Why Be An Atheist?

 

There is an abundance of reasons for not accepting the premise that a god exists. First and foremost is the simple fact that reasonable evidence has never been presented to support the assertion that there is a god of any kind. There have been many attempts to do so and there have been many learned arguments. However, little to no evidence has been brought forth to substantiate the claim there is a god and... arguments are NOT evidence.

 

Nevertheless, the challenging question continues to be asked; ‘How can you be an atheist?’ or, perhaps less bluntly: ‘Why are you an atheist?’ The non-believer may pose this question to himself several times a day. ‘Why don’t I just accept the tenets related to the local religion?’, might well be an alternative wording of the question. 

 

Perhaps you’ve asked yourself a similar question. I don’t know that I ever openly voiced or cohesively and coherently thought the question out. Perhaps I’m more intuitive than logical in this regard, at least. Moreover, I don’t know if I’ve ever been asked the question. The stigma of being an atheist precludes many from even saying the word ‘atheist’ - as if it were a blasphemous pejorative.

 

For me, the question of the higher power persisted to simmer for a long time. Raised as a Roman Catholic, there was much I found to be absurd or immoral or ludicrous and evil in the teachings of the Church. (I’ll forgo giving a list of such things. The reader can supply a list for themselves that needn’t be as comprehensive as Martin Luther’s.)

 

Prompted by the niggling of the question of a higher power, I looked to other sources than the Bible – other viewpoints and other prophets; Edgar Cayce, Velikovsky, Gurdjieff, Eliade, Jung, Buddha, Nostradamus, Illich, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, etc.  All presented interesting hypotheses but all felt out of whack, a bit. Tales about Mu, Atlantis, crystals, and ancient wisdom had an appeal but delivered little satisfaction. 

 

My conclusion – thus far - has been that all these things, while not improbable, were little more than speculative because very little real evidence was provided. Wordy ad hoc reasoning does not make for good argument and - as mentioned before - argument is not evidence. The tales were intriguing; sometimes beautiful and awe-inspiring and overwhelming, but the luster wore off after a while; the sausage had been seen being made, as it were. 

 

Arguments, even by the saintly, seemed specious. (Again, argument is not evidence.) The pre-supposition that a god – a higher power - existed was pervasive but not persuasive. Too much was ludicrous on its face; soul travel, pyramid power, prophesy, (etc.) much else lacked credible evidence. 

 

There’s that word, again.

 

It would seem that evidence of a higher power would be all around and obvious. One might insert the ‘Look at the trees!’ apologetic here but acceptance of that simple-minded notion would require a willful ignorance of biology. Evidence of a god should be more than inferential. Shouldn’t it? For such an overwhelming claim, evidence should be stark and irrefutable. None has ever been presented, that I know of.

 

It has been claimed that god has ‘written it on your heart’. Posh! Again, one would have to think that the heart is a repository of tenets, a container wherein higher knowledge resides. I cannot accept that. The heart is a pump for blood. The brain is the place for thought, emotion, decision-making, consciousness and so on. While ‘god writing its/his instructions on your heart’ makes for an appealing metaphor, so do the diagrams of Gurdjieff and the quatrains of Nostradamus. It would seem that a Supreme Being would be more capable than Aesop was of presenting itself and a governing creed by parables.

 

And what about all the other demi-gods, semi-gods and deific personalities which speckle the ancient world? Asclepius, Simon Magus, Romulus, Siddhartha, Osiris, et.al. had the powers attributed to the Man from Nazareth. Raising the dead and healing the sick were like squirting boutonniere to these and other folk of legend and myth. They were parlor tricks; pick a card, any card! And like feats of magic, none of these averred miracles were true. None were accompanied by credible evidence.

 

Walk on water? As if…

Water to wine? That trick is on the back shelf; old hat.

Raise the dead? Come back from the dead? Get a grip!

 

The apologetic runs that ‘with god, the omnipotent, all is possible...

Oy! Again with the presupposition! 

If that is the case, then mustn’t all of the various rabbit-trails offered by the likes of Cayce, Illich and others be equally viable and factual? The Bible is real ‘cuz the Bible tells us so. Amen and Halleluiah. Praise B! Jesus is god cuz it says so in the Bible. And Cayce is a prophet cuz it says so right in the literature. And all the Sadhus – the Holy Men- of India are real and true because they say they are. 

 

Easy-peasy! 

 

All it takes is unshakeable faith and willful ignorance. Just put all doubt out of your mind and ‘Voila’, you’ve joined the ranks of the Believers and are entitled to salvation, etc. Be sure to get your entry ticket to Paradise stamped and verified. You wouldn’t want to left at the station because of an oversight. Heaven forfend!

 

Once one steps back from modern Christianity and hears about the plethora of mystery cults, children of god and the accounts of revelations, one must at least sense that the Christian faith is much the same as other myths of dying-and-rising gods and the Holy Men of Judea and Galacia have substantial similarity to those of the Punjab.

 

Was Asclepius different from Jesus, the Christ? Yes, the tales are different but the underlying message is entwined with the tales of the Nazarene. Is Herakles or Romulus different from Jesus? Yes, the tales are different; the tellers of the tales were different, as well. The social circumstances of the tale-tellers were different. They came from a different time in history; a different culture; a different society; a different people. This is at the heart of ‘syncretism’; one fable/myth/legend is adapted to another culture with a different legendarium and back-story. 

 

The tales, while different, are comparative to high degrees. There are too many parallels in the tales of Asclepius and the children of god, to ignore. There are too many similarities to cordon off one as factual and dismiss the others as fantasy.

 

Was Jesus of Nazareth special? Not so much, as it turns out. (Oh, and ‘Happy Easter’ BTW.)

 

One shouldn’t accept any claim as true until that claim is supported by sound reasoning and empirical evidence.