Montana Freethinkers

Promoting skeptical enquiry into religion, philosophy, politics, history, and economics in Montana and beyond.

Atheist Manifesto: by Justin Whitaker (from Spring, 1999)

May 2005 Preface

It can not be said too often that we live in a world of change. This understood, it should come as no surprise that my views concerning theism/atheism have changed significantly over the past six years. I am still searching for answers though, and still very skeptical of those that are handed to me. From other sections of this site you will see that I have spent some time as a Buddhist, though maintaining skepticism and an atheistic worldview. For the most part, my 'anti-' theist views have softened. I see a lot more of the good which can be found in theistic views of the world. However, I do still hold that a moral life can be lived free of theism (as so many Buddhists, and others, have demonstrated over the millennia), and that reasoned enquiry and love for humanity are the basis of the good life. What follows, then, is a record of my views from six years ago and not necessarily contiguous with any of my current worldview.

Why do we believe? A question asked by those willing for centuries, and many answers have come forth. This essay will take a historical look at religion preceding and leading into Christianity, a logical look at it, and finally a psychological look at it.

Religion is known to have existed for at least 7000 years, and it is thought to have begun around 10,000 years ago. The first signs of religion are found in gravesites of early humans/late Neanderthals in Eastern Europe. These gravesites were found to have very clean fossils, with flowers, dyes, and later, pottery placed around the body of the deceased. The Aborigines of Australia are believed to have formed religion around 2000 years later, around the same time as the peoples of Eastern Asia and Central Africa. Before this time, as discovered in Eastern Asia’s ‘Peking Man’, deceased members of a group were often cannibalized and the remains were placed in the back of the groups dwelling (most often a large cave) along with other waste. These late pre-humans all are found to have identical bone structures and brain capacities as those of modern men. In fact if one were to place a Neanderthal in modern society, give him a clean shave and a quick English lesson, it would be impossible to distinguish him from other modern men. They are classified as pre-human only by their lifestyle and lack of complex tools and social grouping.

Gravesites, the beginning of religion it can be said, are still a key element of all religious people today. Virtually every religion has an intricate ceremony to ensure an easy journey into the afterlife, or the next life. People could not, and still cannot, determine what happened to a ‘person’ after they died. Humanity had evolved past the unknowing cannibals witnessed in Eastern Asia, and now feared death, and the implications involved.

Next came natural phenomena such as meteors, volcanoes, earthquakes, floods, etc. The first known priests of South America used their ability to predict an eclipse of the sun as a display of their connection with the Gods. The priests of Greece told the people that lightening was due to the anger of Zeus, the King of the Gods. So again, religion was used to explain: first death, now the natural world. It was in these early times that mankind first began to question the origin of things, such as the earth and of mankind itself. From this came the various ‘Origin Myths’ of today. From the Native American’s eagle and serpent to Christianity’s 7 Days, these were the stories told to the people by the priests, backed by the priests claim to ‘Divine Right’ or ‘Divine Influence’. The priests claimed that they were told these stories by God, or various Gods. Soon man had an explanation for almost everything, backed by God, or in most cases, a God for each phenomenon. Priests, the only ones with the ability to predict what the Gods would do next, using weather and astrological signs for predictions, became very powerful, next to kings, and in some cases they ruled as or above the kings.

In the time of Christianity the priests of Judea had become highly corrupt, they were closely connected with the kings of the time, owned lavish palaces, and lived lives of luxury. The priests used their divine right to persecute those who did not follow their teachings, calling them evil, sinners, and heretics. Such persecutions abound in the Bible, written as orders from God to murder the nonbelievers. Jesus appeared as a leader of the people, preaching to the poor, the outcasts. This gained him great popularity among the poorer Jews, but the others rejected him, pointing out that he often spoke against the scriptures and did not fulfill the prophesy of the true messiah. Those who knew the scriptures of the past rejected Jesus, while the ignorant, the outcast, and the needy clung to him as the man who would deliver them from their dejected place in society. Jesus saw himself as the messiah, sent to bring the word of God, his father, to the Jews in an attempt to revitalize the church for the end-times, which he saw as coming within the lives of some of his disciples. So, before his death he gave them the order to spread his word, to hurry, because the end-times were near and God would only accept 12000 from each of the 12 tribes of Judea, with the disciples as the leaders of each of these 12 tribes after the Armageddon had taken place. (Bible Placements to be added)

The disciples then went out, preaching to the Jews, but saw poor results. They then decided to preach also to the gentiles, knowing that these people accepted new gods readily, most already having a pantheon of gods to explain various phenomena in their lives. The disciples won many converts at this time, promising paradise after death, a privilege previously reserved to high priests, to all who believed in this new God with them. Nearly 40 years after the death of Jesus the first Gospel, that of Mark, was written, chronicling the life of Jesus as it was told to its author(s). It wasn’t until much later that the other books of the Gospel and following records that make up the New Testament were written.

