It's remarkable how many people insist I'm not Atheist. It seems pretty
obvious to me that I don't believe any god exists, and that pretty much
makes me an Atheist. Nevertheless, here these people are, so insistent that
I can't possibly be an Atheist. "You're too nice," they say, or "you really
believe, you just don't know it" (how's that again?). Sometimes I hear
something like "You believe in something, and that is really god" or "you
are still looking, but you'll find Him" (he's invited to stop by my house
at any time). When I have the time to converse with these people, it
usually comes down to this: I'm really an Agnostic, they say, because I am
willing to admit that I don't know there isn't any god. It is apparently so
important for people to believe that I'm "really just an Agnostic" that I
find it to be a haunting sign of the hold religion has on people. It is
tragic that the mere thought of a good friend or relative being an actual,
avowed Atheist is so horrible that it must be denied.

Sometimes I have the chance to explain that I am an Atheist not because I
know there isn't a god, but because I don't believe there is. If someone
insisted that their pet fish could talk, I really couldn't say I knew it
didn't, especially if I could not go and see for myself, but it would still
be fair for me to say that there are no talking fish. The relevance of this
is that I do not believe god exists any more than I believe fish can talk.
Certainly, I have not examined all species of fish, nor every single fish
for that matter, nor could I ever accomplish such a feat. But the claim
that they exist is so contrary to my own personal experience and reliable
facts that I simply will not believe it unless very definitive proof is
provided. Of course, if I visit someone's pet fish and it talks to me, I am
still wiser to test the possibilities of trickery or insanity before
believing it can talk. But if I found many fish that talked, trustworthy
people confirmed it, scientists published carefully researched papers about
them, and newspaper headlines read "INCREDIBLE DISCOVERY: TALKING FISH!"
then it would be more than reasonable to believe they existed. No one
really disputes such common sense, until it is applied to religion.

I've never seen or talked to a god, or seen a god do anything unmistakably
godlike. People insist they know one exists, but most of them really say
they only feel it, and don't offer any other proof. Indeed, it is odd that
those few who honestly offer the more genuine proof of actually hearing god
talk are branded insane even by the believers. Believers are probably right
about that, but their own "feeling" that a god exists isn't any more
convincing to me. Anyone might "feel" that fish could talk, but that
wouldn't mean it was so, nor would that be a very reliable way to know it
was true even if it was. People still say there are billions of witnesses
to god's existence, but since the vast majority of them only "feel" that
god exists, even trillions of witnesses wouldn't count for much. I am
astonished how many people think that if the Earth stopped rotating we
would all fall off into space--they just "feel" intuitively that this is
true, even though the exact opposite would happen (people at the equator
would actually gain a few pounds). I agree that billions of people "feel"
god exists, but feelings are only evidence of what lies in our hearts and
dreams. Feelings do not tell us much about reality outside of ourselves.

People also say that the bible says a god exists. The bible also says a guy
lived inside the belly of a giant fish (whale actually) for three days,
somehow failing to be digested in its stomach acids; and that a flood "so
great" that it covered all the mountains with water occurred to fulfill a
genocidal whim of an apparently all loving and forgiving god (why not just
make everyone vanish instantly and save the world's people and animals the
suffering of being drowned?). Since these all sound like tall tales to me,
I think god is probably a tall tale, too. Basically, if the bible said
there were talking fish, I would not believe it until I saw one myself (the
bible does fittingly claim the existence of a talking ass). Likewise, the
bible may say a god exists, but I still won't believe it until I see one
myself.

Most people I meet, however, don't realize that I'm first and foremost a
freethinker, and only an Atheist as a result of applying freethought to the
evidence available to me. My reasons for being a freethinker are actually
rather different from the reasons I have for not believing in a god. I
sometimes wear a shirt that says, "We all need humanity, not religion;
reason, not faith." This has sometimes triggered interesting conversations
about why I'm a freethinker. "That's pretty harsh," some who read that
shirt say. I ask why. It seems reasonable to me that if religion vanished
from the earth, but was replaced by the entire human race working humanely
together, nothing would be lost, and everything gained. Thus, we need
humanity--that is, our own humanity, as well as the entirety of the human
species. But we do not need religion--it offers nothing that cannot be
gained through other means.

It also seems reasonable to me that if people lived by reason instead of
faith, many tragedies would be averted, and equal numbers of advances would
be made, especially in human behavior. I do not claim this as a recipe for
utopia, only for significant improvement. How many times do we find
ourselves saying of a criminal or a politician, "They are just so stupid!
Any rational person would have acted entirely differently." A criminal or
politician can have all the faith we want them to, but they will still do
stupid things--and that's the problem. Thus, we only need people to act
intelligently. We can do without faith. In fact, "faith" of Islamic suicide
bombers and abortion clinic murderers is actually a real threat to
humanity, as was the "faith" of Red Party members in their belief that
communism would lead to utopia. People can do without faith. They cannot do
without reason.

