Godless by choice?

I’ve volunteered to be a moderator for the new Internet Infidels Newswire Feedback Forum, so it looks like from now on I’m going to be reading a lot of religion-related news.

A recent article from the feed is from The Columbus Dispatch and is entitled Godless BY CHOICE.

Although the article is quite good and treats the subject fairly, we have a problem. The fact that the author (or whoever titled the article, it may not be the same person) chose to stress the words “BY CHOICE” signals to me immediately that they fundamentally do not understand. I did not “choose” to reject God. I didn’t want to leave the church. One might say that “the church” actually left me.

When I was a child, I didn’t “choose” to no longer believe in Santa Claus. I don’t believe anyone else did either. I simply reached a point where I had seen so many things that indicated otherwise that I could no longer pretend. I noticed that “Santa”, “The Tooth Fairy” (”she” used to write us letters) and “The Easter Bunny” all had the exact same handwriting as my mom. One year when we happened to be on our way home from visiting relatives on Christmas Day, Santa’s sleigh was conveniently delayed until after we got back. On Easter, after we got back from church, we had to wait outside for several minutes while “The Easter Bunny” got our Easter baskets set up. And I, like most children (except, you know, babies), wasn’t born yesterday. At no point did I say to myself, “Self, I’m not going to believe in Santa Claus anymore. I’m going to believe that it’s actually my parents who buy and wrap the presents and put them under the tree.” I just reached a point where I had to put together the pieces and accept the truth.

And it was the same way with God. I simply reached a point where accepting, on the authority of a man wearing a silly hat, that there was an invisible man in the sky who loves me and everyone else while simultaneously being wrathful and bloodthirsty enough to send practically everyone who has ever existed to a place of eternal torment for what amounts to a thoughtcrime, who created the entire universe and everything in it but somehow managed to deeply and personally care about my sex life, who supposedly inspired the writing of a book where he can’t even keep his own story straight and which has the fingerprints of humanity all over every page, no longer made sense. And that’s the way I feel. But I never wanted to feel that way. I thought something was wrong with me. Why couldn’t I just believe like everyone else?

John Sterling, the first person quoted in the article, has it exactly right:

“The more I studied and thought about it, the more I disbelieved in it,” he said of Christianity. “It seemed less and less likely that the Bible was the literal word of God. And it started seeming more and more likely that morality comes from culture and biology.” The church had been a good home to him, Sterling said, but once he concluded there is no God, he made a break.

“I left the church not because I didn’t like it,” he said. “I left it because I thought it wasn’t true.”

I’ve also got a problem with the article’s definition of “atheist” and “agnostic”:

Among nonbelievers, Marty said, there are many more agnostics (those who say there is no way to know if a god exists) than atheists (those who actively declare the universe godless).

It is unclear whether those definitions are Marty’s or the author’s, but whoever it is is dead wrong about what an “atheist” is. An atheist is someone who is without a god. Someone who is godless. My own personal definition is, “Someone who is unable to answer ‘yes’ to the question, ‘Do you believe in one or more gods?’” It is entirely possible to be both atheist and agnostic at the same time, and in fact, most godless people meet both definitions. Many atheists will go so far as to actively declare that certain specific gods do not exist, such as the Greek Pantheon, or the Abrahamic god, and reply “we can’t know, but I don’t believe there is one” to the question of God in general.

The question “What is an atheist, what is an agnostic, what is the difference, and can one be both?” is a perennial discussion topic on Internet Infidels, and I’m sure there are multiple godless people who will be more than willing to tell me that I am completely wrong and offer their own definition. My point is that the definition “An atheist is someone who actively declares that there is no god” is fatally simplistic.

Cassandra Cox has it right, too:

“If there was some kind of proof out there that there was a god, I would definitely be open to believing in that,” Cox said. “But I don’t find that likely. If the Rapture happens, then I’ll definitely think that something’s going on.”

Many theists seem to believe that atheists must be as dogmatic about their beliefs as they are, and assume that if a god were to demonstrate its existence, atheists would reject the idea outright in favor of refusing to admit that they might have been wrong. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:

I have better things to do than wait around for god to come out from wherever he’s hiding. If he wants to reveal himself, I’ll evaluate the evidence when that happens. Until then, I’m not going to waste my time believing something on faith when there’s no evidence for it.

Until then, I am godless, and even though I may not have been “born that way”, it’s not a choice.

Tags: Atheism