Losing My Religion; or Why I'm an Atheist

“That's me in the corner. That's me in the spotlight losing my religion.” – R.E.M.

I make no bones about the fact that I am an atheist. I am not agnostic. Agnostics believe in the existence of some sort of deity or over-arching creator and/or controlling force in the universe. No. I am what used to be described as a secular humanist and believe that the universe functions all on it's own with certain immutable scientific laws all of which are amenable to objective proof a/k/a the scientific method.

To give the background context, I am the child of Jewish parents. I was brought up in the Jewish faith (at least they tried). I was subjected to five years of Hebrew School (two hours two days a week after regular school plus two hours on Sunday mornings) along with all the stress on attending Saturday morning services, either upstairs with the adults or junior congregation. Hoo-boy did I resent those six extra hours a week along with the extra school work for which I was held responsible. This was made even worse by the fact that the Catholic kids got time off from regular school every Wednesday afternoon to go to catechism class. But my reasons for losing the faith really did not relate to the extra burden of work. It was deeper and predated Hebrew School

One of the first books I had was a little Jewish prayer book for kids, I suspect from my maternal grandfather. In it, there was a stylized picture of e good lord (which flew in the face of the 10 Commandments thing about graven images, but I digress). It showed an old bearded man. From the time I was old enough to understand the concept of the Judeo-Christian deity, I was taught that He was all powerful and omniscient and perfect. Well if He was all powerful, why couldn't he make Himself look like a young guy? When I asked that question, my grandfather told me I was being disrespectful. I was somewhat chastened by that answer but I also noticed that I had not received an answer to the question I had asked.

The second thing that the prayer book did was it taught me the prayer to say every night before I went to sleep. For years, I said that prayer as I lay down to go night night with my stuffed bunny rabbit. Then, one night, it occurred to me to wonder what would happen if I DIDN'T say my prayer. So I skipped it one night, laid down with Bunny...and woke up the next morning feeling NO worse for wear. That was the end of worrying about saying my prayer before going to sleep. When my mother asked me about it I just said I didn't need to say it anymore. She had no good answer other than that I SHOULD keep doing it. No explanation why, just that I should.

Early in my Hebrew School ordeal, I asked the following question. "Why did God speak to people in the bible then suddenly he stopped talking to people?" The answer from my teacher was something along the lines of, "Well, because those were biblical times." When I persisted in attempting to get an explanation of what that meant, I got sent to the principal's office for showing a lack of due respect. That was compounded by the fact that my mother worked for the synagogue so I was in double immediate deep kimchee. (Years later when I heard George Carlin talking about Catholic school and getting answers along the lines of "Well, it's a mystery," I was reminded of this incident. As he put it they made questioners out of them and it made them lose the faith.)

So I was well on my way to losing the faith by the time of my bar-mitzvah. The important thing about passing that milestone was that it meant the end of Hebrew School. When my mother made the hideous suggestion that I continue with Hebrew high school, it was one of the VERY few times my father ever said no to her after I had already expressed my vehement opposition. Hebrew School was like hitting myself in the head with a hammer. It felt so good when I stopped.

I knew that I could not possibly buy into the whole story of Jesus from the virgin birth right through the whole resurrection so Christianity held no attraction for me. Judaism, at least, made some objective sense in that, other than the whole God thing, most things had some reasonable basis. I continued to think of myself as a Jew. Before we got married, my wife converted to Judaism and we were married by a rabbi. Part of that was sheer cowardice on my part in not standing up to my parents and insisting on a civil ceremony. When our daughter was born, we had her named in a Jewish ceremony. But we raised her with an awareness of both religious traditions. We told her that religion was her choice and when she got old enough she could decide for herself. We had a Christmas tree at the same time we lit the candles for Channukah. (And, yes, it's always been a Christmas tree, not a Channukah bush.)

My father had died when I was in high school and for a year, I went to services at least once a week to say Kaddish (the Jewish prayer for the dead). I didn't believe in what I was doing but I felt guilty to NOT do it. When that year ended, I basically had had it with going to services. My mother remarried when I was a college freshman and the family into which she married was very into Judaism. I just could never feel a part of the scene and the alienation increased. Not only was I the one who had lost the faith, I had even married someone who was not born into the faith. Subtly, I always felt like the black sheep.

