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Showing posts with label atheism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label atheism. Show all posts

Over recent years I have found myself thinking more and more about death. The death of my dog Kero, my heart attack, my father’s death, simply getting older, and now COVID-19, have each made death more of a reality for me. But, having become an atheist, death has become harder and harder for me to get my head around.

I was never particularly religious, though I was born Jewish. In mainstream Judaism there isn’t really an afterlife, but in my modern American cultural meme-set there was always a sense of something after life. There was going to be something; heaven and hell, reincarnation, Valhalla, filling pyramids with earthly items to use in the afterlife, building terracotta armies, becoming one with the cosmic consciousness, or just wandering the earth, haunting graveyards and old houses. There was a presumption that there would be something.

It is no surprise that humans have created so many ideas about what comes after this life because, no matter how absurd an afterlife we invent, it is conceivable, whereas nothingness, there being nothing after this existence, is inconceivable.

Part of the atheist package, as I understand it, is that there is absolutely nothing after death. After you die you are, well… dead. The consciousness doesn’t go anywhere, it simply ceases. The ever-quotable Mark Twain apparently said, “I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.” Similarly, another clever atheist (Richard Dawkins? Sam Harris?) said, “I’ve never concerned myself with what happened before I was born, why should I concern myself with what happens after I die.” They may well have believed that, and considering Occam’s Razor, it is undoubtedly true. Nonetheless, I feel compelled to try to “understand” that impending nothingness, whatever that might mean.

I had always expected that when I died there would be some awareness that it had happened. I’d have some realization of it. I’d have some feeling about it. Maybe I would think, “Ahhhhh, the pain is finally over.” Or maybe, “oh no, I haven’t finished yet.” Or perhaps, “damn, I wanted to see what was going to happen with the project/election/playoffs.” Mainstream American culture has taught me this. But if there is nothing, then there is no awareness of having died, there is no awareness of having lived, there is no awareness.

I have a subconscious expectation that if I die right now, I will somehow learn how future events turn out, and I will be pleased, or disappointed, or thrilled, or horrified. I also assume that I will know how I am remembered. But the atheists, of which I am now one, say that this is not the case. If I were to die while writing this sentence, I would never know it. Furthermore, you would never read it, which is unfortunate since we each could have enjoyed the irony.

How do I think about this? How do I think about not thinking? How do I think about not having the capacity to think? How do I think about there being no “I” with which to think? I’m trying to comprehend the incomprehensible.

Last night I went to bed a bit early. I briefly woke up a little after midnight and looked at the clock. I lay there for a short time, thinking about the amazing dreams I had just had - so vivid and strange - then fell back to sleep. Then I woke up needing to pee. I thought, “Good lord, I just woke up a second ago, why didn’t I go pee then?” But when I looked at the clock, I saw that it read 4:00am. Four hours had passed during which I functionally didn’t exist. I was neither conscious, nor dreaming. “I” wasn’t, as far as I was concerned. If an asteroid had landed on my house at 2:00am, killing me instantly, I wouldn’t have known. As far as I was concerned, I would have effectively died when I fell asleep a little after midnight. Yet I can’t even say that, because I wouldn’t have been “concerned”. “As far as I was concerned” has no meaning in that context. I would’ve gone to bed, had some amazing dreams and then ceased to exist.

For Jews, we live on only in the way that we are remembered. Needless to say, most of us would like to be remembered well. But if I don’t exist, why should I care how I am remembered? There will not be a “me” to care. Trying to discuss how I will be remembered after I am actually dead is meaningless. While I am alive, I am concerned about how I will be remembered after I die. But after the event, nothing.

There are those who have suggested that if there is no reward in the afterlife, and we realize that after death we won’t care how we were thought of, then there is no reason to be a good person. That is nonsense. I firmly believe that almost no one thinks about their reward when performing most good acts, nor their punishment when acting badly. I do good acts because, like most of us, I have empathy. When I see someone sad, in pain, suffering, or afraid, I feel badly for them and I want to help ease that condition. When I see someone that is happy, joyous, or simply serene, I feel good for them. I am happy that they are happy. This is automatic. The act is its own reward. I am certainly not thinking about anything that will accrue to me in the afterlife. No one is keeping score. I’m a good person because I’m a person, not because I need to rack up points to get into heaven.

