setting: having dinner with my parents.
Katie: Paul (my stepdad) do you think your being a minister is what caused me to be an atheist?
Paul: You’re not an atheist.
And so started the discussion.
My mom chimed in first, knowing good and well that her points would take less than 10 minutes where as I would be sitting listening to my step father for over an hour. My mom thinks I am an atheist (but I’ll grow out of it..) because I was expecting more. Which is more than correct. I couldn’t stay in a church that answered with “because the bible says so”, it just wasn’t in me. She also claimed that I was looking for a new social group that I could associate myself with. So my finding CFI and meeting the people there has reaffirmed and made my so-called atheism stronger. She also chimed in that she highly supports what my friends and I are do (which she defined as “blithering back and forth on Facebook”) because we are being open minded, talking and trying to make sense of it all.
Woo! Go mom! Very supportive, understanding and was really on the same ground as me. She thinks that churches are hypocritical, and that they’re not really a place to go to to look for answers or a way of life that is worth following. But - I should point out that she’s been a christian her whole life, and still is. Clearly, an open minded one.
My step dad… First he said that CFI is just another social group and said it was just another church for us to be a part of. I tried to explain that it is not a religion without god, and he said “yes, but you don’t go around raping people.” Those damn morals… if only Einstein had written a book about them before Christians did they wouldn’t be so closely associated with religion.
I grabbed a pen; Paul started his rant (the following is not word for word, but it’s the general gist):
“Atheism is a cop out. By the very definition of God, atheists do not exist. It is easy to dump on religion, and to call God nothing. It is not so easy to define what it is you actually support.
What is religion? Do you define it as organize? If so, then you are leaving out a plethora of religions. Do you define it as a human quest for goodness? If so, then your secular humanists are not so far off from me. They just don’t want to look for what that goodness is. Looking at many religions, they all have some form of the golden rule, really, any religion. God is that which is the greatest good conceivable for all. God is immanent, he is the here and he is the now. He is the goodness. There is no man on a cloud, no heaven - only the goodness of here and now.
Atheism is a ‘contrarian’ position. They may not be able to form a coherent thought about what God is, but they are moral and they are good. Lets go back to the very dawn of time, before there were people, at some point there were people. When it was just one person, it was easy to get along. You introduce another person, and it gets a little more complicated. Soon there are islands of people, and tribes of people. Are people killing one another for food? Are women getting raped?
Fast forward, now there are a lot of us. But each tribe has made some similar way of getting along. They might be different ways, but each tribe has decided that it is in their best interest to get along, and not to fight. As long as the tribes are separate from one another they are fine. But then we build boats, and we float over to see one another. We’ve all got our own ways of getting along, we’ve all got our own ways creating a common goodness. These are the same foundational values, only they are executed in different ways.
At some point some bright bunny decides to make these ways a religion. Now the religion is the tribe, and everyone’s tribe is wroth dying over. The fact that these religions are still based on the same foundational values is apparently irrelevant - because they are not executed the same way. That foundational value is god, it is the common goodness. Just now we are fighting over who has the right way to go about executing this common goodness.
Therefore, by the definition of god, you and your friends are not atheists. They are no atheists. We all have grown up knowing not to hurt one another, we just know it. That is god. If you had no sense of something “bigger” then your life would be unmanageable. What is the difference between your mystery of improbability and just loving one another, and my mystery of god, our origins and loving one another? Nothing. Foundationally, no one can be an atheist unless they are immoral. Otherwise, what do you support?
You’re all so quick to tell us what you don’t believe in, but not one of you can sit and tell me what you DO stand for that is any different than a religion.”
D’oh.
Do lets hear it atheists. If you want to claim to be atheist, what do you support?
Personally I support reason and love. I think the “god” that my step dad is talking about is not the “god” that most other people follow, and definitely not how they would define god. if you define god as goodness, just call it what it is - goodness, i believe in goodness and that people are inherently good (most of the time.) I support religions and questioning those religions. I highly support digging deeply into what we just “assume” to be true, or what we have “faith” in and seeing why we assume things, or why we have that faith.
I support people who don’t want to look further than just accepting that they have faith in God. I support people who want to look past that, far past that to the point of claiming they are an atheist, because they can’t find the support, or reasoning to say they have faith.
Atheism for me is a form of apathy. Really all this contemplation of higher beings amounts to nothing more than mental masturbation since no one ever will be able to prove one way or the other the existence of “God”.
