“Why can’t some people just see the truth?” How not to behave as an atheist

As my first blog I hope this is clear, entertaining and that it stimulates response. It is not my intention to upset or malign anyone.

Before getting on with the business of how to behave as an atheist, I thought perhaps a short introduction would be helpful. I could think of nothing more appropriate than an account of how I became convinced that God does not exist. Along the way I want to define a few words so that my meaning will be understood later. Perhaps I should start with the big one.

The observant reader will notice that I capitalised the word God. I write this in a nominally Christian county and from a background firmly fixed in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Throughout the blog I will refer to the monotheistic God of the three Abrahamic faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. I hope I will be forgiven for presuming that my disbelief in any other deity or pantheon is understood.

Another definition I believe is essential is that of Atheist. Open any English dictionary and you will find something similar to the following; ‘a person who believes that God does not exist’. This is fine as far as it goes but it begs the question, which god? I have partly answered this above but it needs to be pinned down a little more.

Belief in the Abrahamic God is called Theism, that is a belief in a god which interacts with his creation and with mankind. This is very different from Deism, which is a belief in a divine creator of the universe but one which does not interact, in any noticeable way, with his creation. (When referring to God I will use He as a convenient pronoun. No gender is assigned or implied). It is today widely accepted the The Founding Fathers of the USA were all Deists. They understood the power of religion and made it clear the there should be a separation of church and state. Something modern America would do well to keep in mind. But I digress.

That’s enough dry academic stuff for now. Let me tell you about how I became an atheist and how I moved past it.

From my present day perspective I can see that I was fortunate indeed in my choice of parents and my country of birth. Had I not shown foresight rare in the unborn, I may have come into the world in a very different situation. I may have been born in an Islamic country to observant Muslims, or in The Bible Belt of America to staunch Christians. Either way, and in a host of other similar possibilities, I would almost certainly have been brought up strictly according to the faith of my parents and imbued with the faith driven culture in which they lived. Had such been the case it is extremely unlikely that I would be writing this.

My parents were nominally Christian and, if pressed, they would have described themselves as Church Of England. The English church began as a way of allowing a king to divorce and remarry. It adopted Protestantism to separate it from Papal rule, went through many years of conflict with Catholicism and struggled with Puritanism, but today it is more like a social club than a religion. There is none of the fervour shown by other Christian sects or indeed other religions. That is not to say that C of E followers are not serious about God but only that, in typical British fashion, they prefer not to be terribly strident about it. Indeed, British people tend to look upon outward displays of emotion with some discomfort.

So it was that I grew up knowing I was a Christian and, irregularly, attending Sunday school, but understanding that my faith was a private thing, to be trotted out on Sundays or at weddings, Christenings and funerals, where I sang hymns with gusto, but it was not to form an active part of my life.

This lack of passion in matters of religion made it easier for me to handle a change which occurred when I was in my teens. Like many young people I was looking for a sense of identity. I flirted with gangs but I was never truly convinced that being a skinhead was the answer to life’s ineffable mysteries. And then, during a brief venture into genealogy, I discovered a Jewish heritage in my family tree. It mattered not to me that Jews place emphasis on the matriarchal line and that it was my Father’s family who had been Jewish only two generation before; I was a Jew. It was something I could be proud of. Different enough to be radical, to a working class teenager in middle England, with an added frisson of danger due to Arab-Israeli conflict and with the right to display my righteous indignation at the Holocaust, should anyone care to listen.

I embraced Judaism with the passion of a convert, much to my parent’s displeasure. They had nothing against Jews but they had lived through the Second World War and had witnessed anti-Semitism, before I even knew the word, and they did not want their son suffering such treatment over what they hoped would be a short-lived phase.

I purchased a copy of the Tanach, the Christian Old Testament but with the books in their original order, before the church of Rome decided it knew best. I had a Torah, the first five books of Moses and I even, very briefly, dipped into the Babylonian Talmud, the immense volumes of commentary and discussion based on study of the Torah and designed to answer questions about how what was written should be applied to day to day issues. I wore a skull cap and a prayer shawl on the Sabbath and I even nailed the Mezzuzah to the frame of our front door, for which my Father was grateful, of course. For those who don’t know, the Mezzuzah is a small metal container which holds a tiny scroll bearing a Hebrew prayer, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your resources…...” I won’t take up space here with the whole thing.

I met regularly with a Rabbi, with whom I discussed my intention to convert and who, as he was obliged to do, tried to talk me out of it. Although orthodox Jews do not accept converts, reform and modern Jews do, but they make it difficult, in order to discourage anyone with any uncertainty. I was not discouraged and I eventually undertook the full immersion baptism to make me a Jew. It was only a short time later that my life took another turn.

My first job was working for the local government as an administrator and after two years there I had been promised a promotion, as a reward for overseeing the computerisation of my section without an increase in pay. When the task was completed the role of department head was given to the area manager’s secretary and, with the fire of youth in my belly, I marched into his office, spoke of favouritism and injustice and told him right where he could shove his job. Then I went home, cooled down and realised that I was unemployed and, because I had resigned voluntarily, I was not entitled to state benefits.

Later, whilst glancing through the Situations Vacant column of the newspaper, I came across something that immediately interested me and filled me with a sense of God’s purpose. It was an advertisement for young people to come and work and live on a Kibbutz in Israel. I didn’t even have to think about it. I applied and shortly thereafter was accepted. Only then did I tell my parents.

