This ain’t no party
It might surprise some theists that I don’t enjoy being an atheist. Not that I’m miserable about being one, but it’s not fornication Fridays, weekend orgies, Meth Monday, anti-Christ conspiracy on Wednesday, a Thursday meet-and-greet with the Prince of Darkness over pizza.¹ Nor do any of those appeal to me. Except maybe those orgies, but I’m too old for those now, anyway.
Philosophical atheism didn’t make sense when humankind thought the universe worked with Newtonian physics. The solar system did seem to run like an automaton. Isaac Newton saw it precisely that way and believed it was proof of God. (Note that he didn’t prove God any other way.)
Atheism makes sense today, while it didn’t work in the past. We’ve learned since Newton the universe isn’t like a watch. It’s like a garbage heap where you might find a watch here or there. The overall chaos indicates the universe didn’t come from anything we’d call a “creation.” Not if we define “creation” as a conscious act by something with a mind and a purpose. Nothing with anything like a human mind made this existence.
How did I become an unbeliever?
I wasn’t born an atheist. I started my life in the Roman Catholic Church as the oldest son of six children. I went to Roman Catholic schools, all the way up to a Jesuit university. However, I had strong doubts throughout my life. I tried to address the doubts by learning more about Christianity. Yet, the more I learned, the more my doubts multiplied.
I went through Catholic grade and high school without a full grasp of my religion. The whole Christian story struck me as incomprehensible.² I vacillated between monotheism and atheism throughout my late teens, 20s, and half my 30s.
It was very alienating to me as a child when authority figures most wanted me to learn nonsense. It undercut the rest of their teachings. After high school, you could find me being either Christian or agnostic, depending on the month of the year. I tried for some time to force myself to doubt my doubts through prayer and willpower, but finally, I couldn’t keep my faith and be honest about it at the same time.
The point of schism
To my parent’s great disappointment, I became a full-stop nonbeliever in my mid-30s when I studied the doctrine of original sin. I pondered it then, and not for the first time. In the Catholic Church, believing the Genesis creation story is optional. I always had a fascination with science and read SF from early on. I always thought the evolutionary theory of life was correct, at least in explaining current life.
However, this time, it hit me: if the biblical creation story was a myth, where would that leave original sin? How was it committed if life evolved? Did some Cro-Magnon in 70,000 BCE piss off God so much he’s held our species in contempt ever since? Did that even make moral sense for God? Remember, as the story goes, original sin brought evil into all creation. How could our seemingly trivial transgression of eating the wrong fruit ruin things on the opposite arm of the Milky Way galaxy?
Unlike the creation story in Genesis, original sin is a central dogma in Christianity. If original sin was both unsupportable and morally incoherent, it neither explained the human condition nor the problem of evil.
Christianity owes its existence to original sin. Because of its taint, people are innately evil, are drawn toward other sins, and ultimately are condemned to Hell. Without OS, Jesus had no reason to be on Earth, and Christianity has no purpose.
After I realized this, the religion began to resemble an old medicine show, in which an itinerant huckster tells people they’re sick; they need salvation to avoid eternal torture in Hell. The religion then sells them the cure and keeps selling it for life. A tent revival is similar to such a con game. The Megachurches do the same thing on an industrial scale.
Religion as a shady business
Jesus’s sacrifice purportedly wiped away original sin; but no, it didn’t, since the Church couldn’t exploit that closure. Believers have to believe in God, get baptized, attend Church; pray; keep themselves pure from corruption; confess and repent their sins when they fail; receive sacraments, and illegalize anything that might make God angry, such as birth control and abortion. Some think they also have to work toward making the garbled prophecies in Revelations come true, although an all-powerful God wouldn’t need their help. Moreover, I wonder if their doing it for him is blasphemous. It’s supposed to look accidental when it happens.
Most importantly, believers must donate money to their churches, support their priests, bishops, nuns, ministers, and pastors, spread the word to grow membership, and send their children to Church and religious schools. Oh, and simultaneously give all their wealth to the poor. They can slough on that one. If they do everything right, they will receive their reward with the Rapture and the Second Coming.
I say good luck there. “Kingdom Come” is now 2,000 years late. Jesus said this would happen in the lifetime of his apostles.³ The scenario raises a question: if Jesus is supposed to come back, why did he ever leave? Did he take a 2,000-year vacation, a holiday, perhaps with Death? At least Death still got his work done.
I’m here to stay
My atheism has endured for 30 years and survived many religious arguments online. Among my four siblings, I’m the only liberal and the sole atheist. With them and their spouses, I’m outnumbered eight-to-one. It does make family get-togethers uneasy. Still, there’s no going back to monotheism or spiritualism for me.
