Introduction

What's an Atheist?

What's Atheism?

Do You Deny the Existence of God?

Do You Believe in God?

Do You Believe in Jesus?

Introduction

All the Questions You ever wanted to ask American Atheists, with all of the answers.

by Madalyn Murray O' Hair and Jon Garth Murray


NOTE: The questions which follow were excerpted from the book of the same title published by the American Atheist Press. This 1982 work was originally written to clarify the confusion that existed at that time about Atheism. "Few, if any (Atheists), know the fundamental premises on which the theoretic of Atheism is based," declared the authors.

Despite the popularity of ALL THE QUESTIONS.... many individuals who use the term Atheist to describe their philosophical convictions still know little about the history and underpinnings of our movement. We even have some "Atheists" who try to organize their own "churches" complete with titles and rituals. (Talk about missing the point!), or flirt with notions about "non theistic" religions. Buddhism is always a favorite candidate for this dubious distinction, which betrays not only an ignorance about Atheism, but about Buddhist "thought" as well.

But we must all start somewhere on our intellectual quest; ALL THE QUESTIONS... has been a good beginning for many with a sincere desire to learn more about Atheism.

What's an Atheist?

THEIST: Just what exactly is an Atheist?

If your questions are not asked with the specificity necessary to answer them, please be aware that we will correct you. An "Atheist" is not a "what." An "Atheist" is a person who has a lifestyle premised on the weltanschauung of materialism. That is, we accept "objective reality" in living our lives and we reject any phantasmagoria of the imagination of theistic fold. We live in the real world. Theistic folk live in a world of make believe. To put it simply, an Atheist says to you, "What you see is what you get...." An Atheist uses reason to solve human problems, to make his way in life, to seek happiness, to live with the human community. We eschew the irrational idea of theism.

What's Atheism?

THEIST: I don't think you have answered me. I'll try again. What is Atheism?

Atheism is the accepted life style of Atheists. Let's look at the word Atheism. This is a word of Greek or Latin derivation and, if you know your grammar, and we presume that you do, an "a" or an "in" used before any word simply takes away the thrust of that word. For instance, the word "independent" simply means "free from dependency." Also, the word "Atheism" simply means "free from theism," The word "agnostic" simply means free from gnostic, or knowledge.... Therefore, Atheism is freedom from theism, freedom from religion. An Atheist is a person who lives his life free from entanglement with religious ideas, only that and nothing more. Whatever the monkey on your back is, we are all free from that. We are free from all theistic ideas whether they are christian, hindu, islamic, jew, voodoo, or taoistic.

Do You Deny the Existence of God?

THEIST: I seem to be getting no place. The dictionary that I have here says "Atheist -- one who denies the existence of God." Now, answer me straight: Do you deny the existence of God?

Well, who wrote that definition in the dictionary? Atheists didn't. A theist supplied that definition, and it has almost nothing to do with Atheism.

Do You Believe in God?

THEIST: You are not answering me. Do you believe in God?

When you ask any Atheist if he believes in god, you are putting up a first premise which says "There is a god." Then you ask the Atheist if he believes or disbelieves in that god. That is just the same as asking us if we believe there is a tree outside your window. If there is a tree, what difference does it make if we say that we do or do not believe there is a tree there? The same reasoning applies to the god idea. If you say there is a god and that we have a choice of believing or not believing or not believing in the god, that does not affect that you have already premised there is a god "out there" somewhere.

THEIST: Are you going to answer me or not? Do you believe in God?

Our question is do YOU believe in god? Do you believe in the ancient Egypt sun god Ra?

THEIST: Don't be an idiot. Of course I don't believe in a sun god. My question to you is "Do you believe in God?"

Our question to you is germane in the discussion here. Do you believe in Thor? In Zeus? in pallas athene?

THEIST: Those were old pagan gods. No one believes in them anymore. Of course, I don' t believe in them. Are you going to answer my question or not? "Do you believe in God?"

