What's Up with Atheism? Approximate Reading Time: 6 Minutes

Note: If you have only recently left Jehovah's Witnesses, this article may not be for you, as it does not deal with the challenge of overcoming JW indoctrination. This article will mainly interest those people who are at a later stage of recovery.

"How can somebody not believe in God?" People who have believed in God for all or most of their lives can scarcely imagine otherwise.

To be sure, there are tremendous advantages to believing in God. It makes people feel that there is some grand design to existence – some special purpose that eludes our limited minds. This makes the pain and suffering of daily life seem less onerous, because there is a reason for it all. Moreover, theists (people who believe in God) never feel completely alone, and they have an organized set of principles (in the Bible, or the Koran, or whatever) to give structure to their lives.

However, knowing that an idea is helpful does not tell us if it is true or false. For example, in the past people believed that problems stemming from incest were punishment from a god. Some still do. However, most of us now understand that it is a matter of genetics, not divine retribution. The explanation was wrong, even though the advice (i.e. to avoid incest) prevented a lot of suffering.

It is easy to conclude there is a god at work when there is a mundane (but unknown) explanation. People have, at times, conducted rituals to bring rain to water the crops. When these rituals failed, they assumed they had done them incorrectly, or the gods were angry with them. When they worked, they considered it proof that the gods had smiled upon them. Yet it was simply a matter of meteorology: sometimes it rained and sometimes it didn't. There's no evidence that some gods were paying attention in this matter.

Some may protest, "But I know God exists – I feel him in my heart!"

Arguing about such emotions is fruitless: we cannot tell people what they do or do not feel. We could, however, question their interpretation of the feelings. Emotions are easily misconstrued. We may confuse love with lust, or anger with passion, or vengeful rage with a reasonable desire for justice. The confusion between emotions and reasoning is called rationalization: we have the feeling first, and come up with justification afterwards. Everybody does it at one time or another.

It is useful, however, to compare interpretations. Consider two investors in a company who have each lost a million dollars because they were cheated by a confidence trickster. One investor may say that he wants to kill the con-man "because he has it coming to him". The other may put aside his murderous impulse and say, "The law will deal with him." Both may have experienced the same initial shock, but they differed in the way they processed the emotion.

In a similar way, different people process the emotions associated with theism in different ways. One may believe in the God of the Bible, while another may kneel down before Allah. Other people may interpret their feelings as a sense of one-ness with the universe. Still others may give no explanation in particular and simply say, "I'm a happy, spiritual, easy-going person!"

What is significant, here, is that each of those people is feeling the same intensity of emotion. What differs are the explanations. Who is right?

When people adhere to a particular religion which has a specific description of God, they are often convinced that they are right and the members of other religions are wrong. They may say that those who disagree are ignorant, stupid, evil, misguided, deluded, or influenced by demons.

However, these rationalizations omit one alternative that logic requires us to consider: maybe all of the religions are wrong. This brings up two additional possibilities:

• There may be a god, but it is not like the one the existing religions are worshipping.
• Maybe there is no god at all.

Roughly speaking, an agnostic takes the first route: there could indeed be a god, but its nature is unknown and possibly unknowable – at least at this time.

Atheists are a bit more forthright: they do not see any reason to believe in gods. They do not believe that such a belief explains anything in a compelling way.

Many theists think that an 'atheist' is somebody who flatly states that "God does not exist". While there are some atheists who say this, it is illogical and rather presumptuous. Most atheists simply lack a belief in gods.

Theists are often moved to give atheists proof that their belief in gods (or a God) is justified. One might think that atheists are obliged to explain the evidence. In practice, though, this 'obligation' is not that compelling. While people may fiercely wish to demonstrate that something is so, it is hard to be motivated by the lack of such a belief. Remember: in most cases, atheism is not an assertion (i.e. "God does not exist"), but the absence of a belief (e.g. "I have no reason to believe in invisible beings").

That is not to say that you will not encounter atheists who want to 'cure' others of their theism and engage in protracted debates about the subject. However, most atheists simply note the vast kaleidoscope of theistic beliefs and conclude, "They all have the same delusion."

In other words, atheists look at all the different theistic religions – Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, etc. – and shake their heads. "All those people," an atheist might say, "so utterly convinced that they know what's what." Such an atheist may consider the underlying 'problem' to be so complex as to be insoluble.

Theists may seek to reach out to an atheist by demonstrating that their scriptures are 'obviously' inspired by a Supreme Intelligence. Christians do this, as do Muslims. Mormons have their Book of Mormon, while the Hindus have their ancient texts. There is no shortage of holy books – but which one is the true Word of the Most High?

Once again, we have to be careful not to leave out a logical alternative: maybe none of those books are divinely inspired. This notion would, of course, be hard to take for a man who had studied the Koran for all of his life. He has absorbed its wisdom and finds countless instances in everyday life where it shows its supernatural origin. However, he would have trouble convincing a Christian of that.

Similarly, a Christian would have trouble proving to a Muslim that the New Testament is 'superior' to the Koran, and most Christians do not consider the Book of Mormon to be a genuine Testament of Jesus. Indeed, they would say it was simply made up. In short, a fiction.

On the sidelines, the atheists continue to shake their heads.

