As a reminder, “The Grand Enigma” is my term for the truth that we and the cosmos exist and each plausible answer as why we exist has, what seems like, absurdities. Speaking in logical terms, this means that only one answer can be correct (because they all have contradicting tenets) although it is plausible that all could be wrong, the answer being something we’ve never imagined. We have already crossed the bridge of the illogical but quite popular view of omnism (the idea that all answers are correct) and the dependence on subjective truth.

The purpose of my posting is to reveal—only a peep-hole view—into the absurdities of each of the possible answers, not a comprehensive view. After the previous post, I had one private message from an atheist suggesting that I’m a liar. Why? Because I didn’t include a long list of other Christian absurdities that they attributed to Jesus. I’m sure that there are Christians who read my first post and are angry at me, and would call me a liar, because I included too many Christian absurdities (I just hope they don’t invite me for coffee with a smile, only to punch me in the mouth). I was trying to be fair to the atheist by showing them the rightful respect and being honest about the absurdities of my own view. Now it is their turn. This will take at least two if not four posts.

Atheism, An Introduction.

This exposure of all the imagined and unimaginable absurdities of atheism, for the sake of brevity, is limited. Later, I will give an assignment for those who do want to do extra reading. I want to be clear; my observations and conclusions are my own honest opinions. These views are not from studying atheism academically, but from personal observations including when I seriously considered atheism, circa 1992. If you don’t agree, and I suspect the majority will not agree with all of it, don’t take it personally. I don’t take your disagreement personally.

I have claimed that if there is a default position, it is agnosticism. However, the atheists, as well as the Christian, see their positions as the default one. Here is the popular notion among atheists as expressed by ex-atheist, Oxford professor, Antony Flew. “I held to the presumption of atheism derived from the old legal maxim that ‘The onus of proof lies on the one who affirms, not on the one who denies.’” Antony Flew from his book, There is No God.

The Causes of Atheism

I want to be clear that I do not agree with the Christian, especially the evangelical, who believes that the Christian God is the default position and atheism is the result of both ignorance and rebellion against that God. I don’t find it helpful to carry this disrespectful bias, because for one, it is not consistent with reality. I’ve said before, my atheist friends have been some of the most honest, smartest, and moral people I’ve ever known. Secondly, it ends any productive conversation to carry that bias. So, how do people become atheists?

I looked for some type of survey about why people become atheist and I could not find one. So, I will base my opinion on my experiences. If you find such an objective survey that contradicts my observations, feel free to share that in comments.

Unlike religion, which has held the dominant view for most societies, most atheists are not raised as atheists. For them, atheism is acquired. In America, the primary position for these folks was a Christian perspective. So, somewhere along their path of life, they made a choice to leave Christianity for the sake of atheism.

While there may be no statistics for why people become atheists, there are statistics for why people leave Christianity. One of the most common reasons is Christian hypocrisy. That term, I suppose, captures many things that were not offered as answers to those surveys. One of those is abuse.

Several years ago, I was part of a “Post Evangelical” group of hundreds of people, and to my surprise, many of them spoke of being abused in the evangelical church, often the victims of sexual abuse. It appears that “youth pastors” were the worse, “decent” married young men who could not contain themselves around the high school girls (or boys). That deeply emotional trauma, became the catalyst for these victims reconsidering Christianity. Part of the reconsideration led them to atheism.

I think a common path to atheism is someone raised in a Christian home, but questions about life and the cosmos were not answered satisfactory there. When these people went on to study topics such as science and the humanities, with a sincere desire to know the truth, they found inconsistencies between what they had been taught in their Christian homes and the evidence. What they learned in science lectures was much more plausible than what they had heard in church.

I’ve mentioned before, I left my last church when they were discussing requiring the teenagers to believe in a six-thousand-year-old earth. I said, if we did that, and they got to college and found out the truth, they will likely reject Christianity completely. To which, the head elder declared that I was not a real Christian. But this was why I raised the issue.

The third reason that people become atheists, is due to social coercion, which is the primary reason most people become Christians. The Christian, however, (via projection) likely exaggerates this reason for the atheist.

The few atheists that are raised by atheist parents, likely choose this path due to coercion, as do the religious raised by parents of the same faith. There is also social pressure at the high end of some sciences, where it is not cool to believe in God, and if the scientist does, they keep it secret, or become an atheist like their friends. I don’t think this is as true today as it was in the 1970s or 80s.

There are/were a few atheist zealots. Christopher Hitchens (was raised Christian, with some Jewish heritage, and died in 2011), Dr. Richard Dawkins (professor of evolutionary biology at Oxford, raised Anglican), and astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson (raised Catholic). Tyson is a great communicator and I enjoy listening to him, however, it is clear from lectures I’ve heard him give to scientific atheists groups that he would like to eradicate the belief in God from the fields of science. Why? He claims, which I don’t agree with, that a belief in God quenches any aspiration for discovery. In the past, great scientists, such as Newton, say they owe their curiosity about the cosmos to their belief in God.

How Atheism is Similar to Theism

To my surprise, as I was leaving evangelicalism and starting to embrace atheism, I found many similarities between the two. The atheist takes pride, or so I thought, that their approach is rational and based on evidence while the religious is based on superstition. I’ve heard that the scientific field of anthropology has the greatest percentage of atheists (nearly 100%) because they observed the evolution of religion from primal superstitions of early hominids, who had no explanations for lightening, fire, volcanos, and storms, into the complex religious systems that we have today. But what I found was, as soon as you enter the door of atheism, just like in religion, your thinking must end, and you adopt major viewpoints for which there is no evidence. For one, you must never consider the existence of a higher being again. Eliminating one possible answer, while there is no evidental proof that God doesn’t exist, only assumptions, is very unscientific, just ask Aristotle (who assumed via logic, there had to be an unmoveable mover).

The Tower of Think

Leonard Cohen sang about the “Tower of Song,” a mythological place where dead singers live. But imagine there is a tower of think, the more you think, the higher you climb in this tower. Now imagine that the stairs of this tower have landings every so often.

When you come into the door of religion, you are encouraged to stop climbing (thinking) once you reach the first landing. The theme becomes just accepting what you are told. “Faith” is the term some prefer to use. Within the Christian community it is frowned upon to think too much. Whenever I go near a church someone feels compelled to tell me my relationship with God is not authentic because it is not like their’s, I think too much. Thinking is of the devil, right? But this system has been used by the religious establishment for centuries to control people. Martin Luther thought too much, and it got him into a heap of trouble with the church, as did Galileo. Religion is all about conformity. Even the most progressive ends of Christianity, who pride themselves in openness, demand conformity to their views. While striving for a larger table, they end up with a nightstand.

But atheism is the same way. Once in, reaching the first landing, your contemplation about the big questions of life must end. You must accept the atheistic status quo, making huge assumptions without further questioning. Evolution solves all the problems of how we got here. The Big Bang solves the problem of origins. But do they? When I realized that even atheism would require as much blind faith as my previous religious orientation had, in disillusionment, I kept climbing those stairs, ending up back in theism.

Next time I will get into some of the absurdities of atheism.
Mike