I’m Just A Little More Atheistic Than You
In recorded history, there have been 2870 deities. I don’t believe in any of them. Followers of the monotheistic religions, which include Christianity, Islam and many more, don’t believe in 2869 of them. Everyone’s an atheist, I (and my fellow “atheists”) just go one god further.
The word atheist is a strange one. Why is there a word for someone who doesn’t believe in something? I don’t believe in Santa, but I’m not described as an “a-santa-ist”. Likewise, I’m not an a-tooth-fairy-ist or an a-Easter-bunny-ist.
An argument Christians seem to love throwing at me is that the atheist world view isn’t very nice. Their story promises an afterlife of sunshine, lollipops and rainbows (if you’re well behaved of course); ours offers nothing of the sort!
Being a nice story (itself debatable) doesn’t make it true.
But our story, namely evolution, is actually pretty astounding. It’s exquisitely beautiful. There’s nothing morbid about evolution. It’s perfect. And what’s more, it has been proven beyond an exceedingly high degree of reasonable doubt.
I was brought up a Catholic, I’ve been put through all the bizarre ceremonies, I went to a Catholic grammar school. I’m qualified to debate this. My parents never shoved it down my throat like a lot of Christians do. They allowed room for my own thoughts. They don’t believe, not really, but their generation weren’t as free to challenge it as mine are.
Religion is not a private affair, as it should be. It is just a school subject, a box to tick, a reason to hate your neighbour, a reason for war. It’s a comfort to the ignorant and the foolish.
More people have died in the name of religion (and for a huge majority, that was Christianity) than anything else. A quick Google search brings up the horrifying number of 800 million. All but a handful of wars in human history were because of religion. Of these, an estimated 15 million have been executed in the name of Christ. You know, pagans, non-believers and witches. That’s a conservative estimate.
And you thought the holocaust was bad.
Then there’s physics. Theists claim that anything as intricate and magnificent as the universe couldn’t have come about out of chance. It must have had a creator.
Okay, so who created that creator?
Faith is a bullshit word. It means nothing. Claiming that “you just know” is ridiculous. The idea isn’t just inherent in you, your parents and your teachers told you so. As their parents and teachers told them. As a child, your parents’ word is gospel (a delicate choice of word). At that age, you have no reason to question it, nor do you possess the capacity to do so.
Wake up!
I’m Just A Little More Atheistic Than You was originally published in The Precipice on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.