Not that anybody actually reads this blog or cares about what I think (except for you potential employers who will make judgments about my character based on what you read here…not smart by the way) but this topic is something that I have been wrestling with for some time now and I finally feel strong enough to come out about it. I am an atheist!

There are a number of things that I want to say about this life change but I suppose a bit of background would be a good place to start. From 2nd to 8th grade I attended a private Catholic school in an upscale part of San Diego. I had years of Catholic education, mass, and I was even an alter boy for a number of those years (and no, I was not molested). I always assumed that I was a good Christian boy; I was nice to people, prayed, attended mass on a semi-regular schedule, and listened to my parents and teachers.

During high school, religion was a sort of back burner issue for me. I went to a public high school and was, like most teenagers, consumed with the new people, lifestyles, activities, and experiences of those years. Sure I still prayed, but mostly when I was in trouble or wanted something (girlfriend, grades, car, etc.). Juvenile; yes, unexpected; no. I was still a strong believer and often referred to the Bible for guidance and comfort. It is an exceptional story whether you believe it or not.

Then came my college years. Like a lot of people afforded the opportunity to attend college, it was a life changing and rather challenging period of my life. I was never strong academically and initially I struggled to find my place both in college and in the world (still working on the latter, actually). A university education is supposed to do a number of things, but as Woodrow Wilson said, the main goal of a higher education is to enable you to think critically about the world around you. Well, that is certainly what it did for me. It was during my later college years that I began to wonder about my faith and my religion. As I learned more about the world, not only did questions arise about the teachings of my faith, but challenges as well. Things like suffering, greed, inequality, other religions, and the sheer logic of there being a god at all caused me to question and challenge my faith. The teachings of the church simply didn’t reconcile with the reality that I was learning and experiencing.

Being in this precarious place of still believing (wanting to believe is probably more accurate) yet having these questions and conflicts, I simply chose not to think about it for a number of years (about 3 1/2 years to be exact). I prayed when I felt I needed to and I used my rationality when it suited me. I celebrated the religious holidays and defended my religion when it was questioned by others. But these actions were simply that, hollow and meaningless routine actions void of purpose and intrinsic meaning. I knew it was time for me to get off the fencepost and set my feet firmly on one side of this issue.

When I moved to Arizona and began my doctoral program is when I truly began to work out this religion thing. I spent probably a month entertaining thoughts I have never allowed myself to think before:

• What if there is no god?
• What if there is no hell?
• What if Satan is not the source of all evil?
• Does god make sense?
• Does religion make sense?
• Why are there so many religions?
• What if my religion not the right one?
• I’ve been taught that God loves us all, but that is obviously not true; just look around this world.

Throughout my youth, I was never asked to think about these things; I was given the answers. I was told what to think. I was told how to behave. I was told how to live. I simply could no longer reconcile the fact that I could call myself a scientist (social scientist) yet still believe in religion. Needless to say, I choose atheism over theism. Any decision of this magnitude is an incredibly subjective and complex problem that simply cannot be entirely expressed in words alone. However, I want to share some of the more important factors that weighted heavily in my decision so that they may be of some help to others wrestling with this issue.

The three O’s - The logical fallacy of God and freewill
In a video I posted here a few months ago, the creator made the logical argument that God is not worthy of belief because of a logical fallacy between what defines God and our supposed freewill. The Bible implies that we all have freewill in both action and belief (Genesis 2:16, Joshua 24:15, Deuteronomy 30:19, John 5:1; 3:16; 14:15; 15:7, Romans 2:10, Timothy 6:12; 2:21, Corinthians 9:24, Acts 6:10; 7:51-55) yet the very notion of an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent god as described in the Bible refutes this.

1. God gives us freewill of action and belief.
2. God wants me to go to heaven.
3. But God is omniscient and thus knows that I will become an atheist.
4. He creates me anyway.
5. Rejection of God sends my soul to hell.
6. Thus God is creating me to burn in hell.
7. If we truly have freewill, then God is not omniscient.
8. What kind of a god is not omniscient? One not worth your worship, that’s what.

Pain, suffering, and acting in the name of God
We are taught to think of God as a caring father. Someone we can talk to whenever we need guidance. Someone we can lean on when life gets tough. Yea, that works well when you have food on your plate, a roof over your head, health insurance, clean water, and live in a relatively stable society. But for the remaining human population, He doesn’t do much good. Any reasonably educated or well read individual will have some notion of the sheer number of people across this globe who suffer every day. Take for example:

• Millions go with little to no food/water everyday, including millions of children.
• Women and young girls are raped (repeatedly) in unstable (and stable) regions everyday; often in front of other family members including parents, spouses, children, and siblings.
• Cancer and other painful and debilitating diseases…enough said.
• Parents watching their children be riddled with bullets, limbs and heads hacked off, raped, sodomized, pressed into forced combat, etc.
• War and all the consequences including: rape, torture, human shields, citizen casualties, city destruction, etc.
• Really, there are too many thing to mention.