It is usually argued that we need religion in order to get humanity to
behave and work together. All evidence is to the contrary. Religion has not
notably improved human behavior. The Pagan Romans were far kinder than the
Inquisition Christians. Nor has religion united Christians, Muslims,
Buddhists, or Jews. It has quite unmistakably divided them. In fact,
religion will never unite them, because a religion requires that they all
share the same beliefs, without offering any reliable evidence that their
ideas are more correct than anyone else's. Reason, on the other hand, is
the only thing that can actually unite people of diverse opinions. Reason,
by definition, bases its decisions on evidence available to everyone, and
allows people to disagree when this evidence is lacking. Religion will
never do that, and that is the problem with it.

It's also often argued that we need faith just as much as we need reason.
Usually, this claim is based on a very loose definition of "faith." Many
have said that Atheists have faith like everyone else, and no one can do
without having faith in something. However, this is misleading. If you mean
by "faith" nothing more than "belief" then you can dispense with the word
altogether. In reality, faith is usually used to describe a particular
justification for believing something, rather than to simply say you
believe it. If I say I believe there are no talking fish, it isn't very
productive to say that this proves I have "faith" that fish don't talk,
because I don't believe it on faith. I believe it because of the evidence
of my senses and the evidence presented by people employing a reasonable
method of getting at the truth about things. However, to say you have
"faith" that god exists means more than just saying you believe it. It
means that you believe god exists because you have faith that he does. It
is this meaning of faith that reason stands opposite to. I do not believe
anything on faith. I only believe things because I have good evidence to
support them. And that is what reason means: basing all beliefs on the
evidence of the senses, and on nothing else.

Of course, some try to take issue with this. For one, they say that I have
only replaced faith in god with faith in reason, but I only believe in
reason because the evidence of my senses has always confirmed that reason
is reliable. I do not believe in it on faith. People also say that I
actually do believe in things that I have never seen demonstrated, like the
existence of uranium or that my friends would defend me in a life-or-death
situation. And this, they say, proves I do have faith in some things. But
even these beliefs are not really based on faith. The evidence of my senses
has so far proven that certain sources are reliable enough to believe
without direct evidence to the contrary. Science, responsible journalism,
and people I know who honestly use tried and tested methods, have all
proved themselves reliable to me through my own senses. If their claims
suddenly widely contradicted my personal experiences, I would cease
believing in their claims. The claims of the bible obviously fall into the
'unbelievable' category. That is why I think the existence of uranium is
far more likely than the existence of a god. I do not believe this way
because of my faith in science, but because the evidence of my senses tells
me that science gets things right far more often than the bible. Even more
than that, science much more quickly admits an error than any religion
will. Likewise, my “faith” in friends is also based on prior experience.
The evidence of my senses proves so far that honest, compassionate, mature
people will defend their friends. Thus, all my beliefs are rooted in
evidence, and not in faith.

Why do I think this way? It seems almost silly to ask such a question. Does
it really make sense to base your beliefs on things for which you have no
good evidence? "Faith in god" is not the same as faith in science or
friends or even everyday assumptions like "a fish did not write this
essay." Faith in god means faith that something astoundingly incredible,
that is both unproven and unprovable, is true. That is simply not
reasonable to me. I will never base my beliefs on such stretches of
imagination, because it so easily leads to error and self-deception. Though
my heart may tell me many useful things about me, only my mind has anything
useful to say about the outside world. And it tells me that god, like
talking fish, is the grandest of fictions.

I suspect that many people think they need to believe in a god for life to
have meaning, and this may very well be the only reason they believe in
god. More than a suspicion, this theory has been confirmed several times by
the open admission of believers I have spoken with. However, it is not
rational to believe in something only because you need to, especially when
it stands a good chance of not being true. It is unwise to build an
emotional investment in any idea that could be wrong, lest you bind
yourself to a bad idea that can mire you in error and misery. We can all
easily see that a compulsive gambler "needs" to believe he'll win in order
to keep placing his bet, but that need has no correspondence with the
truth. If the odds are 10 to 1 against, no matter what a gambler needs, he
is not likely to be right about winning the bet.

Since I have always lived my life with meaning and joy, without needing a
belief in god or an afterlife, I know that such beliefs are unnecessary.
And I have also personally encountered hundreds of other people who find
ample meaning in life without needing to believe in god or heaven, so I
know I am not just a fluke of nature. So when anyone asks me why I am a
freethinker, I usually start off with the short answer: it is not necessary
or reasonable to think any other way. And as a freethinker, if any believer
tries to argue that you cannot prove a god does not exist, simply ask them
to prove this essay was not written by a fish. Maybe then they will begin
to understand.