50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God (7 page)

Some believers suspect that atheists like science a little too much.
A few have accused me of making science my religion. Not all but
some nonbelievers may have a deep appreciation for science but it
does not mean they worship it or necessarily believe in it as some ultimate source of wisdom and guidance. Science to me, for example, is
simply the best method we have for figuring things out. That's as far as it goes. Science is not my surrogate god, as some believers charge.
Science gave us napalm and the H-bomb so in my eyes it clearly is not
a fountain of goodness that can do no wrong. I do not look to it to find
personal meaning in life. It's not my mentor or guiding light. It is a
tool. I think it is invaluable, irreplaceable, and inspirational but still
just a tool.

Atheists do not worship humans as gods either, contrary to what
many believers claim. This weird idea may have come from some
believers' reaction to secular humanism. Secular humanism is a positive philosophy that promotes reason and ethics. It has no place for the
supernatural, probably because nothing supernatural has ever been
shown to be real in all of history. Some believers viciously oppose secular humanism, calling it a terrible evil that threatens the world. Christian TV preachers routinely attack it. Some believers even make the
outrageous claim that Hitler and Stalin were humanists and mass
murder is what you get when secular humanism runs its course. I find
all of this fear and animosity toward humanism odd since the American Humanists Association defines it this way: "Humanism is a progressive lifestance that, without supernaturalism, affirms our ability
and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that
aspire to the greater good of humanity."

How does this line of thinking threaten the good people of planet
Earth? The following are some principles of the Council for Secular
Humanism:

• We are committed to the application of reason and science to the
understanding of the universe and to the solving of human problems.

• We deplore efforts to denigrate human intelligence, to seek to
explain the world in supernatural terms, and to look outside
nature for salvation.

• We believe that scientific discovery and technology can contribute to the betterment of human life.

• We believe in an open and pluralistic society and that democracy is the best guarantee of protecting human rights from authoritarian elites and repressive majorities.

• We are concerned with securing justice and fairness in society
and with eliminating discrimination and intolerance.

• We attempt to transcend divisive parochial loyalties based on
race, religion, gender, nationality, creed, class, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, and strive to work together for the common
good of humanity.

• We want to protect and enhance the earth, to preserve it for
future generations, and to avoid inflicting needless suffering on
other species.

• We believe in enjoying life here and now and in developing our
creative talents to their fullest.

• We believe in the cultivation of moral excellence.

• We respect the right to privacy. Mature adults should be allowed
to fulfill their aspirations, to express their sexual preferences, to
exercise reproductive freedom, to have access to comprehensive
and informed healthcare, and to die with dignity.

• We believe in the common moral decencies: altruism, integrity,
honesty, truthfulness, and responsibility. Humanist ethics is
amenable to critical, rational guidance. There are normative
standards that we discover together. Moral principles are tested
by their consequences.

• We are deeply concerned with the moral education of our children. We want to nourish reason and compassion.

• We are engaged by the arts no less than by the sciences.

• We are citizens of the universe and are excited by discoveries
still to be made in the cosmos.

• We are skeptical of untested claims to knowledge, and we are
open to novel ideas and seek new departures in our thinking.

• We believe in optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather than
despair, learning in the place of dogma, truth instead of ignorance, joy rather than guilt or sin, tolerance in the place of fear,
love instead of hatred, compassion over selfishness, beauty instead of ugliness, and reason rather than blind faith or irrationality.

• We believe in the fullest realization of the best and noblest that
we are capable of as human beings. (Council for Secular
Humanism Web site)

Why would anyone have a problem with those principles? Who can
honestly say that secular humanists are bad people based on what they
stand for? I know the knock against all things supernatural troubles
believers but I hope they can at least see that these are positive themes.
Don't principles like these offer us a chance to improve our world, a
much better chance than Sharia Law or the laws of the Old Testament,
for example?

Whether one calls them members of a religion or not, isn't it
obvious that people who are pushing "optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather than despair, learning in the place of dogma, truth
instead of ignorance . . . and reason rather than blind faith or irrationality" are on the right side of human progress? While I am not a
card-carrying member of any humanist organization, I am proud to say
that I agree with their general attitude toward life and their goals for
our world. They do not seem to be a group of people who would be
likely to burn people alive for thinking differently or intentionally fly
planes into buildings. They sound like the kind of people I wouldn't
mind having as neighbors.

Having worked to make the case that atheism is not a religious
belief, I will now confess that I have a secret belief about gods that I
rarely talk about. It's sort of embarrassing because it is very similar to
religious belief. I can't back it up with convincing evidence or overwhelming arguments but it's there, rattling around in my head
nonetheless.

I believe there are no gods.

There, I said it. I'm a believer too, sort of. I can't prove that my
belief is true and I freely admit that I may be wrong. I will change my
belief if I'm shown to be wrong. However, based on what I know about the creativity of the human mind and the complete lack of evidence or strong arguments to support claims about gods, I can't help
but "believe" that all gods were invented and do not exist. I don't
know this and I can't prove it but I do believe it. I just have a hunch
that if gods were real somebody would have come up with some evidence or at least a really good argument for them by now. After all, we
have discovered three billion year-old fossils and identified galaxies
far beyond our own. Surely we would have found some trace of gods
by now if any were there. But we haven't so, reluctantly, I find myself
believing in their nonexistence. This silly little belief is not my religion, however. I have none.

"The Affirmations of Humanism: A Statement of Principles." The Council for
Secular Humanism. http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section
=main&page=affirmations.

Dawkins, Richard. A Devil's Chaplain. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2003.

Robinson, B. A. "Definitions of the Word `Religion."' Ontario Consultants on
Religious Tolerance, Religious Tolerance.org. http://www.religious
tolerance.org/rel-defn.htm.

