Atheist FAQ

I am an Atheist. I do not believe in any god. I believe every­one has a right to their own belief. I hap­pen to choose to be a freethinker.

To answer many ques­tions brought up of me in regards to my lack of faith, I built a web­site. Here are many ques­tions asked of me con­cern­ing my beliefs and my answers to them. May they save me some breath. Let’s look at some points made by Christians and answer these points with log­i­cal thought. Some of these points will use bible verses to prove my point. This is not because I put any “faith” in the bible, rather because my tar­get audi­ence does. Please under­stand that I bring up Christanity because that is what I am most exposed to. It is not a per­sonal attack against Christians and most of my com­ments here could be used with other religions.

Do you believe in god?

To answer your ques­tion, I have to ask a ques­tion. Which god are you ask­ing about? Thor, Ra, Zeus? How about Vishnu, Brahma, or Siva? All of these gods were/​are believed in by many peo­ple at one time or another. The god idea is a mat­ter of time and place.

“I con­tend that we are both athe­ists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you under­stand why you dis­miss all the other pos­si­ble gods, you will under­stand why I dis­miss yours. ” Stephen Roberts

"You really believe in God, you are just wishing for an argument" or something along them lines.

Let me respond with this. You really don’t believe in God. You just want to go along with every­one else. I hope that sounds as stu­pid to you as your com­ment does to me. Why would you assume that I really believe in God? Why should I argue the point? Why should I spend hours and hours build­ing a web site detail­ing my thoughts, if I really believed God existed? Why would I stand up in front of nasty crit­i­cism, if I didn’t believe in God’s non-​existence? Trust me. I am an Atheist and proud of it.

“If you would just look around at the life around you, you have to believe in God.”

Because I under­stand the sci­en­tific expla­na­tion of liv­ing things, I do not feel this offers proof.

“Isn’t it enough to see that a gar­den is beau­ti­ful with­out hav­ing to believe that there are fairies at the bot­tom of it too?” Douglas Adams

“So where did we come from then?”

As I was not born at that time, I wasn’t there. I don’t have an answer, but that doesn’t mean because I don’t know, that a God must have cre­ated it.

“Wouldn’t you rather believe that there is a God and you can go to heaven?”

While that thought might make me feel warm and fuzzy inside, I am a real­ist. I would also like to think that every­one who reads this will be over­whelmed with my intel­lect and want to send me lots of money. Again, I am a real­ist and that’s not going hap­pen. Wouldn’t you rather believe in Santa Claus? I would love to think that some old man is going to bring me what I want for Christmas, because I was good. This ques­tion falls under what is known as Pascal’s Wager, which basi­cally is stated as this:

“Believe in God and die. If he exists, you are in heaven. If he doesn’t, you lose noth­ing. Don’t believe in God and die. He exists, you go to hell. If he doesn’t exist, you lose nothing.”

If you believe in god, how can you be sure which god to believe in? What if you choose the wrong god? If you believe in God and he doesn’t exist, the thing you have lost is time and the life you spent wor­ship­ping some­thing that didn’t exist. The ques­tion is this. Is believ­ing in a god because of a wager truly believ­ing? Secondly, can you believe in some­thing sim­ply because you think you need to? Wouldn’t you still dis­be­lieve in the back of your mind? Beliefs are not about what you will to be so. They are about what your rea­son tells you is real.

“The bible says so.”

The ques­tion I have is “which bible”? Once you answer, that answer this. Which edi­tion of which bible? There are 250 Jewish-​Christian writ­ings and only 66 were selected to be canon­i­cal. The New Testament was not formed until the lat­ter half of the sec­ond cen­tury when Irenaeus selected twenty books from among forty or more gospels, nearly as many acts of apos­tles, a score of rev­e­la­tions and a hun­dred epis­tles. It wasn’t until 1672 that the Greek Catholics and the Council of Jerusalem accepted the book of Revelations. The Westminster Assembly in 1647 approved the list of sixty-​six books com­pos­ing the autho­rized ver­sion, the King James Version (KJV), the one most used bible in America. That makes the KJV 354 years old!

Even once you decide on which bible, ask your­self this. What val­i­dates the bible as being the “word of god”? The bible can­not stand on its own as tes­ti­mony that there is a God. This is called “Circular Reasoning”. I could say that “I am god” and because I am god and I’ve said that I am, that in and of itself, proves I am god. This is also Circular Reasoning.

“The bible solves all of our mod­ern day prob­lems even though it is thou­sands of years old.”

Again, we have to ask “which bible?” As I already said, the KJV is only 354 years old! Secondly, let me ask this ques­tion. Two babies are born Siamese, shar­ing the same heart. To leave them joined would mean that they would live, but their qual­ity of life would be very low. To sep­a­rate them, meant that one would have to die so the other could live. What does the bible say about the moral­ity of killing one so the other may live. Where is the easy deci­sion. The bible wasn’t writ­ten with mod­ern day prob­lems in mind. In the bible’s time, babies wouldn’t have been sep­a­rated at all, because they didn’t know how. Many of our prob­lems involve tech­nol­ogy that didn’t exist when the bible was written.