But perhaps the biggest issue I have with all of this is that a large proportion of the world’s suffering can be drawn directly to religion; the things people do in the name of God. Be it female circumcision, suicide bombings, woman’s rights abuses (legal spousal rape, girls doused with acid for seeking an education, etc.), restriction of freedom of speech and worship (or lack there of), war, faith healing of children (parents refuse medical treatment in favor of prayer), forced conversion, etc. If someone was doing something in my name that I didn’t agree with,you can believe that I most certainly would do something about it. Yet after all this death, suffering, and inhumanity, where is God? If He is out there, he certainly doesn’t give a shit about us. And let’s be honest, why would God need our help? If God wanted to stop abortions, have the Ten Commandments in government buildings, or wipe Israel off the face of the planet, why doesn’t he do it himself. He certainly must be powerful enough…I mean, he flooded the world and killed everything once already, right? Does he really need that much help to knock over two sky scrapers and kill an abortionist? You don’t think he can handle it? Thou hast such little faith?

Given all of this (and what probably amounts to thousands of other examples), how can a reasonable person still believe in a just and loving god? What kind of god allows his creations to be treated in this way? One worthy of your worship?

Unresolved questions

• God created Eden around a tree of knowledge. Places man and woman in the garden and says, “don’t eat the apples.” Man/woman eats the apple and God gets pissed and punished us all for the rest of eternity. Why didn’t he know we would eat the apple? Can he blame us for eating the apple given that he created us without the knowledge of right and wrong or the ability to reason for ourselves? Why create it in the first place? Why tempt us? Satan wanted us to eat the apple, why? So that we would have knowledge/reason? Why was God afraid of humans having the ability to reason? What purpose did we serve before we were able to reason for ourselves? Given that God created us without the ability to reason (which would make us basically slaves, in more ways than one), can we consider Satan as someone who set us free (allowed us to think for ourselves and make our own decisions)? Did Satan give us freewill when God did not?
• A religious belief structure is entirely illogical. The Bible is supposed to be the word of God. If it is, then why are there so many contradictions in it? Why are there so many different versions? Why are there so many different sects of similar religions? Why do these sects constantly disagree and fight with each other (Catholic/Protestant, Shia/Sunni, etc)? Given that each sect is simply a different interpretation of the same material, how can any one of them claim to be correct if all they are doing is interpreting, through the imperfect mind of man, what other men wrote thousands of years before?
• What kind of god would punish his creations with eternal damnation if they refused to believe in him? Sounds like a fascist dictator. Why create us and force us to worship him for our entire lives? What purpose does that serve? Why are we to deny our own desires, which he placed in us, in order to be righteous and correct by him? Why even bother tempting us? By denying our desires, doesn’t that negate the gift of truly living the life that he has supposedly given us?
• Why are fundies, and for the most part general believers so hypocritical? If you are going to believe a faith that has at its foundation a sacred book, shouldn’t you believe and abide by the entire book? Why do conservatives (both religious and political) think that it is ok to hoard wealth when it’s painfully obvious that Jesus spoke out against wealth? Is Capitalism and the free-market system compatible with the teachings of Christ (if you know anything about either, the answer is no)? Conservatives want to restrict the reproductive rights of women, but don’t want to provide support to the mother and unwanted child; doesn’t sound very Christian to me (more like pro-forced labor rather than pro-life). If you are pro-life, by definition you should also be against war, violence, and anything that hastens death (in other words, anti-starvation, anti-gun, anti-Capitalism, etc.). There are also a number of verses in the Bible that promote everything including selling your daughters (Exodus 21:7-11), killing babies (Exodus 12:29-30), slavery (Leviticus 25:44-46), murdering non-believers (Deuteronomy 13: 6-15), mass murder of women and children (I Samuel 15:2-3), rape (Isaiah 13:15-16) and a number of things that most followers of the Bible don’t do today. Why not? Why pick and choose only the good parts that you want to believe in? Check that, why believe in a book that promotes these things at all? They are ENTIRELY contradictory to the teachings of Christ.

I have certainly not covered all the things that I would like to cover but if I did, I would be writing for days. Having said all of this, just because I no longer believe in a god does not mean that I have lost respect for the religions of the world. Religion has served to inspire man to create greats works of art (books, architecture, paintings, stories, etc.) and deeds. This cannot be denied. However, it has also inspired some of the worst things this world has ever seen. If I believe anything now, it is that religion is more of a danger to our world than a helper. I am a humanist now and have chosen to believe in humanity rather than a god. I believe that our morality is ingrained in us through evolution, culture, and society, not by divine inspiration.

Hopefully, others will learn to be critical of their beliefs and have the courage to challenge what they think they know. An open mind is the most valuable thing I feel a person can possess and the most valuable trait a person can have is the ability to change their mind when presented with new evidence. Humanity’s search for answers should not be limited to a belief structure. By doing so, we limit not only what we know, but also what we can understand. Without understanding, we are destined to squander this great thing we call life.

Tags: Atheism, bible, catholic, christianity, islam, question god, rationality, religion