Chapter 2: Our Many Faces

So like many other faiths, Atheism is extremely denominational. Our roadblock, however, is the rather large fact that, unlike the religious, Atheists don't bother to declare their specific belief or bother to search out those who feel the same. They simply make the declaration that they don't believe in God, and then keep all the details to themselves. I suppose that this is one of the only solid consistencies amongst Atheists. We all tend to be loners in our 'practiced' beliefs.

It's this loner aspect of our lives that makes it so difficult for each Atheist to know what the other believes. And with our difficulty, we simply choose not to care. So imagine, then, how hard it must be for the religious to know our differences when we ourselves are incapable of knowing. The poor religious, only trying to understand what it is that we believe and why we believe it, are thrown up against a brick wall of communication that moves for nobody.

Occasionally, however, one will stumble across a fellow Atheist who is very willing to talk, sometimes endlessly, about what he or she believes. But like I have stressed over and over, this individuals beliefs are not the beliefs of us all. this particular Atheist could talk for hours about what he or she considers the essential or true Atheist, but just like no Christian belief is more right than another, nor are this Atheist's beliefs more right than any other Atheist's.

All this dodging and weaving around what makes up an Atheist only raises one question, one I can hear others screaming constantly in their heads whenever I try to explain this to them. We are a creature of knowledge, and that knowledge is born of experience and question. The question you are most likely asking now is: 'Who the hell are you, and what the hell do you people believe then?!'

I promise, I will do my best to explain. I will do my best to answer your question, along with any other questions you may have as we progress through the rest of this book. But before I tell you who I am and what it is that I believe, let me first tell you about some of the Atheists I have come across in my life. Some of them I have loved, some I have hated. AS I said before, there is no community amongst Atheists. I make each decision on whether or not I will like a particular Atheist based on each one I meet. They are no different than anyone else. their beliefs do not sway my perception of them one bit. It's all about the personality.

That being said, let me begin with a type of Atheist you all probably know. This specific 'denomination' tends to be the most vocal. They are the only type of Atheist that I have met which forms up into pseudo-communities in order to achieve their goal; to make others believe that there is no God. Though their intentions could be paired with the intentions of any religious convert, it's their actions that separates them from these other groups. We will call this type of Atheist, thanks to their behaviour which will be further explained, the 'Hostile Atheists.'

My first prolonged experience with Hostile Atheists wasn't until I attended University. I went to school in San Antonio, TX, south of what is known in the United States as the 'Bible Belt.' There are plenty of Christians in Texas, much more than anywhere else I've lived. Largely because of this, there aren't many Atheists, or if there are, they don't make themselves known. I was in a graduating class of over 700 people in high school in Houston, TX. I was the only Atheist I knew.

I believe that it's largely because of this Atheist isolation that so many Hostile Atheists sprung up in University. You throw a large collection of similarly aged and minded students together in their first parent-free environment, it becomes almost inevitable that you will have people acting in ways that they never were able to before. It's not really their fault most of the time. If you suppress self-expression, it has a tendency to violently erupt when the restraints are removed.

It's all these characteristics of development that produces Hostile Atheists. These particular Atheists voice their opinions in rather insulting ways. They use guilt and aggression to attempt to sway others. but oftehn, their goals are not to convert. They don't care about making you believe what they believe. They already have their fellow believers, and they consider themselves elite in their understanding of the world. So instead of converting or sharing their beliefs, they focus on segregation and isolation. Like children in an elementary school, Hostile Atheists bully the religious with slogans like 'Without god there would be no more war!' and 'You can't believe in science and God!' Their goals aren't to convert the believers, but instead to rally support targeted towards making the religious feel unwanted. Hostile Atheists are manipulators, and quite often cruel ones at that.

We aren't all bad. I know I started with one of our least lovable denominations, but I'll try and redeem us a little here. Another type of Atheist is one which tends to keep all beliefs hidden. We will call this denomination the Secret Atheist. Secret Atheists have their beliefs, and then keep them all to themselves. They believe what they believe, but don't have any desire to share it with anyone. My grandmother was once a Secret Atheist, until the years rolled by and she became a little more vocal. Once upon a time, no matter how hard you probed her for answers, she wouldn't even give you a hint. That's just the way the Secret Atheist lives. Like Atheism requires, they live alone and silently, going about their ways with friends and family, but keeping their social lives and religious lives separate.

The Secret Atheist has a very close cousin called the Quiet Atheist. The Quiet Atheist is much like its cousin in many ways. They're non-confrontational, relaxed in their beliefs, and unwilling to share what they hold to be true. The only difference really is that Quiet Atheists will actually discuss what they believe when probed by people they trust. This is the type of Atheist my grandmother became in the later years of her life.

