Why I'm an Atheist
I Finally Got Around to Writing This
“In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.” - David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)
In August, I authored a post about the founding of the United States in the context of religion. In that post, I noted that I’m an atheist. Specifically, I’m an agnostic atheist. Which is to say that I don’t believe in a god, gods, or a higher power. However, I also readily admit that I’m open to being proven wrong because, at the end of the day, I cannot say with any certainty there’s not something out there.
Recently, I’ve been more outspoken about being an atheist. I had kept my lack of belief to mostly myself for many years for personal reasons. A few friends, my sister, and my fiance knew, but I didn’t publicly talk about it. In the past year, I’ve gotten to a point where I don’t care anymore. The outspokenness has caused some conflict with friends, even a few close friends, who are evangelical Christians. The conflict was unintended, but I suppose it was unavoidable.
The fact is, although I’m not a believer, religious freedom is important to me because it includes the freedom from religion. My lack of belief puts me in a minority in the United States. I don’t want any particular religious views forced on me, nor do I want to force atheism on others.
What caused me to become more outspoken about my lack of belief? Well, when I worked in conservative politics, being an outspoken atheist wasn’t exactly smiled upon. When I left my old job in February 2021, I gradually started being more outspoken. I had also kept my lack of belief mostly to myself because of personal relationships. Over time, I decided that I shouldn’t have to hide something simply because it may upset a few people.
I was also motivated (and alarmed by) national conservatism and Christian nationalism. At its core, national conservatism is essentially far-right Catholicism, or integralism. Christian nationalism is based mainly on evangelical Protestantism. It’s easy to confuse national conservatism and Christian nationalism. They’re similar in the sense that they both employ populist rhetoric and are based on an illiberal worldview. There are key differences, though. Perhaps the biggest difference is in economics and the role of government. National conservatives tend to have center-left to left-wing economic viewpoints and want a more active government while Christian nationalists are closer to Christian reconstructionism—or biblical government mixed with economic conservatism and populist sentiment.
Forcing any religious perspective on people, which both want to do, through the force of government is wrong. Our government is secular in nature and designed to protect the rights of both majorities and minorities, including religious minorities. Now, the irony of this is that Catholic integralists and Christian nationalists are minorities.
Do I have a problem with believers? Generally, no, I don’t. Which is to say I don’t generally care what anyone believes as long as the government isn’t used to force a particular set of religious beliefs or morality on others. I can’t say for certain what the faiths of my friend group are, although I would guess that a majority fall into the “religious none” category, but a decent number of them are evangelical Christian Protestants, mainline Christian Protestants, or practicing Catholics. We tend to disagree on cultural issues and whether government should promote a morality based on fundamentalist doctrine. For example, prohibitions on same-sex marriage and other anti-LGBTQ policies and abortion immediately come to mind.
Why am I an atheist? The answer is incredibly long, so I’ll do my best to sum it up. I was raised in an evangelical Christian home. I had a born-again experience when I was in 6th grade. We went to Southern Baptist churches until I was probably 14 years old. We switched to a nondenominational church that was very similar to the churches we went to when I was younger. I also attended a private Christian school off and in parts of elementary, middle, and high school. In my very early 20s, I led praise and worship for middle school kids on Sunday mornings.
Initially, I started by pulling away from the faith in which I grew up. I was in my early 20s and became frustrated by what I saw as evangelical Christianity turning into a political movement that was anti-gay and anti-immigrant. I also saw many evangelicals ignoring the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth and the responsibilities of the church as defined by Acts. At the time, I had limited knowledge of the growth of the so-called “Moral Majority” in the 1980s and its attachment to the conservative movement and Republican politics.
Over time, though, what started as a reaction to the continued growth of evangelical Christianity into a political movement began to evolve into agnosticism and, then, into a legitimate disbelief in God, gods, or anything else. This evolution was unrelated to what initially caused me to pull away from evangelical Christianity.
Not long before I stopped going to church, I developed an interest in Christian apologetics and the history of the faith. I read a lot of the works of William Lane Craig and Lee Strobel, among others. The interest in the history of Christianity stayed around. I began to read and study more on my own. I’ve continued to do so in recent years as a hobby. When I was “deconstructing” my faith years ago, I found the answers of Christian apologists to be extraordinarily lacking.
Christianity began as a sect of Judaism. Judaism emerged from Yahwism. Yahwism comes from the Canaanite religion. It was a monolatrist or henotheistic religion, meaning that the existence of other gods was acknowledged, although Yahweh was their national god.
Breaking down what we know about Yahweh, though, shows that he is not unlike most ancient deities, which is to say, unremarkable. Yahwism existed until the Babylonian exile in the 6th century BCE, when it began to transition into a monotheistic religion, what we know as Judaism. What emerged from Babylonian exile is apocalyptic Judaism, which is evident in Daniel, Isaiah, and Ezekiel, as well as other books, including the Old Testament Apocrypha.
