I am an atheist. Although I have hidden behind a veil of secrecy about it for several years, I am now choosing to be open about my beliefs. This essay is a brief attempt at explaining my logical reasoning for why I do not believe in a god. Although the term, “atheist” puts me into a very specific group, I do not claim to be the voice of every person in this group. I am writing this essay in order to initiate an agreed upon rapport with a theist friend of mine. I am also writing this in hopes that it may be an informative tool in the future for those who may be curious as to why I believe what I believe. For the record, I do not believe I am any smarter, or that I am somehow better than anyone who believes in a god or gods.
My goal is not to try and change someone’s belief system (that would be very naïve of me). My goal is also not to offend anyone. I understand that this is a touchy subject, for which people have extremely strong opinion. I ask you to read this document with an objective eye. If you are apt to get offended by my saying that god does not exist, then stop reading now.
My goal is to help others understand my point of view so that they may see the world through my eyes, and better appreciate why I don’t believe in the existence of god. If you’re not moved, don’t like, or don’t believe my arguments, that’s fine. I don’t need you to believe the same things I do. I’m not on a mission to convert anyone. I feel that people owe it to themselves to look at whatever they believe with a critical eye. This goes for everything in life, not just about the existence of a god.
My goal in this essay is not to get into philosophical arguments about right and wrong and morality. The philosophy of social behavior is not the point of this writing. My goal is to explain why I don’t believe in god. This is a separate issue entirely from how atheists or anyone else can be good people or not. I don’t wish to discuss any other social or philosophical ideas beyond whether or not god exists.
This discussion is merely about the existence of a god. It is not a discussion about Christianity, or any other religion. I do not want to cite the bible or any other religious text. Not only do I not want to get into an argument about specific doctrine, but I feel that before someone believes in a doctrine, they have to accept that the god of that doctrine exists first. Since I do not believe that god exists, I can’t accept that what’s said in religious text to be a valid argument for his existence. Once you can prove to me that god exists, we can then have a completely separate argument over which religion is the correct one. In other words, I will not accept a quotation from the Bible (or any other religious text) as proof of god's existence.
In my attempts to convey my ideas, I will bring up several points. Some will be arguments as to why it is illogical to believe in god. Some will be arguments for the existence of god, and then why those arguments are illogical. For the sake of keeping my ideas on a clear path, I’ve labeled each idea as a specific “section”. For political correctness’ sake, I apologize for calling god a “he”. I’m not trying to pick a specific sex for the almighty, it just seems less awkward than calling god an “it”.
Section 1. What is "god"?
I think it would be silly of me to sit here and argue against something if I can't even explain what that something is I'm arguing against. I'm sure that if you ask a thousand people to define what "god" is, you'll get a thousand different answers. I can't possibly try to speak for everyone, so I will try to give a brief, blanket definition of what I consider to be "god".
I consider god to be a deity. God is the self-aware creator of the universe as we know it. In that god created the universe, god rules his universe. He is probably all powerful, all knowing, and can most likely manipulate the universe to his bidding if/when he chooses. This means god is most likely omnipotent, and omniscient.
I understand that not everyone believes that god needs to fulfill all of these requirements. But I personally feel that if he doesn't... he doesn't merit the label, "god".
Section 2. “Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence.”-Carl Sagan
The belief in god is something for me that a person needs to be certain about. I’m not going to believe in something based on hopes and desires. If you’re not certain, then what you believe in could be only partially correct, or even wrong. The heart of my argument comes down to proof. If I’m going to believe in a god, I want proof. I want tangible proof. If I’m going to believe in a god, the proof needs to be irrefutable. I’m not going to live my life believing every amazing claim I hear, just because someone or many people have said that it’s true. If I did, I would believe in ghosts, alien abductions, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, and many other fantastic claims.
