Why would a preacher become an atheist?

The usual scenario is that a Biblically naive young person goes away to seminary with an interest in religion and a devotion to God. For the first time, he (usually) studies the Bible from a critical perspective. Doubts are born, but he prays for faith and does his best to push them away. Two decades later, he has been a minister for 18 years, and his doubts have multiplied. At long last he is forced to admit, at least to himself, that he has become that vilest of filth, that most loathsome of vermin, that veritable dung of Satan: an atheist.

Unfortunately, his job requires him to worship a specific triune deity, and the same church that endorses his paycheck owns his house. His parents, his wife, and his children, are probably religious. He has no training in anything but religion, and his every friend is committed to religion. If you were that person, what would you do? I think I would leave, and/or shoot myself, and/or go crazy. I might even build a new and deeply rewarding life based on rationality. Some do.

The men in the 1967 photo are Church of Christ preachers who had come together for a county-wide revival in Brookhaven, Mississippi. Three of the six were from the area, and I knew them well. I was 18 at the time, and had been struggling to keep my faith since I was eleven, yet I still envisioned preachers as residing in that rarefied realm referred to as "Men of God." I was so enamored by the group shown that if someone at the revival had dropped dead, I was certain that the combined prayers of these six men could bring him back.

Buford Stewart is second from right. When his little country church offered him a raise, he turned it down because he wanted to embrace God's ideal of voluntary poverty. I slept with him--platonically--when he took me along on a revival to Kentucky. The man on the far right is Norman Miller who took me to Indiana on another revival. They loved me, but if they were still alive and ran into me today, their version of the "God of love" would command that they turn me over to him for the everlasting agony that, in their view, I would so richly deserve.*


*"And whoever shall not...hear your words, when you depart out of that house...shake off the dust of your feet. Verily I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment..." Matthew 10:14-15. 

In appreciation of my religious/spiritual readers

There aren’t a great many arguments to support the existence of a god, and studious atheists have rejected them all. This makes any attempt to convert such people a waste of time. Few of my religious/spiritual readers who have stayed with me through my attacks on religion have tried to convert me. Their tolerance and kindness has made it increasingly difficult for me to write posts in which I criticize religion, not because my opinions have changed but because I don’t want to wound my friends. Yet, I must continue to write such posts because they are important—to me if to no one else.

I never mean to make it personal. I can’t even imagine attacking one of my readers personally, much less one of my readers whom I value as much as I do Marion in Louisiana; Fodder in the Ukraine; Julie, Corgi, and Robin in California; Marion in British Columbia; Rhymes in Georgia; or Kylie, Nolly, and Natalie in Australia (just to name the first ten who come to mind).

It is certainly possible to find some touching stories and some impressive wisdom in religion, so if you find solace there, then who am I to begrudge you? It is only when religion hurts people that I object to it. As the Wiccans say, “An it harm none, do as ye will.”

A potpourri of generalizations about the irreligious

I went into atheism kicking and screaming, but many atheists found it easy to give up their religion because it never made a lick of sense to them, and because they didn’t think that living forever sounded so great anyway.

Even today, if someone could prove to me that god exists—and that he is good—that person would find me most appreciative, but then I would feel the same way if he convinced me that I had won a billion dollars. Neither prospect appears very likely.

I’m actually glad that no one ever tries to convert me, because it would bore me to rehash the same old tired arguments for god's existence. Yet, for someone to say that I’m going to burn in hell forever if I don’t believe in his particular version of god, and then to spend no time at all trying to show me the error of my ways does seem strange. Maybe such people recognize the paucity of their arguments, or maybe they just don’t like me well enough on earth to put up with me in heaven.

Believers sometimes ask what I’ll say to god after I’m dead if it turns out that I was wrong. Well, if I were standing at the edge of the proverbial fiery pit, I might brown-nose for all I was worth, but if I were honest, I would have to say, “I’m very surprised that you exist, but since you do exist, allow me to point out that you’re sure one sorry-ass excuse for a deity. The main difference between you and Satan is that Satan at least knows he’s evil.”

When I was a child in Mississippi, I often heard white people say that black demonstrators had no reason to criticize the way they were treated. When believers tell me that I have no reason to criticize religion, I remember those white people.

An atheist won’t think you’re more evolved because you claim to be spiritual rather than religious. He’ll just be grateful that you lack organizations through which to oppress him. Likewise, he won’t take it as a compliment if you tell him that he’s “too spiritual to be a real atheist.” Really, he won't.

