50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God (18 page)

By the way, not that name dropping proves anything, but this
"immoral" atheism crowd that many believers love to hate includes
many notable figures who seem like fairly respectable people. Here
are just a few: Thomas Edison, Ernest Hemingway, Isaac Asimov,
Noam Chomsky, Mark Twain, James D. Watson, Bill Gates, Warren
Buffet, Steven Hawking, and Carl Sagan. Are these evil people? Are
these people you wouldn't want to hire or have as neighbors? Are they
fools who have never done good, as the Bible claims about all nonbelievers?

No matter how illogical and unfair it may be, atheists do not find
easy or broad acceptance in strongly religious countries such as the
United States, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan. But it is important to
keep in mind that this has nothing to do with whether or not gods exist.
Some believers make the mistake of assessing truth by measuring pop ularity. Yes, atheism is not fashionable and atheists sometimes have to
watch their back. But this is about who is prejudiced, not who is on the
right side of reality. This is about being different. This is like the high
school in-crowd determining who is cool and who is not. It's the
majority looking down their collective noses at yet another minority.
Without a doubt, future generations will shake their heads and wonder
how such an attitude could ever have existed.

Perhaps some of the prejudice can be explained by believers misreading how atheists view their gods. Contrary to what many believers
think, atheists do not insult or fight against anyone's god. They don't
reject anyone's god. Atheists can't do any of this because for them
gods do not exist. Atheists are not believers who choose not to worship a god. They are not people who have decided to hate a god. Atheists are people who do not believe any gods exist. How can one insult
something that does not exist? How can atheists fight against something they do not think is there? Yes, some atheists might insult
believers or strongly oppose a religion, but these are significantly different things from directing rage or rudeness toward a real god. Atheists, by definition, can only take issue with the belief people have in
gods. Nonbelievers do not see themselves as the enemies of gods.
They can't be because atheists are waiting to be convinced that the
gods are even there.

A humorous side of prejudice against atheists is that believers are
atheists too! Yes, every person on earth-including every believer-is
a nonbeliever to a degree. For example, the Christian is a nonbeliever,
just like all those atheists they don't trust, when it comes to the Hindu
gods. Christians are skeptical of the claims of Hinduism and conclude
that all those gods were simply made up by people long ago. Christians are hardcore atheists on this matter, despite the fact that Hinduism is much older than Christianity, has a billion confident
believers, can cite ancient writings in support of its claims, and has
countless stories of miracles and life-changing events that Hindus
credit their gods for.

Muslims are staunch nonbelievers when it comes to Jesus being a god. Muslims declare loud and clear that their god never had a son.
They take note of the absence of evidence and conclude that the resurrection story is fiction. More than a billion Muslims are atheistic
toward Jesus, despite the claims of miracles, ancient writings in support, and all the miracles and life-changing experiences that Christians
credit Jesus for.

Believers might benefit from asking themselves why it is they do
not accept the claims of other religions. Why are they so much more
skeptical of beliefs other than their own? If they apply their critical
thinking and skepticism equally, believers may discover an entirely
new perspective on their religion. Remember, both the believer and
the atheist are doubters. They reject many gods alike. The only difference is that the atheist went all the way and left no god unchallenged.

Edgell, Penny, Joseph Gerteis, and Douglas Hartmann. "Atheists as `Other':
Moral Boundaries and Cultural Membership in American Society."
American Sociological Review 71, no. 2 (2006): 211-34.

Head, Tom, ed. Conversations with Carl Sagan. University of Mississippi,
2006. Great selection of interviews and speeches by Carl Sagan.

Hitler, Adolf. Mein Kampf. Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999.

Martin, Michael, ed. The Cambridge Companion To Atheism. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007. An excellent collection of articles
and essays on nonbelief.

If this is the best God can do, I'm not impressed.

-George Carlin

othing provokes deep thoughts on life and death like an exhibition of skinless corpses in creative poses. I caught up with
the touring Body Worlds exhibit at the Chicago's Museum of Science
and Industry. As I expected, it was both fascinating and educational.
But I was surprised that it ignited a philosophical flashfire within my
mind.

I had never seen the human body presented like this before and it
took me for a wild ride. Thanks to Gunther von Hagens's patented
plastination process, lifelike dead people stood within arm's reach, no
display-case glass between us, no clothes, and no more guessing about
what a human liver really looks like. These were not textbook-style,
unnatural anatomy displays. These exhibits weren't designed to collect dust and put pre-med students to sleep. I was wandering among
the most creative collection of corpses ever assembled. These were
interesting people who just happened to be dead and missing their
skin. Their poses seemed anything but posed. They ran, played chess,
rode horses, kicked soccer balls. Some were split apart to allow for
easy viewing of internal organs. Who knew dead people could be so
lively? (Note: Body Worlds' creator, Gunther von Hagens, denies ever knowingly using the bodies of executed Chinese prisoners for his
shows, something a rival company reportedly has done. Von Hagens's
Web site claims there is a donor roster of 8,688 individuals hoping to
have their bodies plastinated and displayed in a Body Worlds show
after their death.)