Now we are starting to get to Atheists who are more like myself. This type of Atheist we will now discuss is one I like to call the Conversational Atheist. This particular Atheist tends to be quite willing to talk about his or her beliefs, even if he may not fully understand them himself. Education and culture aren't part of the Conversational Atheist's arsenal. He isn't smart or worldly or wise. he is just a regular character who has, for whatever reason, chosen not to believe in God and wants you to know about it. Fortunately, the Conversational Atheist is a harmless breed. Often he has chosen to become an Atheist because he feels wronged personally by God. I find this to be most common with Conversational Atheists; when a person falls from religion, he most often ends up here in the Conversational Atheist corner. They are unable to convert others because most of the time their beliefs are grounded in personal history rather than logical reasoning. So though a Conversational Atheist may seem as though he is trying to sway your opinions, he really isn't. All he really wants is a bit of your time to talk to you about his life and where he's coming from.

This next denomination I would like to call the Evolutionist Atheist, but thanks to people not understanding that evolution isn't debatable, it's proven science, people have decided that 'Evolutionists' are a faith-based group rather than just people trying to progress human knowledge. So, I will instead call this denomination of Atheists the Darwinist Atheists. These Atheists are the next step from Conversation Atheists. They also enjoy talking about their faith, but they have chosen Atheism because their education has taken them there. They simply can't juggle faith in God and an extensive education. This happens a lot with people who follow the researcher or life-time student track. I think it has to do with the fact that they spend so much time focusing on what they can know for sure that they forget how to just believe in something. Without solid evidence, they are unconvinced, and the less grounded in reality that evidence is, the harder it is for them to believe. It's either that, or after a lifetime of education and studying how the world works, they lose all hope in both humanity and God. All I know is that these Atheists are one of the most common types of Atheists in the world. They have the most varied belief system and all come to their beliefs in different ways. They are the missionaries of the Atheist faith, using what they have learned throughout their lives to teach people how God simply cannot exist. They are probably the strongest willed Atheists as well, because no matter what anyone says, a Darwinist Atheist will never change his mind. He will always be an Atheist, no matter what, and he will try to tell you why he's right with equal dedication.

Which brings us to the final main category of Atheists that I will be talking about in this chapter. This denomination is the title denomination, and the type of Atheist that I consider myself to be. We are Religious Atheists. The Religious Atheist believes that there is no God thanks to a life of Religious exposure. I am not talking about experiencing just one religion, or two, or three. Religious Atheists have experiences countless different faiths from all reaches of the world. It's this extreme religious exposure that overloads the senses, rendering us unable to believe that with so many different faiths out there, how could it be possible that any one of them is the correct one? And so it seems to us that religion must be the creation of man, not the requirement of God. But the most important part of being a Religious Atheist is this: We will never say that you, regardless of your faith, whatever it may be, are wrong. Like you, we have chosen a particular belief system that works for us, and our is simply to not believe in any God at all. But it's still faith. Just like for whatever you believe, this is what works for us.

So, by doing my best to scratch the surface of the Atheist faith, I believe I have given you some of our most commonly occurring denominations. But there's an extremely important side note here that you must pay attention to in order to fully understand how we work. Unlike with religious denominations which are secure in their beliefs, the Atheist's lack of community allows for a pick and choose quality to our denominations. Any aspect of any of these faiths can cross over into another, depending on the believer. For example, I am a Religious Atheist. However, I have a hint of Darwinist and Conversational Atheist in me as well. I absolutely love to talk about God. Unlike Darwinist and Conversational Atheists, however, I speak of God as if I believed in him myself. But that's a subject for a later chapter.

Just know, as you turn the pages of this book, that though we have many denominations like many other faiths, ours are open to be twisted and manipulated based on the believer. With no one telling Atheists what to believe, I'm afraid this is inevitable. But maybe that's one of the most attractive qualities of our faith?

Chapter 1: Your Friend the Atheist

Chances are good that I'm not the only Atheist you know. I for one have several Atheist friends, and my friendship with them has nothing to do with me being an Atheist myself. The religious tend to assume that Atheists all have this strong connection or bond, that we are all part of this massive team of people with a single goal in mind, and that goal is to disprove God. Though I know several Atheists who believe exactly that, for many of us, the desire to disprove God isn't our driving force.

You see, being an Atheist is extremely different from being religious in one major sense when it comes to community. The religious are joined together by whatever form of congregation their religion takes part in. Now, I realize that not every religion requires its believers to come together and pray, but for the most part, this is a fairly common rule. In order to truly participate in an organized religion, one is required to attend regular services to their God or Gods. In these services, the community comes together and shares in what they believe by expressing their faith as one giant body of believers.