But it is still strange to think that Charles Darwin, Jack the Ripper, Adolf Hitler, and Mother Teresa are all the same after death. None of them are aware of their good or bad acts. None of them are aware of their contribution to knowledge, or to kindness, or to evil. None of them are aware. It is nonsensical to talk about whether or not they are aware. They just... aren’t. Having your name on a building, or a city or state, plant, animal, geographic feature, or a star or galaxy, means something to those you’ve left behind, and might have thrilled you if you were alive, but is completely meaningless, completely nothingness, once you are dead.

Similarly, whenever conversation turns to the “big bang” theory, people always ask what came before. There has to be something before. It is not possible that there was nothing. Right? What does it mean for there to be no time, no space, nothing? How could the “big bang” possibly have come from… nothing? There must have been something, because nothing cannot be conceived of. It is, again, inconceivable. That there was nothing before the big bang is inconceivable.

Even if there is nothing, there has to be something to contain the nothing. After all, if there is an empty glass, there is still a glass. Yet, there it is. The atheist is forced to accept this. There was nothing before I was born, and there will be nothing after I die. Impossible to contemplate or conceive, yet true.

And so I go round and around, and around once more, arriving at… nothing. For my entire life, except during those periods when I was unconscious, I have been self-aware. I have been in possession of thought. I have been aware of the world around me. How can I possibly think about nonexistence? I can’t even use the word “think” to think about not thinking.

What is the death of an atheist?

I have been giving some thought to the Ten Commandments and I've gotta say, I have a problem with them. It’s fairly common for people to say that regardless of which religion you believe in, or even if you are an atheist, we can all pretty much agree on the moral validity of the Ten Commandments. But the Ten Commandments probably aren't what you think they are, and their morality is questionable. Furthermore, according to a Reuter’s article, a survey done in 2007 showed that more Americans can name the ingredients in a Big Mac than can list the Ten Commandments. That was true of me until just days ago. So, when people say they agree with the Ten Commandments, it’s not clear what they think they are supporting.

Let’s look at the Ten Commandments, shall we? First of all, for the vast majority of people, what they think of as the Ten Commandments, aren’t actually the Ten Commandments. According to Exodus – which is hardly an historically accurate document – God wrote a set of rules on two tablets, but Moses smashed them before anyone else ever saw them. Later, God wrote a completely different set of Ten Commandments on two new tablets. The second set of commandments were given to the people, so they are the Ten Commandments. But they're not what you think. Those commandments relate almost entirely to the proper worship of God, containing almost no moral or ethical content. If one believes Exodus (and why would one?) the second set of commandments are the true Ten Commandments. The first set were smashed and thus were kind of an “oh by the way” first draft.

Nonetheless, it is the first set of “Ten Commandments”, described in Exodus but never actually handed down to the Israelites, that the vast majority of people refer to as “The Ten Commandments”. It is that set that people talk about, or hang on a wall, or engrave onto a set of tablets to place on the grounds of an Alabama courthouse. But even within that set, there is disagreement. Wikipedia provides a table showing the somewhat different sets of Ten Commandments held by different religious groups.

But I’m not interested in errors of understanding about which set of commandments are “The” Commandments, or even about the exact language of each commandment in the set. The important questions relate to what people think of as "The Ten Commandments" - considered to be the underpinnings of Western morality.

To talk about them in any sensible way, I have to choose one version. Since they originally appear in the Old Testament, I am going with the basic, Jewish, first-edition Ten Commandments:
1) I am the Lord thy god, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
2) Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.
3) Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
4) Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.
5) Honor thy father and thy mother.
6) Thou shalt not murder.
7) Thou shalt not commit adultery.
8) Thou shalt not steal.
9) Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
10) Thou shalt not covet anything that belongs to thy neighbor.
The First Commandment isn't even a commandment. It's just a salutation. I don't understand why it is listed as a commandment. It really belongs in a preamble or a signature line. Perhaps God put it there so the Israelites wouldn't think Moses simply made up the other nine on his own.

Thinking about the Ten Commandments as an atheist, the next two are null and void. If there is no God, then they are meaningless. The Fourth Commandment fits into the same category. If there is no God, then the seventh day of the week is just the seventh day of the week; it is not “the Sabbath” and “keeping it holy” is pointless. Even if you believe in a God, then these are rules about how to worship one particular god - they are not ethical statements about how to live a moral life. They are not a guide for how to behave in society.

So, four down and six to go.