How can I say that with confidence? Recall the famous scene in the Wizard of Oz, where the Great and Powerful Oz terrorizes the characters with his size, arrogance, thunderous rage, and pyrotechnics. Then Toto (a hero among skeptics) pulls back the curtain to reveal a nerdy guy putting on the show. Imagine the Wizard as God and the “man behind the curtain” as a plurality of people, and they’ve been keeping the show going for many generations.⁴
I’ve seen the mortals behind the curtain. Now I can’t un-see them. The Supreme Being is a show put on by the leadership of the faithful. The show grants them personal gain in money and status. Since I’m a materialist, I can only notice the earthly rewards are considerable and sometimes grossly opulent.
My continued drift away from monotheism
Once I freed myself from any obligation to believe in God to save my soul, other disagreements with all modern versions of monotheism came to the fore. I recently discovered just how much the psychological threat of Hell motivates evangelical Christians. It’s a powerful extortion tool, and it gives Christian leadership immense sway to gather and coerce their followers.
I know most believers are sincere in their faith; even among the clergy and pastors, that’s true. I pity them. I’m doubtful monotheistic religions, in general, could’ve caught on and thrived without some conscious fraud committed in every generation. This deception is historically documented with the sale of holy artifacts, the direct extortion of indulgences, the power inherent in a priest knowing all your wrongdoings from confession, and the corruption in the medieval and renaissance Catholic Church. Pedophilia among the Catholic clergy is nothing new by older historical standards. The obscene wealth of megachurch pastors echoes the renaissance Catholic Church. I presume this flimflam was present from the origin of all three Abrahamic religions and repeated at the beginning of offshoots, such as Nation of Islam, Mormonism, and Christian Science; or cults like Scientology. It’s easy to spot the deception when it’s not directed at you. When fraud didn’t do the trick, they resorted to force in the form of crusades, inquisitions, and religious wars.
In my lifetime, Christianity has been mostly benign. Mostly. I’m certain this tolerant version isn’t permanent, however. It’s not representative of Christian history. It’s recently changed in problematic ways with Christian Nationalism and Dominionism.
Needs and preferences are irrelevant to actuality
Nevertheless, those aren’t my reasons for my unbelief. I’m an atheist because I think this universe is Godless and not because of my dim view of monotheism. A Godless universe isn’t my preference. I’d much rather exist in a universe created and controlled by a Supreme Being with a coherent plan. A loving God who wants only the best for me and the rest of humanity would be far better still.
Alas. Some propositions are too good to be true. If they’re well-established, it makes no difference. Believers tell me to take Pascal’s wager without realizing how intellectually and morally corrupt that is. Some believers fear a godless world more than Hell, and I can’t say I blame them. Yet, none of us get the existence we choose.
As for atheists who say they’ve converted to a religion, I think they either defined their atheism differently than I do, or they never thought too deeply about it. I’ve been in both those places. Now I’m always an atheist, barring an actual manifestation of God.
Wait, I have a disclaimer
Although I see my atheism in the rational terms I’ve given here, I also think that we humans often make our most important decisions unconsciously, for sometimes trivial reasons, outside conscious awareness. All the conscious mind does in that scenario is create the cover story for public perception.
They say people follow the religion of their parents. Due to crises, the home I lived in for my first three years was far different than the one in which my siblings were raised. I’m not more rational or intelligent than the average person, and I can’t make myself an exception to that principle. Yet, the account I give above is true as far as I know.
In Part 2, I’ll explain I’ll give my definition of God and why I don’t find the concept believable.
This article was originally by this author on Medium/Politically Speaking, on May 19, 2022
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Footnotes
¹ For readers who think I’m exaggerating what some evangelical fanatics believe about atheists, I’ll refer you to Jack Chick Bible Tracts comic books, which were circulated all over in the ’80s & ’90s. They still circulate today. On Medium, he’s been called the most widely read theologian in history. I kept them on my bookshelf, right next to my Mad Magazines. It’s what the world looks like to a fundamentalist. Some might not go all-in on it, but you need only check out Tom Westbrook’s Holy Koolaid Youtube channel. Christian Nationalists’ comments about the 2020 election and January 6th insurrection to see that Jack Chick’s worldview is still current.
² God in the scriptures keeps on changing his plans. They’re all nonsensical, and every one of his plans blows up, he blames his creations for it and comes out with one more insane than the last. Some metaphors are just too perfect to be accidental.
³ And he said to them, “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.” Mark 9:1
⁴ Some analogies are too perfect to be accidental. I wonder if L. Frank Baum had the Christian God in mind when he wrote that scene.