Logical and Psychological arguments are still in the works – But read my original Manifesto below for a summary of these and other Historical arguments.

It is my view that the belief in god is illogical. The belief is today, as it has always been, a way to explain the unexplained and to attribute our weaknesses and strengths to a being other than ourselves. We as humans 10,000 years ago (YA) began to wonder about death, it is believed. This is the spawn of religion, the unknown. We did not know where we went after death and this frightened us. For century’s when people died, they were (as observed in Peiking man) often cannibalized and their bones placed in the back of the cave or dwelling area. The Neanderthal’s of Eastern Europe were the first believed to prepare the dead for some form of post-death existence. We have found graves with intricately placed flowers, and later, pottery. From this evolved our modern beliefs about the after-life. These include reincarnation (Hindu), eternity with god (Heaven), eternity in absence of god (a kinder definition of Hell), nearness to Ala, and so on. Basically it is believed by most religions that if you are a good believer that you will face eternal happiness after death, and if you are a poor believer or non-believer you will be faced with eternal suffering. It is the belief of myself as an Atheist that we go to the same place that we were before birth, nowhere.

An argument once posed to me by a Christian friend of mine is that we cannot become “nothing”; at least our soul cannot, due to the basic characteristics of matter. “Matter and energy cannot be destroyed,” she brilliantly conveyed, “It can simply change form, we know that the flesh can decompose, but your atheistic belief cannot account for the soul.” Need I even state what I said to her? Well, might as well. I told her that the soul has no matter, it has no energy, it is nothing, like the ideas we had in our head before we died. Sure it would be nice to think that when we die, our soul (containing all the information in our brain I suppose) would be whisked away to some “higher place.”

Once we (humans) had solved the big after-life mystery, we went on to explain things like earthquakes, disease, thunderstorms, volcanic eruptions, pretty much anything not caused by man. They were all simply the acts of god. This was thousands of years ago, and although we have advanced greatly in many things, we still believe that many things are acts of god. As an Atheist, one of my religious beliefs is that science is the most powerful thing man has created, even more powerful than any of the gods we have created. Not to sidetrack too far, but I do state that man created god, not visa-versa because there is no proof of the existence of god, nor is there any evidence that any other life form believes in god. Science has over the last 2,000 years, and incredibly increasing over the last 100 years, replaced many of the beliefs of religion. Therefore, my beliefs are slowly but surely replacing those of religious people. We can now say that thunderstorms are caused by colliding air masses and that earthquakes are caused by sliding tectonic plates, but there is NO way to convince an ignorant theist that god is not making these air masses and plates move. It’s really that simple. These beliefs may or may not be held by all Christians or Muslims or Jews but if they are, how do you tell them they are wrong? How can I convince an ancient Greek that Atlas is no longer responsible for holding the earth up, and harder yet, that he never was? To them this is blasphemy, heresy, and lies.

As children most of us believed in Santa Clause, because that is who our parents told us brought us our presents each year. And most of us believed in god, because he was used to explain many things that otherwise could not be explained to us. If our mom had told us that Uncle Albert was responsible for all of these things, you would believe it. So what happened to Santa Clause? We would defend him to the best of our ability any time a peer would tell us he didn’t exist, and perhaps cry if a cruel older brother or sister would tell us that mom and dad had “just made him up.” And at some point we asked our mom and dad, and if they felt we were old enough, they would tell us the truth… he was all made up. We were not stupid because we believed in him, just ignorant, or to put it nicer, ill informed, as is the case with god. Mom and dad never told us he didn’t exist, because nobody told them, or when they did, they defended god to the best of their ability, or went to their own mom and dad to attempt to discover the truth, which they never got.

As a believer in science I admit that the existence or nonexistence of some things cannot be proved. This is not a major flaw in most cases, but with god, it seems to be a pretty major hang-up. Scientists can only rely on their own beliefs to determine results. These beliefs are spawned from thorough testing, and seeing the same results time after time, whereas the existence of god cannot be proved or disproved by any testing or research. Neither can the existence of invisible flying dragons or a wide range of other things, but we atheists put these things all in the same category. The only reason that we’ve “disproved” the existence of Santa Clause is because supposedly he delivers presents to all the good little boys and girls every year at Christmas, and we’ve seen clearly that he does not in fact do this – or maybe he does but none of us were ever good enough to actually receive presents from him, so our parents had to buy us stuff and tell us it was from him, much as we now do with our own children. So I guess Santa Clause can go in that magical category with god and invisible flying dragons.

So why do people believe in god? There are simply still things that cannot be explained.

Arguments against Atheism

The first two I find to be two of the best, both used commonly by the outspoken radio talk show host G. Gordon Liddy. He, like many people who today speak against agnosticism and atheism was once himself agnostic.