I find the Fifth Commandment to be terrible. “Honor thy father and thy mother.” Okay, sure. Of course I will honor them if they are good people, and were good parents, and did their best to raise me. But what if they were drunk and abusive? What if they molested me? What if they abandoned me, beat me, or sold me into slavery? What if they sent me to work in the coal mines at the age of 7? Am I commanded to honor them? That’s absurd.

On the other hand, if my parents were wonderful people and worked hard to raise me kindly and well, then of course I will honor them for their excellence. Doesn’t it diminish my honoring them by telling them that I was commanded to do so?

I cannot accept the Fifth Commandment, even though it sounds good at first. Honor thy father if he deserves it. Honor thy mother if she deserves it. Honor your grandparents, aunts, uncles, nannies, neighbors, mentors and teachers – if they deserve it. If they don’t, then defend yourself against them; tell them not to hurt you; tell the authorities that they are molesting you; and so on. Other than in establishing a patriarchal society, a commandment to honor your parents is worse than useless.

We’re half way through the list and there is not one that I can accept.

Number six commands that “Thou shalt not murder.” Sounds great. But did you really have to tell me that? Furthermore, if we were to believe the Bible, in Exodus 32, no sooner does Moses receive the Ten Commandments than he orders the Levites to slay the Israelites who worshiped before the Golden Calf. So, the Sixth Commandment should really read, “Thou shalt not murder unless your leader tells you to.” The juxtaposition between receiving the law from the Lord, and the murder described in the Old Testament, utterly calls into question the Sixth Commandment; arguably the one which should be most universally accepted.

“Thou shalt not commit adultery”, says Commandment number seven. Why is that a commandment? Isn’t that between you and your spouse? Wouldn’t it be better to say, “You are commanded to treat your spouse well; you are commanded to treat your spouse the way you want them to treat you.” We are told, “Thou shalt not commit adultery”, but feel free to beat your wife, take your spouse for granted, henpecked them, criticize them, browbeat them, or subject them to any form of physical or mental torture. Just don’t have sex with anyone other than them. Oh, and by the way, you’re not commanded to make sure they enjoy it. I’m going to give the Seventh Commandment a qualified OK, because generally speaking committing adultery probably wont make your partner happy, but as is, I hardly think it is worth the stone its written on.

The Eighth Commandment says, “Thou shalt not steal”. Good. I’m good with that… kinda. Obviously I could come up with a dozen examples of when you should steal: you should steal if you’re starving to death, or if you know that someone is about to commit murder and you steal their weapon, or if someone has stolen something and you "steal" it back, etc. But that’s not the point. The point is that the Ten Commandments are generally considered to be the bedrock of Western civilization’s morality, but the eighth Commandment is just about possessions. It’s about private property. Shouldn’t the moral basis of our society be reserved for ethical statements about how to live your life and how to treat each other, rather than about material goods? This commandment is fine; it just doesn’t deserve a spot in the top ten.

Wow, only two to go and I haven’t found a single commandment that I can really advocate for.

Commandment number nine: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” All right! Finally! A real statement about how to behave in a civilized society. Thank you. The Ninth Commandment works. Whew.

The last commandment reads, “Thou shalt not covet anything that belongs to thy neighbor.” Depending upon your source, it might specify your neighbor’s house, wife, servants, animals, etc. Once again, other than your neighbor’s wife, this is really about material goods. [For the versions that specifically mention “your neighbor’s wife”, the implication that she is a possession presents a whole extra set of problems.] I find this Commandment to be much worse than the materialist Eighth Commandment, because this Commandment is about coveting. To “covet”, is to yearn to possess something, to desire wrongfully, or simply to wish for eagerly. But yearning, desiring, or wishing are thoughts, not actions. So the Tenth Commandment is commanding you not to think something, regardless of whether or not you’re going to act upon that thought. This is the work of the thought police. I can’t accept the Tenth Commandment at all.

[Note: if your set of Commandments includes the "your neighbor's wife" clause, it has to make you wonder if the 10th Commandment doesn't apply to (heterosexual) women - there is no commandment that thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's husband. In fact, do any of the commandments apply to women? Of course I am being ridiculous. Though it's a bit late to be pointing out that the Bible is utterly patriarchal and misogynistic, it is clear that nothing in the bible applies to women, slaves (!), animals, children (even male children), unbelievers, or members of other tribes. As far as the authors of the bible were concerned, they were all sub-human.]

