jckuhl

Atheism is a shockingly simple concept, which is why I’m often frustrated by fundamentalist and evangelical apologists who constantly try to miscategorize it by something it is not. If you listen to any apologists, atheism is my religion, my world view, my morality, my philosophy.

It is none of those things.

The concept of atheism is simple. It has one simple meaning. It means I lack a belief in a god or gods. I don’t believe there’s a god. Theists claim there is a god, I do not believe them.

That is the entirity of atheism.

I was a catholic, and I am now an atheist. But it would be wrong to say atheism replaced my catholicism. It did not. An analogy, imagine on my shelf I have a TV. I then sell the TV.

I didn’t replace my TV, I just have an empty shelf where the TV was.

Athiesm is no more a religion than that empty shelf is a TV.

Atheism is not a religion. It has no priests or prophets (and no, we don’t worship Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins.) It has no holy texts. There are no rituals, no dogmas, and no shared beliefs (other than the lack of belief in a god of course.)

That last one I think is the most important that I listed. Atheists lack shared beliefs with other atheists. For instance, I do not believe in any religion. A Buddhist on the other hand maintains a religion, Buddhism, without believing in a diety. I do not believe in the supernatural. Some pagan or occultists religions might believe in black magic and the like without believing in a god. Or perhaps there are atheists out there who believe in ghosts and other things of that nature. I am a liberal, there are atheists who are conservatives. I could go on, but I think I make my point clear, there is nothing that unites atheists, other than the lack of a belief in a god or gods.

Atheism is often also accused of being a world view or a philosophy. It is neither. While obviously my world view is without a god, atheism doesn’t inform my world view. I believe something is true due to evidence, or disbelieve it due to lack of evidence. I do not specifically try to justify my lack of belief in a god by hunting down alternatives to god. Rather, I just follow the evidence and so far the evidence for god has simply come up short.

Atheism also doesn’t give me purpose or meaning. Apologetics love to toss that one at us. “If you are an atheist, how does life give you meaning? How does atheism give you meaning?” It doesn’t. Again, atheism is not a replacement for my lost religion of catholicism (and many atheists never had a religion to begin with). Atheism doesn’t give me purpose or meaning, that is irrelevant to atheism. Where I find meaning and purpose has nothing to do with being an atheist. But I don’t believe there’s a god to give us purpose, and I do believe the universe is cold and indifferent to us, so I think most people either give themselves a purpose, or do without. And I don’t think one is more valid than the other as it all comes down to the individual.

But this doesn’t mean atheism is nihilism either. Sure, atheism doesn’t give us meaning, but that doesn’t mean nothing gives us meaning. I find meaning in family, in writing, in art. There are obviously atheists who are nihilists, but that doesn’t mean all atheists are nihilists. Just because we don’t believe a god gives us meaning doesn’t mean we don’t believe in meaning (though some of us don’t.)

Atheism also doesn’t mean believing in evolution or living an evolution-based world view. The conflation with fundamentalists Christians and evolution is absolutely insane to me. Of course the things I can say against creationism will wait for another time, but in short, it’s wild to me that creationists will be willfully ignorant about evolution just because it contradicts their rigid interpretation of an ancient book. There is however this wild claim that evolution is an “atheist” theory that’s trying to drive people away from Christianity, when that’s not even remotely true.

In fact, I’d say it’s the other way around. It’s bad faith Christian evangelicals who act like brazen idiots that drives faithminded people away from the church.

But I digress.

Evolution is a theory of biology, which is a field of science that focuses on living systems. It has nothing to say about god. Science is a description of the natural world, therefore the supernatural, including any gods, would not be a part of science, even if they did exist. The fact that evolution doesn’t mention god or try to incorporate one into itself is because, being a part of science, evolution is constrained to the natural world, not the supernatual. But no evolutionary biologist is going into work, twirling their mustaches and laughing maniaclly about how they’re “disproving god” today. That doesn’t exist.

I’ve even heard insane arguments from evangelicals who think that atheists should “kill the weak” because we believe in evolution and evolution is all about “the survival of the fittest.” So shouldn’t atheists be killing the weak? No, and it’s ludicrous to act like we think like that. Like, give me a break. Evolution isn’t a world view, it is merely a description of how biology works in the natural world, specifically, how biodiversity came about. Understanding evolution and how it works doesn’t mean it’s a philosophy to live by. It isn’t, and it was never intended to be. I mean, you don’t see physicists throwing themselves to the earth in order to “live in accordance to the theory of gravity” after all.

Finally atheism does not mean we lack morality or that we “steal them from the christians” (the arrogance of this claim!). Atheists have a moral system, it just doesn’t come from a god. I don’t believe there is objective morality, it doesn’t exist. All morality is subjective. And I believe things are good or bad, depending on how much help or harm my actions cause. I use sympathy and empathy to guide my decision making, which is a product of evolution. Humans are a social species, and hardly the only one on earth. All social species display some amount of moral behavior, because moral behavior and cooperation is vital for the survival of a social species.

I don’t need a god to tell me not to kill other people. I don’t kill other people because it causes irrevocable harm to other people and I wouldn’t want them doing the same to me. I’m not going to go into the weeds of moral philosophy but the long and short of it is this, that atheists are capable of morals just like anyone else.

In the end, atheism is only one thing. A lack of belief in a god or gods. That is it. Anything else being ascribed to an atheist, is not a part of atheism. Secular humanism isn’t atheist. You don’t have to be an atheist to believe church and state should be separate or that the human condition should be improved. Science isn’t atheism, neither is empiricism. These are merely tools for learning how the natural world works.

And athiesm is certaintly not a religion. It is is the furthest thing from a religion. A religion is a belief, atheism is a lack of belief.

I think before evangelical christians spout off about atheism on social media or Youtube or TikTok, maybe they should actually ask one of us what we actually believe instead of building strawmen that they can knock over to look impressive in front of gullible audiences.

Thanks.