Atheism

What is Atheism?

Atheism is the positive disbelief in the existence of any God or gods. The word comes from the Greek a ('without') and theos ('deity'). Atheism is an active philosophy - it is not based on laziness or ignorance, but rather on a practical examination of the facts and history surrounding deity worship and belief. Just because one does not give any god an active role in one's life does not necessarily make one an Atheist. Atheism requires you to come to the complete realisation that there is no god.

Agnosticism is the claim that mankind cannot know whether or not a deity exists, or what the nature of that deity might be.

Atheism is not to be confused with Satanism, despite what some fundamentalist Theists and Deists might say.

Why be an Atheist?

The simple answer is that there is no reason to believe that any deity exists.

The whole concept of gods has been handed down to us from our ancient ancestors, who speculated that they were responsible for events that could not be explained- everything from the creation of existence to why it rained. As our knowledge of how the universe works has steadily increased over time, more and more events could be explained without having to resort to the powers of a hypothetical deity.

Ask someone 'rational' why they believe in God, and the answer invariably comes down to something like: " Someone or something must have created existence: this is God. "Then the obvious question to ask is what or who created this God? "God always was", is the usual reply.

Firstly, there is no reason to believe that existence has a creator, but more about that later. The most obvious flaw in the above argument is the notion that the Universe must have been created by something, yet God did not.

Even just taking this comment on a surface level, it is hypocritical: If God could always exist, why not the Universe? If one is willing to accept the concept of infinite existence of something, why would there be any need to invoke God?

Therefore this argument does not prove a need for God in rational terms.

Also, if God were to have created the universe, it would have had to exist before it.

The Theory of Relativity, (for which there is much rational proof as to it's validity), shows that time and space are inseparable. This means that both time and space must have been created together. The Big Bang Theory (another theory for which there is a massive amount of rational evidence to support it) shows that all existence; space, time, matter and energy emanated from one event that occurred about 10 to 20 thousand million years ago. It is important to note that time itself was created at this event, therefore there was no 'before the big bang', therefore no possibility of something or someone starting it.

As mentioned earlier, there is no reason to suppose that existence has a creator.

It is of course true to say that no one knows for sure what happened in the first few seconds of the big bang, let alone how or why it occurred. But our ignorance on these matters is no reason to go and claim that an intelligent omnipotent omnipresent entity was responsible for it . Just because we do not understand a phenomenon, does not mean that it is the work of some deity.

Asking a 'fundamentalist' why they believe in God is an entirely different matter. If you ask this question to a fundamentalist Christian, they will undoubtably spout Biblical 'evidence', and so on through all the World's religions and all their holy books. It is impossible to rationally argue with a fundamentalist on the non-existence of god, or indeed the validity of any specific part of his/her belief structure, simply because fundamentalism starts out from the irrational point that their holy book contains the truth simply because God speaks through it's pages. I will take Christianity as an example. Ask a fundamentalist Christian why they believe in God, and they will tell you that the Bible tells us that God exists. Then ask them why do they believe in what the Bible says, as opposed to something like the Hindu Vedas, and they will tell you that the bible contains the word of God, and that the Vedas are hoaxes. They will argue in circles, unable to give a rational answer to either question about the existence of God or the validity of the Bible without referring to the other issue.

The deeper reason behind their belief is the concept of 'faith'. Faith, it is claimed, needs no rational evidence: one simply knows something to be the case. In religious terms, people who have faith in the belief of God are not swayed by rational arguments to the contrary. The whole idea of faith is so irrational in itself that to use it to attempt to prove the existence of a deity defies reasonable belief.

Many people claim that their faith came about when they 'felt the presence of God' , often at a time of distress or hardship. This kind of personal 'evidence' is impossible to verify. Psychologists know for a fact that in many cases the mind builds up natural defences to protect us from the mental damage of certain situations, such as illness, bereavement, and destitution. It is therefore a much more logical assumption to say that 'presence' is the work of the mind, and not of a hypothetical deity. This argument, in common with most situations where one is arguing against an irrational premise, would probably hold little sway over someone who claims to have 'felt the presence of God', but that does not take away from it's rational validity.

The fact remains that of all the religions of the world that claim to preach the truth, at the very most only one of them can be true. That means, in real terms, that at least all but one of the 'Holy' books is a lie. Since none of them, with all their diverse and opposing claims, has any proof to it's validity other than faith and claims made within the book in question, there is no rational reason to believe that any of them represent the truth.