There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth but I would not be dissuaded. A month later I was on a plane headed for the promised land.

This is not the place to go into depth about my two years living in Israel but I do need to relate one of the most important things I encountered and how it changed my life completely. I had arrived thinking that my discovery of a Jewish heritage, my conversion, the heated end of my employment and the advert for new Kibbutzim were all meant to be and that I was part of something bigger. Should I say divine plan? Well I was still a teenager. What I did not expect and what initially shocked me, was that virtually no-one on the kibbutz was religious. To them, being Jewish was much more than a religion. It was a history, a culture, a shared experience and, in Zionism, a political movement dedicated to growing the Jewish homeland. In reality they had no time for religious zeal; they were too busy.

I didn’t know what to make of the attitude of the Sabra’s, the native born Israelis named after a local fruit which had a soft core protected by a hard outer skin. I was irritated by their good natured ribbing of my beliefs and I was confused. As the months went by I too became bound up with the harsh realities of life on a communal farm only yards from the border with Syria and my religious convictions began to waver. I remember wondering how Jews, a people actually living their faith and so different from the church of my childhood, could be so pragmatic and even careless about their relationship with God. I began to question.

Strangely, it was my deep conviction that Judaism was the way that ultimately led to me replacing faith with reason. I had read my Bible as a child and my Torah as a teen but now, in my early twenties, I read with a more critical eye. And I saw so much inconsistency and so much which I struggled to accept. I sought out books on biblical study and interpretation to shore up my beliefs and I found them unconvincing. I read authors with a totally opposite view and, slowly, they began to make sense.

The philosopher Bertrand Russell’s book, ‘Why I’m not a Christian’ had a huge impact on me. I later saw him interviewed on TV and his succinct answer to the question as to why he was not a Christian has stayed with me.

“Because I see no evidence whatever for any of the Christian dogmas. I have examined all the stock arguments for the existence of God and none of them seem to me to be logically valid”.

That appeal to logic is what really fascinated me. Despite not being particularly assiduous in my school work, as an adult I have always enjoyed learning and I developed logical, critical thinking quite naturally. Something else Russell said in the same interview neatly described my own experience.

“I never decided that I didn’t want to remain a believer”.

Like Russell, I never made a conscious choice. The more I read and the more critical was my thinking, the more it became impossible for me to continue believing something which was clearly without evidence. I finally saw that the holy books of Judaism and Christianity were works of faith and not history. Myth and legend, not fact. At this point I was unable to dispute with believers but I knew I could no longer hold to something I viewed as man made fiction.

So, I was now a non-believer. At first I was more agnostic than atheist, but that was really only down to me being uncomfortable with finally turning my back on something which had been so integral to my life. Over the next few years I read more and more material from both sides of the argument and my stance finally became entrenched as not just atheist but anti-theist. Not only did I not believe, I was appalled at what God supposedly did, condoned and actually ordered done. It was from this position that I became a militant atheist.

With the passion I had once devoted to religion, I became an activist in what I saw as the fight against the evils of religion. I missed no opportunity to argue my cause, nor was I polite or respectful in my methods. Looking back now I am ashamed of my behaviour. I had been raised to be respectful of everyone unless and until they proved themselves unworthy. Sad to say, I saw believers as, at best, fools and, at worst, liars and manipulators. Thankfully, I eventually moved beyond this unpleasantness.

As the years passed I mellowed. I came to see that believers were, in the main, good people who were as convinced of their position as I was of mine. Moreover, I had to admit that I could no more prove that God did not exist than they could prove he did. I continued to campaign but I did so in a more gentle fashion and I withheld my vitriol for those who clearly abused their position, such as paedophile priests, the Roman church telling Africans in danger of contracting HIV that condoms were evil and Catholic priests in Rwanda who actively called for genocide from the pulpit. There are many other examples.

I found that reading Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennet, Sam Harris and others reinforced my intellectual understanding of the argument whilst easing me away from needing to fight every battle.

Today I think very differently. For one thing, I no longer call myself an atheist. The concept is not mine but I decided I did not wish to be defined by a negative. There are many things I don’t believe in but I do not feel it necessary to describe myself in terms of what I do not believe. Instead I have adopted Humanism. Without using God as an excuse, a crutch or a scape-goat it falls to us to be responsible for our actions and inaction, in terms of man’s inhumanity to man and how we treat the planet.

I now look back down the telescope of my own life and see an evolution in my thinking. I cannot say whether where I am now is where I will remain, but I am comfortable that I am able to discuss religion and faith objectively and calmly. I am better able to formulate my argument without descending into disrespect and insult and without belittling those who believe. Indeed, I find it strange that so many atheists are so easily led into unattractive diatribe and poor behaviour. I am more inclined to accept it from believers, who often feel their very personal relationship with God is threatened and who respond to that threat emotionally. But many atheists consider themselves to be enlightened. They are supposed to be the ones who see more clearly. How then can such people justify speaking insults and being, at times, deeply unpleasant?

I would like to ask all non-believers to be civil; to hold the moral high ground, to use logic and calm intellectual argument rather than anger or insults and to allow reason to triumph over superstition by force of argument and not by force of personality.