An Atheist's Defense of a Belief Structure
Written by John Rozewicki   
Monday, 14 August 2006

What Atheism Means

I am an atheist, and atheism means exactly what the definition says it means; a belief that god does not exist. It is a negative statement. It states mostly what a person does not belive, and says very little about what a person actually does believe. Atheism is not nihilism; a belief in meaninglessness. It's certainly not satanism, because we don't believe in supreme beings. It doesn't necessarily mean we're against religion, or have no morals. All it means is that we reject the current popular belief in a supreme being. It says nothing more.

Religion

I do happen to be against religion, philosophically. Religion is a ready-made belief structure, and as such means that it is inherently telling people what to believe. It is wrong to ask someone to believe things that they have not personally found to be true in their own lives. Yet, many religions indoctrinate children and ask them to do specifically this. This makes religion just a set of rules to be followed, and usually with no reason given.

Spirituality

Again, just as being an atheist doesn't mean a person doesn't have beliefs, being against religion doesn't mean that I am against personal spirituality. In fact, the reason I am against religion is because it interferes with an individual's personal spirituality. People should believe whatever they have found to be true in their own lives. Personal spirituality can almost never be argued with.

What I Have Found to Be True

I believe that people are fundamentally good. Very few people go out of their way to harm other people, and most people, in my experience, have been more than accomodating in whatever things you could reasonably ask them to do. The fact that our society can exist proves that people are fundamentally good. We put our trust in a lot of other people every day for things we don't really think about. Every time we pass a car going in the opposite direction, we have trusted that person to not swerve their car and plow into ours. Every time we leave our home unlocked, we trust that unwanted people will not come in and do us harm. The tiny amount of bad deeds done every day are completely obliterated by the number of bad deeds that could have easily been done, but people were trusted not to do. I believe that the world will exist even if I am not there to experience it, that other people exist, and are fully realized separate people whose wants and needs are as important to them as my own are to me. Because other people are just as valid as myself, I find it hard to justify doing harm to them and putting my needs above theirs to their detriment. I didn't need an ancient book to tell me not to steal, kill, or otherwise abuse my neighbors. And if that is all that's stopping the majority of the United States from not stealing, killing, or otherwise abusing their neighbors then I should be one scared individual.

Defensive

I am not a morally bankrupt atheist. I resent the implication by the religious right that I must be. I am clearly not trying to make myself god in my belief structure. The fact that I talk about the necessity of trust in other individuals shows that I do not believe I am all-powerful. I find it ridiculous that while the religious showdown is happening in the middle east, they're all still so focused on attacking the atheists. As I see it, we've not really done anything to deserve it. How many maximum security prisoners and death row inmates are atheists? If anything, atheists should be damn scared of the religious. We run the risk of getting nuked because those assholes want to fight out their ancient god damn holy war. It's amazing how profanity and blasphemy make everything cut to the bone so much more; it's a good thing I have no qualms about doing it.
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