Atheism Is a Purely Emotional Response to Being Mad at God?

I’m amazed at the ability of the Godfull to miss the point and make false statements and generalizations about how atheists become atheists.

The thought is on my mind because a theology student recently asked me to answer some survey questions (he’d been assigned an “interview an atheist” project). I’m not sure if the questions were his own, or if they’d been fed to him by a professor, but the bias in them hurt my brain and caused me to feed on baby flesh.

Anyway, while all the questions had bias (I may post the others later), one in particular got my goat:

James Spiegel wrote in The Making of an Atheist that most people are atheists or agnostics because either one or both of the following are true: (1) there was a major disaster earlier in life that made the person angry toward God (perhaps a death of a loved one or disappointment with some people in the church), (2) the person simply does not want God to be a part of their life. Do either of these descriptions fit why you think there is no God? When did you become an atheist/agnostic, and what would you say brought this about?

Not Enough Options

The claim that there are only two options is incorrect. Including those mentioned above, I can think of four possibilities (I’m probably missing some):

  1. A person could grow up in an atheist household and know virtually nothing about religion or god.
  2. A person could use rational thinking and an examination of evidence and history to conclude there is no god.
  3. There was a major disaster earlier in life that made the person angry toward God (perhaps a death of a loved one or disappointment with some people in the church (part of the original question).
  4. The person simply does not want God to be a part of their life (also part of the original question).
Analysis
  1. Why does the author see only points 3 & 4 as possible reasons for a person being an atheist? Is it because he is a shallow thinker? Or is it because he is purposefully misleading his readers?
  2. Both reasons 3 & 4 mischaracterize what it means to be an atheist:
    • Definition of an Atheist: A person who does not believe in the existence of deities (Christian, Islamic, Judaic, Hindu, Greek & Roman gods – among thousands of other deities – all included).
    • Author’s Definition (my interpretation): A person who has been alienated from, or is angry with God and who, as a result, has decided to force god’s existence from their minds by an act of mental will.
    • The author’s definition seems very similar to a person who is angry with their father and decides to shut him out of their lives. Note that, in this example, the father still exists, but he is avoided or ignored or pushed far away from the person’s daily life and thoughts.
    • The author’s conceptualization of what an atheist is, is a grossly ignorant, dishonest misrepresentation of the concept. Atheism is simply a lack of belief in deities. It is not an emotional rejection of something a person knows to exist.
One More Thing

It is entirely possible for a person to begin their journey toward atheism based on an emotional/traumatic event, but to arrive at their destination based on rational thinking. In other words, emotion can be the trigger that leads to further investigation, that leads to a weighing of evidence, that leads to a non-emotion based abandonment of belief.

In my case, I became an atheist at 40 years of age after a lifetime of trying to believe. Certainly, there were troubling events in my life, but they did not solely lead to my atheism. My decision to abandon belief in god was based on the combined impact of these major findings (among others):

  1. That religions do not adequately explain the problem of evil.
  2. That there is no evidence for any god or deity.
  3. That the existence of thousands of religions – all claiming to be the exclusive holders of truth and none of them providing compelling evidence for their claim suggests that none of their claims are to be trusted.

It’s important to realize that, for a long time, I really wanted to believe but, the more investigation I did, the less I was able to stomach the Kool-Aid.

One More, One More Thing

We are not mad at God. We simply do not think your god exists. Would you accept my claim that you are angry at glow-in-the-dark, spacesuit-wearing six-legged chickens? Or that you are mad at the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

No? Well, now you know how ridiculous we view your claim that “atheists are just mad at God”.

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May 10, 2010 · Filed Under Atheism, Religion

Comments

13 Responses to “Atheism Is a Purely Emotional Response to Being Mad at God?”

  1. Arizona Atheist on May 10th, 2010 at 9:59 am

    Very good post! My reasons for disbelief mirror your own and I completely agree with what you’ve said about the argument. I’ve actually read the book and it is badly argued. I even wrote a chapter by chapter review of it pointing out all the author’s errors. Some of his claims just made me scratch my head…

  2. Hermes on May 10th, 2010 at 10:39 am

    Another reason for the list: no reason at all.