Likewise, an atheist won’t think you’re “sensitive” because you believe in magic and mysticism; he’ll just think you’re so jaded that you can’t appreciate a real wonder unless you populate it with creatures of fantasy.

I sometimes wonder if most religious people aren’t just pretending to love god because they’re afraid of him. I would even suspect that most religious people secretly hate god because they have books that portray him in one way, yet the world around them—over which he presumably has complete control—is the other way.

Atheists think the same way about god that they think about Bigfoot. They don't categorically deny his existence; they just take the complete lack of evidence as a bad sign.

Most atheists spend zero amount of time fretting over your beliefs about god. What they fret about is that so many of you are determined to force your beliefs about god on society, only to scream that you’re being persecuted if anyone objects.

Most atheists do think that the world would be better off if no one believed in god because religion is a major—if not the major—cause of hatred, alienation, and war. Believers don’t seem to notice the harm caused by religion, or if they do notice it, they blame it on other people’s version of religion rather than the concept of religion.

Few atheists think religious people are more moral. In fact, most of them believe religion to be a hindrance to morality because religious people place their holy book or guru above fairness and compassion.

I think people are religious for psychological reasons. The world is often unjust and capricious, and the universe as a whole places no value upon our lives. Religion claims that the opposite is true, and this makes it attractive.

Scandinavia is known for its low crime rate, its high standard of living, its reluctance to wage war, its environmentally responsible lifestyle, and its irreligion. America is known for its high crime rate, its worsening standard of living, its warmongering, its pollution, and its religiosity. This same pattern is repeated in the parts of America that are the least religious compared to the parts that are the most religious, and it is repeated everywhere else in the world. Does this maybe suggest something to you?

Herding cats

Part 1

When I took over leadership of my local atheist group, about six of us met irregularly. The first thing I did was to organize a regular monthly meeting. I also worried a lot. I worried that the group would fail, and I worried that its failure would be my fault. I thought I would feel better if I organized a steering committee to share the responsibility. Along with the regular meeting and the steering committee, we now have a monthly movie night, a monthly game night, and a bi-monthly book group. You might think I would feel better, but you would be wrong. I was so overwrought after our meeting on Saturday that I had to take even more pills than usual to get to sleep, and then I was awakened by nightmares.

In one, I was driving a car in which all 72 of us were riding. I had no idea where we were or even where we were going, but I didn’t want to admit it, so I kept trying to get my bearings by looking at road signs. Because I was going a little fast, I missed a curve. We ended up in a large flat area and came to a stop facing the way we had come. Still not wanting to admit my ignorance, I said I was just turning around.

In another dream, we were all in a house overlooking a river. I decided that maybe we were overlooking it from a bit too close, so I went outside and looked under the house. Sure enough the river was running under part of it, and although the house was built on posts, they didn’t look too substantial, and I worried that the house might fall into the river. When I turned to go back in, I saw that a mountain lion was stalking me, and I knew I would never make it to the door. I yelled for help, and when someone opened the door, I told her to bring me a gun. “Which one?” she asked. “Any of them!” I yelled, and woke up.

Part 2

The youngest person in our group is a teenager, and the oldest is eighty-seven. We’re equally divided according to gender, and nearly everyone has at least one college degree. Of the religious backgrounds represented, I only know of the following: Mormon, Mennonite, Unity, Jehovah’s Witness, Orthodox Jew, Baptist, Church of Christ (me), Roman Catholic, and one person whose parents were atheists. I’ve no doubt that many others are also represented, but I have no idea what they are.

The steering committee met before the regular meeting on Saturday, and one of the items on the agenda concerned how to handle group business between committee meetings. I had been doing it with the thought that the committee could overturn anything they didn’t like, and I rather suspected they would want me to continue, which they did. Later, I thought that I would be just as happy if two or three people shared the responsibility with me, but as soon as I thought that, I realized that for me to do it alone saves a lot of time.

The thing I’ve hated most has been facilitating our regular meetings, both because I’m shy in groups and because atheists tend to buck authority. It’s even hard for me to facilitate the steering committee. Two-thirds through the one on Saturday, someone asked me if we were covering everything I wanted covered. I laughingly said: “Oh, I gave up on that ten minutes ago because directing you people is like herding cats.” That must have pleased them because they stayed on track for the rest of the meeting.

