The lightning strike came in the form of a 2006 BBC documentary called "The Root of All Evil?" that was written and presented by a man named Richard Dawkins. Dawkins has gained notoriety over the past few years as one of several highly-educated non-believers, sometimes derisively called the "New Atheists," who have spoken openly and passionately about the harm that religion and belief in God and the supernatural are doing to society. If you wish to watch the documentary yourself, I highly recommend it. It consists of two parts; The God Delusion and The Virus of Faith. More information on Richard Dawkins can be found at his website, Richarddawkins.net.
Everything within that documentary spoke to me in one way or another, but the majority of it was stuff that I had already recognized about religion, and I had also come to realize that the existence of religion and the existence or non-existence of God are not mutually inclusive. Just because there is religion doesn't mean that God exists, and just because religions are divisive or harmful or evil does not mean that God does not exist. But there was one point that was brought up in the documentary, so brief as to almost seem an afterthought, that struck me like a bolt of lightning from a clear blue sky: the idea that belief in the existence of God diminishes the awesome majesty of the world around us.
It was something I had never considered before. I was never a young-earth creationist or anything - I understand and accept evolution, the age of the Earth, the depth and complexity of the cosmos, and everything that science has found out about the world so far - but it had never occurred to me to question the belief that something out there bigger than us had to have been ultimately responsible for our existence, and that that something was God. Take away the assumption that the creation and evolution of human beings, of the world, and of the universe was in some part guided by an omnipotent being, and consider that instead it had all just come about by a myriad of natural processes that we do not yet know about or fully understand: it still blows my mind to think about it in those terms.
Inventing a deity to explain the complexity of the universe may seem like an easy way out, but it really raises more questions than it answers, especially when the definition of that deity requires that it exist outside of time and space and nature, everything we are capable of examining and understanding (this is the definition of super-natural: if it is outside of nature, how can we ever have a hope of examining or understanding it?). But stop to contemplate that the vast complexity of space and time around us is the result of nothing more than billions upon billions of natural processes, each one tiny but important, most of which we have not even imagined much less begun to understand, and it makes our world, our existence, and our ability to try and understand everything we see around us all the more amazing.
And the thing that makes it so amazing, at least to me, is the fact that it means that we are nothing special. If the natural forces that created the universe one tiny step at a time were able to create us, then intelligence is not something unique or impossible to understand. If it is a natural phenomenon, and not a God-given spark, then we may not be the only intelligent beings in the universe, or the only species on our own planet capable of being intelligent. And the realization that, even with our intelligence, we are no more special or unique than any other animal that has evolved physical and mental character traits that allow it to survive and manipulate the world around it totally changes your view of the world. Once I took God out of the equation, even for a moment, I realized that the world doesn't need him to explain its existence, and therefore neither did I.
I had discarded religion because there was no way of knowing who was right, and there were too many people telling me too many contradictory things about how the creator of the universe wanted me to live my life. I discarded worship of God when I realized that he could not be the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving deity that I had been raised to believe he was, a realization best described through the words of the Greek philosopher Epicurus:
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?”
And I discarded belief in God entirely when I realized that the universe did not need such a deity in order to exist, and is in fact a more amazing and wondrous place without him. When I reached the end of the documentary, and heard Richard Dawkins speak so eloquently about how he, as an atheist, placed the highest value on this life, because it is the only one we have and we are infinitely lucky to have it, I realized that I was an atheist too.
It has taken a lot of reading, thinking, and refining of my own ideas about the world, life, and where I stand on issues of knowledge and belief, but the real reason why I am an atheist now, and will continue to be one for the foreseeable future, is because I no longer see any reason to believe in the existence of something for which there is no factual evidence. This hasn't diminished my view of the world in any way; in fact, finally discarding a belief in God made me a much happier person. I realized that the world is more complex and amazing than I could have imagined, I decided that any purpose I choose to make in life will be guided by my own hand, and I discovered that I am still the same good and decent person I always was, even without an all-seeing vindictive deity in the sky analyzing my every thought for human weakness. And I am also a much more complex person than the label of 'atheist' can cover. All I am as an atheist is a person who does not believe in the existence of God. But life is more than a series of labels, obviously, and in future posts I hope to move away from examples of what I am not and instead focus on who I am and how I see the world.
I would like to conclude this extremely long topic with two quotes by one of my favorite authors, and favorite atheists, the late Douglas Adams. I was surprised and overjoyed to find, when I discovered the writings of Richard Dawkins, that he and Douglas Adams were both great admirers of one another. I would ask that anyone who is a fan of Adams read the wonderful tribute to his life written by Dawkins; it appears at the end of The Salmon of Doubt, and you can also find it here, along with Dawkins' eulogy to Adams. I could probably fill a whole new post with my favorite Douglas Adams quotes about atheism, but these two quotes by Adams sum up my reasons for being an atheist in a way that I never could alone.
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, from Last Chance To See
...imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.
-- From a speech given by Adams at Digital Biota 2. Later quoted in Richard Dawkin’s Eulogy for Douglas Adams.
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