"You don't believe in God because you just want to sin".
This one makes absolutely no sense. So, let me get this straight.
The only reason you're not doing anything bad
is because you're afraid of God?
I'm glad that you're religious then because, I don't know, for some reason
I can be a good person without, you know,
fear of hell fire.
No atheist becomes an atheist
because they just have this deep desire to do bad horrible things.
We become atheists because that's where the evidence takes us.
And that's the only reason we become atheists. Anyone who says he became an atheist--
I've never met an atheist, by the way,
who said they became an atheist because they just
really wanted to have premarital sex. "You're an atheist?"
"You don't act like an atheist".
What the hell does that mean? Like
what did you think I was gonna do? Punch you and take your money? That whole line
feeds off of this idea that atheists are inherently immoral.
That there's no moral compass to us. So,
we must be this horrible people that just wanna do bad, bad things.
And it's offensive
because if you replace "atheist", like, "Oh, you're an atheist? You don't act like one".
If you replace that with anything else,
you would understand immediately how offensive that was, like "Oh, you're not acting Jewish".
Just think before you say it because
if anyone said that to you, like "Oh, you're a Christian?"
"Well, you're not acting like one".
I think you would probably be
a little upset by that as well.
"When you're suffering, you will call out to God".
No, atheists don't automatically start believing in God just because they're
closer to death
than they would otherwise. That's silly.
And I hope that, you know, if I am ever suffering,
I have friends and family that I can rely on. I hope that I have some sort of outlet to,
you know, talk about things that are meaningful to me and I hope there are people who love me
that will be there for me.
That's what I need.
I don't need God. Oh, and maybe some doctors who know what they're doing. That would be great.
"It's just a phase".
No, it's not. It's not just a phase. If I say that to any Christian,
"Oh, you worship Jesus now?"
"Must be just a teenage thing or something like that".
That would be an offensive thing for me to say.
And it's offensive for anyone to tell me I'm an atheist because I'm just going through something right now. I'm just going through a phase,
I must have something really difficult going on in my life right now.
No, that's offensive because it means that I didn't
put any thoughts into becoming an atheist. And I did.
And just about all the atheists I know put a lot of thought into it. Because it's not easy
to be an atheist. It's certainly not easy
leaving your faith,
whatever it was, to become an atheist.
And it's not just because you're rebellious.
Because a lot of teenagers, a lot of young people do become atheists, and they leave their parents' religion.
It's not because they're trying to be rebellious.
It's because they see what religion has to offer. They look at the evidence. They question
what they hear in church. And they realize,
"I don't buy into any of this".
And for, you know, you to come along and say, "Well, it's just a phase. You'll get over it".
How insulting is that?
"I don't have enough faith to be an atheist".
This is a popular
Christian apologist line that, you know, "I would be an atheist, but I don't have enough faith".
To me it takes a lot more faith to believe that, you know,
someone was born from a virgin
and he died and then came back to life
and he walked on water and, you know, you can touch people and they're healed.
All of the Christian, you know, BS that we hear constantly,
That takes faith. That takes faith because there's no evidence that any of that actually happened.
It never happens these days, you know, it all happened thousands of years ago
before, you know, video cameras and YouTube.
But it doesn't take faith to be an atheist. "Have I heard about Jesus?"
No.
Never.
Why don't you tell me about Jesus?
He was... He was born form a virgin? How does that work exactly?
And, wait... He rose up from the dead? How exactly does that work because I don't see that happening anymore?
We all know about Jesus. We all know about the Bible.
Many of us have read the Bible.
Many of us were Christians growing up.
So, we all have a very good understanding of religion and Christianity, and Jesus, and the Bible.
And guess what! We found reasons to reject it all.
"Where will I go when I die?"
I actually like this question. I think it's silly to ask it because I think there's an easy answer to it. But I think this is a fair question.
Where would you go when you die?
I think it's probably the same place you were before you were born,
which is to say, you just weren't here.
And that was it. And the world moved on without you and that's okay.
But people ask this question as if we're worried about what's gonna happen when we die.
And I'm not worried about that. You know, I hope that I can leave some sort of mark on this Earth, so that,
you know, people I love can be helped and people I don't know
can be helped by something I did in this lifetime.
But I'm not really worried about where I go when I die.
I'm not gonna be in Heaven.
I'm not gonna be in hell either, by the way. So, there's that.
But I'm not really worried about-- I don't sit around thinking, "Oh, man, when I die, where am I gonna go?"
Don't worry about what's gonna happen in your afterlife.
Don't worry about where you were before you were born. Just
enjoy this life and appreciate it, and do what you can with it.
"Atheists believe we all came from monkeys".
Oh, my God.
Every time someone says, and they always say this,
it just shows the ignorance of the person saying it.
Whoever asks this question or makes a statement like this,
they don't know the first thing about how evolution works.
So, it's one of those things. It's like, "Why didn't you, at least, do some research before you said something like this?"
Look, evolution says humans and monkeys... We do have a common ancestor.
But really the person asking the question doesn't care about that.
The idea is: "Oh, evolution says we weren't created from God".
"We are just descendants of apes and something like that".
And it's like, "Well, yeah". Technically that is true. We are animals in that sense.
But we're also very different from them. It's not like humans are sitting around, I don't know, flinging feces at each other and...
We are so much more than that and we're
very differently evolved from other creatures.
