A personal view

I’m fascinated by the term “Atheist”, defined by the Wictionary as “A person who believes that no deities exist”. There is a subtlety to that definition that bothers me. It rather implies that “normal” people know there are deities but that Atheists, for some peculiar reason, don’t accept this. I think it should be written the other way around. I don’t think we should define the term “Atheist”, or use it. I think we need a term “Theist”, defined as “A person who believes that deities exist”. I would then simply describe myself as “not a Theist”. 

Why do I not believe in the existence of deities? Simple. I don’t need to. Belief in a God or Gods is all about making the world make sense. This happens, or that doesn’t happen, because God has a purpose and it’s all about his will. I don’t accept that. Things just happen. Nobody makes them happen; they just do. A volcano erupts or an earthquake occurs because of physical processes. No God made it happen to teach his people anything (like how to suffer, for example?) We weren’t “put on this earth” to achieve some destiny; we’re here because our parents had sex. You can no more change the world by praying than King Canute could stop the tide.

 If you accept that the world becomes a far better place to live! No more do you need to fret about whether you have achieved your divine purpose. Nobody is watching you when you misbehave. There won’t be some great celestial reckoning at the end of your life where it will be decided if you succeeded or failed. Just live your life as you see fit and ignore anyone who tells you otherwise.

So, if not from a holy book, where do I get my morality from? Well it strikes me that you don’t have to have more than two brain cells to work out that killing people and stealing their property is a bad idea. And quite a few religious observers have fought in wars, where killing is a natural consequence, so that particular morality seems to be rather selectively applied anyway. I’m not faithful to my wife because some God tells me to be, I do it because it’s how we agreed our marriage. In fact I actually keep to the Ten Commandments (well, except the ones about God, of course), but not because some prophet told me to. I do it because they make sense for living, and for that reason only.

How can I speak about religion, if I’ve never tried it? Oh but I have! Twice! Both times it failed me. Try as I might I just couldn’t believe it. I listened hard to all that was said but in the end my head told me otherwise. Religion, Gods and the rest of it just don’t make sense.

Some religious people look on me with pity, thinking that lack of a deity makes me somehow incomplete. I look on them with sadness, wondering what they would make of the world if their firmly held beliefs were found to be false. Maybe they need those beliefs to prevent them from having to think about how the world really is, and for that reason I would never try to shake their faith; it’s their life and they’re entitled to lead it however they wish. (It would be good if they would apply that maxim to me.)

So if you are religious, here’s a deal. If you don’t try to convert me to your beliefs, I won’t try to divert you from yours. I won’t point out the manifest stupidity of the story of creation. Or the obvious flaws in the Bible (or any other holy book you give me to study). Or the complete nonsense that is the belief in a God who created a vast, varied and complex universe, governed by laws so complicated our best minds can’t fully understand them, and then fiddles with it randomly in response to your little prayer to make a person nicer to you at work today.

I really won’t.