I suspect that many believers who visit a Body Worlds exhibit see
it as a confirmation of their claim that the human body is the magical
creation of an artistic god. I can understand their feelings; I was close
to being seduced by the body's "divine design" too. So many organs
doing so many jobs. Bones and muscles work in harmony to stand,
walk, run, and jump. The vast and complex network of blood vessels.
The heart that never sleeps. The brain's ability to store data and its
infinite power of imagination. How can all of this have "just happened" naturally with no help from a god? It's a fair question and no
believer should ever be faulted for asking it. Looking at the bodies of
Body Worlds helped to open my eyes to the view many believers hold
about the connection between the human body and their gods. Without
a basic understanding of evolution, something most people don't have,
nothing but a god can explain these magnificent machines. Any scientist or science literate person who turns snobbish and dismissive of
those who see a god's work in the human body might consider that
they probably would hold the same view if they had not been fortunate
enough to learn about evolution. Yes, the human body can be easily
recognized as the product of millions of years of evolution-but only
if one has a basic biology education first. Short of that, a god seems
like the only sensible answer.

The controversy over teaching evolution in the United States, and
the popularity of creationism in that nation, has been well reported in
the media; but what about the entire continent of Africa? What percentage of children there get a competent education about the biological history of life on earth? What about the Middle East? South
America? The Caribbean? Probably the overwhelming majority of
children on earth in any given year never hear a single word about
human evolution. No wonder millions of people can't imagine how nature could be responsible for the complexity of the human body.
They have no idea of the age of the earth and its life. They know
nothing of genetic mutations and natural selection. I certainly never
heard anything about evolution throughout my education in American
public schools during the 1970s. Never once was human evolution
mentioned, much less taught, in my classes. Through twelve years of
elementary, middle, and high school, not one teacher ever told me
about the Australopithecus, Homo erectus, or Neanderthal. Nobody
bothered to mention how my ancestors shaped stones into tools and
tamed fire. No one ever told me the story of humankind's great walk
out of Africa to populate the globe. Today, I look back and feel
cheated. I should have been taught what science has learned about
who I am and where I came from. Fortunately, I made up for lost time
and learned about human evolution on my own and in university
anthropology classes. But what about all my friends and classmates
from elementary school through high school who never did learn what
human evolution is all about? They probably still have never heard
about Olduvia Gorge, the Leakey family, or Charles Darwin's voyage
aboard the HMS Beagle. Most Americans today wouldn't know a
Homo ergaster cranium from their own. So when they hear about their
ancestors and the evolutionary trail that led to them, they reject it as
absurd. It's preposterous because they don't understand it. And in most
cases the reason they don't know anything about evolution is because
no one ever bothered to teach it to them. It's not entirely their fault.
Their teachers, schools, school boards, and government failed them.
No one should be surprised that half of the American population
rejects evolution because it is easy to dismiss something you don't
know anything about.

Around the age of ten, I stumbled across a book called Early Man
(Howell 1965). It was loaded with great photos and artwork. I was fascinated by this story of human origins. I was amazed to learn that my
ancestors lived in Africa, that they made stone chopping tools more
than a million years ago, and competed against other hominid species
who lived alongside them. What made it even more exciting was that this story had actual evidence; fossils you could see for yourself. And
the scientists even admitted that they didn't know all the answers.
They were still learning the story. It all seemed so sensible and
respectable. It was believable.

Inspired by that book, I made my own stone tools in the backyard.
I studied photographs of chopper tools and tried to reproduce them
perfectly. I remember feeling uncomfortably inferior to my Homo
erectus forebears because my tools never turned out quite as impressively as theirs. I even conducted my own digs. I remember once excavating a bone from the woods near my home and comparing it to a
photograph of Australopithecus fossils in the Early Man book. They
matched up pretty well and I was convinced that I had made a major
discovery. Australopithecenes in Florida! I was going to shake up the
paleoanthropological world. I was going to be famous! For some
reason, however, my mother was not convinced and refused to alert
the media. She may not have known much about human evolution, but
she did know a chicken bone when she saw one.

My own experience with evolution prevents me from being too
aggressive or judgmental toward believers who say evolution is nonsense and that creationism/intelligent design is valid science. Their
schools probably failed them just like all of mine did. For this reason,
I have never been inclined to argue with creationists. They don't need
debates; they need information. They don't need to be beat up with
superior arguments; they need books. I always prefer to simply share
some basic information about evolution and leave it at that. For
example, if someone came to me and declared that the earth is flat, I
don't think it would make much sense to get all huffy and worked up
over it. I know that the earth is spherical. People who think the earth
is flat do not need to be argued into submission. They just need to be
handed a few photos of the earth from space so they can go home and
look them over in private. Most people who think evolution is a lie just
need to be shown a Homo erectus skull. For example, I have museumquality full-sized replicas of Australopithecus, Homo erectus, and
Neanderthal skulls at home on a bookshelf. If a guest ever tells me that human evolution is a big, fat lie, I'm ready. I don't need to argue.
I'll just point to those skulls and ask "Then I wonder who those guys
were?" Evolution versus creationism is not smart people versus stupid
people. It's not even believers versus nonbelievers, though many
describe it that way. This is almost entirely a clash between people
who have been exposed to the theory of evolution versus those who
have not. I can never pretend to feel that I am necessarily smarter than
a creationist who says biologically modern humans were created ten
thousand years ago, or an intelligent design believer who says unanswered questions about the human body prove that a god designed it.
I can't because I know that I easily could have ended up in their shoes.
I suspect that if I had not come across that one book on human evolution many years ago in childhood, I might believe things like that too.
There but for the grace of a good science book go I.