There’s battle-lines being drawn …
It seems lately there’s a lot of tension and even overt conflict and animosity between religious groups (extreme/fundamentalist ones, at any rate) and some very (increasingly?) vocal atheists – Richard Dawkins springs immediately to mind, as does a moronic article on ABC News today, with an Anglican Priest blaming sectarian conflict on atheists … whut???
There are a bunch of ‘declared’ atheists I interact with on Twitter, and I read a tweet this morning that reminded me of the film “The Commitments”; it basically said: ‘say it loud, I’m atheist and I’m proud’. 
It got me thinking. Yes I’m atheist, in that I don’t believe in a god or gods. I guess in that sense “I’m an atheist” is shorthand for “I’m not Catholic, and I’m not Protestant, and I’m not Bretheren, and I’m not Mormon, and I’m not Baptist and I’m not Jewish, or Buddhist, or Muslim, or Pentacostal …”. Jowever it’s really not something one “is”, in the same way that one might say “I’m Catholic”. In any case, am I “proud” of my atheism? Not especially. I’m certainly not ashamed of it, but it’s not something that for me warrants – or requires – pride. It’s simply the absence of belief in gods.
So why don’t I believe in gods?
I was raised atheist. No, that didn’t involve any special ceremonies or anti-church services or anything; quite simply religion was not a part of our life. It wasn’t until my late teens that I found out my father had in fact been raised Catholic or Protestant or something (probably the latter, being of Scottish extraction) – not that he was any more. I didn’t even have an awareness that some people went to church and prayed to a god. For me gods were found in old mythology, so when I did cotton on to others’ churchgoing I found it odd, since to me gods were in storybooks (mostly Norse, and very bloodthirsty ), used by pre-scientific societies to “explain” the natural world, in an attempt to imagine order in the apparent chaos, and thereby feel some sense of control.
More recently, as I’ve developed more explicitly my critical thinking muscles, I’ve elaborated (for myself) my lack of belief. The existence of an eternal omnipotent god, who stands outside time and space, and can do anything he/it/they want is fundamentally not testable in a scientific way. Whatever test might be performed, the comeback can be ‘god made it that way … to test us’ and so forth. Being untestable it is, as Wolfgang Pauli is said to have remarked: not right; it’s not even wrong. Basically therefore there is no empirical evidence-based reason to believe in a god or gods.
Further, the existence of gods is not necessary; it adds nothing to my life. I am kind and moral without gods. I have a wonderful (godless) family. I work hard to help many of the most disadvantaged and tormented people in our society – without gods to make me do it. Adding gods would not make me a better person than I am (nor a worse one).
But if I don’t believe, won’t I go to hell? Despite all the good I do, despite my kind and moral behaviour, despite my love for humanity the Earth and this Universe, some religions would have me burn in everlasting torment because I don’t go to church on Sundays…. First I have to say that if that is correct, if a god would behave in that way, negating a lifetime of good because someon doesn’t pray and visit church, that’s one hell of a petty and insecure supreme being. Even if I were to accept the proposition though, it wouldn’t help me. What if I chose the wrong god/gods/religion/branch of religion to adhere to? Say I decided I’d become Protestant … What if the Jews were right? Or the Buddhists?? I’m screwed. And all because I didn’t happen to be raised in a house with the correct religion out of all the various ones that abound.
Even if I had, that might not work though. There seem to be a couple of other “chunks” of atheists: some raised in religious environments but at a certain point found some inconsistencies/illogicality that led them to abandon their faith; and some who left because of particularly/unusually bad, traumatic, or abusive experiences in their religious environment. So just being raised in the “right” religion doesn’t mean you’ll stay there.
That said, I do rather disagree with Dawkins et al’s approach to this issue. I don’t think it’s reasonable to attack someone else’s faith, or to suggest they shouldn’t believe. While I have to say I really truly don’t understand why someone would believe in gods, I don’t think it’s any of my business to question or challenge them about it. Against that I guess some would point to “all the atrocities committed in the name of religion” … well, yeah … but also nah. Bad things are done by people. Many people are religious. Is it any worse for bad things to be done ostensibly in the name of religion than overtly in the name of desire, greed, and power?
Maybe it is … maybe not. I don’t really know. What I do know is that most atheists – like most Catholics, like most Protestants, like most Muslims, like most Jews, like ………… like most humans – are good, decent people. If we could all just remember that in all our dealings with each other, perhaps the world would become a better place.
(And we’d all sit around holding hands singing Kumbaya….) 
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