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Nothing happens when you die. The existence of the universe in its present manifestation is a cosmic accident. Life has no purpose, it is void of all meaning. There is no reason beyond personal self-gratification to aspire to anything. The pleasure and well-being of the Self is top priority and everything and everyone else is expendable to that end. These are concepts which undoubtedly spring to the minds of many when pondering the meaning of that dreaded word, "Atheism." So how can I possibly the have the audacity to even use the word "Gospel," which means "good news," in the same sentence?
A fairly recent Gallup poll revealed that more than 50% of Americans would decline to vote for a "generally well-qualified candidate" nominated by their own political party if that candidate were an atheist. This beats out prejudice against blacks, women, Mormons and gays by orders of magnitude. Clearly, atheists are not very well-liked among members of the general public. I can do little better than speculate on the reasons for this, but based on personal experience and discussions I've had with many people, even some of my closest friends, even close friends who call themselves agnostic, I have reason to believe that much of this negative sentiment stems from some of the false notions of atheism mentioned above.
My goal here is not to prove that all atheists are outstanding people, pillars of society or even necessarily individuals you'd much like to have a beer with. Atheism, by its very nature, is a simple statement of nonbelief, bearing no organized belief structure, set of values or standardized worldview. It's a group label that really narrows it down to the least common denominator; all that's required for membership is lack of belief in a deity. The effect of this is that people bearing the label of "atheist" come in all shapes and sizes. From Joseph Stalin, tyrant of the Soviet Union and murderer of countless political dissenters, to Bertrand Russell, British philosopher and diehard pacifist. From Carl Sagan, who taught the world to find inspiration in the stars, to Richard Dawkins, who advocates evolution with unrivaled ferocity. From Friedrich Nietzsche, the foremost pioneer of Nihilism, to Dr. Paul Kurtz, the founder of the Council for Secular Humanism. From Karl Marx, the father of Communism, to Ayn Rand, staunch champion of laissez-faire capitalism. The only person I can truly speak for is myself, and that is what I intend to do with this piece.
Defining our terms
First of all, what do I mean when I say that I am an atheist? Envision this scenario: You, myself, and a group of other people are sitting, standing, pacing or whatever else you'd like to imagine, in a room. The room is vast, nearly infinitely complex, adorned with countless decorations and objects of interest, such that a single one of us could never in our lifetimes exhaustively investigate the whole of its contents. This room represents the extent of the physical universe: everything we can see, hear, touch, taste, smell, observe, and experiment with. The room has four solid, impenetrable walls with no doors, no windows and no holes. A question is raised: The room itself is fascinating in its grandeur, with many things to explore and discover and admire, but what lies outside these four walls?
Some speculate that there is a personal being who exists outside the room, who created the room and all its contents. They write books about this being, they imagine that he must be similar in nature to ourselves, some of them admire and fear him and believe that he even has an active influence on the daily goings-on of the inside of the room. Some even claim that they can feel his presence on some deep level. Others call that ridiculous. They say the nature of the room and its contents indicate that there couldn't possibly be anything outside the room, that the room is the extent of everything that exists, and everything else is mere fairy tale.
The question comes to me. What do I believe is outside the room? My answer is quite simple: I don't know, and I make no assumptions. I could speculate and imagine for hours, but at the end of the day it would be just speculation. It's impossible to peer beyond the walls to see for myself, and without any evidence of anything I don't much care to guess. Besides, there are still so many fascinating things inside the room that have yet to be discovered. If asked the specific question, "Do you believe in the being that created the room?" I would have to say no, simply because I cannot profess my belief in something I cannot physically experience in some way.
Some might say that definition qualifies me as an agnostic, not an atheist. I say that it qualifies me as an agnostic and an atheist. On a philosophical level, sure, it's impossible to know what is or isn't outside of the room. It could be anything, it could be nothing at all. You could be right, the being who created the room could be real. But if pressed, I would have to say I don't believe this being exists. Why? If nothing else, then for the sheer unlikelihood that the blind speculations of my fellow people of the room have happened onto the correct answer, even with no empirical evidence to follow. Sure, many of them may claim to have personally experienced this being in some way, but what evidence do they have to show for it? And furthermore, there are dozens of different people all claiming to have felt and been spoken to by this being, but they all have wildly incompatible ideas of who and what this being is, so I can't just take all of them at their word, and if I choose to take one of them at their word and say that everyone else is wrong, it would be little more than a random decision.
I'm also unimpressed, however, by the people claiming that they've found proof within the room that the room is the only thing that exists. For how can anything inside the room possibly indicate the nonexistence of anything outside the room? No, I prefer to remain content in my lack of knowledge until someone manages to poke a hole in the wall. Replace this room with the physical universe, and replace the "beings" with the god or gods of your choice, and you have my stance on theistic belief.
So what about morality?
For most people of the world and especially the United States, religious belief is a prime source of ethics, values, inspiration and motivation. We do good, that the glory of God might be made manifest through our actions. We define "good" by the set of laws and values God has established for us. But what if we don't believe in God? What, then, governs our behavior and morality, what is there to define for us what is "good"? Many atheists, like Nietzsche, have deduced that without God, concepts like "morality" and "altruism" are meaningless; futile ventures in the grand scheme of things which should bear no relevance to how we live our lives. For myself, I must sharply disagree with this notion.
Empathy is a deeply human characteristic, hard-coded into our DNA by millions of years of evolution. The ability and inclination to empathize is so firmly rooted into our biology that it is inseparable from the definition of humanity, except by rare psychological disorders like sociopathy. When we witness the suffering of others, we suffer ourselves. It is why we grieve when we read a sad story, why we cringe when we see violence, why we squirm at the sight of blood. This, for me, lies at the core of my morality. I despise seeing others suffer as much as I despise to suffer myself. I go out of my way to prevent it. I take action to repair it. That is what morality means to me, and it is the basis of my system of ethics. Some might say that defining morality as something born simply of cold, unthinking evolutionary forces cheapens the definition. I disagree. On a purely subjective level, I find it much more beautiful, almost poetic, that the very thing which literally makes us human – our biology, our DNA – is what provides us with our moral backbone.
Carpe diem
So I've defined my independence from religious belief, and I've defined my morality within that framework, but there's one more important question: What about inspiration? Where's the motivation for self-improvement? Why aspire to greater things, why seek to make an impact on the world and improve it for the better? If, in the end, I'm just going to die, and then that's it - game over - doesn't life become utterly pointless? My answer to this one is profoundly simple. I do not have the liberty of believing that I will survive the death of my body. There is no safety net, death is not just a transition into the "next life," death is death. It is final. It is absolute. This, to me, does the exact opposite of cheapening the value of life. On the contrary, this concept makes life literally infinitely more valuable. If for a single day I do not learn anything new, do nothing to improve myself, make no attempt to make the world just a little bit nicer for someone else, or take the time to appreciate the little things we so often take for granted, then I have lost a full day of my life which I'll never be able to get back. My life is finite, which makes it the most precious of all commodities. Squandering even a moment of it is completely unacceptable to me.
In conclusion
I am an atheist. The mere sight of that sentence, I'm sure, causes many to cringe. I only hope, however, that through the course of this piece I have alleviated you, the reader, of this gut reaction, if only just a little bit. I hope that I may have caused you to realize that the statement really does very little to describe who I am. It means I do not believe in a god; no more, and no less. It is not a statement of ethics, or of personality, or of outlook, or of philosophy, or of mission or purpose. My atheism does not define who I am as a person. Rather, who I am defines me as an atheist.
Thank you for reading.