In summary, of the Ten Commandments, one isnt a commandment at all; three are meaningless (or if you are a theist, they are meaningful but not useful as moral precepts); two are terrible; two are OK, but morally ambiguous; one would be good if it weren’t nullified by the context of the Old Testament; and one, just one, as written in the Bible, truly deserves to be a grounding principle of our culture.

Meanwhile, in reading the Old Testament and learning the circumstances of Moses supposedly receiving the Ten Commandments from God, I have to conclude that Moses was a sanctimonious moron with serious short-term memory problems. If we are to believe Exodus 32, he went up Mount Sinai and there received the stone tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments. He was up there for a long time - God knows what he was doing all that while. Because he was gone so long, the Israelites lost faith in him and created the Golden Calf. In Exodus 32.9-10 we are told that God looked down from Mount Sinai [Huh? Isn’t God everywhere? Why does he need to “look” in any particular direction?] and saw that the people were praying to the Golden Calf. He was furious, declaring that he would destroy the people for what they had done. But in Exodus 32.11-13, Moses talks God out of it. [Huh? God is infallible and omniscient, but you can talk him into changing his mind?]

Moses then descended the mountain and saw the people praying to the Golden Calf. He became enraged. He, “hurled the tablets from his hands and shattered them at the foot of the mountain.”(Exodus 32.19) Are you kidding me? God told Moses that the people were praying to a false idol. But Moses forgot while hiking down the hill? I know Moses was old, and likely forgetful, but that sounds like something he might have kept in mind. We are told that he was so peevish that he smashed the gift that The Lord created with His own hand. Really? I don’t care if they were fornicating with the Golden Calf. Smashing God’s tablets is more than a temper tantrum. Then, having just talked God out of killing the Israelites, Moses calls the faithful to him saying, “thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: each of you put sword on thigh, go back and forth from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay brother, neighbor, and kin” (Exodus 32.27). Uh, Really? So Moses talks God out of his fury, then goes down the mountain and is so furious himself that he destroys the tablets containing the Ten Commandments, and orders the faithful to kill “some 3000 of the people” - which, we note, is a violation of the Sixth Commandment that he just received. Did Moses have a stroke while hiking down Mount Saini? If so, Exodus doesn’t mention it. The Lord then makes what is supposed to be a copy of the first tablets, but turns out to be a completely different set of Ten Commandments. Maybe God also suffers from memory loss? Moses successfully gives the new-and-improved Commandments to the remaining people.

So that story is pretty psychopathic, but here’s the worst thing about it: The Commandment that the Israelites had supposedly disobeyed, and for which they were put to death, hadn’t yet been given to them at the time of their transgression. The first set of Ten Commandments says, “thou shalt have no other gods before me,” but when the Israelites made the Golden Calf, and prayed to it as a God, they had not yet been told that they must not do so. Therefore, wiping them out, as God had wanted to do, or killing 3000 of their number as Moses did, is utterly unreasonable. We don’t retroactively punish people for breaking newly minted laws. Why should God, or his servant, Moses?

OK. So, the Ten Commandments that we speak of aren’t theTen Commandments, and no one remembers what they are, and only one of them is worth the stone its written on, and the circumstances described in Exodus are indicative of sociopathy. Well, how have we done obeying God’s Commandments? Lousy.

Every second of every day, somewhere on earth, millions upon millions of people are breaking at least one of the Ten Commandments. Every moment someone, somewhere, is taking the Lord’s name in vain. I’m hard-pressed to believe that there is a millisecond that goes by when someone isn’t making a graven image or regarding one. Go to any city or town anywhere in America on any given Saturday or Sunday, and you will find businesses that are open. We can argue about which day is the Sabbath, but there is no questioning the fact that it has not been kept “holy”. The statistics on murder are stunning. Robbery, theft, and burglary are even more common than murder. Sociologists have shown that adultery is commonplace. People bear false witness, gossiping and lying about each other, all the time. Everyone, everywhere, (with the possible exception of the of the Dalai Lama) covets things. In most of the world, encouraging people to covet is a major industry.

So really, rather than engraving the Ten Commandments on two tablets of stone, God might as well have sent a card. We would’ve read it, said, “yeah, sounds good,” and thrown it in a shoebox with birthday, get-well, and sympathy cards.

