An Atheist Manifesto

I am an atheist. I do not believe in any sort of god, whether it be the Christian God, the Jewish God, the God of Islam, or the God of the ancient Greeks, Romans or Druids. Atheism is not my “religion” or my “faith” - it simply means that I do not believe in God any more than I believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, Pink Unicorns, Bigfoot, the Healing Power of Crystals or Little Green Men from Mars. I may not be able to “prove” that God does not exist, but I don’t need to. I also don’t need to prove that pink unicorns don’t exist in order to justify my lack of belief in them, either.

The fact that I do not currently know what came before the Big Bang or how all the details of evolution work does not mean that I “must” believe in God. I am perfectly willing to accept that I do not know everything and that some things may simply be unknowable.

I understand and appreciate that a belief in God has inspired many wonderful things throughout history. It has also inspired intolerance, bigotry, oppression, torture and acts of terrorism. I bear no ill will toward people whose religious beliefs provide them comfort and lead them to be good and moral and treat others with the respect due every human being. I object, however, to people who use a belief in God to promote a preference of ignorance over knowledge, justify intolerance toward their fellow man, and assume that I am incapable of being a good and moral person simply because I don’t happen to accept their particular fantasy world-view.

I do not believe that morality can only come from God or that atheists must be immoral. Billions of people the world over manage to live good, moral lives without a belief in any god whatsoever (let alone the Christian God), while many people who claim to believe in God perform atrocities in His name. Morality derives from our innate nature as social animals and our long-standing experience that society functions better when people are nice to one another, and anyone who is only nice to his fellow man because “God told him to” is not particularly moral.

I do not believe in God because, if one’s eternal salvation depends on believing in one particular god or version of god, that means that billions of people in the history of the world are doomed through no fault of their own. The fact that so many religions and notions of a god or gods - many diametrically opposed to others - have existed throughout history means that the likelihood that any one version of God happens to the the “correct” one is vanishingly small.

I do not believe in God because, if he is truly omnipotent, he must choose to let innocent people and other creatures suffer from painful deaths, diseases, accidents and natural disasters. “Free will” only excuses man’s inhumanity to man - it doesn’t explain why God would let a young child die an agonizing death from cancer or be crushed under a building due to an earthquake.

I do not believe in God because the description of God in every single religious text throughout history is one which simply cannot be supported by available evidence. If you want to define God as an immaterial being that created the universe and has had no interaction with it or us ever since and that has nothing to do with defining morality and that doesn’t expect us to worship or fear or obey it or even acknowledge it in any way, then sure, why not. But

what’s the point?

Barry's World