    5. A person could, on hearing claims about deities, realize that deities just aren’t plausible.

    This differs from #2 since there isn’t a concerted effort any more than there was with other ideas about entities like Santa Claus, ghosts, faeries, or monsters under your bed.

    I realize these statements — their cherished deity named God being on the same level as Santa — irks many theists, yet they aren’t indignant about me dismissing out of hand the claims that UFO aliens are making crop circles or whipping out an anal probe. Yet, however improbable, it is possible that some intelligent life is examining Earth in person. That seems much more likely than an undefined immaterial entity poofing everything into existence. That idea is just strange.

    There’s no rational process needed to just decide that Santa is not likely. Why require one for other claims?

    In my case, I ‘figured out’ the Christian deity being unrealistic just after the time that I did the same for Santa. I was shocked to find out later — when I entered college — that people with similar levels of education as I had actually did believe that there were real entities that did some of the things in the Christian Bible and other religious books. Some of them even asserted that they knew for a fact that there was such an entity.

    I still find this to be very strange.

    So, have I gained ‘reasons’ and examined the evidence since then? Yes. Yet, the question was what started it. The answer for me and for many atheists is probably that the claims of theists just aren’t credible. To talk with theists, though, requires that you learn about what they think, no matter how incoherent or fanciful it seems to be.

    Whatsittoya
    October 24th, 2010 at 8:41 pm

    Wait, Santa isn’t real, HOW WILL I GO ON!?!!?!? I’m an Atheist too, I just dislike the rigidity of the principles set down by the bible. One thing that just absolutely drives me mad though is the common belief that Jesus Christ wasn’t a person. He absolutely existed, just because people dislike and/or don’t believe in a religion doesn’t mean they have to spread pure lies. Just because he wasn’t the son of god doesn’t mean he wasn’t an influential being who sparked a religion. I have a friend who is hardcore Christian, and sometimes it annoys me when the rigidity of his religion and the freedom and flexibility of mine (or rather, the lack of mine).

  3. Nadina Cardillo on May 10th, 2010 at 11:47 am

    A few days ago I told a friend of mine a pretty bad event of my childhood and she answered with “Now I understand why you are an atheist”. After I recovered from the shock, I explained her that the fact that every atheist is an atheist because they are angry at God is a Hollywood claim, and the vast majority of atheists I know went through a process of rationalization and concluded there is no God.

    She said “I think you have seen God several times in your life, but your anger hasn’t allowed you to truly “SEE” him”. Now I felt like Avatar: I don’t just see God because he’s in front of me, I have to “SEE” him… oh come on.

    Just for fun, I asked her today if God answers every prayer. She said he does. I asked if God would answer an African player asking for food. She said he does. I asked if he just answered no. She said he gives African people food in through charity. I’ve donated money to charity organizations…

    Doesn’t it fuck you personally when Christians attribute something YOU did to God? Like “I found your wallet” “Thank GOD”.

  4. Buffy on May 10th, 2010 at 1:18 pm

    It’s amazing how egotistical and simplistic some believers can be when imagining the reasons people are atheists. But then that’s often what they’re taught in their churches–that we’re reprobates, recalcitrant children, fools. Why would they take the time to find out the truth?

  5. Hermes on May 10th, 2010 at 3:30 pm

    Nadina, Buffy, it is what it is, and what it is, of course, is bigotry.

    The only pass that they get for such behavior is through our own empathy; by acknowledging that bigotry, like seasonal colds, is endemic and spares nobody. Each strain must be dealt with. Sometimes knowledge of the sickness is enough, though unfortunately this is not usually the case.

  6. Stutz on May 11th, 2010 at 1:54 pm

    Hermes, nice option #5. I have a #6:

    A person might realize that the nature of God is not internally consistent.

    When I was younger I could rationalize away the scientific and historical evidence (#2) with the “Bible is metaphorical” and “God created the earth with a history” arguments. However, I began my journey toward disbelief when I realized that a loving God would never send tiny, finite beings to an eternity of punishment and torture in Hell. An infinite consequence for a single, insignificant human lifetime of incorrect belief? And what about the millions of people who lived and died in China, Africa, the Americas, etc. before the spread of Christianity who had no way of even beginning to form the concept of Jesus or even the Christian God? Are all of them in Hell for eternity?

