Why I Am an Atheist
Ian
Lance
Taylor
http://www.airs.com/ian/
ian@airs.com
2003
Ian Lance Taylor
This document is licensed under a Creative
Commons License.
$Date: 2003/04/08 22:22:04 $
George H. W. Bush
I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens,
nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under
God.
Ezar Vorborra, in Lois McMaster Bujold's novel
Shards of Honor
I am an atheist, myself. A simple faith, but a great comfort
to me, in these last days.
Last changed on $Date: 2003/04/08 22:22:04 $.
I'm an atheist. This essay discusses why, and some of the
consequences. I wrote this more for myself than for anybody else. If
you don't care, I don't blame you.
Religious Belief in General
I think that most people have an opinion about the overall nature of
the universe and about the role which humanity plays in the universe.
(I've met people who don't, but I think they are a small minority.)
What I mean by this is that most people have some sort of answer to
questions like
Why is there something rather than nothing?
Why are we here?
What happens to us after we die?
How can we tell right from wrong?
Many people are not confident about their answers to these questions,
but they rarely say they have no idea. Instead, they say things like
I would like to think that....
Most people also don't
think about these questions very much, at least not after their
sophomore year in college. They find a set of answers which satisfy
them, and stick with them.
These questions range from metaphysics to ethics, but for most people
the answers are tied together. I think the best word for this
combination is religion, although it stretches the dictionary
definition somewhat. Whether you believe in a traditional religion or
not, one of the clear advantages of religious belief is a coherent set
of answers to these questions.
I am using the term religion here to include non-traditional beliefs,
including beliefs which do not include any sort of traditional god.
For example, many people these days profess to hold beliefs like
the universe is over time moving to a more perfect
state
and the right thing to do is to increase the
amount of love and happiness in the universe.
I'm not sure whether it is possible to discover the true answers to
these questions—to discover a true religion—without at
some point relying on faith or some sort of personal mystical insight.
I am sure that nobody has yet found a religion which is generally
convincing; this is obvious from the wide range of religious faiths
which are currently believed.
I think that most people want to have a religion because it gives them
a secure place in the universe, and because it gives them guidance for
their actions in ambiguous situations. It's easier to live with some
sort of explanation, even one that may be incorrect, than it is to
live with perpetual ignorance.
Most people get their religion primarily from their parents and
secondarily from their culture. It's common for people to let their
religion lapse; this means that they no longer follow traditional
practices, but they often continue to use the religion as a basis for
their beliefs about the universe. Conversion to a different religion
is a different matter; while it happens frequently enough that one
hears about it, most people don't do it.
My Initial Religious Beliefs
I was baptized in the Lutheran church, but my parents are not
church-goers. I did not attend any sort of church service, except
that my parents sent me to Sunday School for one year when I was 11.
This was not particularly successful. I recall taking it fairly
seriously, and although I do not remember this my sister says that the
teachers got quite annoyed with my incessant questions. I read the
entire Bible that year, although I was too young to understand the
more philosophical parts. After leaving Sunday School, I once again
had no experience with traditional religions.
When I thought about religion in my later teenage years, I soon
decided that there was no logical way to decide whether there was a
god, or why there is something rather than nothing. It seemed
unlikely to me that it would ever be possible to answer questions of
that sort. (I was a logical fellow at the time, probably more so than
I am today.) So I considered myself to be an agnostic in the strict
original sense: one who does not believe that we can know whether god
exists. (The term agnostic is now also used to describe people who
are uncertain whether god exists, which is a slightly different point
of view.)
Unfortunately, agnosticism, while logical, is not for me an
emotionally satisfying position to hold. It's hard to find a secure
place in the universe, or a guide to action, by professing complete
ignorance. However, the inherent logic of the position held me there.
I shifted my position thanks to a book by Martin Gardner, The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener (the
same Martin Gardner who wrote the Mathematical Games column in
Scientific American for many years). I read the book in my sophomore
year in college, so I was perfectly primed for philosophical
decisions.
Among other things, the book explains why Martin Gardner is a theist.
Ironically, his discussion encouraged me to become an atheist. The
key point for me was his summary of arguments by William James (whom I
have not read).
According to Gardner, James defines a live option as a forced choice
between momentous and plausible alternatives. A simple example is a
person who is seriously considering marriage. The alternatives
(marriage or no marriage) are both momentous and plausible. The
choice is forced—one way or another, one alternative must be
chosen.
