Why Atheism?

          Atheism is one of the most misunderstood concepts of our time and perhaps one of the most controversial as well. Living in a small mid-western town, I am acutely aware of this. Here, one cannot go outside without the fear of tripping over someone of a particular faith. As it happens, the faith most prevalent in the United States is the Judeo-Christian faith. This same faith is the largest the world has ever seen, and it is quite old, going back 1500-2000 years depending on when one defines its origin. In the United States of America, nearly every single person shares this faith in one aspect or another. Whether Lutheran, Catholic, Presbyterian, Baptist, Nondenominational, etc., between 85-95% of Americans are a part of this blanket faith. So why not me? 

          I hesitate to group atheists together at any point in time simply because the definition of atheism does not allow it. Atheism is simply the "rejection of the idea of supernatural entities known as gods." So yes, we can throw all atheists into the same bucket, but it only tells us one thing about them: that they do not believe in gods. It tells us nothing of what they do believe in at all. It tells us nothing of their background or the terms in which they think. Let us turn this around and use a christian instead. We automatically know that this person believes the Holy Bible is divine, that it was divinely inspired by only one god (Yahweh), that a man named Jesus lived, performed miracles, and let himself be sacrificed to save every human from sin, that the world and universe we inhabit and everything within it was created by Yahweh, that Hell and Heaven are real places where the souls of the dead will forever dwell, that Satan is a real being that hates humanity and will rise at some point to be judged and forever thrown back into Hell and that the Trinity will lift the world up on the final day of judgement and seal the fate of every being that has ever lived. Of course there are many more assumptions one can make of all Christians, but these are some of the main tenets and beliefs that basically all Christians share. I hope it is now clear why it is a mistake to pigeonhole atheists in the same manner as can be done with people of faith. But if we must, I think the best thing to say that would encompass as many atheists as possible would be to label them "free thinkers". After all, that is what we are! We all think for ourselves and come to our own conclusions. This is exactly what led me to atheism. The more I learned about the world, the more I learned that it just did not fit with the Bible, or with any faith for that matter. I began to realize that science actually did what faith claimed to do. Science gave me answers. Faith only raised more. Science is testable. Faith, by definition, is not. Science admits it knows little. Faith claims to know all. Science encourages attainment of knowledge. Faith admonishes the same act. "God did it.", says faith. "That's all you need to know." 

          Well it isn't all we need to know. We need to know much more than we know even now. The earth, which the Bible says sits on four pillars, we now realize is a rather special planet in a rather average solar system orbiting a very average star in a still average galaxy rocketing through space and time in an astonishingly gargantuan universe that is still expanding! And the expansion is getting faster and faster every second! And in a few years time, we hope to know just how this universe came into existence. With the launch of LISA, we hope to finally look back into the time BEFORE the Big Bang. Amazing. And all of this happened with absolutely no need for a god. It is all natural. 

          So why atheism? Because atheism allows me to do just what Sherlock Holmes did to solve the mysteries surrounding him. It allows me to keep my mind wide open and twist theories to suit facts instead of wrongly twisting facts to suit theories. I am not burdened by the need to start from the Bible to explain the universe. I start with the universe to explain the universe.

--Corey S.

"Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world;

it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious." Sam Harris --American neuroscientist