Atheists want to make one thing very clear: They are not angry with God.
After all, how can they be angry at something they don’t believe in? For atheists, being angry with God is akin to being enraged by a unicorn or incensed by a gnome – a ridiculous expense of angst that gets them nowhere. In fact, what angers atheists – or a least what unsettles, miffs or concerns them – is any belief not predicated on rational thought, reasonable certainty and, above all, truth.
“A lot of them (people) think that we believe in God but hate him or that we’re some sort of satanist thing and they don’t realize that we just don’t think it exists,” Brittany May, an anthropology and biology junior, says.
That is probably the simplest statement one could make about atheists – from there, things get a little more complicated. Labels, divisions and subdivisions proliferate and a working knowledge of philosophy, science and logic are encouraged. (You might want to add Merriam-Webster and Wikipedia to your favorites now, unless you have a firm command of every kind of “ism” imaginable and pepper your conversations with Carl Sagan quotes or juicy tidbits of Hellenistic philosophy.)
The atheists at Arizona State University – at least the ones involved with the Secular Free Thought Society – are a brainy bunch. They love to debate, discuss, doubt and defend viewpoints as varied as themselves. They may not see eye-to-eye on consequentialism versus deontological ethics or deism versus atheism, but they do agree on one thing.
“The question is not whether you’re an atheist or a deist,” says Averroes Paracha, an economics senior who recently switched his focus to philosophy. “The question is whether you are a free thinker and whether you are skeptical or not.”
Paracha, former president of SFTS, was born in Pakistan and was a conservative Muslim before becoming a deist and eventually an agnostic/atheist, after years of independent study and intense questioning. His conclusion sums up what many atheists believe.
“The question of God, though the most asked question, is not necessarily the most relevant question,” Paracha says. “What’s most important is the pursuit of truth, justice and compassion … Believe what you think is the most honest thing. God doesn’t matter, truth matters.”
May has reached a similar understanding, though she took a much different route. Her parents were atheists who never discussed religion. Her exposure to religion came through the Church of England-run schools she attended while the Mays lived in the U.K. In stark contrast to tales of rebellion against strict, devoutly religious parents, May’s father “caught me praying and he freaked out.”
After moving back to the states and starting high school, May began exploring and studying world religions, science and philosophy. This path led her to identify as an atheist of her own volition.
“I want to make a distinction between absolute certainty and a high degree of certainty – I know I can never be absolutely sure about anything,” May says, with the special attention to word choice and clarity of meaning that typifies most SFTS discussions. “I came to that conclusion mostly after my religious studies classes, after seeing what everybody else in these different cultures believed and then after comparing them. At first my approach was, ‘Oh cool, this is interesting. Maybe I’ll start believing that.’
“Then it sort of clicked that, wait, there’s something that’s real and I need to have an objective approach to finding out what that is – I can’t just pick my favorite options. After investigating it more I had no reason to believe in any of them.”
Justin Grant, a second-year law student, also went through a period of intense studying and searching before he ruled out faith in a higher power and organized religion. He grew up “nominally Christian” but became an atheist once he analyzed the evidence, he says.
“The more I decided to educate myself from as neutral and unbiased a point of view as possible,” Grant says, “the more I felt that the only possibility, the only logical conclusion, was to lack a belief in a god the same way I lack a belief in Santa Claus."
Grant has taken his atheism to the next level by becoming an activist. Currently he is part of a lawsuit against Gov. Jan Brewer regarding proclamations of a state day of prayer, which he has spoken about at SFTS meetings.
“We argued that the proclamation is a molestation in the legal sense in that it perpetuates the Christian hegemony that shouldn’t exist in a government that’s supposed to be religiously neutral,” Grant says. “I don’t know who in powerful positions I can share the fact that I’m an atheist with. It makes us into kind of outsiders to the political system and … if we wish to proclaim who we actually are, we’re kind of relegated to second-class citizen status.”
Grant says the atheist experience has “some parallels to homosexuality in that if you don’t know, you’re going to be received in a friendly way, (but) it may not be the best idea to go out of your way to indicate that.”
He also cites a 2011 study that shows atheists are nearly on par with rapists as to how trustworthy they are perceived by the public. The study implies that people do not trust non-believers because they associate the lack of religious belief with a lack of a moral code.
May, Paracha and Grant have all experienced this stereotype firsthand and attest that atheism does not preclude morality – in fact, it’s quite the opposite.
“Truly, morals don’t necessarily have anything to do either with a religious upbringing or a belief that someone is watching what you do,” Grant says. “In fact, I’ve always felt that’s a morally inferior way to comport yourself – if you do the right thing merely because you wish to avoid punishment for doing the wrong thing.
“I think that’s missed by a lot of people – that the atheist is a moral person because it’s simply the right thing to be, and I think people also miss that humans have a fundamental instinct for cooperation, for unselfish behavior, and so there’s nothing unnatural about developing a morality simply by using your brain.”
In fact, according to a 2010 U.S. religious knowledge survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, atheists and agnostics know more about religions (and their various moral structures) than many practitioners of the religion. They scored highest on a quiz on general religious knowledge (20.9 out of 32 questions correct), answered the most questions correctly about religion in public life (2.8 out of 4) and were second only to Jews in knowledge of world religions (7.5 out of 11).
Yet their thirst for knowledge is never quenched, Paracha says. Part of being a free thinker is being open to new ideas and information and being intellectually honest enough to constantly reevaluate your position on anything.
“I would not be a member of any atheist movement simply because it’s atheist,” Paracha says. “I have no stake in atheism. I could change my views tomorrow.”
Contact the reporter at llemoine@asu.edu
