First let me say that I identify myself as an atheist for all practical purposes, and here is my rational argument for it: consider any specific deity or deities that any of the world’s thousands of religions have invented. Because there is no evidence for any of these deities, it suffices to assume that all of them are man-made. Furthermore, consider that there are infinite deities, or, more broadly, unprovable entities that could be conceived of, all with an equal chance of actually existing. Because there are an infinite amount of them, the chance that any one of them exists is negligible, and it should be self-evident that it is unwise to live one’s life under the assumption that negligible probabilities are true.
To this argument, one could say that while the probability that a particular fabricated entity exists is negligible, it still is not zero, and thus agnosticism is the only rational position to take. I suppose this is correct in a rigorous sense, but in terms of how I approach my life, the assumption that negligible probabilities can be discounted is a reasonable one to have. After all, in every other aspect of one’s life, people can concur that negligible probabilities are not worth our attention: we don’t walk out the door fearing an apocalyptic meteor shower, we don’t worry that books will spontaneously combust when we touch them, and we certainly aren’t agitated about a series of billions of nanoscale anomalies causing our bodies to disintegrate at an atomic level. As one can see, a reductio ad absurdum argument is sufficient to expose the irrationality of believing in any specific unprovable entity (i.e. Yahweh/Adonai, Krishna, Allah, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Russell’s Teapot). Now that I mention Russell’s Teapot, I would consider myself a plagiarist not to note that this is the precise argument that he (philosopher Bertrand Russell) made with his teapot: that there is just as good a chance (~1/ ?) that a teapot is circling the Earth right now as that a deity that there is no evidence for exists; in fact, there is a compelling argument that the former has a much greater (perhaps infinitely greater) chance of existing than the latter, but I won’t seek to delve into this level of abstract logic here. My argument about the negligibility of any specific entity’s existence is adequate, I believe, to justify the continuation of my life under the assumption that all such entities are nonexistent.
Of course, the way pretty much every single religion has gotten around this blatant irrationality is with the concept of faith, a notion that I have always found deeply unsatisfying, unsettling, and downright disturbing. Because when one insists on adhering dogmatically to irrationality, all chances of engagement with them are over. I can’t emphasize enough how destructive this practice is. How are we supposed to partake in a discourse with one another, predicated on the common, inherent notion of reason, when different groups of people avow that their different beliefs are all immune to rationality? How could it be possible that a Christian should have a fruitful interaction with a Jew, or a Muslim, or a Hindu, or a Sikh, on the topic of truth, when the underpinnings of their beliefs are defensible only by shameless irrationality? Have we not lost enough lives in the innumerable religious wars and conflicts that have taken place over beliefs for which there is absolutely no evidence?
In a discussion involving Sam Harris, a prominent Atheist philosopher and scientist, and Ben Shapiro, a well-known Jewish Conservative political pundit, Harris asked Shapiro this exact question, phrased something along the lines of: “Why do you believe that the (miracles, incidents, impossible happenings, etc.) that are accounted in Jewish holy texts took place whereas the mythology of all other religions is false?,” to which Shapiro responded that he had no reason for believing that Jewish myths were true, and that he clung to them irrationally under the ambiguous pretext of “faith.”
After conceding this, the conversation was essentially shut down in my opinion. Harris attempted to persuade Shapiro, through logical discourse, that his Atheist worldview had the potential to guide humanity towards a more felicitous future, only to have his efforts derailed by Shapiro’s stubborn unwillingness to submit his beliefs to rational scrutiny. And because religion plays such an impactful role in how many of its adherents, including Shapiro, act and view the world, Shapiro was further conceding that, in a large part, the most fundamental aspects of his outlook are not subject to reason, review, or revision. This is the most damaging part of religion: it has the ability to transform someone like Shapiro, who is, by their nature, a free-thinking, skeptical, intellectually rigorous, knowledge-thirsty, insatiably curious individual, into someone for whom many of their guiding principles are bound by rigidity and inoculated against the innate beauty of reason.
But to this, one could say that religious faith is but a necessary evil to convince people to act in a way that is beneficial to themselves and to humanity; that, as Jordan Peterson calls it, a “transcendent morality,” whose origins themselves are not subject to reason (such as a deity), is required to force people to behave correctly and hold worthwhile values. This is a genuinely compelling argument, but Harris and I each reject it along the same general line of reasoning.
Now the first part of this argument relies on assuming the proposition that most major religions have something genuinely useful, profound, and spiritually fulfilling to offer humanity, which I absolutely believe is true. Let me repeat that for emphasis: every major religion that I can think of has parts of its teachings that are undoubtedly true, essential, and in line with how we ought to live our lives. Neither Harris nor I, nor any other conscientious Atheist, can deny this fact. But the pinnacle question is this: Is it possible to consolidate the worthwhile parts of every major religion by subjecting them to reason and discussion, and then to remove the notion of “faith” altogether?