Given that, Gardner says, still describing James's thoughts:
Belief in God and immortality are unsupported by logic or
science, but because they are live options we cannot avoid an
emotional decision. If for you the leap of faith makes you happier,
then for you faith is the best bet. You have much to gain and little
to lose. You have a right to believe.
(emphasis in original).
I found that argument to be immediately compelling, and I continue to
believe it today. I would phrase it like this: if you have no logical
reason to choose between alternatives, but choosing one alternative
will, on balance, make you happier, then you should go ahead and
wholeheartedly choose that alternative. You should do more than
merely act as though your preferred alternative were true; you should
go further, and make a leap of faith, and really believe that your
preferred alternative is true.
That argument enabled me to shake free of my agnosticism and choose a
position of strong atheism—the denial that any god
exists—and, further, to choose the belief that the universe is
the result of random processes and that there is no higher purpose. I
choose to believe because these beliefs make me happier.
Why Atheism Makes Me Happier
Atheism makes me happier for the simple reason that it means that I am
responsible for my own choices in life.
I find the traditional Judeo-Christian god to be very paternalistic
(hardly an original thought, I know). We can be good children and
obey, or we can be bad children and rebel. We have no other choices,
and we will never grow up—to god, we will always be children.
Some people have told me that they find this to be comforting. It
makes me feel trapped. We must live our entire lives following a set
of rules imposed from above, and can never be free to decide for
ourselves. I am happier in a universe in which we are free, one in
which we can be the adults.
I feel more or less the same way about any other belief that there is
a purpose to the universe. Whether the purpose is imposed externally,
or created retroactively from the hypothetical Omega Point, it
constrains our actions to acceptance or rebellion. I am happier if we
are unconstrained.
I'm not trying to argue that the universe which I am describing, the
one I believe to be the actual universe, is somehow better than some
other universe, such as the one in which the Judeo-Christian god
exists, the one which many other people believe to be the actual
universe. I'm arguing merely that I am happier in the universe with
no god, and, since there is no logical reason to believe otherwise, I
choose to believe that there is no god.
Using the definition of religion I gave earlier, it should be clear
that I am saying that atheism is my religion. I choose it as a matter
of faith, not logic. I know that some atheists describe atheism as
the logical choice, but I've never found their logic to be any more
convincing than the various proofs of god's existence. I sometimes
describe myself as a religious atheist. Obviously I'm stretching the
usual meaning of the word, but at this point I hope it is clear where
I am coming from.
I admittedly can't explain why there is something rather than nothing,
but belief in god doesn't help much there either. You still have to
explain why god exists rather than nothing. I've never heard of a
reasonable way to answer the question.
Consequences
I'll now briefly discuss some of the consequences of atheism.
Proselytizing
It should be clear from my reasons for choosing to be an atheist that
I have no interest in convincing other people to become atheists. I
think people should choose to live in the universe which they prefer.
I don't think that somebody who believes in god is wrong; they just
follow a different faith. After all, many people who believe in
different gods are able to live together comfortably, despite the
clear contradictions between their faiths.
Of course, some religions include the belief that they know the only
truth, and the further belief that they should convince everybody else
to embrace that truth. That's OK as long as it stays peaceful, though
personally I prefer that such people don't come by and bother me.
Sometimes it turns violent, and I think that most of us can agree that
that is bad for all sides.
Incidentally, I don't think that religion has caused as many wars as
people sometimes claim. I think that religion is more often used as a
rallying flag to convince the fighters that the desired war is just.
Still, religion has undeniably caused many wars, and has made many
more wars much worse. Moreover, I can easily imagine a war fought in
the name of atheism, although I don't know of any actual examples (I
don't count the wars started by atheistic communist countries, because
atheism was not a significant reason for starting or continuing the
wars).
Ethics
When I discuss atheism with other people, which does not happen often,
they sometimes bring up ethics. Some people even question how it is
possible for an atheist to behave ethically. Of course, such a
question implies that the questioner only acts ethically because they
must, perhaps through fear of hell or a desire to look good for god.
I doubt this is actually the case for most people.
It's true, of course, that atheism by itself does not address ethical
questions. Nevertheless, I think I'm a basically ethical person. I
try to follow the Golden Rule—do unto others as you would have
them do unto you—and, more generally, Kant's categorical
imperative—roughly, act in such a way that anybody in the same
situation could reasonably choose to act the same way. These are
simple guidelines which are not sufficient for a fast moving world
with imperfect information, but a full discussion of ethics probably
requires a different essay.
