Where
do they get those ideas from?
The religious life of my family was more implicit than explicit. My only direct exposure to church was going with our neighbors to a Protestant church where, after years of going to services, Sunday School, Vacation Bible School, I was baptized at about age 11. One year later, I decided that I should be more serious in studying the things I was supposed to be believing and so I started reading the Bible. Didn't quite make it through Genesis (I'm sure I would have remembered Lot's daughters). Very early on, I was struck by how incredible the Bible was and so since I couldn't believe the Bible, which I was supposed to believe, then that meant that I didn't belong there. So I left. And I've been an atheist for the 42 subsequent years.
Upon thinking back on that experience, I realized that I had deconverted because I had made the assumption of nave literalism, as well as the nave assumption that biblical literalism was required by our church (to this day, I still do not know which denomination it was a part of). I also did this reading and thinking completely on my own, instead of discussing it with an adult or with a church leader. I had made the right choice, but for the wrong reasons.
The thing is that since having made that decision, it has been repeatedly confirmed as having been the right decision. And not only has nobody been able to present any compelling case for me to convert to Christianity, many proselytizing Christians, most especially "creation science" advocates, have presented very compelling cases
against Christianity, mostly through the Matthew 7:20 test. Besides which, I find the systematic lies and deception of "creation science" to be morally repugnant.
Which brings us to Rawel Singh's:
quote:
Secondly belief in divine requires adherence to cetain ethical disciplines. Those who do not want to subject themselves to discipline deny the very existence or help of God.
I must agree with nwr that atheists are often more moral that most Christians. "Creation science" is a perfect example, wherein an atheist arguing for being truthful gets shouted down by Christians practicing lies and deception while proclaiming themselves to be morally superior. And despite Christians saying that they are more responsible because they have Someone to be responsible to -- and hence an atheist, lacking a god to be responsible to, cannot be responsible nor moral --, I have found that atheists are more likely to take personal responsibility of their actions than many Christians. I think that is related to the experiments done where test subjects were directed to administer electric shocks to other subjects (actually ringers) even to the point of inflicting lethal shocks under the direction of an authority figure who took full responsibility for their actions. Yes, they felt terrible doing it, but they did it nonetheless. A believer in God's absolute laws would be willing to apply those laws regardless of the consequences because God, Who had created those laws, is responsible for those consequences (this is rules-based morality, where right and wrong is determined by adherence to the rules and where you are responsible to the rules-giver for obeying the rules and the rules-giver is responsible for what happens when the rules are followed). OTOH, an atheist would act based on the consequences and would realize that he caused those consequences and hence that he is responsible for them (this is moral reasoning). Furthermore, part of the Christian's doctrine is the idea of turning to God when he has stumbled and done something wrong and being forgiven, whereas an atheist must live with what he has done, so an atheist will more mindful not to stumble.
For example, a local "creation science" activist tells the story of when he was an "atheist" (he actually never was, as evidenced by his saying that he prayed to God every single night while he was an "atheist", something that atheists would not do, something that atheists would have no reason to do). He became an "atheist" in the ninth grade, when he wanted to indulge his bubbling hormones freely and discovered a loophole that his religious training had given him: if he didn't believe in God, then he wouldn't have to be responsible for his actions. So he used his misunderstanding of evolution to use that as an excuse to not believe in God (though to be fair, we don't know if that hadn't also been one of his teachers' misunderstanding, or his misunderstanding of what his teacher was trying to teach). To counter his claim, like Rawel's, that atheists just want to indulge their carnal desires freely without guilt, I pointed out that despite my own bubbling hormones and having been an atheist for several years already, two women, on two separate occasions, offered themselves to me and I declined, even though I found them to be very desirable, because they were married. I had thought of what the consequences of my actions would be and decided that I did not want to take that responsibility and so I did not take the action. More specifically, I tried to imagine how their husbands would feel and did not want to do that to anybody. And the more that I see Christians present their mindset, the less I am able to see a Christian in the same situation coming to the same conclusions that I had; a Christian would likely also decide against, but more from fear of God punishing him for it.
