Atheism For Dummies

Dale McGowan

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781118509227
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophie
• Subtopic: Religionsphilosophie

The easy way to understand atheism and secular philosophy

For people seeking a non-religious philosophy of life, as well as believers with atheist friends, Atheism For Dummies offers an intelligent exploration of the historical and moral case for atheism. Often wildly misunderstood, atheism is a secular approach to life based on the understanding that reality is an arrangement of physical matter, with no consideration of unverifiable spiritual forces.

Atheism For Dummies offers a brief history of atheist philosophy and its evolution, explores it as a historical and cultural movement, covers important historical writings on the subject, and discusses the nature of ethics and morality in the absence of religion.

• A simple, yet intelligent exploration of an often misunderstood philosophy
• Explores the differences between explicit and implicit atheism
• A comprehensive, readable, and thoroughly unbiased resource

As the number of atheists worldwide continues to grow, this book offers a broad understanding of the subject for those exploring atheism as an approach to living.

Part I

Understanding What Atheism Is

In this part . . .

This part is all about the nuts and bolts of atheism: the labels that go along with it, some key terms, how someone can be both an atheist and an agnostic, and what atheists actually believe, don’t believe, and why.

Chapter 1

Meeting Atheism

In This Chapter

Discovering a natural way of looking at the world

Watching the progression of a startling idea through the ages

Seeing the world through the eyes of the everyday atheist

The idea that no God exists is a startling one. Most people grow up hearing that the existence of God is a settled question and that nothing else can explain this complex, astonishing world.

But through the centuries, some people have always doubted the God conclusion — and some have even come to the firm conviction that humans created God, not the other way around.

Of course saying such a thing out loud tends to cause a lot of sputtering and fainting from people who disagree, not to mention the occasional smell of something burning. So you can safely assume that most of those who disbelieved the religions and gods of their times kept mum about it.

Fortunately, a lot of nonbelievers spoke up anyway, and they keep doing so today; otherwise this book wouldn’t exist, and you’d be looking at your palms. People would talk. But the book does exist, and this chapter gives you a flying overview of what to expect as you leaf through it.

Getting a Grip on Atheism

Atheism is a big umbrella. It covers anyone who doesn’t believe in a supernatural god or gods. But under that umbrella are many shades and grades of disbelief and many people with different ways of approaching and expressing it.

Atheists become atheists for many different reasons, and it rarely has anything to do with unanswered prayers or major life calamities. In fact, such a major trauma drives people into belief at least as often as it drives them out of it.

The chapters in Part I provide some of the basic definitions and descriptions that can help you make sense as you read the rest of the book.

Seeing the many forms and faces of religious disbelief

There are about as many ways to disbelieve as there are ways to believe — different degrees, different emphases, and different expressions.

Here are some examples:

Antitheists (atheists who actively oppose religion and work toward a world without it)

Accommodationists (atheists who emphasize the common ground between the religious and nonreligious rather than the differences)

Agnostics (people who emphasize their uncertainty about the question of God’s existence and often claim that it’s unknowable)

Humanists (people who focus on how to live a good human life in a natural universe)

Religious atheists (including many Buddhists, Hindus, Unitarians, and Jains who keep their religious identities and philosophies without bothering any gods)

Freethinkers (people who form their opinions about the universe without the undue influence of religious authority)

Unaffiliated or “None” (they’re not religious, but generally not interested in any label at all, thank you very much)

Even some religious opinions (like Deism and pantheism) exist that are so far removed from any traditional conception of God that many people include them under the atheist umbrella. And a single nonbeliever can, and often does, claim several of these labels at once. They emphasize different things, but most aren’t mutually exclusive. Check out Chapter 2 to nicely complicate your idea of what an atheist is.

Examining what nonbelievers believe and don’t believe — and why

I learned about history from historians and history teachers. I learned about religion by listening to believers and reading their scriptures directly. But most of what people know about atheism they learned from people who aren’t atheists and don’t especially like or even understand them.

That’s a recipe for misinformation if ever there was one.

I went to church for 25 years for various reasons, including family and job, and was every bit as much of an atheist as I am now. Doing so was a big part of my own religious education. But over and over, I heard myself described from the pulpit in ways that made me sad and upset. Being an atheist, I was apparently a very nasty and selfish guy, not all that smart, and bad to the core. I heard that I didn’t care about others and couldn’t be trusted, and that I’d come to my beliefs by hardening my heart, by serving false gods, by not wanting to acknowledge God’s power over me.

One Sunday I sat through a sermon in which the Christians in the room who were married to nonbelievers — that included my wife, by the way — were urged to leave their marriages (2 Corinthians 6:14). That’s when I stopped going entirely.

If you want to find out more about a religious perspective, I am a poor choice for a guide. You’d be better seeking someone out from that perspective. But if you want to know what atheism is actually about, may I humbly suggest an actual atheist for a guide. I happen to be available, so read on!

In Chapter 3, I spend some time describing what atheists actually believe and debunking some common myths about them. Most atheists take ethics very seriously, for example, and find life deeply meaningful and inspiring. We’re not mad at God — at least no madder than the Pope is at Chaac, the Mayan god of rain — and though some atheists arrive at their disbelief after something bad happened to them, that’s not the most common path.

Most atheists come to their conclusions after really working on it for a while, then becoming convinced by things like these:

Realizing that religious answers are just a bit too convenient

Comparing religions and reading their scriptures

Examining the classic arguments for belief

Solving the complexity problem (the idea that the universe is just too complex to have come about without a designer) and (really) understanding evolution

Noticing the steady retreat of religious answers

Grasping the size and age of the universe, as well as the implications

Noticing that the universe is just as an informed person would expect it to be without a God

There’s much more, of course, and Chapter 3 is one of the places to find it.

Seeing the Progression of Atheism

A lot of people think that atheism is a recent idea. But religious disbelief actually has a long and fascinating history, and the chapters in Part II take you on a quick ride through it. Just as a student of Christianity would want to know about a few rather significant things that happened 2,000 years ago, someone who wants a better understanding of atheism likewise needs to know what atheism has been up to for the past 30 centuries or so. These sections provide a quick overview.

In the distant past and in different cultures

People tend to think of certain times and places as completely uniform in their beliefs. India is full to the brim with Hindus. The Greeks all worshipped the gods of Olympus. Everyone in Medieval Europe was Christian. Right?

A closer look shows all of these claims to be misleading. Just as political “red states” (Republicans) and “blue states” (Democrats) in the United States are really all various shades of purple, every place and time in human history includes a lot of different beliefs — including atheism.

That’s not to say all points of view have the same chance to speak into the cultural microphone. Religion...