I was listening to Dennis and Matt on the Non-Prophets, the show that went to air on 30 June. Matt mentioned, on one of his many tangents, a discussion he had regarding Atheism being a civil rights issue in America.
If I recall correctly, the person who had argued against Matt claimed that being an Atheist wasn’t the same as being black for instance, because you can choose to be an Atheist. An argument I am sure that is still used regarding people “choosing” to be gay. Matt went on to point out the various points wrong with this person’s argument, so I won’t go into any greater detail (you can download the show yourself).
What I would like to expand upon is the matter of Atheism being a choice.
In my particular case it is not a choice, but rather a conclusion arrived at. It was not as if I decided one day that it would be good or cool to be an Atheist, but rather that on the evidence there was no other conclusion to be reached. In my personal search for truth there was no choice, once I had come to understand the fundamental stupidity and irrationality of God(s) -there was no choice. I could not unlearn the things I had learnt.
So while I am not black and I can hide my Atheism, for me – Atheism is not a choice. I can choose to lie and tell you I am not, but the bridge has been crossed and burnt, and though I may yearn for the bliss of ignorance, and the comfort in the lie of the big sky daddy, it is what I am.
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Atheism is not a choice, but rather a conclusion arrived at.
I agree. Atheism is also not a “belief”, it is not a “faith in science”, it is not a “worship of you”. (All three are ideas which show up on fundy blogs.) Once you lack a belief in god/gods/ or supernatural forces that lack of belief is simply not a part of you.
I tried my whole life to “believe”, to feel what it was others were feeling when they said, “I believe Jesus is my personal savior.” Somehow I never quite felt it. I never “believed” it deep down. I always wondered if everyone else was faking it to, or if I was the only one with doubts.
Posts like this are the only way I get to learn about the podcasts. Us poor schlubs on dial-up don’t have the privilege of listening in. So- Excellent post, Sean!
I have yet to meet an atheist who never tried really hard to believe. It seems most deconversion stories have to do with religious education.
Why would anyone choose to be part of the most distrusted and disliked minority in my country, or probably yours for that matter?
One of my good friends has tried to convince me to run for some sort of public office many times, I have to keep reminding her that I could never win, solely because I am an admitted atheist.
Hey Fiery,
I could burn some episodes to disk for you? Presuming that is legal of course.
That’d be awesome Sean!
Thanks!
Great post, Sean.
To me, your statement, “I could not unlearn the things I had learnt,” provides powerful insight into the religious mindset.
Oftentimes, the religious choose not to learn, specifically to avoid having real world knowledge interfere with comforting conceptions of the world supported by their religious group. For example, many avoid studying science, literature, and other religions, as well as many other disciplines, to be certain that their pre-existing notions do not come under question. They fully recognize and are motivated to act by that inability to “unlearn.”
Your statement also makes for an interesting point of comparision between rationality and its wayward alternatives. Parsing the sentence, “I could not unlearn the things I had learnt,” it’s quite clear that what the rationalist means by “the things I had learnt” would be a qualitative polar opposite to what a religionist would mean by the same phrase. Whereas the religionist accepts as true things that sit on the ever-shifting sands of human imagination and creativity called authority, revelation, and tradition, the rationalist seeks the firmer footing of evidence that is consistent with the products of science and reason, irrespective of whether they come from a formal laboratory setting or the ceaseless hypothesis-testing we all undertake to impart clarity to the circumstances of our own lives.
Poodles…..I have yet to meet an atheist who never tried really hard to believe.
Hi, I’m Hound Doggy….I’ve never tried to believe.
I don’t know how my thoughts came to be. I wasn’t brought up in a religious home. My mom and I were baptized when I was 9. My dad was before. It didn’t mean anything to me. I never did buy it and no one really cared. I remember being about 4 and asking my mom if god was a girl. Nature? Nurture? Born Atheist?
Sean is right, you can’t unlearn what you learn. I just keep finding more reasons to validate my views of things.
Hound Doggy…
Yea! Now I have met one. Nice to meet a fellow canine also.
Oh and Fiery, you should ask Sean to translate those podcasts into his Australian voice for you. ;P
Hound Doggy,
Welcome to the blog. Yeah I remember when my faith in religion began to crumble. It was a nice cosy delusion and while I sometimes miss the crutch Iknow that I am ultimately better without it.
Russ,
I remember making the comment to my friend;
“How can any thinking person believe in god?”
To me it is that simple, if you are a rational person you are decieving yourself if you believe in god(s)
Poodles,
I can’t translate anything at the moment – I am drowning in my own snot.
Fiery,
Thank you and I will get on to the recordings asap.
Poodles, I’m not sure if the originators of the Non-Prophets show would want their podcasts used for such unrelated purposes.
>:-D
Imagine their chagrin at such a serious endeavor used for …..well
MWAHAHAHA. Sean’s voice….sigh…
ehem. Pardon me while I head back a few pages and relisten to introduction and desert.
Sean,
You asked your friend, “How can any thinking person believe in god?” and then to your readers commented further that, “To me it is that simple, if you are a rational person you are decieving yourself if you believe in god(s)”
You are so right. I too see it as quite that simple.
For me, though, it, again, flows from your statement, “I could not unlearn the things I had learnt.”
For me to accept supernaturalistic god stuff I would be faced with having to unlearn several decades of study. Much of what I cannot unlearn is my basic knowledge and understanding of the natural world which in and of itself is sufficient for me to reject all claims of supernaturalism at work. Further, I can’t unlearn my grasp of probability and statistics. And, I can’t unlearn that in my personal inquiry into more than a thousand specific claims of supernatural causation over those decades, each and every one has been demonstrated to be a the progeny of ignorance and misunderstanding.
Also, I can’t unlearn what I know about how easily the human mind and sensory systems can misperceive the world, from optical and auditory illusions to dreams so real as to be indistinguishable from wakeful consciousness. I can’t unlearn what I know about human suggestibility and how it leads people to attribute imagined supernatural causes to 100 percent supernatural-free phenomena. I can’t unlearn what I know about how a child’s desire to please parents, elders and peers, and to belong to a group can induce the young mind to accept any notion at all like murder, racism and supernaturalism.
For me, Sean, knowing how easily we humans are mislead either intentionally by others or by our own misperceptions, I can’t conceive of anything that could constitute evidence of a deity for me. If I personally witnessed something happen which appeared to be an unequivocal violation of natural law, I would assume either that I was being tricked or that I had just witnessed another natural phenomena for which I lacked an explanation. I can think of no circumstance that would lead me to accept a supernatural explanation.
If I might borrow another phrase from your post, “the bridge has been crossed and burnt.” To me it symbolizes that, though I harbor no desire whatsoever to retrace my steps back across the bridge, I could never do so under any circumstance since there would be far too much to unlearn.
It’s not as if one day I said,”I am an atheist.” It kind of creeped in on me.:)
@ Hound Doggy: You hit the nail on the head. It’s all about validation. Everything we humans do in life centers around validation. We all want to be right and we want people to accept and verify that we are right. Preferably without question.
On the one hand, Christians seem to engross themselves completely with this type of unquestioned validation not specifically on a personal level, but rather on the notion that a god provides them all the truth they need. Someone of faith is already validated in the eyes of whatever god they worship so long as they follow those “truths”.
An unbeliever, on the other hand, is exempt from relying so ultimately upon such a notion of a simple right and wrong morality. Providence?
This very argument would get a Christian to exclaim: “See! I told you so!” And argue that those who don’t believe are inherently immoral.
It is about truth and whose truth is “right”. It’s essentially human nature.
Very good post Sean and some good comments.
Thanks Larro.