But back to no compelling case having been made. They seem to follow the same logic of "creation science's" "Two Model Approach", which artificially clumps all ideas about origins into two mutually exclusive "models" -- the "evolution model" and the "creation model" -- and then proceeds to "prove" the "creation model" solely by attacking their "evolution model", without ever presenting any evidence for that "creation model", or ever trying to directly support that "creation model", or even ever actually presenting that "creation model". Their approach is driven by the false dichotomy (AKA "false dilemma") which is the "Two Model Approach", because in a
true dichotomy you can indeed prove one thing by ruling out all of the other alternatives -- the "Two Model Approach's" fatal flaw is that it leaves out a multitude of other possible models, plus its "evolution model" is a misrepresentation of evolution and its unspoken description of its "creation model" is not all creation-based ideas as they claim, but rather only YEC. And, ironically, what it does achieve more often is to "prove" the "evolution model" when the YEC "creation model" is examined and found to be utterly false. The point is that in order to prove creation, "creation science" must instead present the evidence FOR creation (evidence against evolution doesn't count) and it must try to present a compelling case FOR creation (simply trying to discredit evolution doesn't count).
Similarly, Christian proselytizers will often seek to "prove" their religion by getting their target to accept that something doesn't have a natural explanation and so must have a supernatural explanation, whereupon that supernatural explanation becomes the Christian God and proves the whole of their particular brand of Christian dogma and doctrine. Uh, no, that's not how it works, guys. There have been countless other gods throughout history; there's nothing in that kind of approach to indicate that YHWH is the right one. Even YHWH has a multitude of theologies attached to Him; there's nothing in that kind of approach to indicate which theology is the correct one -- and we do know that finding the correct theology is absolutely essential when dealing with YHWH, don't we now?
So when an atheist gets proselytized at, he is faced with the serious moral issues raised by converting to a religion that allows and even promotes the practice of lying and deceiving (refer to "creation science") or the sanity issues of knowingly converting to a false religion (refer to "creation science" vis--vis the Matthew 7:20 test). Furthermore as an atheist, I cannot convert to Christianity because no one has made a compelling case for it being
the correct choice, that it is indeed true.
I do not personally deny the existence of the supernatural -- I tend to doubt it, but I know that I cannot state with absolute certainty that it does not exist. At the same time, I do know that nobody knows anything certain about the supernatural. We have many subjective experiences, many "revelations", and many generations of fallible human interpretations of what they had been told by other fallible humans and misunderstood. If any of those "revelations" had been anywhere close to the mark, how could it have survived all that followed? Which one of this multitude of interpretations is the right one? Is any of them even close to being right? The only way for even one of them to be right is for there to have been a long line of infallible humans. Sorry, but I have never been able to believe in human infallibility.
A friend at church (UU) offered another reason for becoming an atheist. He used to be a fundamentalist, but he found that many things in everyday life contradicted his beliefs. The problem wasn't that those things existed, but rather that he would blind himself to their existence, he would deceive himself into believing that they did not exist. Finally, the constant effort of self-deception grew to be too much for him, so examined his faith, applied the Matthew 7:20 test to it, and found it to fail. Now he is "a complete atheist and thorough humanist" and a much happier and more fulfilled person because of it.
That was a positive case. There are also far too many negative cases, where the person discovers that his religious leaders had lied to or betrayed him (eg, when one discovers the truth about "creation science" claims -- eg, how Flood Geology had driven Glenn Morton to the verge of atheism). Such cases seem much more likely to produce angry, anti-religion atheists. Worse yet, since they had also been lied to about what atheists are like, they are also much more likely to become the kind of atheists that Rawel Singh described, a self-fulfilling prophecy.
So a person changes from believer to atheist basically because he finds that he doesn't or can't believe in that religion. And a person remains an atheist because he cannot find any reason to convert. Religious persecution or threats of physical violence against the atheist (both of which I have personally experienced) don't count.
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