The Ten Commandments? Don’t be ridiculous. Just do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and we'll all get along just fine. Or, if you want a better set of Ten Commandments, check out Ten Commandments That Would Have Changed the World.


I have some questions about God. That is to say, Yahweh – the one true God, the monotheist Judeo-Christian God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob - not one of those crazy pantheist gods.

The bible tells us that God created the universe, and the heavens and the earth, and light, and that he separated the light from the darkness, and so on. Cool. But, what was God doing before he created everything? God is eternal, so he existed forever and will exist forever. How long did God exist before he created the universe? The universe is somewhere between 6000 and 14 billion years old. God existed forever. Therefore, God existed for an infinitely long time before he created the universe. Where did he exist? What was he doing?

The Gods of the Greek, Roman, Norse, and Hindu pantheons have always had their own parties going on in their own spiritual planes. Earth and human affairs were just side shows. Sometimes they would notice us – generally to either fuck us or fuck with us, but basically they had their own shit going on, which we would experience as earthquakes, wars, the changing of seasons, and so on. But we all know that is nonsense. There is no god but God, right?

So, back to Yahweh. We were created in his image, so, he has some kind of body with head, arms, legs, torso, naughty bits, etc. For an infinitely long time before the creation of the universe, he was… where? In heaven? But wait! Didn’t he create heaven when he created the heavens and the earth? If heaven existed before God created “the heavens and the earth”, where did it come from? Did God create it? If so, when? Where was he before he created heaven? If he is infinite, then where was he before there was a place for him to be?

What was he doing? Was he alone? Or were the angels keeping him company? Did he create the angels? If not, where did they come from? If so, when did he create them? Were there a pantheon of other gods that God hung out with on a Friday night? If so, what happened to them? Might there have been some foul play that we should know about?

Basically what I am asking is, wasn’t God bored? An infinite amount of “time” spent nowhere, alone. Of course, maybe he hadn’t created time yet, so maybe he didn’t spend an infinite amount of time being bored.

OK. Those questions are hurting my brain, so I’ll press on to other issues. God is infinite and existed forever before creating the heavens and the earth, and all the plants, animals, and people. How did he think of it? The heavens and the earth didn’t exist. God existed forever, but one “day” he decided to create this incredibly complicated universe out of nothingness. Based on what? We are created in his image, but, what is everything else created in the image of? There was no universe. No suns, no planets, no trees, no water, no advertisements for underarm deodorants, no odors to be deodorized.

After an infinite existence, God suddenly starts creating stuff. Maybe he created Heaven and Angels to have a place to exist and some company, or maybe they already existed. But, out of absolutely nowhere he began creating novel stuff. Why? How? Based on what? Why then? Why not sooner, or later?

OK. My brain is hurting even more. One last question and I will go get an aspirin. Why six days? God existed forever, then out of literally nowhere gets the idea to create the universe, and does it in six days. Why the hurry? A trillion years one way or the other, what does he care? He’s existed forever, and will exist forever. Six days seems a hell of a rush.

You know what, I have another question. I’m really needing 3 or 4 Advil right about now, but, I am not infinite, so I’m gonna ask another question. After God created everything, he put himself in the business of watching all of us all of the time. He keeps track of everything that everyone does or thinks. When we die he judges us and either accepts us into heaven or sends us to hell (unless we go to purgatory.)

The Population Reference Bureau estimates that about 107 billion people have ever lived. Presumably by now God has seen every action that humans can perform, and listened to every thought that can be thought. Oh sure, new specific thoughts come up all the time, like “I want a new iPhone 6”, but practically speaking that is the same as “I want a new kilt”, or “I want a new spear.” How bored must he be now? We can also presume that he’s let a hell of a lot of us into heaven at this point. For an infinite amount of time he was alone, now he’s utterly inundated with happy, smiling, harp-playing souls.

Do you think that’s really what he had in mind when he created the heavens and the earth, then Adam, and then Eve, and told them to go forth and multiply? Oh wait. He’s infallible. I guess an infinite amount of time going forward watching every human and recording their thoughts and actions, and a heaven filled with billions of souls, must be what he wanted. He doesn’t make mistakes (with the possible exception of the duck-billed platypus.) Still, it seems like a rather extreme over-reaction to loneliness. Perhaps God is a manic-depressive. That would explain a lot. I’ll have to ask him if I ever get the chance.



