Atheism For Dummies (For Dummies (Religion & Spirituality)) (18 page)

And you’re spending this precious moment reading my book?
Seriously?
Go outside, plant a tree, hug your kids, dance naked in the rain! (Just kidding, keep reading.)

Valuing ethical behavior

Most religious believers want to live in a world in which people behave ethically. Funny thing . . . so do most atheists. An ethical society is simply safer, less scary, easier, more satisfying to live in, and simply better, whether or not a person believes in God. That’s the kind of place I want my kids to live in. You know, heck with them — it’s the kind of place
I
want to live in.

Be careful not to confuse atheism with
moral nihilism
— the idea that nothing is inherently right or wrong. In fact, when it comes to defining right and wrong behavior, studies show an amazing amount of agreement on the most basic ethical ideas, even among people with wildly different religious and political beliefs. They may put stronger emphasis in one area or another, and there are certainly some areas of disagreement. But that’s up in the branches. Down at the roots of moral understanding, most atheists and theists agree that they want to live in a world where people treat each other fairly and don’t harm one another.

After everyone recognizes this shared desire, we can all talk about how to make it a reality.

Taking responsibility for ourselves and each other

The transition from religious belief to unbelief often packs a one-two punch. Many people who’ve been through the transition often describe an initial sense of freedom and relief, something I describe further in
Chapter 16
. But then many talk about an enormous feeling of responsibility for themselves and for others.

Believing in God solves an awful lot of problems — or feels like it does. If I give my problems over to God and encourage others to do the same, it can feel like I’ve done something productive, moved toward a solution. But “putting it in God’s hands” often keeps a person from
actually
doing something to improve the situation.

After a person sets religious belief aside, a huge feeling of responsibility often sets in. Life has no divine safety net and no escape clause into the next life. If humans want a better world, they have no one but themselves to turn to. This idea strikes me, and many other atheists, with the overwhelming desire to do it right — to work for human rights, justice, peace, and equality in this, our one and only life.

Asserting that God is actually “that kind of question”

I clearly remember a sentence from my childhood, one that Sunday school teachers and playground peers alike offered up whenever I got to poking around at God: “It’s not that kind of question.”

I never understood what they meant. Did they mean the most interesting question of all — “Is there a God?” — can’t even really be asked? Why would that be? I asked anyway. And after some time, I began to figure out productive ways to ask the question.

Suppose you make an unusual claim, like, “A hundred purple ponies are on the dark side of the moon, galloping in patterns that control our destinies.” I won’t run out and start building a rocket to check it out. I’d say, “What in the world makes you think that?” If you tell me you saw it in a dream, or that an ancient prophet predicted it . . . heck, I wouldn’t even leave my chair.

If people are telling me a God does exist, I don’t need to go looking for God; I just need to know why they think there is one. Then I can decide whether their reasons are convincing to me. Suddenly God is “that kind of question.”

Religious claims are claims of fact, claims that impact this natural world. That’s why atheist scientist Richard Dawkins and Catholic theologian Scott Hahn agree that a universe with a God would be a very different one from a universe without one, and that the presence or absence of a God is indeed a scientific question, even though everyone haven’t all agreed on the answer yet. (I should note that not all scientists or theologians agree with this claim. See “
Answering the Question: Is Science Incompatible with Belief in God?
” at the end of this chapter.)

Addressing the negative consequences of religious belief

Religious belief has inspired a lot of beautiful works of art and music as well as acts of profound generosity and selflessness. Can I get an “Amen!” from the congregation? I thought so.

But if a religious belief inspires bigotry and hatred and violence, it would be immoral to look the other way just because that belief is religious. Amen?

In addition to the good things that religious ideas and people have done, they have done a great deal of harm as well, including

The use of biblical arguments to extend slavery in the 19th century and delay women’s rights in the 20th

Perpetual violence in the Middle East, fueled in large part by conflicting Jewish and Islamic religious claims to the land

The ongoing opposition to equal rights for gays and lesbians — which are almost exclusively framed in religious terms

Catholic opposition to reasonable contraception, which has worsened calamities of overpopulation and HIV/AIDS in the developing world

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, which relied on selected Islamic texts to inspire self-sacrifice and hatred of “infidels”

That’s a greatly abbreviated list, as I’m sure you know. Atheists believe that any idea that inspires such harm must be challenged, and should certainly not be protected from criticism just because it’s a religious idea.

Discovering meaning and purpose

When someone hears that I am an atheist, a meaning-and-purpose question is never far behind — something like, “But how do you get out of bed in the morning?”, or the closely related question, “So you think you are just a collection of molecules?”

As Adam Lee, one of my favorite atheist bloggers, puts it, I’m not “just” any of those things, any more than a house is “just bricks” or a book is “just words.” It takes both a special arrangement and an infusion of purpose to make those things. The same is true of me. I am responsible for making sure I’m not “just” a collection of molecules, not even “just” an organism, but one whose brief time on Earth is full of meaning and purpose.

We all ought to get out of bed in grateful surprise every single morning, giggling with amazement at our luck to be conscious things, to be inside that tiny window of existence between two infinities of nonexistence. Most mornings I fail to wake up that way, and boo on me for that. But when I do, it’s partly because I have scads of meaning and purpose in my life.