Introduction

I am an atheist, I have no belief in any of the thousands of deities that millions of other people sincerely believe in.
You, however, may well do, and I respect that. I respect your right to believe whatever you wish, be it Sikhism, Christianity, Judaism, Odinism, Islam, Hinduism, Wicca or whatever.

I respect your right to believe it, I just don't respect what it is that you actually believe in - I think it is superstitious and irrational. I believe that the good that is brought about by religious belief is far outweighed by the corruption, hypocrisy, bigotry, ignorance, intolerance, violence, credulity and actual physical and mental damage that it creates, directly or indirectly. (This is not why I do not believe, but why I consider religious belief to be a Bad Thing.)

This page has several functions:
it is intended to help open the minds of people who have been brought up to believe in some form of religious dogma. If your beliefs cannot stand up to reasonable questioning, why should you hang onto them?

It is also intended to be an introduction to atheism for those who don't know what it is (or have been misinformed) and a useful resource for those who do. I would like to set the record straight over certain issues, deflate various untruths, give my (humble) opinions on various matters and provide links to other sites that you may find helpful.

If you are having trouble with any of the concepts I present here, feel free to contact me for further explanation. Constructive criticism of this site is also welcome.

What is atheism?

There seem to be many misconceptions about what an atheist is and is not, and what atheists do and do not believe.
Although the following will not apply to all atheists, I feel it gives a general overview of atheism:

  • An atheist, quite simply, has no belief in any deity. ("A-Theist" = "Without Theism")

  • Atheism is not, in any possible sense of the word, a religion. It is the total freedom from religion.

  • An atheist is not, by definition, a pagan, a satanist, a communist or un-patriotic.

  • Atheists do not hate God or Jesus, they simply do not believe in the existence of God or the divinity of Jesus (or anyone else, for that matter). Christians, for example, do not believe in the Hindu God Ganesh - that is not the same as hating Ganesh, is it? Disbelieving or disagreeing is not the same as hating.

  • Atheists do not believe in God for many of the same reasons that they (and theists) do not believe in leprechauns, unicorns or the Gods of other religions.

  • Atheists are not amoral. You don't need a Holy Book to tell you what is Right and Wrong. Compassion, reason and experience serve perfectly adequately.

  • "Atheism" only tells you what a person does not believe. Atheists have wildly different views on many topics, and may only agree with each other when it comes to the subject of religion. Some atheists are Secular Humanists (myself included) which does give an indication of what they believe, or their stance on a particular idea.

  • Some Christians think atheists somehow make a special effort not to believe in Jehovah and Jesus in particular. Nope. They are just two among thousands of gods we don't believe in, there's nothing special about them from an atheist's point of view. Atheism is not the opposite of Christianity - it's the absence of theism.

  • Atheists are not servants of Satan, nor do we worship him. Atheists consider Satan (and similar beings) to be just another mythical entity, and no more believe in him than, for instance, a Christian believes in the devils of other religions. Also, many atheists devote a lot of their time to doing good in the world - recognising that there is no help "from above", it is up to humans to solve our own problems.

Positive, negative or agnostic?

Atheists do not always assert that God does not exist. There are two broad categories of atheism -

"Positive" (or "strong" or "hard") atheism and "Negative" (or "weak" or "soft") atheism.

A "Positive atheist" will say "God X does not exist", whereas a "Negative atheist" will say "I do not believe God X exists" - there is a subtle but important difference.

Some (if not all) agnostics may also be considered "negative atheists", as they are not theists (there is an overlap between agnosticism and weak atheism). Agnostics (it means "without knowledge") consider the question of God to be unanswerable - there may be a God, or there may not, but we have no way of ever determining the truth of the matter. Occasionally atheists will refer to themselves as agnostics - the term is often more socially acceptable in a strongly religious region, as some theists have an extremely negative view of atheism and automatically assume that all atheists are "positive" atheists.

Depending on the definition of the God in question, the atheist may be either "positive", "negative" or agnostic. Many theists will also have the same reaction towards the deities of other religions. For example, if you give a self-contradictory definition of your God, I will say that it certainly does not exist (like a square circle), but if some group on the other side of the world has a God that I have never even heard of, I am still atheistic towards it as I simply have no belief in it. In that sense, many Christians are also atheists - they just believe in one more God than I do.

Picking on Christians?

Many people have asked why I "attack" the Christian religion in particular. Quite simply, I know more about it than I do about other religions. I live in the U.K., which is predominantly Christian. If I lived in an Islamic or Hindu country, I would probably be using those religions as my point of reference instead. It's all quite arbitrary. I do not hate Christians (and other theists), or consider them to be stupid or inferior. Most of the people I know (friends and family included) are Christians of one sort or another. Many of the issues I raise do relate directly to the Christian mythology, but I feel that the points they make can also be applied most other religions. As I learn more about the other religions, I may well include articles specific to them - although I have better things to do with my time than study religion =).

 

 

Further reading