Jesus of Nazareth emerged as an apocalyptic preacher who developed a following as a messianic figure. He’s crucified, supposedly comes back from the dead, and supposedly ascends to heaven but tells his followers in Matthew 24:34 that “this generation will certainly not pass away” before he returns.
Jesus of Nazareth wasn’t the only messianic figure in his own time. Apollonius of Tyana was a Neopythagoreanian who reportedly performed miracles, was executed, and whose followers believed he would return. In the 2nd century, Simon bar Kokhba claimed to be the messiah and started a revolt that lasted for approximately three years against Roman rule.
What makes Christianity remarkable is its adoption by Constantine and the Roman Empire. Pauline Christianity spread across the Roman Empire. Paul didn’t believe that Gentile followers had to convert to Judaism and keep the law before becoming followers of Jesus. Peter (Cephas), James, and others did. Notably, Peter and James actually walked with Jesus, the latter being his brother. This disagreement is mentioned in detail in Galatians 2. Jewish Christians were persecuted during the Bar Kokhba revolt. After this, Pauline Christianity “won the messaging war,” so to speak.
One of the core tenets of evangelical Christianity is the supposed inerrancy of the Bible. Some may argue that inerrancy is interpreted differently. Some believe it applies only to the original manuscripts, none of which have survived. Others believe even the copies of the manuscripts are inerrant. The problem, of course, is that no two manuscripts are alike, and there are plenty of contradictions and errors in those manuscripts.
But inerrancy has been a cornerstone of the Christian faith for centuries. In the 4th century, Augustine expressed frustration with Jerome, who had discovered a falsehood in Galatians. Augustine wrote, “It seems to me that the most disastrous consequences must follow upon our believing that anything false is found in the sacred books: that is to say that the men by whom the Scripture has been given to us, and committed to writing, did put down in these books anything false.”
In 1707, English theologian John Mill documented more than 30,000 textual problems between biblical manuscripts. More issues with the text have been identified since. Most of these issues with the text don’t matter, but others do matter quite significantly and are very difficult to reconcile.
For some, problems with the text can be explained away through hermeneutics. In my experience, hermeneutical defenses of biblical text often involve mental gymnastics that would deserve a gold medal if it were a sport.
The Hebrew Bible—perhaps better known as the “Old Testament,” presents a number of issues, from similarities with other religions in the ancient Near East to the lack of historical evidence to moral problems.
First, there are two accounts of creation in Genesis. Genesis 1:26 tells us that man is created on the sixth day, after the earth, plants, and animals, etc. However, Genesis 2:7 suggests that man was created before plants and animals, etc. It’s pretty clear that the Genesis 1 account of creation is influenced by the Mesopotamian creation story, found in the Enuma Elish, and perhaps the Ugaritic Ba’al Cycle. (Ugarit was an ancient city near present-day Latakia, Syria. For those who may find it interesting, Latakia is also near ancient Laodicea.) The influences of Mesopotamian and Canaanite can be found in some of the books that comprise the Hebrew Bible.
Since I mentioned the Ba’al Cycle, it’s probably worth going down that road a little more. The Canaanite pantheon consists of a number of deities. Some of them may be familiar. Obviously, Ba’al Hadad is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as the national god of the Phoenicians. Chemosh is the god of the Moabites and is also mentioned in the Bible. Yahweh—also known by the tetragrammaton “YHWH”—is the national god of the Israelites.
Yahweh is a fascinating deity. There’s not a lot known about his origins, but he is believed to be a storm god in the Canaanite pantheon. However, El is the main god in the Canaanite pantheon. In the Hebrew Bible, El shows up under various names, including El Elyon and El Shaddai. Yahweh is known as the “Lord.” The thing is, El and Yahweh aren’t the same deity. Ancient Israelites were either henotheistic or monolatrist. There are examples of this in the Hebrew Bible, most obviously in Deuteronomy 32:8-9 and Psalms 89:6-8. Over time, Yahweh adopted the qualities of El. It’s worth noting here that the name “Israel,” which means “God perseveres,” isn’t a Yahwistic name.
Monotheism didn’t emerge until the Babylonian exile in the 6th century BCE. Isaiah, for example, is one of the exilic books of the Hebrew Bible where monotheism is very clearly espoused. (I recognize that part of Isaiah was written prior to the Babylonian exile. However, Deutero-Isaiah and Trito-Isaiah were written either during exile or after.)
One passage in particular, Isaiah 45:7, makes clear the extent of Yahweh’s supposed power: “I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things.” Other translations go a little further. Rather than “disaster,” some translations say “evil.” (Keep in mind that the “devil” or “Satan” of Christianity doesn’t exist in Judaism. The serpent in Genesis isn’t identified as such. “Satan,” or “the accuser,” is one of the angels in Job 1:6.)
There are also significant moral issues in the Hebrew Bible. The conquest of Canaan is replete with stories of violence against the inhabitants of the “Promised Land” and other tales. Examples include Exodus 12:29, Leviticus 20:9, Joshua 8, 1 Samuel 15:3, Jeremiah 11:22-23, Lamentations 2:20-22, and Jeremiah 19:7-9.
