{"id":410,"date":"2007-08-21T10:53:49","date_gmt":"2007-08-21T17:53:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2007\/08\/21\/why-atheism\/"},"modified":"2018-04-03T08:35:34","modified_gmt":"2018-04-03T15:35:34","slug":"why-atheism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2007\/08\/21\/why-atheism\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Atheism?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIsn\u2019t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too.\u201d<\/em> – Douglas Adams<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’m an atheist. I’d like to tell you why. Most of the arguments for being an atheist point to how it is more scientific or probable. I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve heard those before, so I\u2019m not going to touch them. Instead, I\u2019d like to focus on the reasons atheism can lead to a greater quality of life.<\/p>\n

That said, I\u2019m not here to convert anyone, just expose people to different ideas. I\u2019m not on a crusade against religion. I\u2019ve read many different books on various world religions. Even if I disagree with some of the founding points, the exposure to those ideas improved my philosophy towards life.<\/p>\n

Common Arguments Against Atheism<\/h2>\n

I\u2019d like to start by giving my rebuttal to many of the common arguments against atheism. I\u2019m not even going to touch the circular logic of going to Hell or blasphemy. But here are some of the supposedly sensible objections to denying the existence of a god:<\/p>\n

Morality<\/h2>\n

Morality doesn\u2019t need to come from the threat of divine punishment. Religion can do much good, but it can be twisted to do evil as well. I believe ethics come from society. It comes from the basic principles of respecting the rights of others, service and altruism. You don\u2019t need a god to explain morality anymore than you need Zeus to explain lightning bolts.<\/p>\n

Afterlife<\/h2>\n

Another common objection is that in not believing in a god, you believe death creates infinite nothingness. I don\u2019t have space to fully explain different theories on the life and death, but this doesn\u2019t need to be so. Atheism only suggests that death is a current unknown.<\/p>\n

Scott Adams suggested another possibility in his book God\u2019s Debris. Your consciousness is based on a pattern stored on neurons in your brain. If this is the case, dying would simply pause the pattern and it would resume sometime in the future. With no delay being seen from the observer this would essentially mean you couldn\u2019t experience death.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not arguing that this theory is the way reality works, just that atheism isn\u2019t surrendering to a nihilistic view of life. Instead, it is opening yourself to many different possibilities.<\/p>\n

Meaning<\/h2>\n

This is an argument I\u2019ve never quite understood. It basically goes that if you don\u2019t believe in God, isn\u2019t life meaningless? I think this is a rather weak argument since it assumes that meaning can\u2019t be self-determined. It also assumes that without an invisible spirit watching you, life doesn\u2019t have a purpose.<\/p>\n

I pick a meaning for my life and I believe it is just as satisfying without conjuring a notion of a god. I believe a god can actually become a distraction from meaning since it causes you to focus on a divine overlord instead of what really matters – the other people and beings you share the world with.<\/p>\n

Atheism for a Greater Quality of Life<\/h2>\n

Aside from being an atheist, I\u2019m also a vegetarian. Beyond putting myself in two self-selected minorities, many of the arguments I\u2019ve seen against vegetarianism are similar to those against atheism. A common cited reason people I know don\u2019t want to eat meat is because they enjoy it too much. They don\u2019t want to sacrifice.<\/p>\n

This is hard to explain until you\u2019ve tried both sides, but I don\u2019t see avoiding meat as a sacrifice. Instead I see it as an opportunity to live a healthier life, reducing my chances of many chronic diseases and giving me more energy to do what I love. I also see it as removing the environmental and ethical discomfort in supporting an industry with questionable practices.<\/p>\n

Similarly, I think a lot of believers don\u2019t rationally believe in a god. But they don\u2019t want to sacrifice the comforting notion that a being greater than themselves is watching down on them and helping them out.<\/p>\n

But in focusing on that one benefit, you miss on the potential benefits of not believing in a deity:<\/p>\n