I'm not sure where I drifted into flat-out atheism but I went through a period where I experimented with Zen. What I liked (and still like) about Zen is that it is independent of belief in a deity although belief in gods is part, hence my having drifted away from it.

I think the final recognition of my total loss of faith came when I was watching an episode of Carl Sagan's classic TV series "Cosmos." In one episode, he said, "We are all star stuff." When I understood that he meant that everything around us with the exception of hydrogen and helium had been created in the hearts of now dead stars, I was blown away. That answered the question for me as to where did I come from. At some point every atom that is "me" was created by the cataclysm of a star exploding. There was the scientific explanation...and there was the final rupture for me and religion. I had become a secular humanist.

Since then, I have recognized that the universe works by immutable laws. Whether or not the Big Bang is actually the scientific explanation for how the universe began, there is a scientific explanation for everything around us. I don't understand mathematics beyond one and one making two, so I can't prove these things myself. But I have learned enough about cosmology to understand the nature of the laws of the universe. I have learned enough about quantum mechanics to understand that Einstein was wrong when he said that god does not shoot craps with the universe. He was wrong in that quantum mechanics teaches that at the sub-atomic level, random chance operates. If we accept the omniscient and perfect god of Judeo-Christian belief, random chance has no place because he has predetermined everything. Sorry. Nils Bohr, yes; magic sky-person, no.

I find Richard Dawkins to be most illuminating. His book “The God Delusion” has provided me with another favorite quote. “We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.” If a person believes in any particular deity, whether it be Odin, God/Allah, Vishnu, Zool, he or she, by definition, rejects all other god-beings. Therefore, everyone is atheistic about all those other gods.

If we accept the concept taught in Jewish, Christian and Muslim tradition that God/Allah is a perfect being, I have several questions. Why did a perfect being find it necessary to create something? If a being is perfect unto itself, it should have no need to create anything. Next question. If said being is perfect, how could Satan have rebelled against him? Rebellion implies displeasure and how can a perfect being do anything except be perfect? Finally, if a being is perfect, why does it need prayer from its creations? And a related issue to that last question is how can a perfect being get mad? Oh, and on the subject of creation, it implies a beginning and an end which flies in the face of the everlasting and always was god being.

I touched on quantum theory earlier. The basis of quantum theory is randomness. Accepting that, there is no way for a being to know everything that is going to happen where everything is subject to random behavior. This explains why a pair of literally identical twins, raised with identical experiences will still turn out different. Random behavior at the sub-atomic level will, inevitably cause a divergence at the microscopic level which will eventually translate to the macro level.

I also believe that humans are only one of many sentient species in the universe. It is estimated that there are as many as 200 billion galaxies in the known universe. Each galaxy has between 10 and 200 million stars. Who knows how many planets orbit all those stars. But, to me, it is inconceivable that we here on our little spaceship earth are the only beings who happened to have a planet that was just right for life to evolve. (Yes, I said it. I also believe in evolution.) Therefore, unless every single sentient race is identical to humans down to the molecular level, how could we have been created in god’s image? It’s impossible to prove, but statistically it just does not wash.

Now, having said all this, I do not begrudge anybody their individual beliefs. To try and force my lack of belief on them is as unacceptable as it is when I find believers trying to force their religious convictions on me. Belief or lack thereof is an intensely personal thing. I may disagree with your belief but I will fight for your right to practice what you believe as long as such belief does not impinge on me or the government. I take the Establishment Clause very seriously and recognize that it protects atheists as much as Jews, Christians of all types and all the other religions out there.

So there it is. These are the reasons for my atheism. It started with my asking questions for which no reasonable answer could be provided. When I began comparing the ideas of simply “believing” or “having faith” with the logic of science, science won out hands down. And I don’t apologize for it any more than I expect you to apologize for your own belief. We are all passengers on spaceship earth. Peace.