If I were screwing up, the steering committee wouldn’t be so agreeable, yet, as I told them, I don’t want anyone to think of me as a leader in the sense that they either have to get along with me or leave the group. Rather, I want them to think of me as a leader whose goal isn’t to dominate but to serve. They said that is how I come across.

Part 3

Madalyn Murry O’Hair actually did lead American Atheists by force of personality. She could dominate hundreds of people just by walking into a room. I heard her speak at LSU (Louisiana State University) one night. She trashed Christianity in the most vulgar terms before a largely Christian audience that sat in speechless horror. When she finished, she didn’t exit through the wings as speakers usually do, but down the center aisle. I thought, oh, my god, they’re going to beat her to death, but they made a path for her that was wide enough for five people, and the only sound I heard was that of her heels striking the floor. I was reminded of Moses parting the Red Sea.

The trouble with Madalyn was that she needlessly alienated a whole lot of people, many of them atheists. She saw herself as the epitome of what a self-respecting atheist was supposed to be, and if you had a less confrontative vision, she considered you a coward. Because of her harshness, one of her followers founded The Freedom from Religion Foundation, which is now much larger than American Atheists. Another problem with Madalyn was that when she died, her organization nearly folded. That’s just how it is with personality-dominated groups.

Madalyn liked my writing and, as a result, she asked me to call her Grandma. That was definitely one of the high points of my life because, say what you will about her, she was one smart, quick thinking, and courageous cookie. She lived for the cause of advancing atheism to such an extent that it would make the pope and Billy Graham together look like pikers.

Part 4

Ah, but I can hear some of you saying: “See there, atheism is just another form of religion,” to which I would say, “Define religion.” If you mean a faith-based worldview, atheism is not a religion. I would even suspect that, to most atheists, atheism isn’t even a means to end (as is most religions), but simply one result of a worldview that values evidence and rationality. In saying this, I don’t mean that religious people value ignorance and irrationality, but that they hold faith as a superior means of knowledge, at least in matters of religion. My challenge to them is: “But how do you know that faith is superior?” If they say, “Because I have faith that faith is superior,” they’re into an infinite regress.

Any claim to the superiority of faith over evidence and reason can’t be disproven by evidence and reason. This is why—in the short term anyway—atheists can only reach believers who are susceptible to rational argument. True believers literally don’t care about evidence and reason (although they might use it in an attempt to persuade the ignorant). For example, if it were possible to prove conclusively that the entire Bible was written by some prankster, it wouldn’t matter in the least to them. They would just say, “That was how God chose to bring us his word,” or, “God allowed Satan to create false evidence in order to test the faithful.” Afterwards, they would believe even more strongly than before. Faith isn’t just belief in the absence of evidence; faith is belief despite the evidence.

Things I hate

I hate litterbugs. I think they should be shot on sight, and I would include cigarette butt litterbugs. I can sympathize with an occasional murderer but there’s no excuse for littering.

I hate people who talk loudly and/or in public places on their cellphones. In fact, I hate cellphones. I just want to take them out of people’s hands and stomp on them.

I hate people who smoke in public, especially if they’re walking in front of me on the sidewalk. They’re killing themselves anyway, so why not euthanize them now—with a flamethrower?

I hate my country because we’re forever bombing the hell out of other countries and then pretending that we did it for their own good.

I hate it when people are so fat they waddle. It’s one thing to be a little overweight; it’s another to have a feedbag full of doughnuts hanging around your neck all day. I think we should send 300-pounders to Third World countries so that starving people will have something to eat.

I hate political correctness, which I define as legal or occupational coercion on the part of some people to force other people to conform to their definition of niceness.

I hate predictable—and often silly and redundant—phrases such as “at this point in time,” “he broke down in tears,” and “the merciless flood waters.”

I hate stores that don’t carry bulbs and batteries for the products they sell. I also hate stores that play loud music or try to sell me stuff over their PA.

I hate it that every fitted sheet now comes in a range of sizes—say 12” to 18”—because the only people whose beds look properly made up are people who have the largest size mattresses that the sheets will fit.

I hate it that every weakness has become a psychiatric disorder. No one is shy anymore; he has a social anxiety disorder. No one is a glutton; she has an eating disorder. No one is sexually impotent; he has an erectile dysfunction disorder. Clearly, the whole damn society is in immediate and desperate need of pharmaceuticals. I think we should follow the money if we want to understand such things.

I hate it when desperate people believe silly things in order to feel comforted, but instead of admitting to their desperation, they say they have “faith.”

