Why I Don't Believe

Q: Why do you believe this? Why are you an atheist?

A: [Disclaimer – after writing this I just wanted to return to the top to clarify something. I often refer to Atheism and science as if they were one in the same… this is not the case, but it just happens to be so in my personal case. I choose to be an atheist (to disbelieve in a god) because it is my belief that science and religion (in its current form) cannot peacefully coexist in one man’s knowledge structure. For me science does the basic job of religion, and that is to answer big questions about life. This concept is incredibly easy for me to consider because I’m happy to use one of my dumbed-down, alternative definitions of science, like “Learning what works best through trial and error.” I hope this isn’t too unreasonable for anyone out there.]

My doubts began when I was a sophomore in college at Indiana University. I think the first thing that happened was that I realized that I hadn’t really thought of god for a while… like he had been absent from my life for a long time. When I came to this realization I thought it was a little strange, considering God had been quite a large part of my life before college. At this time I was living with my friends Dave, Ben, Addom, and Nimai. Dave’s dad is Jewish and his mom is Christian, but Dave just seemed a bit apathetic. Ben was Jewish, Nimai was Hindu, and Addom was a Christian. I lived with these four guys essentially all throughout college, with the exception of Addom. Seeing them (and all the other students at this diverse school) every day and realizing how great they all were, with or without different gods of their choosing, made me realize that there was no way that just one of them could be right (and by this time I was projecting their beliefs respectively upon millions of others), but according to all of their doctrines, there was no way that more than one of them could be right. There was one thing they all seemed to agree on, however, and that was science.

If Christianity says the only way to paradise is through belief in Jesus Christ and repentance of sins, and Muslims say the only way is through the teachings of Muhammad, and Jews say the only way is through Judaism, then 2 of them are totally wrong, and totally fucked, because they just totally wasted their whole lives (“HA HA!!”). And how about all of the tribal cultures that until recently went undiscovered for centuries. They knew nothing of Jesus Christ, so were those tribes’ entire histories wasted? Were they all condemned to burn for eternity at the moment of their conception? As Susan Savage-Rumbaugh stated in her TED.com speech I mentioned earlier, “There were Tasmanians who were discovered around the 1600s and they had no fire, they had no stone tools… to our knowledge, they had no music.” I assume, however, that these simple people, like us, experienced moments of extreme joy, of pain, of sorrow, and of celebration. Each and every one of them might have very well been a perfectly good human being, with loving sons and daughters and friends and family, yet, obviously, not a single one of them ever had a chance to know Jesus, or to hear any of Muhammad’s prophecies, and thus, each and every one of them were hopelessly condemned to wind up in hell. None of them ever had a chance in the world for paradise, yet according to Christians, any serial killer who prays before he is put to death will be accepted lovingly into the arms of god in heaven.

If anyone tells you they know everything without error, you and I both know they are obviously loaded with bullshit. It makes little sense to accept something as true at face value, without further investigation. That is essentially the epitome of ignorance, and it’s often quite dangerous. This is why I believe that science should always outweigh religion in terms of how the natural world works, and has worked for billions of years. Not only can we show you evidence to prove our theories work, we are always open to new theories that could potentially replace outdated ones. It is obvious most Christians don’t believe every single word of the bible, considering that you don’t hear of too many newlywed wives being stoned to death by their new husbands on their fathers’ doorsteps for not being virgins (the bible tells men to do this in Deuteronomy 22… it also says you and your neighbors should stone your rebellious son to death in Deuteronomy 21). Yet they say their Bible is the only way to heaven… that it is the one true word of the all-powerful, all-knowing God. Now wait a minute… you can’t properly follow a religion that has the rule “don’t pick and choose your beliefs” as a pillar of its belief system if you are going around saying “no” to this verse and “yes” to this verse. And you certainly must stop using the Bible as your evidence to disprove science and rational thought if you prove to me every day through your actions and beliefs (as well as those of every single believer out there) that many parts of your religious works are outdated, unnecessary, or flat out wrong. It is obvious to me that Christianity (and Judaism and Islam, etc.) is wrong on many areas of morality, and several other things for that matter. So, why should I believe any of it... especially when it is presented to me as an error-free work of God, when it clearly is not? If you just bought a dictionary that incorrectly defined a couple of words every so often, I would hope that you would return it, and call the publisher to complain. With the Bible, however, asking its owner to do this, and pointing out the reason for it, could quickly result in an unreasonable slap upside the head.

Evolution, Evolution, Evolution… This was the big one… when I actually understood the concept of evolution; that was the moment I realized there is no need for a god. This is a big one, so I’ll get back to it later. (Maybe next week, maybe next year.)

Whenever someone asks me how I find meaning in life, I tell them that I already know the meaning of life (and I truly believe I do), that I am probably happier than they will ever be, and I refuse to tell them my secret, considering how piously they asked the question. Why can’t they accept the fact that their life’s only meaning is what they make of it? If their only meaning in life is to have God in it, and then go to heaven, then my question to them is what is the meaning of your afterlife? If all life has to have meaning, then what about the afterlife? Is there a superafterlife that the afterlife prepares you for, or is the meaning of the afterlife simply to spend time with the people you knew during your natural life? So from my point of view, Christians just believe they have a second meaningless life that lasts a hell of a lot longer, but has the exact same cast of characters. This does not sound fun… it sounds stupid.

In closing for today, I just want to add that I find it much harder to believe that a highly advanced and perfect creator came from nothing and then created all of this, rather than my belief that all of this is the result of a freak explosion and a lot of time. After all, a freak occurrence that releases random bits of dust, gas, and debris seems a hell of a lot more likely than a freak occurrence that creates a perfect being capable of creating everything that we now know to exist.