Part of the interview an atheist survey I recently completed asked why I think living as an atheist is better than living a life under God.

In retrospect, my response wasn’t nearly as good as it might have been. For starters,  I wrote it right before bed time. And that led me to only partially answer the question – I left a lot of awesomeness out!

At any rate, the question is excellent blog fodder which I hope to fully consume in a series of posts starting with this one. Here in this post, I’ll set the stage by clarifying some things about my atheism, and how things besides my atheism factor into the awesomeness of being godless.

First, Some Basics…

• What is atheism? Atheism is disbelief in the existence of deities including the Abrahamaic gods and the thousands of other gods contemplated throughout history. Atheism is nothing more than this disbelief.

• What is not Atheism? Atheism is not a world view. It does not come all packaged up with a set of beliefs.

The bullets are a reminder that we should never assume atheism means anything more than it does. Not all atheists share similar beliefs and world views. We are not all humanists, anarchists, liberals, or materialists, and not all of us disbelieve in supernatural concepts such as souls, ghosts, karma, past lives and E.S.P. In other words, we are a diverse group of people who tend to share only one thing – our disbelief in the existence of deities.

I imagine that’s one of the reasons it’s often said that atheists are harder to herd than cats.

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Can We Narrow the Field Down a Bit?

At the risk of riling up the herd, I’m going to suggest that one sub-set of atheists tend to have commonalities. The sub-set I’m speaking of (the one I am a part of) is best understood by how they arrive at atheism:

• Some atheists haven’t given belief/non-belief much thought. They haven’t really pinned down the reasons they do not believe. In this group you may find atheists believing in things that fall under the category of the supernatural – even though they do not believe in god(s). This is not the sub-set I want to talk about.
• Some atheists are not really atheists. These are the folks who call themselves atheists, but who misunderstand the meaning of the concept. These are the atheists who are rebelling against a god they still believe exists. Although I haven’t met one of these, they are the straw man atheists that apologists like James Spiegal like to mislead people into thinking are the only type of atheists. This is not the sub-set of “atheist” I want to pin my discussion on.
• Some atheists arrive at their atheism after having listened to the arguments for and against gods, having gathered and weighed evidence and having used their powers of reason. These atheists rely on the tools of skepticism (not to be confused with cynicism) and the scientific method to attain an understanding of the universe they live in.
  

  Master of Skepticism Carl Sagan

That last group of ‘skeptical atheists’ is the one I will try to represent (I’m sure they’ll tell me if I do a poor job!). But, hold onto your horses because I’m not done defining them.

Naturalist Charles Darwin

It’s Natural

Reason, skepticism and the scientific method tend to lead my group of atheists in consistent directions. Most notably, it leads us to reject the existence of not just deities, but anything supernatural. That is to say that we tend to be naturalists. That is, we hold the view that the world can be understood in scientific terms, without relying on spiritual or supernatural explanations.

Wrapping it all up…

Context helps us understand and appreciate the things an atheist would consider to be awesome about godlessness. The context for myself (and I presume other atheists like me) is that I am not just an atheist – I am also a skeptic, a rationalist and a naturalist. And with all of that priming the pump, I can finally talk about the awesomeness of godlessness. Stay tuned for part II!
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Godless Girl recently wrote about how she gets past the anger, which inspired vjack from Atheist Revolution to begin a series of posts on getting past anger.

I enjoyed Godless Girl’s post and am looking forward to reading vjack’s thoughts. Check them both out!

PZ Myers

A couple of weeks ago I suggested we stop using the word ‘spiritual’ when describing feelings of awe, wonder, connectedness etc. and use ‘sublime‘ instead. The main thrusts behind my argument were that:

1. Spiritual is defined and understood by most people to have religious connotations.
2. Attempting to re-cast ‘spiritual’ in a less religious light is, in my mind, a pointless, frustrating waste of time.
3. ‘Numinous’ – a word that tends to be favoured by Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins has the same difficulties (to a lesser extent, but still the same religious connotations exist.)
4. In my mind, sublime perfectly fits the bill (read my post for my rationale).

PZ Myers is wondering if we should use a new word – ‘Scientility’:

Describes the sensation that a scientist or amateur of science experiences when he/she observes an amazing phenomenon, for which his/her qualifications or knowledge makes them experience it a greater degree of appreciaton and joy than people without that knowledge.

