Arc Tangent

Inspired by this arti­cle: http://​blogs​.usato​day​.com/​o​p​e​d​/​2​0​0​8​/​1​1​/​a​t​h​e​i​s​m​-​a​-​p​o​s​i​t​.​h​tml

(A refresh­ingly pos­i­tive treat­ment of athe­ism by an appar­ently reli­gious author (Krat­ten­maker writes pro­lif­i­cally on reli­gion in pub­lic life) — though I can’t find any place where he overtly declares his own reli­gious stance.)

Read­ing the com­ments on the arti­cle (always a mis­take) is a scary expe­ri­ence. The utter non­sense some peo­ple believe entirely whole-​heartedly and with the very best of inten­tions is enough to make my eyes water.

It’s inter­est­ing to see the pre­vail­ing under­stand­ing of Athe­ism in action, too. Most believ­ers seem to think of athe­ism as “com­pletely deny­ing the exis­tence of a supreme being”. My own under­stand­ing of our (athe­ists’) usual stance is that we accept the pos­si­bil­ity, how­ever remote, of an omni­scient, omnipresent cre­ator of some descrip­tion — but we find the prob­a­bil­ity so very unlikely, and the required proof so very extra­or­di­nary, and so far have seen noth­ing that would con­vince us of the exis­tence of such a being.

Athe­ism (for me) isn’t a belief, it’s just a stance that says “insuf­fi­cient evi­dence, I choose not to alter the way I live my life on that basis”. I don’t believe blindly in any­thing; and you’ve yet to show me con­vinc­ing evi­dence that your brand of reli­gion is correct.

It’s not about destroy­ing or tear­ing things down. I say you’re free to have your own (non-​harmful-​to-​others) beliefs, how­ever unrea­soned I might con­sider them to be, save on two scores:

• The sep­a­ra­tion of Church and State — no piece of leg­is­la­tion should ever be purely reli­giously or purely ide­o­log­i­cally moti­vated. ‘Tra­di­tion’ is never an excuse. Leg­is­la­tion and gov­ern­ment deci­sions should be rea­soned, con­sid­ered and take into account the deeper ram­i­fi­ca­tions of their pass­ing. California’s Propo­si­tion 8 (the ban on gay mar­riage), I’m look­ing at you.
• Brain­wash­ing of Chil­dren — most reli­gions teach that it is essen­tial to indoc­tri­nate chil­dren in those teach­ings. While some par­ents are good edu­ca­tors, and open their chil­drens’ eyes to other pos­si­bil­i­ties and allow them to make up their own minds (which is totally awe­some), more often than not the child is taught that “this is the truth, the whole of the truth, and any­one who chal­lenges you to think oth­er­wise is a hate­ful per­son” — young minds, blink­ered to the pos­si­bil­i­ties. In my book, it’s com­pletely unac­cept­able to stunt a devel­op­ing mind thus.

(Edit: Obvi­ously, if your reli­gious beliefs moti­vate you to kill, hurt or in any way incon­ve­nience or detain oth­ers, we’re going to have issues.)

I was lucky on the last point to have par­ents who allowed me to be well-​read and chal­lenge those assump­tions, who weren’t afraid to say “I don’t know how to answer that” when they hon­estly couldn’t answer — and a grand­fa­ther who, despite being heav­ily reli­gious him­self, encour­aged me to study the facts and belief sys­tems before me and make my own mind up.

So there we are. I’m pub­li­cally “out”, on the inter­tubes. I’m an athe­ist, and proud of it. :)