Atheism: In self defense

Once again someone tried to convert me.

I'm flattered that members of so many world religions have at one time or another deemed me sufficiently worthy of the effort. Jehova's Witnesses demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that everything in the Bible (their New World translation, of course) was true, since it was the very word of God (“as it clearly says so in the Bible”). Mormons expounded on the unquestionable truth of the Book of Mormon, for the Archangel Gabriel himself revealed it in the form of Golden Tablets which only John Smith could interpret, after which the Tablets returned to Heaven for safekeeping. Baptists pointed to their irrevocable personal relationship with Jesus Christ (“He changed my life!”). Soka Gakkai members cited the self-evident Universal Law of Cause and Effect (“Chanting works; just try it!”). The religious atheists---those who fervently believe in the nonexistence of god---claimed to have Science and Progress on their side.

This time, it was a staunch Catholic. Upon hearing that I profess no faith (“You are an... atheist?”), she thought about it for a while, and, carefully controlling her facial features, added: “I guess that's ok.”

“Of course it's ok,” I replied.

“But,” she hesitantly interjected after a few moments, “don't you... love anything? I mean, beyond yourself?”

I tried not to grin; “What does that have to do with it?” I ask.

“Well, do you?” she pushed.

I could see where she was going, but... “Of course I do,” I replied to her rhetorical question.

She looked up triumphantly, her eyes moist and shining:“Well, then you believe in God, because He created everything.”

I started laughing. Invariably, such conversations take one of the two turns: either we agree to hold to our respective views and maybe learn from our diversity, or the logic breaks down beyond any hope of repair.

Something about atheism gets under some people's skin.

Atheism is a lack of belief in God. Like a lack of trust in the stock market, or a lack of passion for country music, it describes the subjective internal state of a person, and should require no defense. Alas, unlike trust or passion, belief rests on its own presupposition: one has to take for granted that to accept some statement as true while lacking proof is a virtue, as long as the statement comes from the right source. Those who believe, believe in belief.

There is a common confusion about atheism: does one “believe there is no god,” or does one “not believe there is a god”? In the USSR, the former was accepted as a matter of faith. In essence, it constituted a state religion, and I classify it as such. The non-religious atheists are from the second category; if they say that they “believe” there is no god, they use the word in the sense of “conclude”, having reached it through weighing evidence for and against such. The rest of us are like Laplace who, when asked if his model of solar system dynamics left room for the Lord, chimed, “I have no need of that hypothesis.”

I lack belief in god, any god which comes even close to that professed by the deist religions. I am willing for the sake of an exercise to accept a deity's existence as a hypothesis, and see where that takes me. Usually it's not far. I am even more willing to regard an assertion of a deity as an allegorical description of one's relationship to the world. That usually takes me further. But I am unwilling to fool myself and cover up my lack of belief while it remains an apt description of my internal state.

And, like passion for country music, such belief can't be forced.