Now the answer to this question is where people like Jordan Peterson diverge with those like Harris and myself. Bear in mind, at this point we are no longer addressing the veracity of religious beliefs, but the question as to whether religious faith is necessary to sustain a moral society. To this, I would say no- we are not faced with a binary option between either religious faith and a moral consciousness, or Atheism and immorality. It seems abundantly clear to me that humans created the foundations for every single religion, including the meaningful portions, and thus humans have the ability to separate these meaningful portions from the blatantly depraved, immoral, or just suboptimal parts. We, as human beings, should never be forced to compromise our consciousness, and, moreover, our pursuit of human betterment, in the name of dogma and tradition. Furthermore, I refuse to believe that the average human being lacks the potential to make moral choices and have a moral consciousness without an inviolable concept of “faith” to bind them to it. If it is within the average human’s capability to recognize that certain parts of their religion are unacceptable and incorrect- as evidenced by the fact that we no longer stone gays or consider women as property- then I don’t see why it is not within their capability to strive only for moral correctness. Surely it cannot be that the evolution of religious textual interpretation is a coincidence; as our acceptance of free thought has increased, religious values have tended to reflect the fruit of reasoning and humanistic beliefs, albeit in a very flawed manner. While most religious people I know are content to believe a certain degree of primitive, mythological nonsense- such as the notion that a carpenter’s body can be reincarnated weekly in the form of bread- they stop short of believing what their “holy” religious texts have to say about homosexuality or sexual expression. But this isn’t because our interpretation of religious texts have become clearer and more accurate- it’s because secular reasoning has now been formed around religious doctrine. It is this that I don’t understand: why would we fit our more valuable beliefs around imperfect doctrine, instead of forming valuable doctrine around equally valuable beliefs? That is a compromise of grand and devastating proportions, one that dictates we should wait to remedy society’s ills and our own flaws until we find some way that solutions can “arise” from our doctrine. No one needed to look deeper into the Bible to stop hating gays- they needed to look deeper into their minds, hearts, and human instincts. That is the essence of free thought: being able to curate one’s own beliefs by weeding out the meaningful from the useless, the beneficial from the harmful in what they’ve been told. It follows then that free thought is the cornerstone of democracy, and that the irrationality of religion is anathema to its purpose.
The important thing to realize is that none of these ideas are modern, even in a relative sense- they are all tremendously old. For free thought and skepticism are not contrived ideologies like world religions; they are habits of mind that humans have had the potential to practice since, to our knowledge, the time we could definitively be called “humans.” That being said, intense skepticism and inquiry is mentally taxing and, at times, unrewarding. The rapture that comes from intaking a religious charlatan’s rhetoric, the emotional vigor that comes from an ingrained tribal religious mentality, the grossly superficial satisfaction of having “found the answer” are nowhere to be found in a secular worldview. There is no potential to defer to irrationality to justify one’s moral convictions: there are only the arbiters of human well-being, societal flourishing, and personal fulfillment to lay back on. Now, of course, the worthwhile beliefs in religion already do fall back on the latter set of criteria, and they have increasingly done so as societies have progressed. But it’s far more fulfilling, although proportionally more difficult, to defer to these criteria to back all of one’s beliefs. Thus is the challenge that the Atheist community presents to society, and it is one that most of us believe can succeed.
Now, it is of course inherent in Atheism that its members question the validity of their beliefs deeply and honestly- a process that is the direct antithesis of blind faith. So I freely admit that every thing I’ve said thus far is subject to refutation. Perhaps, I will be presented with a rational argument that is so thorough and compelling that my current beliefs, or significant chunks of them, will be entirely shattered. But I very much doubt it; adherents of religion have had millennia to produce one, and so far they’ve come up empty-handed. That is to say, no rational argument has successfully countered the tenets of Atheism in any meaningful way. There have has been no shortage of logical artifice to justify the existence of a god, for example, such as the “ontological argument”- but none that hold up under logical scrutiny, or are even as rigorous as the argument that I have presented here. Religion is a remarkably convenient way to run societies and one’s personal life, but the principles of reason and universal humanism, when applied to religion objectively, show it to be just as compromised as any convenience ever is.
Well this is a lot of what I have to say on the matter; were the contents of my mind on the subject emptied into word, they would certainly fill pages upon pages. However, to say anything other than what I said here would be to lie to myself, which is an injustice that neither I nor those around me deserve. And while I tried to boil it all down to what seems most significant to me right now, I am cognizant of the vagaries of time, and am sure I will return to modify this post, even to make significant additions, if I feel it is called for. I am constantly trying to adjust my views on everything, and particularly these topics, so I will be open to any rational insight that Atheists, Theists, and Agnostics have to offer. And unless something drastically changes, this relentless inquisitiveness is a policy that I intend to carry out for the rest of my life, in the name of humanity, personal fulfillment, and the sheer beauty of free thought.