I could not have expressed my own views any better...
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Atheism and Me – Parsley Victorious
Road to Atheism
I’ve always been an atheist. I mean this quite literally; I cannot recall a time in my life when I believed in any god, in spite of my upbringing. I was raised in a Christian household, and my mother remains devout to this day. I attended Sunday school as a child, and Church every Sunday for the first seventeen years of my life.
Early on, I went because I was a child, and children go where their parents bring them. Later, as my mind matured and I realized that I didn’t believe a word of it, I continued to go despite my distaste for it in order to keep my mother happy. By seventeen I’d had enough, and simply stopped going. She took it surprisingly well; I’m fortunate in that it’s never been a problem for me.
Now that I’m older, and far better informed, I have a number of reasons for my disbelief, which I’ll expound upon later. But my youthful atheism remains a question. I was raised in a household where belief in God wasn’t a question, it was an assumption. Indoctrination of children, I firmly believe, is the only way religion survives in a world where we have answers to so many of life’s questions. I’ve read many accounts of people who were indoctrinated, believed for a long time, and came to atheism as they matured and learned. Why did this indoctrination fail so utterly in me? Truthfully, I can’t be sure, but I do have a theory; it has been discovered that, by stimulating certain regions of the brain magnetically, religious feelings can be artificially stimulated. It occurs to me that in my brain, perhaps this region is diminished, or missing, or has been adapted to another use. It’s about the only thing I can come up with, and it’s bolstered by the fact that I’ve never, not once, felt the slightest inkling that there may be a higher power, or indeed anything supernatural at all. I’ve never had a religious experience, not even a tiny one.
These days, I rely on logic and reason for the things I believe. I require that the things I believe be true, and therefore I require evidence in order to believe in something. And there is, quite simply, no evidence that gods exist, no evidence of an afterlife, no evidence of miracles. Nothing.
The religious will frequently use arguments from ignorance, or personal incredulity, to show why my atheism must be false. ‘How did the universe get here, then?’ they say, or ‘It’s impossible to explain the diversity of life by naturalism alone!’. I find both of these positions absurd. Historically, God has been offered as an answer to those things that mankind did not, at the time, understand – everything from thunder and lightning, to eclipses, to the origins of the universe and life itself. These questions are now answered, or are in the process of being answered. Physics, cosmology, and quantum mechanics are offering ways that the universe could have come into being which require no supernatural causes whatsoever. Abiogenesis and evolution take us from there. We now know how all these things came to be. What need have we for God? Why posit an all-powerful being when one isn’t needed? Even if we didn’t have these answers, I would far rather say ‘I don’t know, so let’s figure it out’ than ‘I don’t know, therefore God did it’. One approach inspires humanity to greater discoveries and achievements; the other stifles these. Imagine if everyone had simply accepted that disease was a curse from God, and neglected to study it. Picture such a world, and you will see why I cannot accept ‘God did it’ as an answer. Ever.
There being no gaps left in which God can hide, I require evidence before I’d be willing to believe in him. And I have seen none. A Holy Book is not evidence. The Bible is evidence in the exact same way that the Qu’ran, the Torah, the Enuma Elish, and Homer’s Odyssey are evidence for their respective claims. All ‘miracles’ that have been offered as proof of divinity have been shown to be cases of pareidolia, wishful thinking, delusion, ignorance of naturalistic explanations, or outright fraud. Prayer doesn’t work. Faith healing doesn’t work. Miracles don’t happen. The religious will offer all kinds of other so-called evidence for – their particular – god. It would make this essay impossible long to mention and refute them all, but suffice to say that every single one I have ever seen has been fallacious.
So there’s no need for god, and no evidence for him. Why, then, should I believe? My disbelief in god is the exact same disbelief I have for fairies, minotaurs, and Santa Claus. Until actual evidence for something, anything, supernatural is presented to me, atheism is my only possible position. You’re willing to try to offer me what you think of as evidence, if you’d like, but you’ll forgive me if I don’t hold my breath waiting to be converted. I’m open to hear it, but frankly, I don’t think it’s ever going to happen.
Because gods do not exist.
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