50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God by Guy P. Harrison Read Free Book Online

religion because thinking of it that way makes it more comfortable for them to deal with. Then it becomes just another rival belief
system, easily dismissed as a mistake and ignored like all the rest. But
atheism is more challenging when it is seen by the believer for what it
really is: the absence of belief in gods. Atheism is not a religion,
organization, club, philosophy, lifestyle, tribe, race, ethnicity, or team.
Atheism is the absence of a belief in a god. That's it. It doesn't even
necessarily mean that one is certain that no gods exist. It just means
she or he does not believe in gods.

    Some believers tell me that atheists think they are smarter and
better people than believers. Unfortunately, some atheists probably do
think that. But the assumption that nonbelievers are superior to
believers is simply wrong. Yes, less religious societies tend to be more
law-abiding and peaceful than more religious societies (Canada vs.
United States; France vs. Pakistan; Sweden vs. Nigeria, for example).
And yes, there are studies that show a decline in religious belief as
educational levels go up. But any random individual atheist is not necessarily morally or intellectually superior to any random individual
believer. I do understand, however, why some atheists might feel a
twinge of superiority when they see images in the news of bloodsoaked Shia Muslims flailing themselves with chains and cutting
themselves with knives while chanting and parading; Hindus stabbing
swordfish bills and other objects through their cheeks during a religious fesitival; and Christians allowing nails to be hammered into
their bodies in gruesome crucifixion reenactments. But an atheist
would be wrong to ever assume blanket superiority based only on the
absence of belief. Intelligence and morality at the individual level
can't be predicted based only on the presence or absence of belief.
There is too much variation to generalize. Belief is just one ingredient
in the complex recipe that makes up an individual's life.
    When believers charge that atheism is "just another religion" I
question them about what they think a religion is. In fairness, it's not
an easy thing to define. Anthropologists are aware of so many beliefs
and rituals in so many cultures that they know better than to make a narrow definition of religion because inevitably it would have too
many exceptions. So they end up defining religion very loosely. Usually anthropologists say something like religions are behaviors and
ideas that are an important part of a culture. With a weak definition
like that maybe the believers are right. Maybe atheism really is just
another religion. But the astronomy club and the chess team could be
religions too, by that standard. Few nonanthropologists have any idea
just how many varieties of religious belief there are today, much less
in the past. It is staggering how productive we are when it comes to
gods and religions. Humans have created millions of religions and
confidently claimed that countless gods exist; so many that we can't
even define religion very well because every definition threatens to
leave somebody out.

    So, is atheism a religion? No, it is not, at least not by the definition that people use outside of anthropology conferences. For most
people religion includes belief in a god and atheism is, by definition,
godless. Atheism is the absence of belief in gods. Most atheists don't
seem eager to be united into an organization based on their absence of
belief. I suspect that for many atheists, nonbelief is just not an overriding concern in their lives. Perhaps they have more important things
to do than sit around discussing the unlikely existence of Thor and
Odin. For example, I would probably list twenty or thirty personal
attributes before I got down to atheism. I may care about how religious
belief impacts the world and I may write about it, but I don't feel a
need to dwell on being an atheist every