Someone posted my "Coming out as a militant atheist" to the Facebook group “Religious Tolerance”, along with a negative commentary. Another person commented on the post, noting that they were praying for the people of France and that they didn’t see how praying for France was a bad thing; that they shouldn’t be criticized for prayer, and that praying for Parisians was showing solidarity with them.

I would like to suggest to that person that instead of “praying” for the people of Paris, they instead “care about”, “empathize with”, “stand with”, “mourn for”, “have their heart go out to”, etc. I propose that they should announce that they intend to take action, active or passive, now or in the future, to help make sure that such things never happen again.

When someone says that they are “praying” for France, there are two possibilities: one is that they actually mean “care about”, “empathize with”, and so on. The other possibility is that they truly mean that they are stopping what they are doing and saying words, aloud or to themselves, requesting that a deity take action.

In the first case, the word "pray" is being used as a synonym for "wish." I think it is more valuable, and conveys more substantive meaning, when people speak of their emotional connection with the French and express their grief and anger at the terrible actions that happen last week. I believe that it is a much more forceful statement to say “I feel emotionally connected with you and care about you” than to say “I am praying for you, i.e. I wish that hadn't happened." So, you should stop using the word "pray" and instead unambiguously express your direct human empathy for the suffering of others.

The second case, actually “praying” to a deity in the religious sense, is at best a waste of your time. If you encourage others to literally pray, then you’re actively doing harm. Your prayers, and the prayers of others, will not be answered by the deity that you are beseeching help from. By encouraging others to pray, you are encouraging them to waste their time and offload their opportunity to give tangible assistance onto a mythological being. When you say "I am praying for the people of France," what you are really saying is "I hope that some force (other than myself) will take care of them.” Imagine what could actually be achieved if everyone in the world who is “praying” for Paris actually did something physical, substantive, and material to assist the Parisians, or to actively prevent future heinous acts perpetrated in the name of “god.”

If in your anguish you cry out to the giant teapot circling the sun, asking it to help the people of France, your pleas will not be answered. The giant teapot circling the sun is not listening, and it’s not going to do anything about the terrorist acts in Paris, and most importantly, there is no giant teapot circling the sun! If you think there is a giant teapot circling the sun that you can call to in time of need, then someone should sit down with you over hot cup of tea and explain the nature of reality. If you honestly believe that praying to a deity to help the people of France will actually achieve anything at all, then you really need to take some time and think about reality, actions and actors, that which is measurable and that which is imaginary. If you don’t actually believe in a deity, then you really, really, shouldn’t be praying.

Back to the first case again, if you say that you are “praying” but actually mean that you are demonstrating empathy with the victims of terrorism, then you may inadvertently be causing harm. By using the word “pray”, you are likely to be encouraging others to pray in the religious sense. As described, this is wasteful and harmful. Don’t use the word “pray” if you don’t mean it, and if you do mean it, stop and think about reality – then stop praying, because really you are just wishing, and wishing things were different wont help anyone.

I hope that everyone is pained by the terrorist acts in Paris. I hope that everyone feels positive emotions for those who were hurt, and negative emotions towards those who committed these crimes. I hope that everyone will be driven by those feelings to take actions to help in any way they can, no matter how small. And, I hope that no one will “pray” for Paris.
Cartoon by Bradley James Peterson

For years I have been sitting on the fence about religion. I have called myself variously an “agnostic”, or “spiritual but not religious”, or I’ve said things like “I believe in God but not in religion.” But I'm realizing that those statements are classic equivocation. I must come out as an atheist. Not only that, the time has come to be what Richard Dawkins calls a “militant atheist.”

Some years ago I was talking with my friend Bill. He is an atheist and asked me about a comment that I had made about God. I told him that I believe in God but not in religion. He asked me how I, as a thinking person, could possibly believe in God. I told him that I found it to be too much effort to be an atheist in a theist society. That I felt an emotional pull towards the various ideas of God and an afterlife. That it wasn’t important enough to me to be confrontational with true believers. But, I must admit that my responses basically boiled down to laziness.

