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”.

Today, me, my wife and our two children attended a conference for families dealing with children afflicted with Type 1 Diabetes. We attended because my seven year old son has been a Type 1 diabetic for close to two years.

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.

There’s no question that one of the challenges we atheists face is to show that life is not empty and meaningless without God. For some odd reason, believers have a hard time believing that – without God –  we’re not here merely to survive, but to really live and affirm the awesomeness of existing.

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.

I was in the mood last night for space stuff so I popped In the Shadow of the Moon into the DVD player. The film is a wonderful documentary (directed by Ron Howard) of the US moon landings. It begins, appropriately enough, at the beginning with John F. Kennedy’s bold challenge, and ends with the landings made by Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and a few lesser known successors.

You can view the entire film in 10 minute segments on youtube but, before you do, I’d like to call your attention to the final segment where some of the astronauts share how their journeys changed them. The segment starts with Eugene Cernan and Charlie Duke describing their feelings of wonder, and how those feelings convinced them of God’s existence (Duke actually became a born-again Christian not long after).

Being a fairly recent (2 year) de-conversion to atheism, I can relate to these men. I’ve shared similar experiences of wonder and majesty – most notably while hiking in the mountains, or going for 10+ mile runs (runner’s high’ll get ya every time). And, yes, two years ago, I too would have given credit to god for those wonderful feelings.

However, since the de-conversion, the source of those feelings has changed, and I’ve become more and more fascinated with the seemingly universal tendency for us to attribute these emotions to a god or creator.

Why is this so?

Some think it’s connected to our affinity toward anthropomorphizing – attributing human qualities to things that are not. In this case, humans create things, so we assume that the universe must also have been created by something human-like, only much more powerful.

Scientists who study the brain may tell you that our willingness to invoke god is connected to our ability to identify patterns. In this case, the pattern is that most everything we observe has a cause, and we extend that pattern to the assumption that the universe must also have a cause.

But is this correct thinking? Just because we see cause and effect around us, does that mean the same rule applied to the formation of the universe? If a god can simply exist, then why can’t a universe? Also, could the Big Bang have been preceded by a Big Crunch, and that crunch have been preceded by a different Big Bang? Might this process be cycling on eon after eon after eon?

And, even if the universe did have an external cause, why would that cause need to be an intelligence or a god? Might it just as easily be another universe, as multi-universe theory proposes?

And then there’s the fact that most of us were raised by parents who told us that God created everything, and many of us grew up in churches where everyone agreed the universe was created by God. How many of those people really examine these claims from authority? After all, all those smart people couldn’t be wrong – could they?

I wonder, if parents stopped teaching this idea to their children, how would it take long before our sense of wonder aimed itself at the natural world instead of some unknown, undetectable entity?

There is a world of science awaiting those who would ask these questions. There is a world of wonder awaiting those willing to entertain the idea that maybe, God didn’t do it. And, in my opinion, the fact that our universe came to be without a deity makes it even more wondrous and majestic.

Sure, we all have our moments (I certain have them) when we just want to grab believers by the neck and choke the belief system out of them.

But many of us also know how hard it is to shed one’s belief in god. The following post on Reddit does a far better job than I ever have of conveying this message. The bonus is just how many atheists chimed in to vigorously agree. Click on the link below to see for yourself.

Atheism vs Theism may seem like a battle of wits involving only science, and debate. The real truth is far deeper and darker than this, and anyone who considers discussing atheism with a “person of faith” should consider this: : atheism.

Search for “Dawkins” or “The God Delusion” on this blog and you’ll quickly learn that my de-conversion to atheism was connected to those two terms. Of course, I’m not alone.

But, does being a Dawkins convert also mean that I think believers are suffering from a delusion?

Answer: It depends.

One definition of the delusion is: “An erroneous belief that is held in the face of evidence to the contrary.”

I’m guessing there are a few possibilities for that “erroneous belief” of yours:

1. You have not heard all of the evidence. You might have been exposed to a lifetime of information from the believer side of the equation, with little to no exposure to the opposing viewpoint. In other words, you are ignorant of the arguments against your belief in God. You are NOT DELUSIONAL.
2. You do not understand the evidence – a sort of variation on ignorance. The best example here might be that you misunderstand how science refutes your belief – perhaps you are a creationist who misunderstands how evolution works. Based on this misconception, your beliefs in creationism and god are based on that misconception. You are NOT DELUSIONAL. Wrong, but not delusional.
3. You were raised to believe in God and have never really put much thought into it. God is sort of a default position that doesn’t occupy your thoughts to any meaningful degree. You are NOT DELUSIONAL. I think most people are like you.
4. You’ve heard and understood the evidence, have put considerable thought into the problem and still believe in God. Sorry, but you ARE DELUSIONAL.