“Why do you hate God?”

It would be fool­ish for me to hate some­thing that I don’t think exist. I would than have to ask you, why do you hate Oden or Thor or any other myth­i­cal God? The bet­ter ques­tion would be “Why do you hate religion?”.

“Why do you hate religion?”

How many wars have been started in the name of “Religion”, killing a sense­less num­ber of peo­ple. Abortion clin­ics have been burned and peo­ple killed in the name of “Religion”. Money has been stolen from good peo­ple ‚who are just look­ing for some light, in the name of “Religion”. Many evil things has been done because of reli­gion, such as tor­ture, geno­cide, racism, slav­ery, polygamy, inva­sions, mass rape, and war. Do you still think reli­gion is cool? I could go on and on, but these are the some of the things I hate reli­gion for.

“You won’t find an athe­ist in a foxhole”

This intel­lec­tual com­ment is said with the thought that a per­son who is in fear of dying (like in war), would imme­di­ately start to believe and pray to God, to spare their life. I assert that, this per­son is not a true athe­ist if his belief can be that eas­ily swayed. Read Philip K. Paulson — I Was an Atheist in a Foxhole.

“You have no val­ues if you don’t believe in God.”

How can intel­li­gent, edu­cated peo­ple believe such a thing? Atheists are sub­ject to the same rules, which make up ethics, as every­one else. Human beings are social ani­mals. Evolution has cre­ated within us ner­vous sys­tems that are in favor of things soci­ety expects from us rather than “anti-​social” behav­iors. We feel what oth­ers feel. A depressed per­son can bring down the whole room as well as a bub­bly per­son can enrich a room with hap­pi­ness. Have you ever heard the say­ing “Smile, it’s con­ta­gious”? We feel guilt when we have dis­ap­pointed oth­ers. We cel­e­brate when some­thing good hap­pens to another. We mourn together when some­thing bad hap­pens. This is because humans are, to a degree, imprint­able. Imprinting is a form of attach­ment, which allows us to build rela­tion­ships. We share this abil­ity with apes. Apes are very social crea­tures. They nur­ture and pro­tect their own. They coop­er­ate with each other to get things done. They live very ordered lives, as it were, and many apes have never even heard of god!

Humans since the begin­ning of time have learned by teach­ing oth­ers. We can say that most of what we know has been passed on by our ances­tors. The process of learn­ing cul­tur­ally is much faster than changes made genet­i­cally, but over all, it is still a very slow process indeed. It has been said that it took over 100,000 years to advance to chip­ping both sides of the hand-​ax! Cultural changes are resisted. People, in gen­eral, do not like large social change. It is this resis­tance that has out­dated the 10 commandments.

Society has grown much larger than it was in the days of the 10 com­mand­ments. We have larger social issues than ever before. New tech­nolo­gies bring new ques­tions. In the days of the com­mand­ments, we did not have abor­tion issues, inter­net pri­vacy issues, and copy­right infringe­ments. Because of these and many other issues, we need a moral code that does not rely on peo­ple claim­ing to know the desires of their deities.

“All morals are derived from God.”

I have enough to say on this state­ment to war­rant another page alto­gether. Click here. (will add later. Moving from another site)

“This Country is a Christian Nation”

For this answer, please go here.

“The rea­son we have suf­fer­ing is so that we know what joy and hap­pi­ness is.”

If this holds true, than how does God know what per­fec­tion is, if he hasn’t done evil?

If God Were Real, I Still Would Not Worship

Even if some­one could prove to me that God was real, if God came to my house, and showed me that I was full of fluff, I would still not wor­ship. You say “this proves how igno­rant you truly are”. Actually, the reverse is true. If God was real, these are the rea­sons I would not wor­ship him.

God pur­sues sal­va­tion with the threat of hell.

“ And whoso­ever was not found writ­ten in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire” Rev. 20:15. That to me doesn’t sound like the “free­dom to choose” that Christians say I was born with. If I held a gun to your head, and told you to kill the next per­son walk­ing by, or I would kill you; do you feel that you have a choice in the mat­ter. Actually you do. You could let me shoot you, but that doesn’t sound like a really good choice. The courts has a word for this. A deci­sion made while under duress. You are being forced to make the deci­sion I want, as God forces you to make the deci­sion he wants; or pay the penalty.

God is not just.

In the bible, the book of Matthew, Jesus walks beside a fig tree and com­mands it to bear fruit, when the tree was out of sea­son. Surprisingly, it didn’t bear fruit. Jesus curses it, and the next day the tree is dead. Yep, that makes sense to me. Does that mean if you don’t obey Jesus, he will destroy you. Does that mean that it would be all right for me to com­mand a man to have a baby, and when he didn’t pro­duce, I could shoot him. Oops, I for­got. I’m not God.