If we are going to answer your question we must have it with specificity, as we have indicated to you. What god do you mean? You have already told us that you don't believe in any of the gods in which millions believed in vast eras of time. You want to throw all other gods away and pick and choose as to which god you want us to talk about. You don't believe in god yourself. You believe in your current, narrow, constricted idea of your particular god.

THEIST: Do you believe in God?

OK. You push us into a corner, so we will take the modern god who is worshipped by the greatest number of people in the world, but we still must couch the question in different terms. Do we accept as historical or verifiable the triune god vishnu/brahma/siva? No, this god was never anything other than a fictional idea.

Do You Believe in Jesus?

THEIST: That's a lie. Jesus Christ is our lord and savior and everyone in the world worships him. Do you believe in Jesus Christ?

We are not going to get anywhere by the use of invectives. Please go to the encyclopedia, but preferably one that deals with world religion, and look at the statistics for and the age of the various religious groups in the world. We can tell you in general terms what the situation is, but you really need to do some research yourself. There are about 900 million hindus, about 1.3 billion muslims, about 2 billion christians, about 360 million buddhists, about 225 million confucians (includes Chinese folk religions), about 15 million jews, and about 15 million sikhs, and most important about 850 million people who are secular/agnostic/non-religious and atheist. The second youngest of these religions is christianity and the very youngest is the islamic, the religion of the muslims. As to the next part of your question, there was no historical jesus, therefore there is no such person for anyone to "believe in."

THEIST: I think you are very good at evading the issue. Let's go back to the dictionary whether you like it or not because that is what people read and that is where we go for definitions. "Do you deny the existence of God?"

Again, we must know what you are talking about. We are not trying to avoid the issue at all. A moment ago you wanted to talk only about jesus christ. That is the god you know. But, we Atheists must talk about all gods, or we must talk about the "god idea." The "professional" Atheists who deal with these matters on talk/back or call-in radio and television shows must know every god that was ever invented. We need to know his mother (who was usually a virgin) and his father (who was usually a shadowy spirit), what nation he lived in, what the color of his eyes was, and what kind of hair he had. We need to know when he was born, when he died, how the nation in which he appeared treated him and why the people finally abandoned him. Let's take your jehova, or yahweh, or the "I am that I am" or whatever you want to call him, and your jesus christ. We know all this about them. They were invented by man's imagination. Just like any other gods. If you stop just a moment to think about it, you will realize all that gods are an incident of time and place.

THEIST: That' s not true. God has always been, everywhere in all ages.

Ah, but he has not. For instance, if you have been born in Europe just 500 years ago you would have tortured and put me to death. If you had been born here in what is now called the United States just 600 years ago, you would have believed in the great father in the sky and would have been a pantheist as all our native Indians were. If you had been born in Greece in the year 200 b.c. you would have had an entire pantheon of gods which you would have worshipped, and you have engaged in many forms of religious worship which are much like the ones you engage in today. You would have been baptized. You would have taken communion, confessed, eaten the eucharist. If you lived in Egypt 3,000 years ago you would have had your body embalmed, waiting on the day that you arose to get into heaven, just like you do today. These are old, silly ideas that we should have abandoned by now.

THEIST: Well, then you do deny the existence of God?

We can do better than that. We can prove, with the general use of scientific historical process, that there never was a jahweh, a jehovah, or an "I am that I am"; that there never was a jesus christ. You see when you say "do you deny" you are asking us to prove a negative proposition. When you say "the existence of god" you are making a positive assertion. Let us give you an example. Suppose we say that we believe in a tooth god. That we worship this god, communicate with the tooth god by mastication, that we know our prayers are answered and that in the next life we will become lower bicuspid molars if we live an ethical life now and worship our tooth god as we should. Prove to us that this is not true.

THEIST: I can't prove that isn't true. I think it's insane but --

Well, you are getting the picture. You can erect any kind of god idea and god system of worship in your imagination and then turn to someone else and say, "Prove that this isn't so." Or, you can say, "Do you deny the existence of my god?" There must be some criterion for the proof......

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