For example: I don’t believe the Easter bunny is real. If you tell me that the Easter bunny exists, I’m not going to believe you until you show me proof. If I believe your proof to be irrefutable, I will accept that the Easter bunny exists. If I don’t think your proof is irrefutable, than the possibility is still open that the Easter bunny does not exist. If you gave me a photo of the Easter bunny, I would be more likely to believe you. If I thought the picture could be manipulated to show the Easter bunny, I have just disqualified your picture as proof. If I believed in anything without proof, then I open the door for believing in any myriad possibilities that may or may not be true. If I don’t think your proof is irrefutable, then it’s circumstantial at best, and therefore not enough proof to sway my belief.
Many people would flip the argument back at me and say, “Well, prove that god DOESN’T exist.” My retort to that argument is that you can almost never prove a negative. The burden of proof lies to those making the claim, not in those refuting that claim. To use Bertrand Russell’s famous teapot analogy: What if I claimed that there was a teapot floating in space, revolving around the sun? What if I said the teapot is so small and so far out that our best telescopes cannot see it. Would you believe me? I don’t have proof. I just believe it to be so. If you told me that you don’t believe me, I would tell you to prove me wrong. You can’t possibly look in every section of the solar system. Therefore, I am right, and we should all believe in a celestial teapot.
Obviously, the burden of proof lies upon the person making the claim. I can’t disprove that god exists any more than you can disprove that my celestial teapot exists. I cannot believe in such a grandiose claim without specific proof showing me that it’s true. If I did, then I would be open to believing just about anything, true or not, and god is no exception.
You can have all the credible evidence in the world proving something is right, but it only takes one piece of credible evidence to prove it wrong. For example: I believe in the existence of gravity. If I held a ball at arms length, I would predict that 100% of the time, if I let go of the ball, it would drop to the ground. If I experiment, I can prove that gravity exists by observing the ball falling to the ground. I could do it thousands, millions, or billions of times. But it would only take one time where the ball does not fall to the ground to completely negate my argument.
This theme holds true for every argument. It is especially used in scrutinizing and disqualifying scientific claims. You can give me your best arguments for the existence of god, but if I can prove that your arguments can be disqualified, then it is not proof. It doesn’t matter how convincing your argument may seem, if the logic behind your argument is not sound, then your argument is not sound. I don't have to have a counter idea to answer your question. If I prove that what you believe is illogical, it's illogical. I don't need to replace your belief with anything else and I don't need a counter theory before I can discount yours.
Section 3. Pascal’s Wager
If you want to read about Pascal’s Wager, click here. The French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote a very convincing argument as to why one should choose to believe in god. It basically goes like this: You have 2 choices, you can believe in god, or you can NOT believe in god. If you believe in god and god exists, you go to heaven. If you don’t believe in god and god exists, you go to hell. And regardless of if you believe in god or don’t believe in god, if god doesn’t exist, then nothing happens.
Someone who reads this should realize that this is about probability and reward. Assuming you want to go to heaven, you should choose to believe in god, because believing in god is the only way to have the best possible outcome. If you chose to believe in god, and god doesn’t exist, then you still only suffer the second best outcome of there being nothing after you die.
The problem with Pascal’s Wager is that it does nothing to actually prove god’s existence. All it does is show the weight of the outcomes should you make a choice to believe in god or not. It also does not take into account which god one should believe in. If I choose to believe in god, but believe in the wrong god, I still may go to hell. Also, the possible outcomes could be wrong. It may be that if god exists and I don’t believe, I go to heaven, and if god exists and you do believe, you go to hell. (No one said god had to be nice).
In his argument, Pascal has narrowed the possible number of outcomes to four (Go to heaven, go to hell, don’t exist, or don’t exist), when it becomes blazingly obvious that there are more than four possible outcomes, and Pascal may be completely wrong in thinking that if you believe in god, you’ll go to heaven, and if you don’t believe, you’ll go to hell.
Because of this miscalculation by Pascal, his argument, however interesting, does not hold merit, nor does it get us any farther as proof of god’s existence.