Whether or not there is a supernatural being orchestrating it all, I desperately want there to be an afterlife. I can’t bear the thought that my loved ones who have died are simply gone. My brain cannot wrap itself around the notion that when I die there is nothing – that it will be so nothing that I won’t even be aware that there is nothing. There won’t be an “I”, and there won’t be “aware”, and there won’t even be “nothing.” I have no way to even think about such a thing (or such a non-thing), so, I desperately want there to be a heaven, or reincarnation, or some kind of afterlife. But guess what, I want a lot of things. I want to have the body of a 25-year-old again. I want vast wealth, power, and fame. I want to have dinner and/or sex with a long list of interesting, attractive, intelligent people. I want my cell phone to get better reception. But guess what, I’m probably not going to get any of these things, and even though I want there to be an afterlife, that doesn’t mean there is one. Just as with poor cell phone reception, I’m going to have to accept it and learn to live with it.

I recently watched an outstanding Ted Talk by Richard Dawkins from 2002 in which he talks about being a militant atheist. He made many important points. Among them he notes that all believers in Yahweh are atheists when it comes to Zeus, Poseidon, Mars, Odin, Thor, Osiris, Seth, Horus, and 100’s of other gods of the Greeks, Romans, Norse, Native Americans, Inuit, Pacific Islanders, etc., as well as, Vishnu, Shiva, Durga and the whole Hindu pantheon. Dawkins says that he takes atheism just one God further. Implicit in this I found the idea that when learning about these non-Judeo-Christian gods, most people find the stories to be anywhere from quaint to ridiculous. The Maori of New Zealand believe that the Polynesian demigod Maui pulled up the north island of New Zealand with a fishing hook. When modern worshippers of Yahweh hear that story, they find it cute and silly. But no thinking person could critically read the Old or New Testaments, or the Koran, without finding the stories held therein to be equally naïve and even absurd.

Dawkins’ Ted Talk was not my first exposure to atheism. Years ago I watched Jonathan Miller’s BBC series A Rough History of Disbelief (aka “A Brief History of Disbelief”), many of which can now be found on YouTube. I found it fascinating, so I followed it up with the equally brilliant, “The Atheism Tapes”. I subsequently read my friend Valerie Tarico’s, The Dark Side: How Evangelical Teachings Corrupt Love and Truth. Each of these are highly recommended.

Even after all these convincing arguments I couldn’t give up my wish that there be some kind of god with a promise of some kind of afterlife. I didn’t care about the religion that was bestowed on me, and I was well aware of the atrocities committed throughout history in the name of virtually every deity conceived by the mind of man. But being an atheist was just too much trouble and I wanted an afterlife, so, I remained “spiritual but not religious.” The lazy man’s escape hatch.

Yet I live in a world where I am daily bombarded by the nonsense promulgated by pandering politicians and other pious pinheads. The very people who should be most impartial – politicians, newscasters, and even some scientists – either believe in and proselytize for some version of god, or pretend to do so.

And then there were last night’s terror attacks in Paris, committed in the name of Allah. Dear God, where are you that you let such atrocities be committed? Dear God, why do you command your followers to perform such acts in your name? God? God? Hello?

So, OK, I’m “coming out” as an atheist. But, why a “militant atheist”? Because I can’t just admit that I am an atheist and sit back wiping my hands clean of terrible acts done daily in the name of “god.” Noted atheist Christopher Hitchens says that he is offended by the notion that he needs to read a 2000-year-old book to know right from wrong. I agree. The subtle nuances of behavior in a polite society, and the laws that pertain to my slice of the world, are created by my particular culture. But the more fundamental questions of right and wrong, good and bad, come from my own empathy with my fellow creatures. I know that the attacks in Paris last night were evil. I don’t need to read the Old Testament or ask my rabbi to understand that it was a wrong act. I don’t need to read the Koran or ask an Imam to receive the opinion that the Paris attacks were a holy jihad and therefore good. I am a human being, so I know that the slaying of other innocent human beings is wrong. If some religion tells me that I need to read their book to understand that truth, then the religion is wrong - dangerously wrong.

No God either promoted, or stood by and watched the Holocaust, the Cambodian genocide, the endless African genocides, the atrocities in the former Yugoslavia, the attacks on 9/11, last night’s terror attack in Paris, nor wars, atrocities, and inquisitions going back to antiquity. By sitting back quietly, secure in my blameless atheism, I am indirectly complicit in the terrible acts committed in the name of religion – be they horrors like terrorism, war, and genocide, or simply suppression of freedoms such as an individual’s decisions about how to treat their own body.

Thus, not only am I coming out as an atheist, but as a militant atheist. Sign me up.