I’m sticking to my guns – I still much prefer using sublime. First, because I think it’s an awesome word that already has the meaning we want to convey. Second, because I do not think the emphasis should be placed on science-based experience/knowledge, but rather that a more broad-based secular word (like sublime!) is what is needed. And third, because I’m just not very fond of the proposed word.

What do you think?

Edit: I spent some time perusing the comments on PZ’s site and it looks like I am not alone with my preference for ‘sublime’. Might they have read my post from last week?

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”.

Baba Brinkman doing his thing...

I’m going to start this post by saying I’ve never cared much for rap music. I suppose I could use the excuse that I’m a an over 40 year-old, white, raised-on-a-farm Albertan Canadian, but I know others in that same demographic who love rap so, so much for that excuse.

Uber-Skeptic Desiree Schell

Last week, Baba Brinkman was on my favorite Skeptical podcast – Skeptically Speaking with Desiree Schell and now, suddenly, I really like rap music. Well, I really like Baba Brinkman’s rap music, anyway.

So that leads me to think that my disconnect with rap has been because what the rapper’s where saying didn’t resonate with me.

Well, what Baba Brinkman has to say resonates with me.

What does Brinkman rap about? Rationality! Freethinking! Science! Evolution! And Darwin baby! DARWIN!

Baba Brinkman is getting the word out about these things in a new manner, and to a new audience. For those who don’t ‘get’ things like the theory of evolution, his songs are terrific consciousness raising experiences and, for those of us who do ‘get it’, they are powerful anthems.

You can find Baba Brinkman:

• on his website
• on CBC Radio 3 were you can listen to him online (my favorite one is ’Natural Selection’) and, from there, buy his music on iTunes.
• on his Skeptically Speaking interview
• and on youtube where you’ll find a good selection of videos including the one you see embedded below – the Rationalist anthem “Off That”.

My Son - only a few weeks after we discovered he was diabetic.

While the kids took advantage of the rare opportunity to play with others with similar challenges, my wife and I attended some excellent sessions. I was especially excited by one that was given by a University of Alberta researcher doing fascinating work on islet cell transplantation (very hopeful work!).

In contrast to the rational tone struck in the researcher’s session, some of the others – especially the Keynote – were much more emotional. I was expecting this. After all, coping with diabetes is very emotional business. Even after two years, I still have moments of extreme anger, sadness, helplessness and frustration around my son’s diabetes. Worrying that he could go to sleep and not wake up (i.e. go into comma) due to severe hypoglycemia is not fun. Neither is knowing that high blood sugar levels could eventually add up to major damage to my son’s vision or kidneys or heart… among other things.

I hate diabetes and I hate it even more that my son has it. Today I learned that I am not alone in that hatred.

However, today I also learned how prolifically my being an atheist sets me apart from how people who believe in God view their child’s affliction.

I do not ask “Why him?”. Not ever.

But that very question was asked (or at least implied) by several people over the course of the day. It started with the Keynote speaker who frequently invoked God in trying to give comfort to us. “God has a plan” he’d say. “Your child’s diabetes is God’s way of strengthening your character” he’d say.

His speech was followed by a very helpful Q&A session where a young father asked, “How do you answer your child when he says, ‘Why me’?

And all the God-talk began again, and all I could think was, “Why is this question even being asked?”.

The question made me realize how my atheism so markedly sets me apart from those who believe in God or who are ‘spiritual’. To me, the question was non-sensical – but it certainly was not non-sensical to the people doing the asking and answering. To them, it was quite important.

For me, the answer to the question is simply and solely mathematical. Here is how I would have answered my fellow father…

“The reason our sons have diabetes is that one in four hundred children get diabetes and, unfortunately, our children drew the short stick in the statistical lottery. Our sons becoming diabetic is no different from the fact that one in eight women get breast cancer, or that one in four men are bald by the time they are 30. There is no ‘why me?’ to these statistics – they simply describe the fact that shit happens in predictable frequencies within the population.”

For me, this statistical explanation is enough. And, if you ask me, it’s a far more comforting way of thinking compared to trying to understand why God would cause or permit this sort of suffering to be inflicted on a child. Most importantly, the answer satisfies my son – especially when I can attach it to the fact that he’s very fortunate not to have been born 100 years ago, before the discovery of insulin therapy.