Section 4. The Problem with Faith
When having arguments about religion, sooner or later, when everything else is pushed aside, the arguments have the tendency to go toward faith. “If god wanted me to have proof, he would have given it to me. Because I don’t have proof, I have to take his existence on faith. Why didn’t he give me proof? Well… he works in mysterious ways.”
“Maybe this is a test, and the faithful are the winners”. If this is your argument, I suggest you read more about Pascal’s wager and logical fallacies associated with it.
I have literally been all over the earth. I’ve danced with African natives. I’ve been to grass huts in South America. I have touched the stones in Stonehenge and in the pyramids of both the Egyptians and the Mayans. I have danced the hula, and I have been to many churches. In my travels, I have met many people of many faiths. Every person of faith that I have met has one thing in common: They all think that what they believe is correct. Many of them have had amazing religious experiences. Many believe it so much that they are willing to die for their faith.
I’m not going to speculate on any one religion or anyone’s personal experiences, but it goes to reason that not all beliefs can be correct. Because they can’t all be correct, and yet so many people of so many beliefs have faith, there is only one conclusion you can make: Faith can’t possibly be proof of god’s existence.
Try as I might, I can’t believe in something just because I want to. Sure it would be nice if god existed, but I can’t just have “faith” that he does and decide that’s all the proof I need. If you told me that, I would tell you that you just need to have faith in the flying spaghetti monster.
As is evident later in my paper, I believe that science is the best tool we have to explain how our world works, and I believe many scientific theories to be true. One could make the argument that I’m taking those scientific theories as “faith”. And to some respect they would be correct. But what they may not realize is that science falls under considerable scrutiny. If I wanted, I could repeat the tests that a theorist has made to come to their conclusions. If I found their theory to be incorrect, I have evidence to support why that theory is wrong. Scientific theories are constantly under scrutiny, and more often than not, the biggest critics of scientific theory are those scientists who are giving peer review. How science differs from being a religion is that science is really the language of observation. It is not a belief system. It is simply a way for humans to make sense of the universe. Our understandings constantly change, and science is the tool we use to know if our observations are correct. It does not bias one belief over another. Do I have faith in science? I would say I have faith that the theories I believe to be true have been put through proper scientific rigor. I have faith that if the theories I believe are proven wrong, that my belief system will change to reflect new, more refined, better tested theories. Do scientists lie, or get things wrong? Of course they do. That is why the review process is strict. Any theory is open for speculation and revision. History is filled with theories that have been challenged and proven to be inadequate. In this respect, I am open for changing what I believe in if I am given adequate proof that what I believe is wrong.
Section 5. We are ALL Atheists
"Atheist" comes from the Greek words a meaning "no" or "without" and theos meaning "god" or "deity". It basically translates to, "without a god".
Do you believe in Zeus? If so, then you likely don’t believe in Ra. Do you believe in Xenu? If so, then you probably don’t believe in Vishnu. If you don’t believe in every god, then you are an atheist to every god or gods except your own. The difference between me and the majority of people of some form of faith is that I believe in one less god than them (assuming they aren’t polytheists of course). I ask the believer, what the difference is between their god and every other god from human history? An interesting tidbit about the origins of the word "atheist" is that it was used by the Greeks and Romans to describe the Christians who denied the gods of the Pagan religions.
I think if someone disregards one god, they must have reasoning as to why they have ruled out any one god over their own. I think that if people are to be honest to themselves, they must put their own god to the same reasoning speculation that they have any other god of which they don’t believe.
Section 6. The Intelligent Designer
William Paley is credited for the famous, “Watchmaker Argument”. His argument has been rehashed several ways, but can be paraphrased to be, “1. A watch’s inner-workings are complex, and as such, it’s existence necessitates having a designer. 2. As with the watch, the complexity of X (X being any given thing which is complex in nature) necessitates having a designer.”
