I do not believe in God. I do not believe in any supernatural powers. Sometimes, I wish I did. A long time ago I looked inside myself and discovered that I do not have a God-shaped hole begging to be filled. That is just part of my personality; I consider it to be unchangeable.
Which is why I have a very mild annoyance at some of the conclusions raised in this article. To be sure, I am long out of the academy, and am wistfully remembering those days, mostly for all the things I should have done and done better. I've softened and mellowed my views since those days, but I have not dramatically changed them.
You know what was the most damaging thing ever done to my faith? Animaniacs. For reals.
See, one episode was set in part in h-e-double hockey sticks. I remember as a nine year old walking home from school, my mind abuzz. How can we be so certain that the Judeo-Christian religion is definitively the only one, the best one? After all, the Greeks and Romans thought theirs was the only certain religion, and now we know it to be false. Why are we so sure that we have it right and they have it wrong? Boom. Instant damage.
I always was interested in science. That itself damaged my religious beliefs: we have evidence for evolution, the universe, all those things. God? Ambiguous at best. No rocks I have ever turned over in my life have had "Made by God" stamped on them. Maybe I'm asking too much from God. I'm not asking for the blinding light of revelation, just a tiny bit more than what the religious folk are offering, okay?
I do recall going to Sunday school when I was very, very little. Whoever taught me said it was okay if I said "This is bad" to the creation of the universe. Guess I was always destined to be an iconoclast! I was never exposed to religious traditions to the same depth as some of my childhood peers, and (to my disgruntlement) Christians would bemoan the fact that if I only went to church weekly I'd have impregnable faith in God. I find that to be very condescending. I always had episodes of disbelief in my childhood---I had episodes of faith, to be sure, even devotion, but they were never strong enough to stick.
To agree with the article, ages 14-17 were decisive for me, though not in the way they would think. That was when my weak faith was slowly stripped away from me in degrees. Okay, I've conceded to a very milquetoast deist philosophy, I thought. Thing is, I was stripping the usefulness of God away in parts. God was reduced to simply flicking the on switch and going away to let humans figure things out. In other words, God was horribly redundant. By the time I was seventeen or eighteen I had abandoned the concept of God, not out of spite, but simple pragmatism. I didn't stop being a believer; I was just honest in my disbelief. There was no purpose for God, and therefore no need for me to believe in Him/Her/It.
This is the whole point to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, if you were ever confused why: it's a deliberately nonsensical concept to highlight how, when examined closely, they break down under the weight of their own implausibility. Yes, if I had a stronger sense of faith I suppose I could counter that somehow, but once you start looking into the mythologies and folklore of the world, you begin to have a harder time accepting the existence of such entities.
I probably identify as a 'skeptic' as opposed to atheist. Not that I am totally immune to the concept of God, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I don't think this fact is sinking in with believers, who assume if I'm in a meadow overflowing with daisies after a good rainstorm and a rainbow has come out I'll fall to my knees in wonder and dedicate my soul to Christ, or whatever. Rapturous wonder is wonderful, but it is not evidence in and of itself. If I do nothing else, I want to make it clear: a lot of people do not believe in God because they see no reason to believe in God, no hard or tangible reason as opposed to an inadequate supply of faith. I seriously resent the idea that all I need is a good session at a church to turn my into a believer. Really, I do.
The evidence for evolution is overwhelming. I have difficulty believing in a soul when there is unmistakable evidence that our minds are linked physically to our brains. I could be wrong. Thing is, it is up to the believer to prove their point beyond a reasonable doubt. I'm not saying that to be difficult. Back up what you are saying with little more than weak arguments and Bible verses---I'm not going to accept anything less, as I would not accept anything less over any other thing I believe in. Sorry if I come across as a militant atheist, but I have trouble accepting the existence of things beyond this world, and I'm sorry if having such doctrines pounded into my skull does not count as evidence.
(At this point the believers smugly whisper "String Theory" and "Hard Problem of Consciousness" to put the screws to any feelings of superiority of my materialist beliefs).
Okay, okay, I never said that strict empiricism is infallible. It is, however, considerably more useful that faith, since faith is pretty much, "Just believe down in your heart!" I'm sorry, but that just isn't good enough.
Empiricism and materialism have their own problems. That does not mean we approach them by piling on hypothetical, supernatural nonsense, usually because when we do find more information that changes our understanding of how things work we have to bend over backwards to accommodate our preconceptions, rather than the other way around.
This world is the only world we definitely know exist; this life is the only one we definitely know we have. We need to concentrate on that and not appeasing Gods that we may loose faith in after a couple of centuries. We need to place humanity and it's welfare as a doctrine above all other doctrines and dogmas. This may ruffle some Christian's feathers. Sorry if that upsets you, but I'm not apologetic for saying that. I'm more interested in the survival of humanity than the survival of Christianity. That's just how I roll.
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