Atheism is not nihilism

I am an atheist. And there is often an inherent difficulty when entering a dialogue about religion. People can become offended by what comes out of it. My hero, Douglas Adams (I wrote a post about him yesterday), put it this way:

“the invention of the scientific method and science is…the most powerful intellectual idea… it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked and if it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn’t withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn’t seem to work like that; it has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. That’s an idea we’re so familiar with…that it’s kind of odd to think what it actually means, because really what it means is ‘Here is an idea or a notion that you’re not allowed to say anything bad about; you’re just not. Why not? – because you’re not!’ If somebody votes for a party that you don’t agree with, you’re free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it…But, the moment I say something that has something to do with somebody’s (I’m going to stick my neck out here and say irrational) beliefs, then we all become terribly protective and terribly defensive and say ‘No, we don’t attack that; that’s an irrational belief but no, we respect it’.”

At ‘Digital Biota 2′, Cambridge, September 1998

I am not in the business of offending people. And I am not in the business of accusing those that hold a belief in a god or gods of being foolish or unintelligent. This is an unfair and unreasonable stance to take, in my opinion. There are historical, cultural and social reasons that people find themselves holding a belief in a god. Although I may have assessed the situation from my perspective and come out the other end as a firm atheist, I don’t take the attitude that those that have not done the same are, somehow, unreasonable.

I do, however, think they are wrong. And this is where Adams’ argument that religion, like anything, should be open to discussion is realised – I respect a person’s right to believe in a god, but I happen to disagree with the conclusion they’ve arrived at.

Here’s my bizarre voice explaining more.

Irrational Nonsense Blues – A song I wrote with Ross Exton.

I was very conscious of how I was discussing religion when I wrote my novel because it could, at times, seem as though I am directly mocking anyone that holds a religious belief. I was extremely careful not to be outlandish or aimlessly provocative in my writing, but the entire premise of the book (and the original idea) comes out of an interest in the subject of why people are so drawn to religious beliefs in the first place. And I am interested. Fascinated, actually. Although I am of the opinion that a belief in a god is an irrational belief, I can rationally understand why such a belief would exist.

There are several reasons. I think myths and religion, like science, could (in their origins at least) be born out of our desire to understand the world around us. And when there was less collective information available one can understand the conclusion our ancestors came to that somebody or something is lifting the sun into the sky every morning, for example, or is providing water for us to drink and food for us to eat (and why Bill O’Reilly uses the fact that ‘the tides go in, the tides go out’ as an argument for the existence of a god). I can understand why such a figure could be given both benevolent and megalomaniacal qualities, the world is, from our perspective, both a provider of good and bad things (“the LORD giveth, and the LORD taketh away”). And I appreciate the role religion has played in our species’ history: art, music and philosophy have a place in religious traditions. And I can understand the social aspect – our tendency, as tribal creatures, to stick together and produce moral codes to aid one another and further our species’ place on this earth. There is, I believe, genetic, anthropological, and psychological reasoning for the presence of religion.

Even so, though I sympathise with why a religious belief might be held, I am yet to see any scientific evidence for the presence of a god-figure. As a consequence, I can only conclude, for now, that there isn’t one. As explained in the Douglas Adams quote above, the scientific model means that we accept ideas that have been rigorously tested and have not been knocked down. The beauty of the model, however, means that it doesn’t end there, and the idea will continue to be tested. And we can accept that an idea that was previously able to withstand testing may yet be knocked down in later tests, and that we were wrong and that we must move on to the new idea. And so it continues. Religion, on the other hand, does not work this way. It protects itself.

So my novel is not an attack on religion, it is a consequence of my intrigue in the subject. In the musty, old community centre in the book we witness an encroachment of rules we should live by and the imparting of short stories with a moral message telling us to accept that some things should remain a mystery. At times a religious outlook seems to be a shoulder shrug to me. A rational outlook is not satisfied with this mystery, and will continue to try and solve it. This is why the latter will always appeal to me over the former. My atheism is not nihilistic or dismissive; it is intrigued, curious and often entirely agape with wonder.