People often use this argument to say that the complexities of nature are proof in themselves that a designer exists. “How could an eye come about through evolution? It’s too complex to come about in baby steps.” To see Richard Dawkins’ answer to that exact question, see here.
The first argument against the Watchmaker Argument that comes to my mind is that, just because you can't conceive of how a complex system may come about naturally, that doesn't mean that it didn't. It only means that if it did in fact come about naturally, then you don't understand the process.
Other people argue there are several organs that have “Irreducible complexity” which means that they have several complex parts, any of which standing along wouldn’t work. Specific examples include the flagellum of E.Coli, the immune system, eyes, etc. Critics of this argument point out that irreducible complexity assumes that individual parts of complex systems can only be used for the specific system we see today and nothing else. This is contrary to what actually happens. In fact, evolution is often preceded by the use of a preexisting part in a new way which happens to be more advantageous when used differently. The elegance of this is that adaptation and change are evolution’s driving forces. Does evolution disprove the existence of god? No, but evolution is a proven fact. It does not need a god as a driving force in order to explain how complex organisms and systems come about. Does it explain how life began? No. Evolution is not a theory of how life started. We are not yet certain how life started. But that does not prove that god did it.
There are three classic criticisms with Paley’s Watchmaker argument.
The first criticism deals with the fact that the Watchmaker Argument assumes that in order to have complexity in nature, there must be a designer. But this is not necessarily the case. There are scenarios that we can observe every day that show order and complexity that come about with no help from a designer whatsoever. For example: crystals, snowflakes, fractals, and amino acids.
The second criticism deals with the fact that Paley’s argument could be a faulty analogy. There is no reason to assume that the universe resembles a watch over any other naturally occurring complex phenomena.
The third criticism leads me to my next section.
Section 7: The Argument about infinity
The third criticism for Paley’s argument is that if there is a designer of the universe, then who designed the designer? And who created THAT designer? This argument can be made ad infinitum. Many people would counter this argument by saying that god is infinite and has no beginning or end. I would counter that argument by asking, “Why can’t the Universe be infinite without god?” Why does god have to be the only possible infinite thing? In fact there is significant proof in the theory of relativity. This theory shows that time is affected by mass and speed. Stephen Hawking speculates in, A Brief History of Time that in the earliest periods after the big bang, time itself was fused with the other fundamental forces of the universe in an all encompassing “superforce” that split into the forces we see today (Gravity, electromagnetism, Nuclear Strong Force, and Nuclear Weak force). If that’s true, then there was nothing before the big bang, because “before” did not exist. There are other theories on the birth of the universe, like the idea that our current universe was created when two or more separate universes collided. Each of these theories opens up argument and speculation for or against it. As far as I know, there is no way of testing any theories of what happened before the Big Bang. Why do I bring these ideas up if they are not proven to be true?
My point is this: We don’t know what happened before the Big Bang. It’s even debated exactly how the Big Bang happened, or if it happened at all. But it is a testable theory. One day, given humans live long enough, the answer to how the universe came about will be known. And hopefully, one day the answer to what came before the universe will be known. Blindly answering that question with, “God did it.” is completely giving up on the quest for the answer. The amount of proof that it was done by an omnipotent being is far less than the amount of proof that it came about naturally. Just because we don’t have an answer does not mean that it’s proof of god’s existence. All it means is that we don’t yet have an answer.
Section 8: God of the Gaps
My previous paragraph brought up my next argument which talks about the “God of the Gaps” logical fallacy. In arguing about god’s existence, people often bring up some experience they have had or they know about that they can’t explain. Because they can’t explain it, they attribute it to god. This is illogical reasoning, because, like I’ve said previously, lack of an answer is not proof of god, it is only proof that we don’t have an answer. One could make the same argument about UFO’s . They are not proof of alien life. They are just proof of something in the sky that we don’t necessarily have an answer for.