I hate it that I can’t trust corporations, ever, about anything. For example, when Dawn Dishwashing Detergent made its bottles smaller, they wrote on the side that it was a “NEW AND IMPROVED SIZE,” so consumers would be fooled into thinking they were getting more for their money.

I hate legalese that is written in small print so people won’t know what they’re signing even if they’re able to read it.

I hate the word folks. When I grew up, folks was used by hillbillies to refer to their relatives. Then, George W. Bush (no surprise there) referred to Al Qaeda as folks, and now everyone uses it all the time.

I hate upspeak (the practice of unintentionally making declarative statements into questions by finishing them several notes higher than they started). A woman (and it IS always a woman) might have eleven hundred doctorates, but when she uses upspeak, I know she doesn’t have confidence in what she’s saying, so I don’t either.

I hate the word “survivor,” as in, “I’m a sexual abuse survivor,” because it’s invariably an excuse for being a perpetually angry twit.

I hate it when people let some “holy” book or person do their thinking for them. If the next pope declares that it’s god’s will that Catholics support stem cell research, then that’s what they’ll do. Or if a long lost chapter of Genesis is found in which “God” says that life came about as the result of evolution, then fundamentalist Christians will jump on that bandwagon. In the final analysis, “people of faith” value compassion, justice, reason, and evidence less than they value having someone tell them what to think.

I hate the word like when it’s used as a substitute for uh. “Like, me and him, like, we, like, got wasted, like, you know?”

I hate style changes in clothing. Speaking for men, at least, tie widths and shirt collars don’t change constantly because guys can’t make up their minds, but because people who sell clothes make more money that way.

I hate Texas because we’ve had three presidents from Texas during my lifetime (Johnson, Bush, and Bush), and they were all warmongers. What’s wrong with those people down there in the most Christian state in the Union?

I hate commercial television. What kind of a dimwit do you have to be to sit through one minute of intelligence insulting commercials for every two minutes of intelligence insulting programming? Even on those rare occasions when it’s a good program, doesn’t it have a desensitizing effect on your psyche to be suddenly and repeatedly yanked from scenes of rapes, murders, and autopsies only to be thrust into deodorant commercials?

I hate rich people because they either: (a) inherited their money from people who cheated others; or (b) cut out the middleman and cheated others themselves.

I hate college athletics because they’ve become more important than education. For every one person who knows how a university ranks scholastically, ten thousand know how its football team did.

I hate it when people join the military during one or another of our many wars without giving a lot of study and thought to whether they believe in the war. I’m truly sorry when they get killed, but I’m not going to pretend that they died “fighting for freedom,” because the truth is that they probably died for no better reason than that they were young and stupid.

I hate it that our planet is doomed because my species is too asinine to plan for the long-term. We’re like three year olds in that we have enough brains to get ourselves into deep shit, but we don’t have enough brains to see it coming or get ourselves out of it.

I’m confused by the part of the Bible where it says that god doesn't confuse people

If it’s such a great thing to be a sheep, why do Christian schools always name their football teams after lions, Crusaders, and even bulldogs? I think Atomic Lambs has a nice ring to it.

Could it be, do you think, that animals got a raw deal? On the one hand, they’re cursed, not because they screwed-up, but because we screwed-up. Yet, we get to go to heaven, and they just get to be dead. I guess the truth of the matter is that animals are only good for providing us with food, clothes, and lab rats. Small wonder then that none of the churches care about animals. When you look at where their money goes, I don’t think they care much about people either, but of course I’m an atheist, and everyone knows that atheists are “embittered God haters.”

I guess I do hate god, but not in the way religious people think. I hate god in much the same way that I hate Hitler. If everyone had ignored Hitler, he could have spent his entire life jumping up and down and screaming at people, and no one would have gotten hurt. God—or rather the concept of god—is the same way. If everyone ignored him, no one would get hurt. The problem is that people think he’s real, so they try to suck up to him in order to get mansions, virgins, and dark chocolate.

I personally think that the Moslem heaven sounds like one hell of a lot of fun, at least for the men. For the women, not so much.

When missionaries come around, they never talk about the good I can do for others but the good I can do for myself. Every Christian virtue is secondary to the desire for eternal wealth, and not just for a few gold serving spoons either but for entire gold turnpikes.

