Why do people become atheists?
I spend a fair bit of time listening to what atheists have to say. I think it’s important for Christians to understand what others say and to really listen to the opinions of others.
There is something I find very interesting about why people declare themselves atheists. Some seem to have reasoned things out for themselves and taken that step of saying that they don’t believe there is a god, but the vast majority don’t take that reasoned approach. Of course they do try to make reasoned arguments but ultimately their declaration that there is no god stems from two assumptions. I’m not saying any of this to attack anyone – by the way – I’m not interested in name calling but I am interested in finding the truth.
The first of these, it seems to me, is that a great number of atheists assume that atheism is somehow the natural result of being intelligent. “How can anyone who is clever believe in all that superstition?”, they might well want to claim. They assume that religious belief is something that poor uneducated peasants believe in. The kind of thing that a Granny might believe because she didn’t get a proper education and likes to think the world is all lovely and fluffy. Or the kind of thing a country yokel, who also believes that drinking cider and dancing around a tree drives away the evil spirits to ensure a good harvest, might believe. But that belief in god is not for the more sophisticated and educated city dweller.
The thing is that this is all assumption and just plain rubbish. There are plenty of very intelligent people who believe in god. I’ve got a bit of paper somewhere from an I.Q. test I once had to endure (took 6 hours I seem to remember) that declares that I’m a pretty intelligent person myself (modesty prevents me from saying how high) and yet I’m convinced that there is a God. I can also appeal to many very intelligent people who are convinced that god exists, whoever that god might be (I’m not arguing for a Christian view of god here but just a view that there is a god).
There does seem to be a certain anti-god snobbishness in certain academic circles but this is often based on prejudice more than any evidence or argument.
This comes out in the claim by some atheists that theists (those who do believe in god) have to prove their belief where a-theists don’t. However an atheist can’t assume the non-existence of god and then say that theists have to prove it – both sides need to have good reason to say what they do. A-theism is a truth ‘claim’ just as much as theism.
I’d better get back to subject because this could get to be a very involved discussion for a blog.
The other assumption that is often made is based on bad experience with an organised religion. Something like ‘I don’t believe in god because I hate organised religion – after all look at all the wars it has caused’, etc. Or it might stem from a bad religious school experience, or perhaps a bad vicar/priest/minister, or even an over zealous evangelist, or even worse a corrupt evangelist. It doesn’t take a clever person (or perhaps it does) to see that anger at organised religion doesn’t prove that there is no god. The best you should be able to come up from this is that you hate god because his followers make you angry.
The first thing to point out is that it isn’t the fault of organised religion that some people in a religion (and sometimes even the leaders) turn out to be nasty, despicable people. If we took this line then we would have to also hate organised sport, organised politics, organised education, organised news reporting (e.g. newspapers), organised businesses, organised holidays, organised families, organised anything. It isn’t because something is organised that makes it bad but sometimes people abuse that organisation for their own ends.
Everyone in an organised religion hates the fact that some people have abused their position in that organisation for their own ends. In that sense we don’t like organised religion any more than anyone else does- but you see sometimes being organised can help.
Schools, for example, come out of organised religion and if their was no organisation their would be no schools (same goes for Universities). What about hospitals? What about helping the homeless? What about charitable works? All these and many more stem from organised religion.
Of course I can’t claim that no one would ever have come up with the idea without organised religion but there is plenty of history to show that organised religion played a key role in pioneering many good things which we often take for granted.
Bad things do not stem from organised religion but we who are a part of it (that is organised religion) need to work hard to make sure that corrupt people don’t get the chance to abuse the organisation for their own agendas.
Anyway if you are someone who claims not to believe in god: a) because you think intelligent people don’t – please think again because this is simply not true, or b) because an encounter with a crackpot organised religious group has made you angry – please think again because the majority of those in organised religions are really quite good people.
If you are going to claim to be atheist then you need better reasons that these.