This brings up a compelling argument. If god exists, how does he do what he does? If god is intervening in our everyday world, how does he do it? What does “god’s will” consist of? It’s not enough of an explanation to say, “god wants it to be, therefore, it is.” There has to be an explanation of how he does what he does. Does he send invisible angels to do his bidding? If so, how are his angels invisible? Is he manipulating things at a subatomic level? If so, how is he doing that? There is an explanation for everything beyond it being god’s will, or magic, or whatever you want to call it. Once you get to the level of explaining HOW god is a god, you start taking the omnipotence away from god altogether.
If you take the omnipotence away from god, then you take away what makes a god a god. With this reasoning, one could say that a belief in a god that works through miracles is proof in itself that god does not exist. Of course, you could say that god does not necessarily work miracles. But then, the entire argument comes down to the definition of what a god is. In my personal opinion, god has to at the very least be omnipotent. If not, then I don’t think they deserve the title, “god”.
Of course, one could argue that god is the reason a universe exists at all. But I think that is a very loose term for a god. One could just as easily attribute it to nature. In fact, explaining HOW god created the universe also takes away the “god” part of being a creator. There will always be an explanation for how “miracles” happen. Because of this, the definition of what god is gets smaller and smaller until there’s no more room for god in the equation.
Section 9: Mixing up Causation with Correlation
“I prayed for X and X happened, therefore, god exists.”
This statement can be very compelling for people as proof that god exists. I agree, that statistically unlikely events that happen can seem like they are supposed to happen. If I prayed everyday to win the lottery, and then one day I did, it would seem amazingly apparent that I was blessed. This is of course until you think about all the people who pray to have monetary riches and never see their wishes come true. There is a psychological phenomenon that people have where they remember their winnings, and forget their losses. This is true with gambling, psychic readings, prayer, and probably other scenarios.
If someone is to take a prayer coming true as proof that god exists, they must also take prayers NOT coming true as proof that god does not exist. One could argue that god may pick and choose which prayers he decides to grant. If this is the case, then we as humans have no idea why some prayers have been chosen over others. And if that’s the case, then it could also be true that sometimes prayers come true strictly because of chance and god has nothing to do with it. I think taking chance into consideration is far simpler, far more likely, and it doesn't require an invisible "all powerful" being.
Section 10: How are we here?
We live in a universe where specific conditions exist that allow for life as we know it. If any of the known forces of the universe were different by even a super tiny amount, we couldn’t be here like we are today. If gravity were even slightly as strong as it is, the universe would have expanded too fast for galaxies to form. If the nuclear forces were different, atoms would not be possible. We live on a planet that, as far as we know, is the only planet in the universe with life. This certainly sounds like we were meant to be here. But are we?
Lets take the simplest of those questions first. Why are we here on Earth? Our planet happens to be of appropriate distance from our star, with appropriate chemicals to support life. We are a planet which is fed by the sun. The sun is one of billions of stars in our galaxy. If one in a million stars in our galaxy has planets, that leaves millions of stars that have the possibility of having planets with situations like Earth’s. There are billions of galaxies. That means there are billions and billions of planets. If one in a billion planets that has the possibility for life has life, that leaves the possibility for millions of planets in the universe to have life. If there are millions of planets that have life, that means Earth happens to be where our life occurred. Why are we here? We are here because this happens to be where we ended up. We aren’t on some other planet because of a choice, we are here because we are the offspring of chance.
The same argument can be made about our universe. It is theorized that there are multiple universes. If this is true, than it’s safe to assume that there are billions upon billions of universes. We happen to be in a universe where the fundamental laws of nature are appropriate for life as we know it to form. This again means that we are here because we are the offspring of chance.
This does not even take into account the idea that this only explains life as we know it. Life could live in situations vastly different from our own personal situation. If this is true, the possibility of life existing in different forms on different planets, in different universes increases exponentially.
Section 11: Why do we believe in god?