If Atheists were to come together in such a manner, we wouldn't exactly have a whole lot to talk about. This is largely because the term Atheist is an overly general term used to describe any individual who doesn't believe in a supreme being, or really any form of post-mortem activity. But like many religions, it's impossible to give a single title to what we as Atheists believe.

Take for example the Christian faith. There are in the Christian faith several thousand different denominations. Granted, most of these are insignificant and consist of only a handful of believers, but even in the most predominant denominations there are drastic differences in what each believes. And yet, they still consider themselves to be Christians, regardless of their differences.

The point that I am trying to make here is this. Let's say I were to meet two people at the same time, both of them friends, and both of them religious. For the sake of discussion in the rest of this book, all the religious and atheist characters created here will, for the most part, be willing to discuss their faith with each other and myself. I know that in real life, this makes these characters confrontational, but this is a book and the characters aren't real, even if they are modelled off the experiences of my life and the people I have met. Now, returning to the problem at hand, the first of the two people, who we will call Luther, introduces himself, shakes my hand, and tells me he is Lutheran. Then, the next person introduces herself, we will call her Cathy, shakes my hand, and tells me she's Roman Catholic. If I were to then say to both of these individuals 'Ah, so you are both Christian! So then you both believe the same thing then, don't you?' Cathy and Luther would very quickly correct me and detail the differences in their faiths.

But what would happen if Cathy or Luther met two Atheist friends who we shall call Ethan and Niki? Because Atheism is such a neglected belief system, by both the religious and fellow Atheists, I can't say with any certainty how this situation would unfold. From my experiences, this is the most commonly occurring answer to the question of a religious confronting two or more Atheists. Cathy or Luther would ask 'Ah, so you are both Atheists? Then you both don't believe in God. Why?'

And then Ethan and Niki immediately accept that they are in one category of disbelief and are now on a united front to defend themselves. What unfolds from here is an interesting balancing act that can't be seen by either Cathy or Luther, but is constantly being watched by Ethan and Niki. You see, Ethan and Niki know that they won't see eye to eye on many topics in the Atheist arsenal. They may not even fully understand what they themselves believe. What they know is that they both don't believe in God, and that they are both in the act of defending their beliefs, whatever they may be. So they watch each other carefully, listen to what each other says, and pay far more attention than Cathy or Luther to the words that are coming out of each others mouths.

This is all because of one of the biggest flaws in the Atheist faith, and that's the shared belief amongst most Atheists and the religious that just because we have chosen not to believe in God, that we believe exactly the same thing. The truth of the matter is, our faith can be as different as any two denominations of the same religion. In fact, Ethan and Niki could believe such extremely different things regarding their Atheism that they could be akin to a Taoist and a Roman Catholic.

Introduction

Welcome to The Religious Atheist. I believe, before I begin explaining the purpose of this endeavour, it is important for me to express my thanks for you actually taking time out of your day to read these words. My gratitude and concern are born of two inevitable responses of hearing or reading the word 'Atheist'; The first being the response of the religious, which is always a cocked head and a disagreeable look, as if by hearing the word 'Atheist' it just became the job of the listener to immediately save me from my eternal damnation. The alternative response is that of a smile, a hand shake, and a compliment from a fellow atheist for being something 'different.'

As sad as it may be, this is how the world seems to view Atheists. We are either a problem to be fixed, or a select few elite that are only recognized as elite by others of our kind. Both of these ideas are massively flawed, and both of them portray atheists as something different, some sort of massive problem or an egotistical cult. Perhaps both.

The truth of the matter is quite different. Atheists are, like all believers, drastically varied in shape, size, form, and faith. Atheists are not all of the same mindset. We do not all agree on every idea that comes out of every other Atheists mouth. And most importantly, we are not all stuck-up, self-centred, egotistical pricks who believe that the only way to achieve a perfect world is to remove God completely from our minds.

That being said, what is it that makes this collection important to you?

The purpose of this is not to convert you from your beliefs. It is not to plant a seed of doubt in your mind to later destroy everything you have ever known. The reason for creating this collection is simple: It's to show you, whatever you may believe in, that like yourself, Atheists aren't all bad. Sure, we have our assholes. But so do you. Sure, we have our extremists whose voices are loudest. But so do you. And sure, the facts that support our beliefs only take us so far, and then we are forced to take one massive leap of faith and just say 'This is what I know!' But so do you.

So, as you read these chapters of what it's like to be what I have coined 'A Religious Atheist,' know that what you are reading is simply a way of life. It's the belief of an individual amongst many. I am going to show you a side of a community that is often portrayed in a far too negative light. I am going to show you a life that requires just as much in terms of faith as any other believer, anywhere in the world. I am going to show you that, despite what you may or may not know about the Atheist community, we do not believe we are all knowing or all powerful.

I am going to show you what it means to be a real Atheist.

Welcome, to The Religious Atheist.