God is justified

Because God is so pow­er­ful he is right and jus­ti­fied to do what­ever he wants. Even if that means killing a whole race of peo­ple, or just destroy­ing the world, because he doesn’t agree with the peo­ple and their lifestyle. Yeah, that’s mercy for you.
“ If our only rea­son for obey­ing God is the fear of pun­ish­ment if we do not, then, from a moral point of view, God has no more claim to our alle­giance than Hitler or Stalin.“
[Theodore Schick, Jr.]

God is will­ing to make every­one pay for one man’s sin.

All of human­ity are sin­ners because of Adam eat­ing a piece of fruit, which if it was so dan­ger­ous, shouldn’t have been in the gar­den any­way. Hmmmmm. The first born of every Egyptian fam­ily was killed, because the pharaoh wouldn’t release the Jews from slavery.

God cre­ated Satan

With full knowl­edge of what Satan was capa­ble of, God cre­ated Satan any­way. If he knew that Lucifer (Satan) would rise up against him, and ruin his cre­ation and instill sin, why cre­ate him? The pup­peteer syn­drome. We are pawns in a game.

God would keep every­one stu­pid and ignorant.

It is how he likes you. It is how he con­trols you. Take for instance, all the con­fu­sion of the bible. When you ask a ques­tion that a Christian does not know the answer to, their reflex­ive answer is “God will tell us when he wants us to know” or my favorite “All things will be answered when we are in heaven.” Horsepoo. God con­fused the work­ers lan­guage at the tower of Babel. Why? They were build­ing the tower to heaven. He didn’t want them to have knowl­edge. It is the same with the for­bid­den tree of knowl­edge of good and evil. Don’t eat it, because than you would be smart and enlightened.

God is a jeal­ous God.

Look at what he had Moses do to the Midianites. In Numbers 25, we read how the Israelites joined up with the Midianites and the Hebrews took up the Midian cus­toms and even started bow­ing down to the Midian gods. Num. 25:3 “And Israel joined him­self unto Baal-​peor: and the anger of the Lord was kin­dled against Israel.” Num. 25:4 And the Lord said unto Moses, Take all the heads of the peo­ple, and hang them up before the Lord against the sun, that the fierce anger of the Lord may be turned away from Israel.” That is what Moses did. Then Zimri, a Hebrew, brought up his wife, who was a Midianite, and Phinehas, took a javelin, chased them into a tent and slaugh­tered the Hebrew and the Midianite woman. This is what God says in Num. 25:10 – 11. 10. And the Lord spake unto Moses, say­ing, 11. Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, hath turned my wrath away from the chil­dren of Israel, while he was zeal­ous for my sake among them, that I con­sumed not the chil­dren of Israel in my jeal­ousy” So what we have here is an exam­ple of our so called free­dom of choice, and a jeal­ous God. The Israelites chose to wor­ship Baal, another God. God didn’t like it, so he had Moses put them all to death. Sounds to me like God threw one heck­uva child­ish tem­per tantrum.

God cre­ated sin

In Isaiah 45:7 we read I form the light, and cre­ate dark­ness; I make peace, and cre­ate evil. I the Lord do all these things. God cre­ated evil. Not much more can be said.

Here are some other thoughts that I would like to address.

• How did Lucifer become evil if evil didn’t exist? And if it did exist, who cre­ated it? GOD
• Why is every other reli­gion wrong but your own? What makes it so? How do you know that your beliefs are correct.
• In the verse below Abraham is talk­ing about peo­ple hav­ing prophets. He makes a very good point that with all the prophets, man should not need any­thing else, and if they can’t believe the prophets, man won’t pay atten­tion if some­one should rise from the dead. This is curi­ous, because Jesus sup­pos­edly did just that. If Abraham can see the sense in this why couldn’t the almighty Jesus?

27 Then he said, I pray thee there­fore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father’s house:
28 For I have five brethren; that he may tes­tify unto them, lest they also come into this place of tor­ment.
29 Abraham said unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.
30 And he said Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.
31 And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, nei­ther will they be per­suaded, though one rose from the dead. –Luke 16:27 – 31

This is where I will end it for now. Religion thrives because it is eas­ier to be igno­rant about things than it is to truly ques­tions things we have been told over and over. It is eas­ier to accept super­sti­tion than face real­ity. I actu­ally had some­one tell me that if it wasn’t for God, she would have died from her drug and alco­hol abuse. Well, in that aspect, I am glad reli­gion was there for her. But what is going to hap­pen when reli­gion fails her? it will even­tu­ally fail her. Why is it, when some­thing good hap­pens to a Christian, that God is the rea­son for their good for­tune; but when some­thing bad hap­pens, it is because of some­thing the Christian did?