There’s the story of Jephthah in Judges 11, who promised Yahweh to sacrifice the first thing he saw come out his door if Yahweh helped him defeat the Ammonites. The first thing that came from the door was his daughter. Jephthah fulfilled his promise by sacrificing his daughter to Yahweh. There’s another story from 2 Kings 2:23-24 in which Elisha summons two bears to kill 42 children. What did they do to deserve death? They called Elisha “baldy.”
Although I could keep going about the moral issues presented in parts of the Hebrew Bible, I’ll leave you with the moral quandary presented by the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament when it comes to slavery.
This is one that I've tried to get my Christian friends who want to argue with me about homosexuality to understand. Christians believe that the Bible condemns homosexuality in Leviticus, Romans, Timothy, and Corinthians. (Keep in mind that those verses may not actually be referring to homosexuality. There’s an ongoing debate about this.) Do you support slavery? Because the Bible doesn't condemn slavery; it actually condones it.
Looking at the New Testament, the four gospels aren’t in agreement about key elements of the life of Jesus of Nazareth.
The Gospel of Mark, the oldest of the four gospels, makes no mention of the virgin birth. (John, which is the latest of the gospels, also doesn’t mention the virgin birth.) Of course, the narrative of the virgin birth is important because of its connection to Isaiah 7:14. Even if one were to suggest that perhaps the manuscript of Mark is incomplete. Mark 3 strongly suggests that Jesus’ family believed he was out of his mind, which supports the view that the author of Mark either didn’t know of the virgin birth or didn’t accept it. None of the Pauline epistles mention the virgin birth.
Mark and Matthew also present the men who were crucified alongside Jesus as mocking him while Luke has one of the men asking Jesus to be remembered. Jesus then says, “[T]oday, you will be with me in paradise.”
Matthew and Luke have different genealogies of Jesus through Joseph, who, according to these two gospels, wasn’t actually the father of Jesus. Establishing the connection to Joseph is important because of his supposed connection to the Davidic line.
There’s no evidence of a census around the time of Jesus’ birth, which scholars estimate took place in 6 BCE to 4 BCE. There was a census of Judea taken in 6 CE, but the structure of the census doesn’t match the biblical account. The census was also taken several years after Jesus’ birth. Matthew writes that Herod was Judean king at the time of Jesus’ birth. He died in 4 BCE. There’s not a census narrative in Matthew, although Jesus was born in Bethlehem in the story.
Matthew also writes of the “slaughter of the innocents,” for which there’s no historical record. An act so brutal would’ve almost certainly been recorded by someone like Josephus, but he doesn’t mention it in his writings.
Luke states that Jesus was born when Quirinius was governor of Syria. Quirinius didn’t become governor of Syria until 6 CE, several years after the death of Herod. Jesus couldn’t have been born when Herod was king and when Quirinius was governor of Syria.
The writers of the gospels, particularly Matthew and Luke, and early Christians created the “messianic prophecies” in the Hebrew Bible. The passages from Isaiah and Micah aren’t talking about Jesus of Nazareth. As biblical scholar Bart Ehrman writes, “[N]o one prior to Christianity took these passages to refer to a future messiah.”
As mentioned, parts of Isaiah were written during the Babylonian exile or after. Parts of Micah, too, were written during the same period. I’ve already noted that what emerged from exile was monotheistic apocalyptic Judaism. Micah 5:2 is one of the messianic prophecies that supposedly foretells the coming of Jesus.
But if you read the remainder of the chapter, the author writes about the Assyrians and the “land of Nimrod,” a reference to Babylon. Verse 14 even mentions "Asherah poles.” Asherah is another Canaanite deity. In the northern kingdom, Asherah was worshipped as the consort of Yahweh. I don’t disagree that the chapter refers to the deliverance of Israel, but it’s deliverance against the enemies of the time in which Micah was written. The supposed prophecy in Isaiah 53 is even more wild.
Some passages of the New Testament were likely written by scribes and don’t appear in the oldest manuscripts. The oldest manuscripts of Mark, for example, don’t include 16:9-20. (Depending on the version of the Bible you have, there may be a footnote about this.) Another example is John 7:53 through John 8:1-11, which contains the story of the woman caught committing adultery. Jesus tells the Pharisees who want to condemn her, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” When the Pharisees leave, Jesus tells her to “go and sin no more.”
Those are only some of the examples of problems with the New Testament. There’s much more than I could write. I’m going to leave it here for now. As I wrote above, I don’t have a problem with your faith. Just please don’t use the government to impose it on the growing number of Americans who don’t accept it or any other faith.
My morality is based primarily on two things: the “Golden Rule” and empathy. The latter is something that I wish we had more of in our discussions about policy issues. Understanding doesn’t mean acceptance, but it humanizes people and their decisions. I know many disagree with me. That’s fine. Just as long as you understand why I am, in the absence of proof, an atheist.