So, this idea that if we came from animals, there's something wrong with us,
That that's some sort of perverted thing to think about;
no, it's not. It's just the reality. You just got to accept it.
"Isn't evolution just a theory?"
No, it's not just a theory. The only people who ever say this
are people who don't really understand what a scientific theory means.
A theory in science means all the evidence
points in that direction, all of it.
And there's no evidence that contradicts it.
And evolution passes that test right now. They haven't found evidence
to discredit evolution.
Like gravity is a theory
and evolution is a theory, in that sense.
The reason we don't say is a fact
is because you can't really conclusively show it, all you can do is pile evidence, after evidence, after evidence
and show that it works. And so far,
all scientists have done that.
And overwhelmingly the scientific community says, "Evolution is not an issue".
We may debate some of the, you know, details about evolution,
but by and large, the actual idea of evolution
that, you know, we evolved, there's natural selection involved, there's sexual selection, and all that;
that's not in dispute.
That's not in dispute anywhere other than, like, a Christian megachurch.
"But where did the universe come from?"
Look,
I'll be honest with you. I don't know where the universe came from,
but neither do you.
Christians don't know where the universe came from. The best answer they can give you is:
"God did it".
"God created it all and that's why we're here".
And, okay, so then I wanna know where God came from
because they don't ever have an answer to that. They just say, "Oh, God's always been here",
as if that's okay. That's...
You can always say "God's always been here and no one has to question that",
which is silly.
Like, "Where the universe come from?" We could say it was the Big Bang, because the evidence all points in that direction.
But then the natural follow-up question is "Well, what came before that? What was there before the Big Bang?"
I don't know. The evidence isn't there.
But nobody knows the answer to that.
The best we could do is to say:
"Well, here's everything we know
and this is the best guess we can come up with".
But that's honest.
And that's why I appreciate that answer.
Because to me that's a lot more truthful than saying,
"Well, sure, we don't have evidence for it".
"But the Bible says this is how it all happened. Therefore, it must have been that way".
"Where do the mountains come from?"
That's a great question. You know how you can find a answer to that one?
Go to Wikipedia and type in "Mountains".
And go learn about where mountains come from. What's amazing to me
is that people who ask questions like that,
like "Where did the mountains come from? How come animals are the way they are?"
it's like they never bothered to Google any of this. They never went to a library
and did the research.
Which is what's amazing to me because I know that if there are certain questions
that someone has an answer to, but I may not be able to tell you of the tip of my tongue,
I know how to go find those answers, at least to the best of my abilities.
And I can find the best answers that are out there, hopefully in a way that makes sense to me.
So, that's...
Don't ask a question that you could have found the answer to by just doing 5 seconds of research online.
It's not that difficult.
"A lot of smart people are Christians".
Look, there are a lot of brilliant Christians.
And I will go ahead and say there are a lot of dumb atheists.
But, you know, when I hear someone like Francis Collins, who is this brilliant scientist
and an Evangelical Christian;
when he talks about, you know, what he does in a laboratory or what he did in a laboratory,
versus his faith,
he speaks about them in very different ways. When he's in a lab,
you know, he's looking for evidence, he's doing these observational studies.
When he's thinking about his faith, it really is supernatural for him.
And, you know, he compartmentalizes those things.
Yes, there are a lot of smart Christians, but you now what?
There are a lot of smart atheists too.
This isn't a popularity contest.
And just because of you people
happen to have mixed the best of both worlds there,
doesn't mean it was right for them to do so. They may have been wrong on the religion issue, even if they were
right on so many other things.
"Why do we only pick on Christians?"
As atheist, I mean, I think it's fair to say that anyone reading my website,
anyone probably reading any book about atheism,
it seems like we're always picking on Christians.
And there's a simple reason for that.
I live in America.
In America, Christianity is the dominant faith, and everywhere you go Christianity is everywhere.
Like I don't get this idea that there's a war on Christmas
because, I don't know, Christmas seems to be everywhere. You can't really escape Jesus ever.
But that's what I'm up against.
When there's like a law suit about-- When there's a problem with church-state separation,
it's never like this Buddhist group that wants to take over the City Council meeting. It's...
It's always Christians.
And is not like we're ever worried about, you know, saying a Hindu prayer before a football game.
It's always a Christian prayer.
So, this is what we're up against, and every precedent pretty much is a Christian.
So, that's what my obstacle is, that what we have to overcome in our society.
"But what will you teach your children?"
I guess the implication here is that if I am not a Christian,
you know, how will I teach my children about love,
and morals, and ethics; and how will I teach them to be good people,
if I'm not a Christian? If you, you know, talk to your child and you're like,
"You know, honey, why shouldn't you steal something from someone else?"
I guarantee you a kid who thinks about it for a couple of seconds would say,
"Well, I wouldn't want anyone to do that to me".
There you go.
You can explain, you know, the golden rule without resorting to the Bible.
Why do you wanna do good for other people? Because it makes them feel better. Because it makes you feel better
You don't need a supernatural explanation for that.
Everything that you can teach your child
because of your religious faith, minus the methodology,
I can teach my children without the religious faith.
So, this idea that, you know, I can't be a good parent or I can't teach my children something
because we're not raising them religiously,
is offensive, is rude, is insulting. Don't say that to someone.
"Do I eat babies?"
Yes.
Yes, I do. And they're delicious.
My name is Hemant Mehta. I write for FriendlyAtheist.com
And we'd love to hear from you. Please, leave a comment below and become part of this discussion.