That aside, I can totally understand why a religious parent would have trouble coming up with an answer to ‘why me?’. I think it’s because deep down, they themselves subconsciously know that the answers a belief in God requires (e.g. “Diabetes is God’s gift to you” etc) are far from comforting.

In fact, those kinds of answers do nothing less than to paint a picture of a cruel, twisted God who inflicts pain and suffering on innocent pre-schoolers who do not have the mental capacity to even begin appreciating the ‘gift’ their God has so graciously provided.

No wonder these parents don’t know how to answer the question. Neither would I.

You don’t have to look far to find websites, blog posts and youtube videos that show atheists just as capable as any believer of feeling all the wonder, awe and majesty the universe has to offer. A run in colorful crunchy, fall leaves, or a hike up a majestic mountain with indigo sky backdrop generate the same connectedness with nature that our believing brethren so easily attribute to deities. Peering across galaxies through the eyes of Hubble give us all a feeling of grandeur, and an impression of our own insignificance that is simply beyond words.

But, in the course of trying to find those words, “spiritual” often gets called into action. Spiritual is a powerful word with no apparent equal – no seemingly adequate synonym that captures nature’s power to inspire. It’s no wonder so many of us call ourselves “Spiritual Atheists”.

But, in my opinion, it’s a problematic label to use because it comes loaded with religious connotation – and I think that goes directly against what we want to accomplish. No matter how hard we try, using spiritual to attach feelings of wonder, awe and amazement to our atheism is wrought with difficulty. This is because the word is not, in the minds of most, tied to nature. No, most people associate it closely with spirit/the Holy Spirit/God. And if that’s not enough to convince you, a quick google will show a theistic bias firmly embedded in how the word is most often defined.

Try as we might, I think these theistic connotations are impossible to avoid and, by trying to call ourselves spiritual atheists, we are setting ourselves up for a lifetime of frustration – it just muddies the waters.

With this problem in mind, I think we need to seek out a better, less religiously affiliated word.

I visited the Skeptical Seeker’s blog where I learned that, in The Atheist’s Way: Living Well without Gods, Eric Maisel thinks the right word might be “meaningful”. Meaningful? Really? That word seems far too generic for me. It’s simply got too much latitude to be useful. All kinds of mundane things can be meaningful. Having a favorite color can be meaningful. Enjoying the taste of coffee can be meaningful. Reading an xkcd comic (go look – it’s a good one) can be meaningful. But do these things hold as much meaning as the awe we feel in pondering the immensity of the universe? I think not …well, except maybe in the case of xkcd comic.

So, no, “meaningful” just doesn’t cut it for me.

When challenged with this line of thinking, Christopher Hitchens likes to talk about the numinous. While I can certainly see the word’s appeal (sounds kind of nummy), I think it suffers from the same issue we have with spiritual – the only difference being that most people don’t know what numinous means. However, that problem is easily remedied with another quick googling where another theistic bias quickly becomes apparent. Do we want to try and redefine another word? Personally, I think trying to do so just seems like another headache.

So, no, I don’t care for “numinous” either.

But, I still think we’d benefit from a secular cousin to the word, and I think I may have found one.

I like sublime. Why? Well, because it seems to describe what we mean when we are tempted to use spiritual! The very first paragraph at wikipedia really grabs your attention by defining sublime as:

…the quality of greatness or vast magnitude, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual or artistic. The term especially refers to a greatness with which nothing else can be compared and which is beyond all possibility of calculation, measurement or imitation.

In philosophy, the sublime gets its legs from aesthetics – the branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty – another definition from wikipedia.

Doesn’t the definition of sublime fit nicely with the curious awe we often feel? Don’t we really mean that we have a profound appreciation for the beauty, greatness and magnitude of nature and the universe?

So, yeah, the sublime works for me. From now on, whenever I speak of things that strike me with a sense of wonder, awe, amazement and connectedness, I’m going to call that the sublime. And whenever I’m challenged for a secular equivalent to spiritual, I will instantly shoot back with the philosophically rich concept of the sublime. I’ll say, “Aha! You’re talking about our godlessly sublime universe!”