Theists may try to sway an atheist by presenting evidence of miracles. Alas, spectacular miracles such as the parting of the Red Sea (Exodus 14:21-22) are hard to come by, these days. We have documentation of remarkable miracles in various holy books, but no video tapes of the purported events. Atheists are even more skeptical about these reports than they are about what they see on the evening news, because of the lack of evidence. For example, Joshua reportedly made the sun stand still for nearly 24 hours (Joshua 10:12-13), but Chinese astronomers of the time noted nothing unusual. As another example, the account of Noah suggests that the entire planet was covered with water (Genesis 7:19-20), but the record of the geological strata and the evidence from ice cores from the Arctic contradict this. Thus, atheists take such narratives with a grain of salt.

You can, of course, see seemingly miraculous occurences every day by tuning in to a televangelist's healing session on TV. Some people consider these to be genuine, while many (or even most) consider them to be stage-managed stunts, heavy on emotion and psychological trickery, but short on divine intervention. The same might be said of the revelations of 'psychics'.

The possibility of fraud or wishful thinking is troubling enough in itself, but it also brings up a serious question that should be addressed: if one religion claims miracles, and another religion also claims miracles, and both assert that the other is wrong, what is the source of the phenomena?

One convenient explanation is "Evil Spirits". However, atheists may consider "fraud and wishful thinking" to be a simpler explanation and do not wish to add to the list of creatures they are supposed to believe in.

It is true that sometimes it is hard to explain a purported miracle, but it is also hard to explain what a really good stage magician does. The atheist is not moved to say, "I don't understand, therefore a spirit being did it." Rather, an atheist says, "I don't understand, and I can't think of any explanation that makes sense to me."

This might seem like avoiding the issue, but most people who call themselves atheists have done at least some research into these matters. Few people would explicitly call themselves "atheist" if they hadn't. In most cases, they found that every time they studied 'miraculous' occurences, they found a reasonable non-supernatural explanation. After a while, they simply tired of the exercise.

We all get tired of disproving things. Life is too short to fight the same battles over and over.

Consider this example: the Loch Ness monster. Let us say that you lack belief in the beast. You are not denying the possibility that it could exist, but after decades of fruitless searching, you have decided to stop reading stories about it.

Now assume you have a friend who strongly believes in Nessy. After years of enduring his efforts to convince you, you finally say, "Please leave me alone, because I don't believe in it!"

Note that you stated your position accurately: you do not believe in it. However, your friend might interpret this as a statement that the creature does not exist. This is not what you said.

You could also be 'agnostic' about Nessy and say, "I think there's something there, but I doubt it's a plesiosaur. Maybe it's a 'rogue wave' or a large misindentified manatee."

No matter how strongly you express your disbelief, you might wrap up your protest by saying, "Anyway, what difference does it make?"

The bottom line, for many atheists, is that God does not appear to do anything. "Whether God exists or not," an atheist might say, "it doesn't seem to make any difference."

Obviously, if you believe the Bible's statements about resurrection, you might find this attitude perverse. Yet you would be hard pressed to demonstrate to the atheist that God is alive and well – and involved.

Ultimately, this is what keeps an atheist from believing in God: lack of evidence begets lack of belief. There are, to be sure, numerous 'proofs' of God's existence, but all of them are, to say the least, debatable. None of them provides incontrovertible evidence.

There are some alternative approaches. "Pascal's Wager" stresses the advantages of believing and the perils of not believing, but it does not tell you which God you should follow. (To quote Homer Simpson: "And what if we picked the wrong religion? Every week, we're just making God madder and madder!")

Another approach is "Deism", which stresses the advantages of believing in God in a general way. Most people consider this philosophy neither objectionable nor interesting, so you don't hear much about it.

Atheists do not have a "faith", as such, to defend. However, they do have one thing in common with theists: they find examples in everyday life that support their position.

A theist may study the human digestive system and marvel, "Surely something so elegant and complex must have been designed by God!" An atheist, on the other hand, might ask, "Why did God create tapeworms?" To an atheist, this thorny problem of a benevolent creator giving humanity the gift of parasites is evidence (though hardly proof) that he or she is correct in doubting the existence of God.

Atheists do not arrive at that state because they are being perverse. In many cases, they were exposed to religion and found too many "tapeworm" problems. Many atheists have studied evolutionary theory in detail and find it more convincing than the many creation accounts told by the world's religions. With all this negative evidence, it is not so much that they won't believe in God as they can't believe in God. Yet because they are surrounded by theists, they can't help but look for evidence that justifies their decision to take another path.

It is hard to identify where our beliefs come from. We may believe in the Christian idea of God, but we must also admit that if we had been raised in an Islamic country that we would, in all likelihood, believe just as strongly in Allah.

Similarly, it is hard for theists to understand how another person became an atheist. However, I hope this article has made a few things clear. First, atheists are not that way because they want to do evil things and want to be freed from moral constraints. Second, atheists generally view most religions as variations on the same basic theme that "There are unseen creatures concerned with humanity."

No amount of quoting the Bible or the Koran is likely to sway an atheist. However, if there is indeed a God, he could always reach out to the atheist as he did to Saul of Tarsus (Acts 9:1-6). Few atheists could help but be impressed by that kind of experience.