So, now that I’ve only got 25% of you mad at me, let’s talk about why you might be clinging to your beliefs so firmly – even “in the face of evidence to the contrary“.

1. Belief is the lynch-pin of your entire world view: It’s known that, when their beliefs crumble, many fundamentalists don’t just abandon creationism, they go all the way toward atheism. That’s because the black and white all-or-nothing nature of their belief system leads them to reject all that they learned. Subconsciously, they know this, so they fight the evidence against their position tooth and nail. They are afraid that, if their belief system is wrong, their life is without meaning. (In contrast, when people whose world views are less literal have a crisis of belief, they tend to adopt even more liberal religious viewpoints. Some even become deists. Their religious views evolve, whereas fundamentalist views simply collapse.)
2. You are afraid of death: Yes, I know – it’s a blanket statement that makes some people angry to hear, but the fact is that most people are afraid of death (or the death of loved ones) and will do everything they can to avoid letting go of their hope for immortality.
3. Peer Pressure: Your family believes. Your friends believe. Over 80% of your country believes. It’s hard to go against the grain. After all, you’ll be an outcast – right?
4. To all you atheists out there, help me out – what would you put here?
5. I’m sure I’ve missed more than one reason. Please repeat the instructions shown in #4.

So there you have it. Some of you are delusional. But, you know, being delusional is not that bad. After all, many very smart people have been delusional about something. No one is saying you are stupid – just that you may have a logical blind spot. We also think that you have the capacity to reason your way through this. All you have to do is let go of your fear, embrace a more evidence-based method of understanding the universe, and try.

The rest of you may just need to do a bit more reading.

It’s been suggested that I became an atheist because I am mad/upset at god for the pain and suffering he’s placed on or allowed me to experience – specifically, that I am mad my son is diabetic, and that I’ve suffered from neck and back pain.

I’ve written about not being mad at god before, and I’ll say it again – I’m not mad. I simply do not think there is a god. Being mad at god would be like being mad at pistachio flavored steak sauce (please tell me pistachio flavored steak sauce doesn’t exist!).

That said, I will admit that personal suffering was part of the thought process that led me to shed my belief in god.

Before I go down that road however, it’s important to point out that my son became a diabetic three months after my de-conversion so there is no way his diabetes could have had anything to do with it (I can just hear the whack-os telling themselves that my son’s diabetes was my punishment for ditching god!).

—

Yes, I’ve put up with a lot of physical pain, but I put up with it for years without questioning the existence of god. It never even occurred to me to somehow blame god.

The real trigger was that someone very close hurt me deeply. I simply could not believe my eyes and ears how bad the situation was, and the questions started pouring in. “How could God let this happen?” etc etc.

But, as I examined my grief, a funny thing happened – I started looking at the pain and suffering of other people, and quickly realized that mine was nothing to complain about. It became obvious that, just by being born in North America in this century, I had a huge advantage over people born elsewhere, or at at different point in history. Want to know suffering? Just take a look at the shortage of food and medicine in some places on the African continent. Many people there don’t have a chance at health, happiness or longevity – only because they were born in the wrong place and time.

When Christopher became a diabetic, I was of course upset. But the “feel-sorry-for-myself” period quickly gave way to the “we’re-so-lucky” period when I realized if we were parents of a child in the Sudan, my son would already be dead. His diabetes only served to reinforce opinions I already had.

Side Note For My American Readers: I live in Canada and have EXCELLENT health coverage for my son’s diabetes! Our public health system is NOT nearly as bad as many seem to be claiming!

So, back to the topic at hand, the problem of evil and suffering led me to question my faith and, with no adequate answers as to why god would permit these things, it all quickly began to crumble.

Today, the problems of evil and suffering still factor strongly into my atheism, but not as strongly as the lack of evidence for god does .

I’m at a point now where there are just too many reasons to count when I say that I deny the existence of the holy spirit.