    Those thoughts made me find the whole story of who God is to be more than implausible. I realized that the feel-good God who might exist (one that really was all-loving and would not send good people to Hell, no matter their religion) was not the one portrayed in the Bible or preached about in church. How could it be that I had the right idea but nobody else did? What right did I or anybody else have to pick and choose from the Bible what was right and what was baloney? If the Biblical God probably didn’t exist, then a God that I essentially made up surely didn’t.

    Later on, I would realize that the feel-good God, in order to really be internally consistent and to jive with scientific evidence, became so vague and amorphous as to be nearly indistinguishable from nothingness/chance/nature/etc. In other words, a universe with such a God was virtually indistinguishable from one without him. By that point I was comfortable calling myself an atheist.

  7. Hermes on May 11th, 2010 at 2:43 pm

    Stutz, I agree with your addition.

    Along those lines, when Christians bring up science and attempt to get me to argue for and defend science, I just tell them science is not required in the conversation. They make claims about a deity. They have to support that. If all the sciences were wrong, they would still have to put up their own positive support.

    That said, is it silly to ignore what can tell us about reality? Of course. Are the sciences valuable to assist us in understanding reality? Also, yes.

    Yet, to address the Christian Biblical claims all that is needed is a Christian and a Bible, and the occasional comparison of those with other topics and people. The evident incoherence flows from that.

  8. 40 Year Old Atheist on May 11th, 2010 at 2:53 pm

    Hey everyone,

    I just want to say how much I enjoy reading your comments. You really enhance my motivation to keep writing.

    Thank you very much – all of you.

  9. Julie on May 11th, 2010 at 7:48 pm

    I think a lot of it goes back to the idea that a believer truly cannot imagine what it’s like to not believe in a god. They really can’t do it, whereas most atheists have at one time believed or tried to believe. Believers therefore have to assume we have abandoned their God, like the example you use about not speaking to a family member you had an issue with.

    I’m not angry with God. I just never could believe in him. I tried very hard, but religion always felt silly to me, even at an early age. I’ve been angry with his followers many times, but if anything when I think of God I chuckle inside because the idea is so ridiculous.

    Luis V.
    December 6th, 2010 at 4:13 pm

    My, how your words ring true Julie!
    I remember that while spending thanksgiving at a friend’s place his wife asked me how my atheism was helping me in dealing with my divorce. I told her the two are simply unrelated and that I was dealing with things on my own just fine. She replied, how sad it must be to have no higher being to turn to. I simply told her that she had no reason to feel sad for me, I had good friends to lean on and for me that was enough. I think she still doesn’t truly believe that I am ok without god and probably thinks I’m going through a phase.
    I know for a fact it would be impossible for her to believe I arrived at my position rationally.

    I am not angry with god. Never have been really. I simply got to a point in my life where I felt I needed to be honest with myself and analyze if/why I should continue labeling myself “religious”. After much thought and about 7-10 years of intense and brutally honest self-scrutiny, I came to the conclusion that I never truly believed and the existence of god was highly improbable and I moved on. Simple, no drama, no clenching my fists at the sky, no shedding tears for what I lost.

  10. Emory on May 12th, 2010 at 2:02 pm

    The first two thoughts that led me down the road to rational thinking:

    1) The bible makes it clear that homosexuality is a sin that leads to hell and yet science tells us that a person is born with certain sexual tendencies. Could a loving god do that?

    2) According to the myth, Judas had no choice but to betray Jesus because every prophecy from the OT had to be fulfilled. In the story, Jesus had to miraculously escape a riotous crowd when he otherwise could have been crucified without the need for Judas to betray him.

    That, and a lot more, was becoming increasingly irrational to me. According to the sect I was in, we were required to believe in the young earth creation as explained in Genesis. When I complained that science has proved the dates to be much, much earlier than 8,000 years ago, I was told that “He’s God. Ever thought that he just made it that way?” to which I thougtht “Damn him if he did.” Unfortunately, these rational thoughts are completely lost on those that are trying to get me to come back because my deconversion has coincided with trama in my life. I’m “just not thinking right” due to the stress involved with cancer treatments. Darn the luck.

  11. Olac Fuentes Zueck on September 8th, 2010 at 4:26 pm

    I agree. False dichotomy for the loss.

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