I think of heaven as like the Bahamas, only a whole lot nicer. The problem with heaven is that every iPod only contains one song—the Hallelujah Chorus no less—and you have to hangout with your inlaws, assuming that they didn’t end up in the goat line. My inlaws tithe, so they will probably go to the head of the sheep line. Some of them can’t even afford to neuter their pets because of all the money they put into the church plate, so, yeah, they’ll be in the sheep line.

If Christians are right about how I’ll be screaming for god to save me just before I die, I’ll end up in the sheep line too, and it won’t have cost me all that money, and it won’t have caused my pets to give birth to all those unwanted litters. Based upon this, it’s probably just as well that I’m a “godless atheist.”

The downside of waiting until the last minute to get religion is that I could be killed instantly by a falling safe or a speeding train. I could also get laryngitis. The Bible says that everyone—atheists included—has to “confess with their mouths that Jesus is Lord,” so it probably wouldn’t work to write it down, but even if it would, I might be too sick to go looking for a pencil.

Even so, I really like it that you only have to do okay for your last few minutes over here in order to get a really nice bungalow over there. It’s like if you went all the way through school and made a zero on every test you ever took, but you got to graduate with honors because you said that you believed in arithmetic three seconds before the final bell.

When an atheist or an agnostic says that Jesus wasn’t god, but that he was a great man anyway, I always wonder what in the hell they’re talking about. If Jesus wasn’t god, then Jesus was a fruitcake, except that real fruitcakes taste good.

The god of the New Testament is supposed to have been the same as the god of the Old Testament except for one difference. When he got mad in the New Testament, he just threatened to torture people for all eternity instead of murdering them immediately. That’s quite an improvement, I guess. It’s probably why everyone says the New Testament god is a “God of love.”

One person who used to read this blog told me that I couldn’t be an atheist, at least not a terribly good atheist, because I didn’t know enough about theology (I think he meant Christian theology as opposed to the theologies of all those false religions). But if this were true, wouldn’t it also be true that most Christians don’t know enough about theology to be theists?

I think the Bible contains a lot of contradictions, but then I stopped taking theology classes after my junior year. Like in one place, Jesus said to turn the other cheek, but in another place, he said to buy a sword even if you had to sell your coat to pay for it (I always wondered if he gave that order in winter). When I mention this to Christians, some think he really did say the first thing but he really didn’t say the second thing. Others think he wants us to stab everyone who refuses to accept his love. I just think he was in a bad mood when he said the second thing.

I’ve noticed that Baptist theologians always agree with the Baptist church, and that Catholic theologians always agree with the Catholic church. Since that is too weird to be a coincidence, it has to be a miracle, which means that god probably does exist.

My problem is that Episcopal theologians don’t agree with one another or with anyone else, and this makes me think that I was right all along about god not existing.

Does the Church of Scientology even have theologians? If I run into Tom Cruise, I’ll ask him. I’ll also suggest that he take his shoes off before he stands on the furniture. My mother always said that we had to take care of our furniture because we couldn’t afford new furniture, and that’s what I have faith in to this very day. Peggy’s mother always said that her family could afford new furniture, and that’s what Peggy has faith in to this very day. When Peggy says that our marriage is plagued by theological incompatibilities, I tell her that Job’s wife gave him a lot of unnecessary trouble too, and, for some strange reason, that always seems to piss her off.

What if you had to take a written exam to get into heaven?

You might be aware of the recent Pew Forum's U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey on which atheists beat out Christians (I scored 100). Last week, I laughed until I cried listening to representatives from various denominations explain on National Public Radio why the test was unfair and the results were irrelevant anyway.

I mean, come on guys, if you're an American Christian, you have the good fortune to live in the most religious of First World nations BY FAR, yet atheists know more about religion than YOU do! ATHEISTS!!! I mean, aren't you just a little embarrassed? If you are, good for you. At least you're more humble--or, perhaps, just more honest--than the experts on the radio. I can't prove it, of course, but I would bet you anything that if the atheists had flunked, those same experts would be saying, "See there. The reason atheists don't believe in God is that they don't know enough about religion."

"But were the differences significant," you might ask. YES! Atheists barely edged out Jews, and Jews barely edged out Mormons, but other Christians might as well have been riding hobbyhorses in the Tour de France. The poor Catholics were clueless about the role of the bread and wine in the mass, and Protestants were fuzzy on the identity of an old-timer named Martin Luther. Arrrgh! All I can say is LOL.

I remain sincerely yours,
An Insufferably Smart-Alecky Atheist

P.S. Enjoy Sunday school!