Why I'm an Atheist.

Today I want to clarify something. Atheism. I feel that many people misunderstand what true Atheism is all about. Most theists see Atheists as naysayers that are just out to attack their beliefs. Well the sad fact is that they are often right. Many Atheists are Atheist simply to be contrarian. The ones that are in it just to piss off theists give the rest of us a bad name and because they are very vocal about it they are primarily what others end up seeing. True Atheism is something very few people have actually considered.

The easiest way for me to describe why an Atheist believes what he/she believes is to describe my own reasoning. I used to be simply agnostic, refusing to pick a side of the debate simply because I did not know enough to make an educated decision. An agnostic can also be a Theist or Atheist, but at the time I was neither. Over time, especially living here in Utah, I have arrived at the personal conclusion that the concept of God is a human creation. Of course you cannot prove or disprove this, much the same way you cannot prove or disprove God. However, I arrived at this conclusion for several reasons. After observing other people for quite some time I found that people have a hard time accepting that they just don't know something. God seems to be the filler that seals all the cracks in knowledge anytime a theist does not understand something. I believe that this human instinct to create answers in the absence of real answers is responsible for the creation of God in order to answer life's greatest questions.

Another reason I have trouble validating the existence of a god is because it is an unfalsifiable, non-scientific claim. I like to bring up a principle known as Occam's Razor. Occam's Razor says that, of two theories that arrive at the same conclusion, the hypothesis that introduces the fewest assumptions is usually the most correct in it's formulation. I believe that of all theories that explain how and why we are here, the theory that we simply don't yet know is the only one that does not require the introduction of another HUGE unknown. It does not need to introduce any new variables. It's not even a theory really, it's just intellectual honesty to state that we don't know something. The concept of God creating the universe is explaining an unknown with another, possible larger, unknown. Such theories cannot be tested and are therefore unfalsifiable.

That is why I made the jump from being a so called "fence-sitter" to being a disbeliever in God. I found that I get more happiness from my life by simply acknowledging and looking upon in awe, the mysteries of our reality. When the answer to every mystery is "God did it" life seems to lose its luster for me. It is the pursuit of knowledge that is fulfilling to me. A true Atheist finds life and every aspect therein to be fascinating!

Another reason I became an Atheist is that the concept of God flies in the face of human achievement. There was a story (http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSEIC47086020070905) where an airline in some other country was worried about the safety of an aircraft and they conducted a religious sacrifice of two goats to ensure the safety of the coming flights. I could not understand how one could be in the presence of such human ingenuity as a large metallic craft that can fly through the air and still think they have to please some whimsical being by killing two goats in order to be safe. In my humble opinion, belief in a god downplays all of humanities accomplishments. Look how far our species has come! It is this reason that I dislike the beginnings of every Thanksgiving dinner.

At Thanksgiving your family likely sits down at the dinner table as mine does. Before you is a grand feast, the likes of which you probably haven't experienced since last Thanksgiving. This food came from all over the world; it was raised or grown using methods that have been developed and refined by humans over hundreds of years. So refined are our methods for growing and raising food that we can manufacture food for humans all over the globe. Afterward, the food is harvested and loaded into trucks which are also a product of human ingenuity. The food is then taken to the appropriate processing facility where more technological development is rampant and always improving. We have learned enough about our environment that within these facilities we can detect and kill microorganisms living in our food that we can't even see! This in turn has contributed to our life expectancy increasing drastically over the last several hundred years. Once the food undergoes all the processing necessary it is packaged appropriately so as to prevent contamination and shipped all over the world.

It is so easy to forget about how far we've come when you get in your car, drive to the store, and come home with a turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, stuffing, cornbread, dinner rolls, butter, milk, chips and dip, croutons, lettuce, ranch dressing, etc etc etc... And all of that can be done in under an hour. God didn't make that feast. WE DID! God didn't make the soil fertile for the farmers, WE DID! God didn't adjust the diets of farm animals to help raise nutritious food, WE DID! God didn't protect you from getting sick from your food, WE DID! Our accomplishments are vast and yet it is so easy to forget about all of that and thank God for the feast in front of us. We are amazing creatures. Most will argue at this point that we are amazing because God made us that way. Well, at that point it becomes a matter of opinion once again. Some people choose to make the jump from an unanswered question about life to a faith-based answer involving God. Others like myself enjoy the mystery and prefer the intellectually honest answer of "we simply don't yet know."

That is why I am an Atheist. I don't have an agenda other than I choose not to believe anything on faith. I take nothing at face value. I utilize the power of critical thinking and the scientific method to make my decisions. Why am I telling you all this? Because I love to express myself, even if that expression upsets those I am close to. Change can only occur in persons desiring change, therefore the only thing I can do is be an example of an Atheist that lives a perfectly happy life and has good moral values despite the absence of religious belief. I try to be as fair and understanding as possible while still expressing myself and what I believe/disbelieve. Now you see what true Atheism is all about. It is just a choice; one that does not require anyone else to agree. Sure, my bias rests with me wishing other people felt as I do, but I do not seek to convert anyone. I only want to grease those mental cogs a little. If nothing else, at least you can see my perspective and perhaps understand my position just a little better.

Thanks for reading.

- Alex
The Utah Skeptic