His first argument is that without god, there is no explanation for the beginning of the universe, ‘the uncaused first cause’ he calls it. Scientists have formulated several theories about how the universe began, most prominently the Big Bang theory. This theory states that a great explosion of matter created the universe approximately 5 billion years ago forming our galaxy and perhaps millions others just like it. Of course this crushed the Christian belief that god created the Earth approximately 6000 B.C. But most intelligent Christians accepted that their own belief could not compete with that of science and adapted this as their own belief, simply stating that God had made the big bang happen. More recently however, a theory of Big Bang, Big Crunch has been put forth stating that the original big bang could have taken place basically ‘forever’ ago. It states that after the first big bang the universe expanded, as it is doing currently, to a critical point at which antimatter formed at the original center would cause a black hole of enormous proportions that would cause the entire universe to contract. Eventually the whole universe would contract into one great ball of mass and energy, and then there would be another big bang, and so on, for eternity. This is today a very widely accepted theory, none of its arguments have been disproved and thus far all evidence supports it.

That is the wonderful thing about science, that the best ideas are accepted, but ceaselessly challenged. Scientists even challenge their own beliefs, because scientists know that new evidence will constantly be collected, and this new evidence will create new theories. There is no scientific dogma, only theories that are most widely accepted, including evolutionary theory.

Second, Liddy argues that without a belief in god there is no reason for morality. This directly contradicts the view put forth by a leading southern Baptist minister on Larry King Live during a discussion on the southern Baptists’ practice of campaigning heavily to convert Jews to Christianity. His conversation with a leading Jewish Rabbi went something like the following:

Minister: It is the words of the bible that say only the acceptance of Christ as your savior can lead to your salvation; otherwise you are condemned to Hell.

Rabbi: So a man can be evil and unkind his entire life and on his deathbed accept Christ and be saved?

Minister: This is not something I have made up; this is the writings of the Bible.

Rabbi: So you’re saying that the children burned and gassed at Auschwitz are condemned to eternal suffering and those who burned them are in Heaven?

Minister: - no reply -

It is points like this that turn more and more people toward Atheism each day. Not that any religion is responsible for people being stupid or racist or cruel, but it gives them an excuse for it. I feel that religion is great for many people because it gives them great guidelines for living a loving, kind life. But these guidelines can be taught just as easily by parents, as my own parents did, telling me not that I would go to hell for stealing, but telling me that its wrong, and I would be held responsible for my actions, both good and bad.

Other Arguments:

I'm sure many are out there, I just can’t think of any right now. Got any?

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Most of my own anti-religious arguments are aimed at Christianity, simply because it’s the religion that I know the most about. I was raised a Catholic, until the age of 12 or so, when my questions became too complicated for the answers that Christianity provided. I know that Muslims have done amazingly cruel things such as using children to clear minefields by telling them that they would be instantly promoted to heaven if they were to die ‘for their people’ or ‘die in battle’. From what I have learned about Jews, they are very peaceful in religious practice. The Rabbi from the Larry King Live show stated that nobody could live a truly righteous life, but that people should try to live a good, moral life and they will be rewarded with Heaven after death. My studies of Hindu and Muslim religions have been minimal, but both are primarily peaceful. As a whole I believe that religion is neither good nor bad, but a powerful means of doing both. Would Mother Teresa have not done so many great humanitarian deeds if she weren’t a Christian; would I be a better person if I were? No. It in no way brings us together as a people, but separates us into categories that can be subjugated, discriminated, and ultimately annihilated.

Still, one of the most powerful arguments for religion is to explain the unexplained. People speaking in tongues, sightings of the Virgin Mary, bleeding Crucifixes, the healing of a chronic illness; these are all ‘miracles’ witnessed by people, prompting them to thank God, and affirming (at least to them) that there is no doubt now that God does exist. But in many cases speaking in tongues has been proven to be complete fraud and sometimes brainwashing, there have been more sightings of little green men than of the Virgin Mary, and magical people called doctors are responsible for more healings than any prayers. As for the bleeding Crucifixes, most occur only once, are never allowed to be scientifically tested, and those that are have never held up.

People seem to ‘need’ their religion. To lean on it in times of need. Philanthropists have exploited this need with messages such as “Help others and He will help you.” People in great conflict seem to think god is their only way out. People try to treat alcoholics by sending them to church. Yes, this does work, but so does the all holy AA. Christians believe that much of the time they simply cannot do something “without God’s help.” This seems like such a cop-out to Atheists.

I will not rule out the possibility of God or perhaps several Gods existing, just as I will not rule out the invisible dragons and unicorns, but I won’t devoutly worship any of them either. God came about through human kind's curiosity and insecurity, it is time that we grow out of it.