Atheism Central for Secondary Schools

"Why is it that almost every human culture yet discovered has found it necessary to believe in an afterlife of some sort, but not a 'before-life?' Why are there so many versions of Heaven, Paradise and The Great Beyond, but almost none about The Great Before ..."

Judith Hayes, "Where Were You Before You Were You?"

"I did not fear non-existence before I lived. Why should I fear it after I have died?"

Epicurus (about 300 B.C.E.)

"[W]hen the martyr's righteous forebrain is exploded by the executioner's bullet and his mind disintegrates, what then? Can we safely assume that all those millions of neural circuits will be reconstituted in an immaterial state, so the conscious mind carries on?"

Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, (First edition, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), p. 245.

"To believe that consciousness can survive the wreck of the brain is like believing that 70 mph can survive the wreck of the car."

Frank Zindler

"Even many of those who claim to believe in immortality still tell themselves and others that neither side of the question is susceptible of proof. Just what can these hopeful ones believe that the word "proof" involves? The evidence against the persistence of personal consciousness is as strong as the the evidence for gravitation, and much more obvious. It is as convincing and unassailable as the proof of the destruction of wood or coal by fire. If it is not certain that death ends personal identity and memory, then almost nothing that man accepts as true is susceptible as proof."

Clarence Darrow, "The Myth of Immortality"

"We know thyere is nothing to be feared in death, that one who is not cannot be made unhappy...A tree cannot exist high in the air or clouds in the depths of the sea, as fish cannot live in the fields, or blood flow in wood or sap in stones ...so mind cannot rise alone without body, or apart from sinews and blood."

Lucretius (96-55 BCE)

"Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact."

Willian James, American psychologist and philosopher (1842-1910).

Christians often ask me why I am an atheist... Actually they don't, but this is a good rhetorical device, so I'm sticking with it. What they would really like to know -- even though they never get around to asking me -- is how could I reject the idea of an all-powerful God who loves us and looks over us? After all, Christianity has been good enough for all sorts of people for almost two thousand years. So why isn't it good enough for me?

There are many reasons why people become atheists. Some people become atheists in reaction to a strict religious upbringing. Occasionally, people like this are in two minds about atheism. Sometimes they return to the church. But no matter how much some people flirt with the idea, they are not atheists if they still believe in God. We define atheism as the lack of any belief in any god. A true atheist can no more believe in God than believe the earth is flat.

Other people are atheists because they come to understand that religion is illogical and often unreasonable. Sometimes this hits people almost like a revelation. One day they might suddenly think to themselves, 'if our god is a god of love, then how come there is so much violence and killing in the Bible?' Or they might think, 'if our particular version of Christianity is the one true faith, then why do so many people around the world worship differently, with no apparent sign of divine displeasure?'

And once you start thinking thoughts like these, lots of other little difficulties start queuing for your attention. Why did Jesus say he would return to earth before all the people standing before him had died? [Luke 9:27] And why has he still not returned, two thousand years later? If faith is the most important thing in the eyes of the one true God, then why did he create human beings capable of disbelieving in him? If God is good and everything that comes from Him is good, then how does this account for Satan? God must have created Satan as well, but he is not good. And why, in the whole two thousand years of the church's existence, has no one come up with a convincing and self-apparent answer for any of these questions that does not involve atheism?

After a while, Christianity starts to sound about as likely as a flat earth resting on the backs of four giant elephants, who, in turn, stand on the back of a giant turtle.

The trouble is, when I talk about logical inconsistency and contradiction Christians start to think that I am a bit too clever for my own good. 'Here's a man with a sharp wit,' they say. 'Someone take it away from him before he cuts himself.' So I will discuss another reason why people become atheists. It is not a "clever" reason that only super-intelligent people can understand. It is just an ordinary reason. It is simply that the world, as we know it, does not work the way the church says it does.

For example, some Christians believe that we have a soul sitting somewhere inside of us. The soul is the part of us that we call ourselves, as opposed to the part of us that is meat and bone and body fluids sloshing around. This is the theory, anyway.

You can make a metaphysical argument in favour of a soul. You can say that what people in ancient times called the soul is really just the content of our thoughts, memories, and personalities. But with explanations like this, theology starts to intrude on the ground of physiology and psychology. And these sciences have found no evidence for a soul. Indeed, they suggest that consciousness (and by association, personality) relies entirely on the brain. A good demonstration of this is the case of Phineas Gage [1].

