowledge to test whether that belief holds because ultimately an atheist tries to be inductive in their reasoning and not deductive.  Meaning we try to make conclusions based on the evidence.  We may think we know what the outcome will be beforehand but evidence may prove us wrong, and any atheist should be willing to change their stance based on new evidence.  I do not believe in evolution.  The evidence of evolution is staggering thus I cannot help but conclude that evolution is a real process.  Nobody had to tell me it is real.  I do not believe in anthropogenic climate change.  The evidence for it is also overwhelming.  Now if new evidence was found that truly contradicted the theory of evolution I would know that a new theory had to be adopted because if a theory cannot explain all the evidence it isn’t a very good theory.  A good atheist should make their arguments with evidence and with respect.  Next let’s talk about atheists that worry me.

With even the title of this blog I wonder how many people will bother to read it.  It’s still not popular today and can even leave a bad taste in the mouth of some people that I know to be quite intellectual given the pomposity of many atheists today.  However, I think there are a lot of misconceptions about atheists and I also wanted to sort of describe my personal journey, and then in two additional posts talk about what annoys me about what people think about atheists and also even make some complaints about atheists that are often seen on public forums and social media. So for anyone who chooses to read this, I thank you.

I tend to start with the bare bones, but I think this time I would like to start more personally.  Nevertheless I think it is worth starting out by simply defining the term atheist as I see it and will refer back to this definition later.  Theism is belief in the existence of a deity or deities.  The dictionary definition also adds in things like someone who believes in a god or gods as being responsible for the universe and also having a personal relationship with his/her creation.  The last part is arguable, as many might say that someone who believes in a god who sort of just passively watches is also a theist.  The word atheism thus simply put is the lack of a belief in a god or gods.  The best analogy that I think can be used to describe theism vs. atheism is to say it is the same as between symmetry and asymmetry.  Something is symmetrical or it isn’t.  Someone believes in a god, or they don’t.  Now on with the story.

As I have told many friends in the past, my questioning of religion happened well before my questioning about God.  So I’ll start with religion since this tends to be tied with the concept of a God, but certainly doesn’t have to be.  As a biracial child I am fortunate to have both sides of my family love and respect me.  And it is this love and respect that first raised doubts in me that religion had some problems.  Not that I could think intellectually about it as a child, but I remember thinking:

“Here are two sides of my family from completely different cultures and they were born into two very different stories about spirituality and God (Christianity and Sikhism), and they both seem to love me very much.  I saw them all as good people.”

When from the very outset of your life you know good people of two different faiths it tells you that goodness is not something contingent upon a particular faith.  And as I grew older and learned more about the faiths in particular, it seemed clear to me that since both stories can’t be right, then both stories must be wrong.

Certainly also having an impact on me is when I gave my heart to Jesus Christ, because I was told that if you prayed hard enough it will happen.  Not sure why they tell kids that, but in retrospect I think it is quite cruel.  So what did I want?  I wanted my alcoholic dad to not drink.  I think we can all agree that this is something pretty normal and somewhat virtuous for a kid to pray for.  On top of that it’s something that I kid will pray for pretty hard; really hard actually.  I was in lock, stock, and barrel.  I was 12 at the time so I can remember pretty vividly what I was like.  Still being a kid, when the heart of a child decides to do something there is no hesitation, no doubt.  He believes.  Kids believe with so much more certainty and of course that is how a kid’s brain is designed; to take in information regardless of its truth and believe it.  So for a good year, I prayed and I prayed.  Well I am sure you can guess the outcome.  When the religious people you know tell you that something is true and it is not, it feels like a betrayal and it is hard to believe them again.  And when you ask them why it doesn’t work, either they have no answer or they tell you “just to keep having faith” or in the worst case they tell you “it’s because you didn’t pray hard enough” or “God only listens to boys who are being good Christians”.  This is a terrific message isn’t it?  Now it’s somehow your fault that your dad is still drinking.  Children of alcoholics already internalize their parent’s drinking and this reinforces it at the spiritual level.

At this point I am going to skip over a lot, because it would require going over all that I have learned in school and in life, and it’s a long story.  I simply wanted to explain the things that I thought were important in sending me on my path towards atheism.  It was a long journey and for most of my 20’s I still believed in God but sort of formed my own definition that I was comfortable with.  It was peaceful in some ways to believe in a God because it was helpful when things were out of my control I could simply say to myself “It is in God’s hands”.  At some point though you realize you are using God as a tool for your own peace of mind and so I had to say to myself, “Well Swarn, what does all that you’ve learned about the world and its history really tell you?  There is no god.”

With that being said I knew that I was in a very unpopular spiritual position in this world.  It’s not something that I cared to share because I didn’t even feel intellectually equipped for the possible confrontations with people who were worried about my soul.  I felt I needed to get even better educated.  Since then I have delved into more books about anthropology, evolution, history, psychology in trying to understand the nature of belief, and also trying to understand how the brain works in general.  When I add this to my formal education that is steeped in physics I can say for certainty that no particular religion had all the answers even if there was a god.  I came out as an atheist around the time that I read Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion as he inspired me to brave.  We fortunately live in a society now where one can be an atheist and not get burned at the stake so I feel quite grateful for that.  Moreover there is a lot of discrimination against atheists and while atheists feel no need to preach and thus keep to themselves, there is value in organizing and being vocal.  I’ll let you look that up if you like, but suffice to say there are 6 states still in this nation who explicitly state in their constitution that an atheist cannot hold government office.  I even came out to my mother who is a devout Christian.  She has always given me freedom to by my own person and I thought it was better she know who I truly am than to think of me as illusion.   I also do not want to try to imply that as atheist I face the type of discrimination that homosexuals face for who they are, so when I say “came out” I make an analogy only in terminology not in circumstance.

Stay tuned for Part II