Or maybe I’ll just say nature kicks ass.

• Morality came from religion.
• The meaning of life came from religion.
• How we got here came from religion.
• What would happen to me after I died came from religion.

Suddenly, there was this blank slate. Nothing I thought I had known, was known.

It scared the hell out of me to realize there was no grand purpose for humanity and my life, that there was no afterlife, and that there was no set moral code telling me how to live. In other words, my religiously based life had been replaced by an immense void.

However, fear and uncertainty very quickly gave way to an insatiable, unconstrained curiosity to learn. I became full of a sense of wonder I hadn’t had since my childhood fascination for space and dinosaurs. Life was now an open road and I realized my new purpose was to explore that road.

That was almost two years ago, and my curiosity hasn’t abated – not in the least. In fact, I’d say it’s just getting stronger.

Which brings me to you. If fear has held you back from thinking god might not exist, I encourage you to press on – the rewards are truly immense. A mind-opening, perhaps even (dare I say it?) spiritual experience awaits you.

And to my fellow non-believers who get frustrated with those who don’t seem to be hearing your message, please try to be patient – there is a lot at stake for them. Letting go of immortality for one’s self and one’s loved ones can be enormously difficult, and your proposition brings a great deal of fear and uncertainty with it.

All that aside, de-conversion after years and years of belief is possible. If I can do it at 40, anyone can.

I Don’t Need a Church

I don’t know about you but, even when I was a believer, I never felt that touchy-feely-church thing (that’s only a Catholic reference if you want it to be). To me, churches were mainly for understanding the world and figuring out how to live a moral life.

What I Miss

Even though I don’t pine for a church community, I do yearn for something else – that feeling of oneness  I used to have with people outside the church. Before I became an atheist, all the ‘God talk’ made me feel comfortable around people. I fit in.

After atheism? Not so much. After atheism, ‘God talk’ became uncomfortable to be around – especially with a growing awareness that it was everywhere. Everywhere I went people were talking about their faith, thanking God for blessings, saying things like “everything happens for a reason”, and proclaiming that Karma would ensure we all got what was coming to us.

Does all this sound familiar?

Choosing Our Battles

We live in a world where the majority of those around us believe in things that we do not. We know that, very often as we challenge those beliefs, we will be viewed as disrespectful, immoral destroyers of personal meaning and purpose. Perhaps it is a tired analogy, but we view these people as living in something akin to the Matrix, and that we always have two choices when considering whether to challenge their conception of reality:

• attempt to ‘wake up’ the believer and, in doing so, risk alienation and hostility, or
• stay quiet based on the notion that it’s not worth the effort to lock horns with those who have no desire to wake up

I tend to opt for the latter choice far more frequently than the former – a decision that avoids confrontation but that also leaves me feeling censored and frustrated. My frustration is compounded simply by having to make this choice so often. On one hand, confrontation feels like doing battle – and we all must choose the hills we die on. On the other hand, choosing avoidance can begin to feel like like death from a million cuts – slow and painful.

This is the nearly daily struggle many of us encounter with believers. Before I became an atheist, I had experienced none of it. Now, it weighs on me and is the reason I feel…out of sync with the majority. I miss being in sync.

But not enough to join an atheist church!

Besides, It’s Not All Bad

On the positive side of the equation, I feel fortunate to have non-church ways to connect with skeptical atheists. Twitter is an atheist/skeptic heaven on earth, I’ve made a number of terrific atheist Facebook friends, and Reddit is a tremendous source of information, inspiration and fun that’s crazy-easy to get hooked on.

And, yes, I’ve even gotten out and met some fellow atheists and skeptics in the real world. These functions usually happen in local pubs where everyone feels safe to share information and opinions about the world from a naturalistic perspective. I’ve been to “Atheist in the Pub” events, “Drinking Skeptically” events, and even a Virtual Drinking Skeptically event. In each of these realms of rationality, the conversation and camaraderie is charming …we even get a little shit-faced at times. But you’d have to get me a lot more shit-faced to get me into an atheist church!

Until we live in a world where religion isn’t so pervasive and the majority is in sync with us, I think these un-church meetings of the mind will be the best we can do.

(In case you are wondering, the beautiful music is part of the Shawshank Redemption Score composed by James Newton Howard,)