Atheism For Dummies (For Dummies (Religion & Spirituality)) (14 page)

Speaking for myself, I asked the question because I thought it was the most interesting one anyone could ask. If there’s a God — then
oh my God, there is a God!
There’s a supreme being who created everything and cares for us!
It affects everything. If on the other hand there’s no God — then
oh my God, there is no God! There’s no supreme being. We’re really on our own!
It affects everything.

Either answer is startling and fascinating. Either one is acceptable. I just want to know which one’s true.

I was really lucky to be able to ask the question at all. Like many of my friends who are now atheists, I attended church regularly with my family when I was young. But I was never given the message that questioning is a bad thing. On the contrary, curiosity and education were both valued in our home, and I was allowed to chase ideas wherever they led.

Just as importantly, I felt personally safe and secure. Religion is often an understandable response to feeling alone, afraid, or unsafe. Depending on a person’s circumstances, being alive and vulnerable in an uncertain world can be terrifying. But fear and insecurity were never a big part of my upbringing. I had enough to eat and a loving home. My education allowed me to take control of my life. I don’t recall ever being threatened with hell. Not everyone with these lucky conditions becomes an atheist, of course, but those conditions are helpful in allowing a person to relax and open up, to ask the questions with a mind both clear and unafraid. In short, these conditions allowed me to doubt. In the end, they allowed me to
decide.

Religious texts in many traditions warn about doubt — and for good reason. After a person begins to treat one of the Big Questions as a real question, not as the set-up for a preferred answer, many of the old questions that were so easily deflected in the past begin to appear in a new light. The philosopher Bertrand Russell called this the difference between the will to believe and the will to find out, which he says is the exact opposite.

Many children go through this same change in their questions about Santa Claus. At first they believe without hesitation. But at some point, questions start to nag at the back of their minds:
How do the reindeer fly? How does Santa get around the world in one night? How does he get into my house if we have no chimney and the alarm is set?
For a while, the child’s strong preference is to continue believing, so the most transparently silly answers from Mom and Dad (“The reindeer eat magic corn!”) are eagerly accepted at first. Tellingly, a child at this stage rarely asks directly if Santa is real because she doesn’t really want to know yet. Her will to believe is stronger than her will to find out.

As the child grows and learns more about the world, the answers become less satisfying, and the urge to know the truth starts to overtake the will to believe. That’s when the direct question comes at last:
Is Santa real?

By offering a universe that cares for everyone after all, and by cancelling death, the idea of a loving God solves many of the deepest human problems. When it comes to God, the will to believe can be so overwhelming that most people never cross the threshold into the will to actually find out. Whatever doubts they have are easily shooed away by the religious equivalents of magic corn.

Those who are able to cross that threshold find that they’re able to revisit the many questions they had shooed away so easily while their will to believe was strongest — questions about good and evil, meaning and purpose, life and death — and to see them in a whole new light. Many end up coming to the conclusion that the God hypothesis just doesn’t fare well in that light, and that it’s much more likely that humanity lives in a natural universe without gods.

Getting a handle on confirmation bias

Many people who eventually identify as atheists notice early on that religion is a perfect fit for the deepest human hopes and fears. Suspiciously perfect, you might say.

Confirmation bias
is the human tendency to see things the way you prefer, and it’s the single biggest obstacle to getting at the truth in any area of life. It leads people to notice and accept evidence that seems to support their beliefs while ignoring evidence that contradicts it.

It’s funny how consistently my kids are the most amazing performers in the talent show, for example, or the most gifted athletes on the field. Of course I tend to notice the things that confirm my opinion (the jump shot or high note that’s successful) and forget the ones that contradict it (the jump shot or high note that’s missed). That’s why I’m a terrible choice to judge their talent shows or referee their games — confirmation bias impairs my judgment, tilting me in the direction of the conclusion I’d prefer — that my kids are the best.

Likewise, any person who wins eternal life if a certain religious idea is true is a terrible judge of whether it is
actually
true.

The satirist H. L. Mencken said he respected someone’s opinion on his own religion no more or less than his opinion that his wife was beautiful and his children were smart. No one can be trusted to be an objective judge when one particular answer showers him or her with glory.

That’s one of the central problems many people notice when they first begin to look closely at religion — that the claims and conclusions of the faith so often play to the preferences of the faithful in a really big way.

The 19th-century agnostic feminist Susan B. Anthony said she distrusted people who claimed to know what God wanted, because it always seemed to line up really well with their own wishes. My thoughts exactly. If someone says he can cancel my death (which is one of my least favorite things, by the way) in exchange for my signature, I’m strongly inclined to reach for that clipboard. But if I’m more eager to see the world as it is than see it as I’d like it to be, it’s important for me to be very skeptical of claims that fit my preferences like a glove. That doesn’t mean I reject the claims outright, just that I need to ask some probing questions and follow the answers wherever they lead.

Asking new questions

After the old questions are reassessed, entirely new questions pop up. Some of these new questions may never have occurred to the person while deep in belief. A few examples include:

How do I determine my own values, and how can I best live them out?

If God didn’t create the world, how did everything get here?

What’s the basis for human morality?

What else
have I taken for granted that isn’t true?

Because God isn’t providing ultimate justice, how can humanity create a just world?

What does it mean to truly die?