Arguably the most common thing we atheists are heard saying is that there is no evidence for the existence of god. Just as commonly, we hear believers say that we must show evidence that god doesn’t exist (it’s at this point where you can usually hear an audible *sigh*).

Before getting into the backward logic of the latter demand, let’s look at some examples of evidence:

1. Fingerprints and hair samples (DNA) are evidence for a person being placed at a crime scene.
2. Fossils are evidence that extinct species of animals once existed.
3. A photo of my wife and I kissing is evidence that we love one another.
4. Observing the speed of different items falling (in a frictionless vacuum) is evidence that gravity has the same pull on items of different mass.

Sometimes, the evidence is convincing and easy to find. Other times, it is weak and difficult to come by (for Galileo’s gravity experiment, we need a frictionless environment). In science, when evidence is weak, we continue to push until we have more and more of it – until we have a degree of confidence that our theory is correct.

What all evidence has in common is that it demonstrates something about the physical properties of the world we live in (i.e. that everything is made of matter). Therefore, evidence must take physical form. It may be visual. It may be auditory. It may be something we can touch or measure in some physical way because, where there’s matter, there’s generally a way to measure it. The point is, evidence is more substantial that a thought that exists in our minds.

The claims of religion operate on two levels. At the macro level, we have the claim that God exists while, on the micro level, we have the claim that the Bible is true, and that Jesus existed.

What evidence do we have that supports those claims? Well, the Bible claims that there is a God. Outside of that, he seems to exist only in the minds of people since there has not, in our time, been any documented, verifiable, observable, physical proof that he’s around.

With respect to the Bible, where’s the evidence in support of its claims? I think to answer this question, it’s helpful to separate the claims into two areas:

1. Its claims about the origins of the universe and life.
2. Its claims about history – specifically, about Jesus’ existence.

With regard to claim #1, virtually everything we know about the origins of the universe (e.g. that it’s 14 billion years old) come into direct conflict with what’s said in the Bible (6000 years?). Most importantly, the knowledge we have is supported by copious amount of evidence. In contrast, the Bible’s evidence is that the Bible says so. A key concept used in the scientific method is this: When a theory is shown to have massive amounts of evidence that conflicts with a theory with no evidence, the latter theory is very likely implausible. This IS evidence for the non-existence of God – or, at least, for the god that is written about in the Bible. It’s also evidence that the Bible is deeply flawed. Given that, I think its prudent that we ask ourselves, “Why should we trust the Bible?”. I see no reason we should.

Aside: Even the claim that god loves us is bogus. Where, outside a thought in your brain can one find evidence for the love of an invisible man in the sky?

With regard to claim #2, again, the Bible runs up against a method similar to science. Historians test in specific ways when they evaluate claims about what happened in the past. Unfortunately, the Bible doesn’t do well when these tests are applied. Without getting too deeply into the historicity of the Bible, one of the best examples of this test is that Jesus is not mentioned anywhere in Roman records of the time. You’d think, someone of that importance would have been mentioned somewhere by the Romans – wouldn’t you?

Aside #2: I recommend reading anything by Bart Ehrman (you can also find some excellent videos of him debating believers on YouTube).

All this means that there is little if any reliable evidence showing the Bible to be worth the paper it is written on. And if this is so, what does it say about the claims about Jesus, or his father?

All this aside, the claim that we must prove the non-existence of god is ludicrous. It’s a claim that was adeptly brushed aside by Bertrand Russel when he conceptualized his “celestial teapot”:

___

I really can’t put a finer point on it than that. Besides, it’s late and I’m tired.

I remember when I began to have doubts about my faith. The world – according to Christianity – just wasn’t adding up.

At first, I tackled the problem by exposing myself to more religion. I attended more church, met more church people, and read more of the Bible.

Still, nothing made sense.

“It must be my church”, I thought, and spent another couple of years church shopping.

Things didn’t get any clearer. Seeing that God’s churches could disagree on so much made things worse. The world, according to the Bible, just didn’t add up.

So, I withdrew from church life. But I wasn’t done with religion. I was still trying to make make God fit into the evil and suffering within the world. I watched hundreds of hours of video and read countless articles on (what seemed like) hundreds of websites.

Still, nothing made sense.

Finally, after many years of this heavy lifting, I asked the unthinkable…

“Maybe there isn’t a god?”

And then I read and watched for another two months before I finally read The God Delusion.