Frankly, reading about Atheists pissing all over religion amounts to the same as reading about Christians pissing all over everything non-Christian because it’s all relative.
Atheism for me is a form of apathy.
For you, and for most nonreligious people in the US (I have no idea about Canada, but it should be the same…).
Athiest or God-Fearing or Somewhere in Between?
Theres something to be said about the debate of between atheists and religious folk. But in my experience it has always boiled down to the existence of a God or if you wish multiple Gods. Its an ontological and epistemological debate and has been going on long before the evangelists, the public interest groups, the terrorists, the Christian charities, The Church (you know the one, the big one) and longer than I could perceive back in time.
So here we are the ultimate question! Does God exist? My answer, a very unimpressive, I dont know. And I probably wont know until the day I die. Does it really matter if I know? (Once again youre going to be very unimpressed) I dont know that either.
But Ill continue living my life moment by moment, reacting to what comes at me second by second, and hopefully Im making choices that I feel are good for me and others. If tomorrow I all of the sudden come to the realization that he/she/it most certainly exist well then I know that was a decision I made which I thought was going to give me and others the best outcome at the moment.
People do this all the time and sometimes its very dynamic, going from one decisions to the next and on to the one right after that one, and then all the way back again. That last one is called changing your mind; which is to say that we can make decisions reversing other decisions. Sometimes it may take years to finally make a decision (have you tried to quit smoking?) And some decisions arent made until the day we die, and some can still yet remain undecided even after weve kicked the bucket.
Were very annoying undeceive people. Ever gone grocery shopping high? Yeah were really like that ALL THE TIME. What to buy? Im so hungry! I want chips! No! Do I want pie? What to believe? Who is lying to me? Can I trust this? Should I buy that full-fat cream cheese instead of reduced fat? (The answer to the last question is very obvious to me, and its a yes, a very definite yes.)
I live my life wanting to be convinced. Give me your best arguments as to why big pharm. sucks. Or why the precautionary principle is paralyzing innovation. Show me what youve got, and then show me what theyve got. Im ultimately the Judge in my trial, and I want the prosecutor and defendant to show me the best evidence they have.
Jihad or Geometry. Beliefs have been known to destroy and theyve been known to create. What is more interesting? The belief or why you believe something. I have no idea what category of religious or non-religious belief I fall into, but it is fun, angering, interesting, frightening and sometimes (Im not going to lie) just plain lazy.
Im probably wrong about all this anyways. Or I might be on to something. Or I might just be “copping out.” Well if I am prove it! Who the fuck ate my bagels!?
For me atheism means freedom, freedom to speak your mind, to not be bound by some big father figure. To explore your life to the fullest and not worry about holy retribution.
In my life my main belief that drives my actions is do unto others as you wish them to do to you.
Atheism has lifted a heavy burden off my heart and made me see the world in a different light. A more positive light. No more are people sinners doomed to burn. They are just people going about their daily lives.
Btw nice blog.
Alon: I don’t think it’s most people. I definitely don’t have a feeling of apathy toward the situation. If I did I wouldn’t bother thinking about it all the time and writing about it. Speak only for yourself man.
Christian: I love you. I’m pretty decisive when it comes to groceries. …But I know what you mean. I change my mind on what my major is going to be, what sort of music I want to listen to at any given time, if I should stop smoking pot or ciggs. …Back and forth man.
Butmunch: Freedom; that’s a really good one. It does allow you to let go and explore a bit more which is fantastic. And thanks!
Again, I don’t know about Canada, and I think it’s not true outside North America. But in the US nonbelief is for most people a form of apathy. Two thirds of nonreligious Americans actually believe in some higher power or god, but can’t be bothered to go to church, which is why nonreligious Americans vote in lower numbers than religious Americans, and in general participate less even in secular social activities.
“There is no man on a cloud, no heaven - only the goodness of here and now.”
By any sane definition I can think of, doesn’t that make him an atheist?
Since I don’t accept his right to impose his own private definitions of ‘atheism’ and God’ on me, I don’t accept his argument. So I don’t feel any need to say what atheism ’supports’. I don’t think it supports anything much, in itself. I am an atheist and I support freedom and tolerance and love and reason all that good stuff. But it’s not because I’m an atheist.
[...] I proceed in asking him what his god is, and as I’ve written about before - it is “goodness”, and atheism is a cop out because it is easier to deny everything [...]
[...] I proceed in asking him what his god is, and as I’ve written about before - it is “goodness”, and atheism is a cop out because it is easier to deny everything than to [...]