Phineas Gage was a 25-year-old railway construction foreman who, on the 13th of September 1848, had a serious accident. An explosion shot a one metre long iron bar through his head. It entered his left eye socket and exited through his cranium (i.e. the top of the skull), destroying the left frontal lobe of his brain. This is serious, because the frontal lobes are the part of the brain we use for thinking.

He survived the accident. But Phineas wasn't the same person he had once been. Where before he had been reliable, hardworking, and popular, his doctor soon noticed he was, 'manifesting but little deference for his fellows, impatient of restraint or advice when it conflicts with his desires, at times pertinaciously obstinate, yet capricious and vacillating, devising many plans of future operations, which are no sooner arranged than they are abandoned...' [2]

You could argue that the trauma of the accident may have caused Phineas Gage to change so dramatically, but since 1848 there have been many cases which tend to confirm the other explanation. The brain really does control our thoughts, personality, and consciousness. So this concept of an independently existing soul has become superfluous. If the soul is independent of the brain, then how come parts of it are destroyed when the brain is damaged?

When religious people say there is an immortal soul, they put themselves at odds with the universe. They can say there is a soul until they are blue in the face, but if you can't see it, hear it, or measure it, and if the phenomena they use to support the idea of a soul can be explained in better ways, then the soul does not exist. This is what I think. And the soul is not the only way that religion is at odds with the reality of the world we live in.

For example, Christians often claim that religion is the primary source of morality in society. By this they mean to imply that, without religion, our society would degenerate into an orgy of anarchy and unrestricted hedonism. And they also use statements like this as a back handed rebuke to atheists, as if to say that we atheists are the cause of all the ills in the world. (It's funny, isn't it, how Christians can make words carry all sorts of extra meanings.)

But the Christian claim over morality does not match with my own experience of people. I have noticed that people can be both good and bad, regardless of whether they are religious or not. I have known the sons of good Christian families, who were good Christians only until they were out of earshot of their parents. On the other hand I have met godless atheists who are excellent people, who I would trust with my own life. Christian "morality" seems to make no difference.

Television evangelists in the United States are Christians. It might be hard to take them seriously, but there is no doubting they talk about Jesus a lot. They lead prayers and say they have dedicated their lives to the Lord. They have the sort of Christian faith you could bend horseshoes around. And when they are caught up in some scandal or other, they ask the Lord's forgiveness. In fact, they seem to spend a lot of time asking the Lord's forgiveness for one thing or another. In fact, they seem to have some trouble with biblical commandments like 'thou shalt not commit adultery,' or 'thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's goods'. What part of 'thou shalt not' don't they understand?

The sad truth is that some television evangelists are devoutly religious, but not particularly moral, even by Christian standards. Jesus Christ, as he is described in the Bible, chose to live a life of poverty and spoke on behalf of the poor and downtrodden. But, for some reason, television evangelists choose not to follow his example. They seem, on the whole, content to be the sort of rich and powerful people Jesus hated. And they seem to love money almost as much as they love God.

If Christian morality does not stop its greatest advocates from sinning, then how exactly is it good for our society? The sort of innate morality of the non-religious is equally, if not more effective. People who do the right thing, just because it is the right thing, usually manage to lead perfectly respectable and moral lives.

Furthermore, it seems that morality is an innate quality of human beings. The natives in the mountains of New Guinea do not need Christianity to tell them the difference between right and wrong. The Australian Aborigines did not need it either, until Christian missionaries forced it on them. The funny thing is that indigenous populations all over the world were more moral people before they got Christianity, than they were afterwards.

So I am perfectly happy to be an atheist. I don't worry that I might suddenly turn bad, or endanger my "soul", the existence of which is nothing but an unsupported assertion. I know that we atheists can live happy and reasonable lives, because we accept the world for what it is. We do not have to pretend that the world is different.

I would be happy to explain all of this to anyone who is interested. But like I said before, Christians just don't seem to ask. Why is that? Certainly they are full of opinions about atheists, which they will express at great length. They are, however, curiously uninterested in what really makes an atheist tick. Perhaps they don't want to know? Perhaps the truth would only get in the way? After all, they are not really interested in what atheists think, they only want an excuse to pour scorn on us.

Kim Walker

References:
1. Bloom, Lazerson, & Hofstadter. 1985. _Brain, Mind, and Behavior_. W. H. Freeman and Co.
2. Harlow, J. M. 1848. Passage of an iron rod through the head. _Boston Medical and Surgical Journal_, 39:389-393.