In between chapters, I supplemented The God Delusion with even more articles and videos – this time with a heavy focus on debates between believers and unbelievers.

And just like that, the world started making sense.

Thinking about the unthinkable was – UNDOUBTEDLY – the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Nevertheless, I finally arrived at an answer that really made sense. There was no god.

Why was it so hard?

First, because in addition to letting go of god, I let go of my ideas around immortality. I saw my mind/my consciousness/my soul as nothing more than what my brain did. When my brain died, I recognized that my life would end and there would be nothing more. This, after 40 years, was an excruciating loss. There was a very real mourning period.

Worse, not only had I let go of my own immortality, but I also recognized the mortality of my family. In a very short period of time, I had to come to terms with one day losing my parents – forever. Even harder, I began to imagine what losing my wife or one of my children would mean to me. I felt such fear. Such sadness.

I was preparing myself for future losses in a reality-based way that I’d never had to consider before.

The permanent loss of loved ones was the hardest idea I’d ever had to deal with – I’m still amazed I was able to accept all of it.

Can you accept the seemingly harsh reality atheism offers? Why would you want to go any further down this path? After all, compared to what the rest of your life has taught you, what I am saying is pretty damn bleak, isn’t it?

In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley suggested that comfort and happiness often come at the expense of freedom and truth.

Yes, sometimes religion is comfortable. Sometimes it will make you happy. But, if inter-mixed and underlying that shallow sense of comfort and happiness, you feel conflict between religion and reality, it may be because you are doubting the truthfulness of what you’ve been taught so far. Accepting faith may also be impinging on your mental freedom to explore the real nature of the universe.

Comfort and happiness versus freedom and truth. Is that the choice? Not necessarily.

Since becoming an atheist, I’ve become free to think deeper about the meaning of life, and I believe I’m closer to the truth of this world than I ever was when I held a belief in God.

But, to my surprise, I am also much happier and more comfortable than I ever was before. There is no more internal conflict because the world finally makes sense. I’ve also gotten past mourning my immortality and am probably better prepared than most for my death, and the death of my loved ones. In fact, I no longer dwell on death at all (except of course to share these experiences!).

And that’s why you owe it to yourself to push a little further – to think outside the box that religion has put you in. You are seeking a melding of comfort, happiness, truth and freedom.

Is today the day you finally allow yourself to think the unthinkable?

An oft made claim believers make is that, without god, there is no objective morality. Meaning, without a higher power, we are free to make up whatever morality suits us, or the societies we live in.

I call bullshit.

1. Someone needs to explain how god’s morality can be so hopelessly confusing as to lead to thousands of religions – some of which are in such vehement opposition to one another other (e.g. Islam vs. Christianity). If god’s morality is objective, you’d think it would be easy for religions to agree on what is right, and what is wrong.
2. Specifically with regard to Christianity, someone needs to explain why there are so many strains of that faith. How is it that a Catholic’s moral code can be so different from a Protestant’s? Why are Jehovah’s Witnesses and Fundamentalist Baptists so different from every other faith? Also, why are each of these varieties of faith so adamant that their particular brand of Christian morality is the superior one (in answering this question, Christians need to be reminded that each competing sect bases its claim on an interpretation of the same book)? Why isn’t the objective morality of the Bible easier to reconcile within Christian denominations?
3. With respect to modern/moderate Christian thinking, why has your religion’s moral code changed so drastically over the centuries and decades? Why was it perfectly acceptable to own a slave a couple of years ago and not today? Why was it ok to severely punish (i.e. beat and/or stone to death) wives and children for their disobedience then, but not now? How can objective morality be claimed when it has, in fact, changed over the generations? Is it possible that your Christian morality is already evolving in the same manner you seem to fear it will if god were to be taken out of the equation?

Objective morality that comes down from the heavens seems pretty far from being true. From my perspective, it actually provides evidence that much of what we call morality is subject to change. Further thought on the three questions asked above leads me to think that so-called god-based objective morality is, in fact, relative morality created out of a combination of:

1. What culture you live in.
2. What religion you grow up in.
3. What point in history you are alive in.

Those three points can be wrapped up nicely into one bullet:

• There is no evidence for god-based objective morality. Rather, evidence seems to point to a high probability that religious moral codes are shaped by us.

Just how morality is developed is a much (much MUCH!) bigger topic for discussion.