Smith, George H. Atheism: The Case Against God. Amherst, NY:
Prometheus Books, 1989.

Wilson, Edward O. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. New York: Vintage Books, 1999.

I will destroy human wisdom and discard their most brilliant ideas.

-Corinthians 1:19

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't
go away.

-Philip K. Dick

he good thing about the creationism vs. evolution debate is that
it gets a lot of people talking about evolution. The bad thing,
however, is that, despite all the talk, most people in the world today
still don't know much about evolution. We are more than a hundred
years beyond Charles Darwin's death and astonishingly inaccurate
ideas about evolution continue to come out of the mouths of people
who should know better. For example, President George W. Bush, a
graduate of Yale University, said "the jury is still out" on evolution.
During a 2007 Republican presidential debate, three candidates raised
their hands to proudly declare that they did not believe in evolution.
Somebody, whether it is the world's scientists, science teachers, or
journalists, are failing to communicate to the public just how real evolution is. Someone is also failing to spark a sense of wonder and
appreciation for evolution in young people. Many adults, under the
mistaken belief that evolution is wrong, evil, or irrelevant steer clear
of it and never learn what it really is. Even worse, many people walk around with ridiculous misinformation rattling around in their heads,
thanks to the hard-working people who market creationism. For
example, in the United States, the nation that put twelve humans on
the moon, millions of citizens currently believe the earth is less than
ten thousand years old and that the first human was created magically
from dirt in modern form. How did this happen? Most American citizens spend at least several years in school. America has a very high literacy rate. Access to libraries and the Internet is very high compared
to most other nations. So how can such a developed country end up
with millions of citizens who have never heard of Homo erectus? And
it's not just America. Most people in the world, based on my experiences, know little or nothing about human evolution. Australopithecus
is a major character in the human story, for example, but I have found
that very, very few people have ever heard the name. Perhaps a general failure of science education is partly responsible, but most of the
blame for this points directly to belief in gods.

When someone goes down the path of belief they risk picking up
a lot more than a god along the way. Sometimes ideas that contradict
mountains of scientific evidence come with the territory. The widespread rejection of evolution in the United States is a sad example of
how destructive belief in a god can be to human intellect. Not all, of
course, but millions of believers trust preachers and creationism marketers over the world's top scientists to give them the facts on evolution. As a result, these people know virtually nothing about evolution.
Today some religious leaders charge that evolution is an evil philosophy. This is particularly troublesome for those believers who are
thoughtful and honest enough to want to know the real story of how
life on Earth has changed over the last few billion years. But when a
trusted preacher, rabbi, priest, or imam declares that the theory of evolution is immoral and could possibly destroy families, schools, and
even civilization, many believers understandably shy away from the
subject. This situation would be laughable if it was not so tragic. Here
we have this fascinating-and true-story about ourselves and the rest
of life on earth but it's feared, shunned, and ridiculed by hundreds of millions of people around the world. In many cases believers think
that accepting evolution would anger their god. Many believers follow
this strange line of reasoning faithfully, giving them one more justification to believe in a god. It goes like this: "Evolution is bad and false.
Creationism is good and true. Therefore, my god is real." Flawed and
twisted though it may be, this reason for belief is popular. Again, it is
important to add that this does not necessarily have anything to do
with intelligence. When a believer is bombarded with creationist
claims and learns little about the science, it's probably not very difficult to come to the wrong conclusions no matter how smart the person
may be.

The question of what claim is right is easily answered by any
objective observer because creationism has no credible evidence to
support its claims while evolution has strong evidence from numerous
sources. The fossil and genetic evidence that supports the claim that
life evolves is nothing less than overwhelming. It's not as if one little
group of eccentric scientists is over in the corner pushing evolution all
by themselves. This theory has been confirmed by decades of independent work by thousands of zoologists, biologists, botanists, microbiologists, and paleoanthropologists working in many different countries. And they say that nothing makes sense in their respective fields
without evolution as the underlying theory. No matter what some
American presidents may say, the jury delivered a verdict on evolution
a long time ago. The debate continues today only because some
believers refuse to face facts. Within the scientific community there is
no debate. Evolution is real.

The unusual but resilient believers' claim that evolution is evil is
more difficult to deal with. What does it mean, "evolution is evil,"
anyway? Okay, I agree that evolution is rough. It's part of a horrible
and unfortunate way for life to have to exist because suffering, death,
and extinction are the norm. But my personal distaste for predators,
parasites, and extinction doesn't mean I can simply say, "I don't
believe in it," and it will go away. Life on this planet will continue to
compete, kill, die, and evolve whether we are all Baptists or evolu tionary biologists. But believers are not hung up on the horrors of
nature. When they make the charge that evolution is evil and threatens
to degrade us all, they mean that it is a philosophy or way of life that
rejects their gods. They think that accepting evolution is the godless
road to ruin, a corrupt belief system that will turn us into monsters.
Anti-evolution believers often point to eugenics atrocities committed
by governments against "unfavorable" subgroups within their populations that they wanted to eliminate. Some cite examples of attempts to
use evolution as a justification for racism. However, these attacks on
evolution don't work. Obviously, people who may have tried to use
the theory of evolution to justify murder, racism, or discrimination
were wrong. But rejecting the theory of evolution because some bad
people in the past attempted to use it to justify crimes is illogical. It
would be like rejecting gravity because bad people on a rooftop once
dropped rocks on somebody's head. It would be like condemning all
religions because some of them were used to justify crimes. Nature
works the way it works, no matter who claims to speak for it. If evolution was the rallying cry of every evil person in history, it still would
not change the fact that plants, animals, and microbes evolve.