Atheism For Dummies (For Dummies (Religion & Spirituality)) (82 page)

Your DNA is about half your mom’s and half your dad’s.

Your memories, your ideas, even your identity take the form of a constantly recomposed electrochemical symphony playing in your head.

You’re related by shared descent to every living thing on Earth — not just apes, but whales, bacteria, redwoods, and your front lawn . . . even bananas.

A bolt of lightning instantly heats trillions of air molecules hotter than the sun. The superheated molecules explode out of the way with a
crack,
leaving a miles-long vacuum behind. The deep rumble that follows is trillions of molecules crashing back in to fill the void.

About a trillion such stars are in the galaxy, which is one of a hundred billion galaxies spread across 12 billion light years in a universe made of a curved fabric woven of space and time in which hydrogen, given the proper conditions, eventually evolves into Justin Bieber.

. . . Make that Stephen Hawking.

Natural processes explain each of these points, and each fundamentally changes the way I look at the world.

A lot remains unknown, but what humanity has learned hasn’t dispelled a sense of wonder one bit. Understanding doesn’t kill wonder, it
feeds
it. Atheists find that the incredible wonder of a natural universe completely eclipses the wonder of a universe that’s controlled by an unseen hand.

Grasping the implications of evolution

Creationists sometimes warn of the dire consequences of accepting evolution. “If you teach children they are descended from animals, they’ll act like animals” is one common warning, and “Survival of the fittest justifies endless cruelty” is another. (I address both of these in
Chapter 15
.) But devote enough time to finding out more about evolution in depth, and you can find that the real implications are beautiful, ennobling, and eye-opening.

If religion teaches that humans are essentially fallen angels, science teaches that humans are risen apes. The first can produce a feeling of shame and unworthiness, like you’ve let yourself down. But the second makes me feel astonished and grateful that humanity has come as far as it has. It’s the natural point of view, informed by science, that makes me optimistic and proud. Yes, people sometimes behave like baboons. But people have also cured polio, measured the universe, formed the United Nations, and written
Charlotte’s Web
. Humanity can always do better, but considering that the ancestors of humans were bacteria, I’d say humanity is doing all right.

Realizing that I’m an animal doesn’t make me want to “act like an animal” — it makes me feel a deep kinship with other living things. That’s one of the greatest implications of a worldview informed by evolution. A walk in the woods becomes a family reunion. And when I grasp that I’m not the end product of evolution, just a tiny twig on the immense and complex tree of life, the pride I felt in the previous paragraph is tempered with a nice dose of humility — and again, wonder.

Discovering and Defining Life’s Meaning

If you don’t believe there’s a God whose divine plan gives your life meaning, you get to figure out your life’s meaning for yourself.

You’d think that the freedom to decide for yourself what your life is all about would appeal to people — especially in the United States, a country with a serious fetish for individual freedom. But the idea of figuring out meaning on their own seems to scare a lot of people. They worry that a life without God would also be a life without meaning.

As with so many other topics in this book, God can be a useful frame for the search for meaning and purpose. A religious person may say:

I didn’t know what God’s purpose was for me. I prayed about it day and night, and finally, after many unfulfilling years, God led me to [insert meaningful thing here]. I’ve never been happier or more fulfilled. I know in my heart that I’ve discovered God’s purpose for my life.

A nonreligious person may have the same experience and put it this way:

I didn’t know what the right purpose was for me. I thought about it day and night, and finally, after many unfulfilling years, all that serious reflection led me to [insert meaningful thing here]. I’ve never been happier or more fulfilled. I know in my heart that I’ve discovered the right purpose for my life.

Once again, a religious and a nonreligious person are less different than they tend to think. One person directs her thinking to an idea of God; the other directs her thinking to her own mind. One feels led by God; the other feels led by her own reflection and self-knowledge. Both knew when they weren’t fulfilled and when they finally were.

Given a choice, I prefer making my own choices, and I think most atheists would say the same. Life is so much more meaningful that way. I chose the person I married, and we chose the house we live in. We chose to have children and how to raise them. She chose to be a teacher; I chose to be a writer. And in every case, the fact that we made our own choices made those experiences so much more meaningful than they would have been if someone else selected us for each other, assigned us to have kids, and chosen our house and careers. Even if they were the same choices we’d have made, the satisfaction clearly would have been so much less.

Meaning and purpose in a natural worldview aren’t really that different from a religious one. Being uncertain about your purpose or feeling like your life doesn’t have the meaning you wish it had can be unsettling. For some, the idea of God helps. But those who don’t believe in a God get to drive the whole scary, exhilarating road themselves.

As I said before, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Raising Children to Think Independently

One of the most heartfelt values for most atheists is the freedom to think for themselves. So it makes sense that most atheist parents also want to protect their kids’ rights to think for themselves.

My parents gave me a strong curiosity about the world and the freedom to think for myself about it, which I’m incredibly grateful for. They never made me feel that I was expected to believe as they did, and they never said I couldn’t or shouldn’t ask certain questions. I worked out my beliefs for myself, building the foundation of my understanding of the world brick by brick.

The result of that process is the deep satisfaction of really knowing what I believe is true and why I believe it, because I placed every brick in that foundation myself. No one handed me settled answers to the big questions, and I was never told to believe something just because so-and-so said it was true. I know the reasoning and experience behind every opinion I hold.