Why are we here? People have been asking that question for millennia. It’s possible that this question was a catalyst for the formation of religion. Human beings have a history for putting human feelings and emotions to non-human things and events. When tragedy strikes us, we ask, “why?” We wonder what we did to warrant such abuse. We see faces and people in things like potato chips, clouds and wall markings. We make meanings and take messages from various (sometimes random) stimuli from the world around us. This is a well known neurological phenomenon called “pareidolia”. Most likely, this is a trait that has given us some evolutionary advantage.
I feel that pareidolia is possibly one of the reasons that we believe in god. Humans give human characteristics to objects and happenings in order to better understand and empathize about the world around us. Asking, “Why are we here?” and “Why did this happen” is giving human characteristics to a very non-human universe. I think the idea of god came about because humans have a very real need to project human ideals to nature. We want to know why we are in a draught, we want to know why the sun moves about the sky. God was a way for us to explain away things we don’t understand. We still use this idea to explain things we don’t understand. Unfortunately, as I said before, not understanding why something is the way it is, is not proof that god exists.
Nature doesn’t send tsunamis and floods to wipe out sinners. Nature sends out tsunamis and floods because that’s what nature does. Whoever gets wiped out just happened to be in a very unfortunate situation. There is no “human nature” to the universe beyond that of humans and our living counterparts. We project our emotions on emotionless stimuli because it helps us deal better with the world around us.
Of course putting the blame on any one phenomenon is most likely oversimplifying how religion came about. I don’t want to begin to extrapolate the varied eccentricities of the formation of religious belief. Not to mention trying to do so is far beyond the scope of this essay. But I think that keeping pareidolia in mind when thinking about religion’s beginnings is a good start. I also think it’s a good phenomenon to keep in mind when we deal with mysteries in the universe we have yet to answer.
In Conclusion
The truth is the truth, no matter how many people do or don't believe it. Every single person in the universe could believe in the Tooth Fairy, but that doesn't mean the Tooth Fairy is real. It doesn't matter how much you want to believe, if your belief fails to follow logical reasoning, you have no proof that what you believe is true.This does not prove that your belief is wrong, just that your reasoning is. But I choose to believe that extraordinary claims require proof. I feel that saying that god exists is an extraordinary claim, and I require proof before I'll believe in him. I can't accept that proof until I know it follows a logical path that does not have faulty reasoning. I have tried to address every argument I could find for the existence of a god, and I feel I have shown why those arguments do not follow logical reasoning. Therefore, I choose to believe that god is an extraordinary claim, without any logical proof to his existence.
If presented with convincing evidence, I would be willing to change my mind. If the evidence presented no matter how compelling, is shown to be faulty, I can’t rightfully believe in it. This is no different than my belief in scientific theory and experimentation. You could show me all the evidence in the world, but if it can be disproven, then the evidence is not proof.
God also cannot be a blanket answer when we have a question that we cannot answer. We still have many unsolved mysteries of the universe. Saying “God did it” closes the door on something that could otherwise be further studied and eventually understood.
The more we understand the universe, the more we understand how it works. The more we understand about the universe, the less we attribute to god. In effect, our idea of god is shrinking. If god were real, the way god works can be explained. The more we explain god, the less godlike he becomes. Humans put “human-like” attributes onto very non-human things. This is a way to deal with the world, but does nothing to prove god’s existence.
In this essay, I have thrown around a few theories which could possibly explain things otherwise unknown. Even if these theories are wrong (and it’s very likely that some or all will be found wrong one day) that is not proof whatsoever that God is the ultimate answer. I have yet to be given proof that god exists. I’ve only been given speculative ideas as to why god may exist. I’ve tried to tackle each speculative idea seen as proof for the existence of god and to why I think those ideas are not logically sound. I’m sure I have missed several reasons, and I know I could elaborate on any one of my points. I may even be dead wrong. Therefore, I am opening my arguments up for debate. I hope that in reading this essay, you have taken away a better understanding of where I come from in why I don’t believe in god. Thank you.
-Mike
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