Anyone who's reasonably familiar with me knows that I'm an atheist, but what's less known is how long it took me to reach this stage in my personal philosophy. It wasn't precipitated by any one thing. I was actually raised in two relatively conservative Christian households: my mother, after several months of searching, became a Lutheran and my father attended a non-denominational church. Growing up, my favorite books were C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia. I even spent two consecutive summers, when I was twelve and thirteen, at a Christian retreat called Camp Id-Ra-Ha-Je (which, in keeping with the camp's Native American theme, was a way of saying I'd Rather Have Jesus). They were probably the best summers I ever had as a kid.
Despite all this influence, Christianity didn't stick. One of my most vivid memories at Camp Id-Ra-Ha-Je was when, during the final days of camp, the resident pastor asked each cabin group to come up with a list of questions regarding God, Christ, the Bible, salvation, or religion in general. My question was both simple and maddeningly frustrating: Where did God come from? The pastor chuckled uncomfortably as he read the question, and the other cabin groups began whispering among themselves. Then the pastor gave one of the most disappointing answers I'd ever heard at that point in my life: he explained that God didn't have a creator, that He was the Supreme Creator, and that He had always been around and would always be around.
I often point to this as being the moment I truly I stopped believing in God, but I suspect that it runs much deeper than that. Even then, I wasn’t able to operate on faith alone; it had always seemed superfluous to me, a fancy way of saying, "It just is." But I needed evidence, and moreover, the evidence, there was any at all, needed to make sense. Blind faith may work for some, but I'm less interested in emotion than motive. I’ve never claimed to understand the reasoning behind the Crucifixion--even as a child I would question it. I certainly felt twinges of guilt: after all, who was I to question the ways of God?
But it wasn't until I read George H. Smith's Atheism: The Case Against God that I was finally able to make some sense of it all. Despite Smith's snide tone, his book is a very comprehensive overview, dispelling many of the myths surrounding atheism and agnosticism while also serving as a defense of atheism and a critique of theism. It's easy to label Smith's book as an attack on Christianity, but this view is short-sighted, considering the author's reasoned approach. Smith states in the book that it isn't his intention to convert people to atheism, but rather to show that theism doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Smith puts the ball firmly in the theist's corner--it's not up to the atheist to prove that God does not exist, but rather, it's up to the theist to prove his or her claims. Smith often belabors the points made in his book (which makes it seem as though he's adding insult to injury) but when approached with an open mind, his book is reasoned and informative.
Bertrand Russell's essay "Why I Am Not a Christian," from Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects, is quite possibly my favorite essay. Russell wasn't really an iconoclast--he avoids the smugness that's so pervasive in Smith's book and instead comes off as a charming and objective philosopher. He briefly summarizes the common arguments for God's existence and examines the morality of Christianity. Was Christ a moral godhead, or the meek lamb, as he's often portrayed? Perhaps not, Russell argues.
There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person that is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment. Christ certainly as depicted in the Gospels did believe in everlasting punishment, and one does find repeatedly a vindictive fury against those people who would not listen to His preaching--an attitude which is not uncommon with preachers, but which does somewhat detract from superlative excellence.
Where Smith approaches his argument from a standpoint of pure reason, Russell tackles the subject from the perspective of moral progress and, by extension, human nature. Does the very nature of Christianity, coupled with the nature of men and women, make it impossible for its adherents to reach paradise? Russell argues that that may very well be the case. But far from being a cynical rationalist, he believes that salvation, as it were, lies in progress, knowledge, and intelligence--not outdated medieval dogma.
We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at the world--its good facts, its bad facts, its beauties, and its ugliness; see the world as it is and be not afraid of it. Conquer the world by intelligence and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it. The whole conception of God is a conception derived from the ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. When you hear people in church debasing themselves and saying that they are miserable sinners, and all the rest of it, it seems contemptible and not worthy of self-respecting human beings. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages.