I follow these guidelines primarily for two reasons. The first reason
is a logical one: they tend to lead to a world in which I am more
comfortable. If I choose to be mean to other people, then other
people will be mean to me, and sometimes unpleasant things may happen
to me. The second reason is an emotional one: it makes me happier to
be around people who are happy to be around me, and the easiest way to
achieve that is to be a nice guy.
I think that ethical behaviour in ordinary situations is no more
complicated than that, and there is no need to import ethical rules
from beyond. There are certainly morally ambiguous situations, where
it is not clear what to do, but those situations arise for atheist and
non-atheist alike (I don't know of a word which means the opposite of
atheist; logically it should be theist, but that means something
slightly different).
The only case I see where one must seriously consider ethical
differences between atheism and non-atheism is temptation, in which
you are strongly tempted to do something which you believe to be
wrong. Temptation occurs to everyone, and most of us give in to it
once in a while. If there were any evidence that non-atheists
resisted temptation better than atheists, that might deserve
examination—not that all atheists have the same ethical beliefs.
However, I know of no such evidence.
Finally, I note that there is no contradiction between my desire to be
free of god's rules and my choice to constrain my actions by following
rules of ethics. If I were following god's rules, they would be
imposed on me from without. Choosing my own rules is a free choice
from within.
Materialism
A corollary to atheism is materialism, in the philosophical sense. I
don't believe there is anything supernatural in the universe.
Although there are of course many things we don't understand, I don't
think there is any reason in principle why we can not understand them.
In particular, I don't believe there is such a thing as a soul, or a
mind separate from the body. Our selves and our consciousness are
solely the result of chemical and physical reactions in our brains and
bodies. Many people find it hard to conceive how this could be so.
While I believe that it can be understood, I'm not going to tackle
this complex topic here.
Life After Death
I don't believe that there is any such thing as literal life after
death. I think it may have been Woody Allen who said I believe
in death after life—the other way doesn't make any
sense.
The only true immortality we have is to be remembered after our
deaths. We are remembered by our friends and children, and our
influences live on through them, although they naturally dilute over
time.
To be remembered in a more personal fashion is a form of immortality
attained by only a few in the past, starting perhaps with Gilgamesh
and the Yellow Emperor, or, rather, the real people behind the myths.
It's interesting to think that, with the information explosion of
today's world, many more people living today will be known in the
future, if only as a photograph or a web page.
Free Will
Without a belief in god, is it possible to have free will? If we are
just matter without soul, then our actions boil down to just one
molecule bumping into another.
Of course, we must first ask whether it is possible to have free will
if there is a god. If we assume an omniscient god, then he (or she)
can predict, and arguably even control, all our actions, so how do we
have free will? Presumably only in some ineffable sense.
Anyhow, when it comes to free will, I am convinced by the arguments
Daniel Dennett makes in his book Elbow
Room. Free will really just means that we are able to do
what we choose to do. And, for most of us, that is true regardless of
our beliefs about the universe.
Animal Rights
Since humans evolved from other forms of life, and since I believe
that humans have no soul, it follows that there are great similarities
between humans and other animals. In particular, I must consider
ethical behaviour toward non-human animals, and must ask whether
non-human animals have any rights.
One of the basic ethical principles is that it is wrong to treat other
people solely as means, rather than as ends in themselves. You must
consider their needs and desires. To what degree does this apply to
non-human animals?
I won't discuss this at length here, but I am a vegetarian and a
supporter of the animal rights movement. For me, these beliefs are
related to my belief in atheism.
Atheists Are a Minority
I live in the United States, where atheists are clearly a minority.
As can be seen by the quote above from George H. W. Bush, who at the
time was Vice President, there are people in power who are skeptical
about the whole idea of atheism, even questioning whether atheists can
be citizens. Fortunately, we are protected by the first amendment.
Even after all these years, it continues to be startling to me to see
how deeply theism permeates U.S. society. God and prayer are invoked
for all sorts of endeavors, both routine and extraordinary. I've seen
crank arguments here and there that the U.S. is run by secular
humanists; those people should try looking at it from the other side
for a while.
Still, I have nothing to complain about. People in the U.S. are free
to believe as they choose. Even the few who really object to atheists
are relatively harmless, since atheism is invisible. Unless, of
course, you start putting essays about it on the web.