Atheism For Dummies (For Dummies (Religion & Spirituality)) (4 page)

This one warns about common misconceptions. If you want to avoid jumping to conclusions, pay special attention to these.

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Where to Go from Here

Now you have the very basic flavor of this book. If you go straight into
Chapter 1
, you can get a more detailed synopsis of the whole book. If you’re a dip-and-diver,
Chapter 1
can help you figure out where to go next. You can also check the table of contents or index, find a topic that interests you, and start reading.

Or you can read straight through. Any way works just fine, as long as you remember to skip anything that loses your interest. However you read it, by the end you’ll know whether you want to explore further.

Part I

Understanding What Atheism Is

Chapter 1

Meeting Atheism

In This Chapter

Discovering a natural way of looking at the world

Watching the progression of a startling idea through the ages

Seeing the world through the eyes of the everyday atheist

T
he idea that no God exists is a startling one. Most people grow up hearing that the existence of God is a settled question and that nothing else can explain this complex, astonishing world.

But through the centuries, some people have always doubted the God conclusion — and some have even come to the firm conviction that humans created God, not the other way around.

Of course saying such a thing out loud tends to cause a lot of sputtering and fainting from people who disagree, not to mention the occasional smell of something burning. So you can safely assume that most of those who disbelieved the religions and gods of their times kept mum about it.

Fortunately, a lot of nonbelievers spoke up anyway, and they keep doing so today; otherwise this book wouldn’t exist, and you’d be looking at your palms. People would talk. But the book does exist, and this chapter gives you a flying overview of what to expect as you leaf through it.

Getting a Grip on Atheism

Atheism is a big umbrella. It covers anyone who doesn’t believe in a supernatural god or gods. But under that umbrella are many shades and grades of disbelief and many people with different ways of approaching and expressing it.

Atheists become atheists for many different reasons, and it rarely has anything to do with unanswered prayers or major life calamities. In fact, such a major trauma drives people
into
belief at least as often as it drives them out of it.

The chapters in Part I provide some of the basic definitions and descriptions that can help you make sense as you read the rest of the book.

Seeing the many forms and faces of religious disbelief

There are about as many ways to disbelieve as there are ways to believe — different degrees, different emphases, and different expressions.

Here are some examples:

Antitheists
(atheists who actively oppose religion and work toward a world without it)

Accommodationists
(atheists who emphasize the common ground between the religious and nonreligious rather than the differences)

Agnostics
(people who emphasize their uncertainty about the question of God’s existence and often claim that it’s unknowable)

Humanists
(people who focus on how to live a good human life in a natural universe)

Religious atheists
(including many Buddhists, Hindus, Unitarians, and Jains who keep their religious identities and philosophies without bothering any gods)

Freethinkers
(people who form their opinions about the universe without the undue influence of religious authority)

Unaffiliated
or
“None”
(they’re not religious, but generally not interested in any label at all, thank you very much)

Even some religious opinions (like Deism and pantheism) exist that are so far removed from any traditional conception of God that many people include them under the atheist umbrella. And a single nonbeliever can, and often does, claim several of these labels at once. They emphasize different things, but most aren’t mutually exclusive. Check out
Chapter 2
to nicely complicate your idea of what an atheist is.

Examining what nonbelievers believe and don’t believe — and why

I learned about history from historians and history teachers. I learned about religion by listening to believers and reading their scriptures directly. But most of what people know about atheism they learned from people who aren’t atheists and don’t especially like or even understand them.

That’s a recipe for misinformation if ever there was one.

I went to church for 25 years for various reasons, including family and job, and was every bit as much of an atheist as I am now. Doing so was a big part of my own religious education. But over and over, I heard myself described from the pulpit in ways that made me sad and upset. Being an atheist, I was apparently a very nasty and selfish guy, not all that smart, and bad to the core. I heard that I didn’t care about others and couldn’t be trusted, and that I’d come to my beliefs by hardening my heart, by serving false gods, by not wanting to acknowledge God’s power over me.