The Matter of Belief

I recently received a message from a fellow nudist who is religious. The message went something like this: Hi Gerry; I was wondering if you might tell us why you call yourself atheist? I mean, is it that you do not believe the earth was created by intelligent design? Or that you believe the earth came from the big bang theory and man evolved from some lovesick amoeba, or is it that you are not certain as what to believe one way or another? Hope you don’t mind us asking... (name withheld)

I sent an answer, but I then started thinking more about it and wondered if I could come up with an answer that was more complete, yet still relatively brief. Let’s see how I do.

First, let’s define terms as I understand them. Let’s start with Atheist with a capital “A”. This type of person is convinced no god of any kind exists, though new evidence could make him or her change his mind. The only proviso: the evidence must be based on fact, not faith.

Then there’s atheist with a lowercase “a”. This kind of person believes the gods presented by the world’s different religions don’t exist. There could, however, be a god who is not associated with any of the religions. Again, any evidence meant to prove the existence of a god must be based on fact, not faith.

Finally, there’s agnostic. This person says it simply can’t be known whether any gods exist or not. The ultimate reality is unknowable, at least in this world. Since it’s unknowable, there is no point in losing sleep over it.

I would be an atheist with a small “a”.

As I told my correspondent, my becoming non-religious had nothing to do with having to accept or reject the scientific explanations of how the universe works and how life came to be as complex as it is today. My mother was Roman Catholic and did her best to have her children raised that way. By the time I was born, the Catholic Church did not have any anti-science bias, so my faith wasn’t challenged in the least by evolution and the Big Bang. They were naturally assimilated into my way of thinking.

As a young boy, I was fascinated by books about Neanderthals, Homo erectus, Homo habilis and other branches of the human family. No one ever said, “Don’t believe that!” So, I saw no reason not to. I probably could have continued to be religious and easily accommodate the scientific knowledge since I could easily see some parts of the Bible as allegory and other parts, the more recent ones, especially the New Testament, as being closer to historical truth. So, I guess the true question is why I didn’t continue to believe since science wasn’t standing in the way.

There was no “A-ha!” or “Eureka!” moment. I suppose among so many other things there was the fact that almost all systems of theistic belief involving prophets or saviours tended to provide for terrible consequences for sins that hadn’t been either forgiven or atoned for. Every system of theistic belief assured us that its path was the right path, and that a terrible punishment awaited those who would not follow its path. After checking out all those that I knew about, I concluded there was no reason to believe any one of them was any closer to being true than any other.

Meanwhile, I discovered that many people who helped humanity progress were often non-believers and quite moral and ethical despite the lack of a theistic belief system. In time, the need for belief in a supernatural creator just didn’t exist anymore for me.

Furthermore, I came to see that the existence of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic god was probably impossible since such a being could not be all-knowing, all-powerful and all-merciful at the same time, yet allow catastrophes, calamities and suffering to occur. If all-knowing, he should know when a catastrophe is to occur, and on what scale. If all-powerful, he can prevent such catastrophes or at least the suffering that results. If all-merciful, he would definitely want to. Since catastrophes continue to occur, there are three possibilities:

a) this god doesn’t know when a catastrophe will occur;
b) this god is powerless to prevent the catastrophe or the suffering that results; or
c) this god simply doesn’t care.

Now, I suppose we could argue that this god’s plan is to let things happen naturally and show mercy once the person has died and has been found suitable for life in heaven. Or it may be that his only way of showing mercy during life is to forgive sins. In either case, the only condition is that the person has followed the correct religious path while living. Whether this jives with the notion of all-merciful is anybody’s guess. Still, if such a being did exist despite indications to the contrary, I would hope he or she could tell me – before I die – exactly which book or which leader, if any, to follow. That’s a fair question, isn’t it?

A god may yet exist, but he or she is probably nothing like the one presented to us by the Jews, Christians and Muslims.