Why I am an Atheist. I felt inspired by a post on Chris Taylor's weblog to produce a manifesto of my own. Chris identifies the wide diversity of belief system as reason for casting doubt on all of them. While I would point out that each of them should ultimately be rejected on the basis of their own demerits, their diversity exposes the subjectivity which underpins concepts of "the divine." My oft-stated reason for disbelief is this: I have never heard an adequate, formal, objective definition of "God." How am I supposed to say "yes, I believe in God" when you can't tell me what "God" is? Atheism is simply the absence of theistic belief. If no religion can provide me with a reasonable, specific belief about God, then I can't say that I have one.

It is a sad fact, but I think the most clear descriptions of God are the mere "God of the gaps" versions. For example, a Deist believes in no personal god. But the Deist does believe that there must have been some "greater power" who set the universe in motion but then abandoned it. This belief is a convenient way out of logical conundrums such as "how can the universe simply pop into existence from nowhere?" I.e., Deism is a way of maintaining a strict scientific world view without having to deal with the supposed paradoxes of Atheism.

I don't have anything against Deists. I might call myself a Deist or a Unitarian or a Humanist if being an Atheist gets too sticky. But, as one illustration of a failed but popular (among theologians) definition for "God", I want to examine God as "the being than which non greater can be conceived". The subjectivity here is obvious: what is greatness? Greatness Buddha-style? Greatness Jesus-style? Jim Jones-style? Ghengis Khan-style? Hitler-style? All of the above? Why? I think James pointed out some time ago that this definition has a close similarity to "the joke than which none funnier can be conceived." Scientists have evidently discovered that joke (as reported here). It is:

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"Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other man pulls out his phone and calls emergency services. He gasps to the operator: "My friend is dead! What can I do?" The operator in a calm, soothing voice replies: "Take it easy. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead." There is a silence, then a shot is heard. Back on the phone, the hunter says, "Ok, now what?"
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Maybe the joke is amusing, but I've heard funnier. Funnier to me, that is. This joke is the least-common-denominator of humor. If we took God to be defined by the least common denominator of everyone's personal notion of "greatness," he'd end up being about as great as that joke is funny.

The bottom line is that there are at least as many (and I say more) problems and paradoxes wrapped up with theistic belief than with atheism. These paradoxes go back to the dawn of written lanuage. "Does God declare the law because it is good or is the law good because God declares it?" "Can God create a rock so heavy he can't lift it?" "When God does something, does he do it for specific reasons (implying that He merely obeys laws which are greater than Him), or does he do it for no specific reasons (implying that He just does things at random, and is therefore insane)?" "The universe had to come from somewhere (that's why we believe in God, right?), but where did God have to come from?" "Where's Kolob?" and so on.

But the more important, non-theological point that Ive left out is this: religion gives another set of labels by which people can draw lines and boders between each other. It is another means of saying "you are different from me, and you are beneath me." It is rarely sufficient for a religion to espouse a viewpoint; it must push that viewpoint on others via politics and terrorism. It was militant Islamists who attacked the World Trade Center. It was militant Christians who bombed abortion clinics. Militant Hindus and militant Muslims create havoc in parts of India. It is the dogmatic fundamentalism of Mormons, Southern Baptists and others that cause continual grief for homosexuals in the U.S. They foment hatred and it breeds violence. The children who's parents take them to the dominant church end up throwing rocks at the children who's parents take them to the lesser church. The same self-righteousness makes older children feel justified when they harrass and murder heretics and sodomites.

I have to make the concession that not all religious people act this way. Most fundamentalists don't listen that closely to their ministers. But enough people will take the extreme position to make it a problem. The irrational beliefs of Christianity (most of which are not gleaned from the Bible at all), make their way into public policy through political efforts of churches. In total, large organized religions tend to resist and delay every progressive change. Only smaller organizations (such as Unitarian-Universalists) embedded in diverse communities can genuinely tolerate an improvement in humanity at their own expense.