I have been an atheist for most of my life. My parents were, and most of my peers for most of my life have been. I toyed with the idea of God only for a few years around my graduation from college. I was intrigued by Quakerism and was aware of unusual mental states that came during meditation or meeting for worship. But it didn't take long for me to decide that everything was going on within my own head.
I had heard of the "New Atheists" for years, and had felt I didn't need to read a book trying to persuade me of something I already believed. But recently I became interested at a secondary level. I have tried to call myself a "friendly atheist", since I think the caricature of "atheist" in the religious mind is someone who is angry and intolerant and scoffs not just at God but any sort of wonder, beauty or humility.
I had thought in recent years that there was no need to try to get a believer to stop believing if they found religion a comfort and lived what those of us in modern times would call "a good life". So were these new atheists being more hostile than necessary? ChatGPT told me the seminal work was "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins, so I got it out of the library and read it. Dawkins thinks what's bad about religion (aside from is just being false) is that if you accept people taking anything on faith without protest, it lays the groundwork for a fundamentalism that tramples on other people's rights. He is also concerned with children of Christian denominations who literally believe that the fate of sinners is everlasting torment in hell, leading to unnecessary distress.
In the book Dawkins goes through arguments that were familiar to me such as looking at the proofs people had put forward for the existence of God and dismissing them.
I ended up feeling that the situation was simpler than we often make it out to be, and that an atheist shouldn't need to get into such arguments.
My thesis is that what has changed in the past 500 years or so is the widespread adoption of the scientific method. One notable step along the way was Isaac Newton's elegant laws that explained a great deal of how physical bodies move and behave, including notably gravity.
Before the scientific method, we humans did the best we could in figuring out the world around us and how it worked. Our ability to find true relationships has been a key to our success as a species. If you find a particular kind of grub, mash it and smear its insides on an arrow head, then pierce an animal with the arrow, a poison from within the body of the grub kills the animal. But our ability to find such true relationships carries along with it finding relationships where none exist at all. So among our past beliefs is the idea that there were spirits inhabiting physical objects and animals, that they could do harm, and certain sacrifices were necessary to satisfy the desires of Gods. Not much changed fundamentally as various forms of monotheism arose. There were passionate battles, slaughter and torture as groups with incompatible beliefs confronted one another. Even modern believers presumably think most such conflict was a tragic waste.
But what has emerged over time from the scientific method is a truly astonishing set of discoveries. Many have practical benefit. We can farm better, breed better crop strains, harness metals and make machinery, leading on through physical technology to jet travel and the internet. We discovered public health measures and effective drugs so that very few people die young. The health, cleanliness, abundant food, central heating, and availability of unlimited information and entertainment we in western societies have today would all seem like fantasy to anyone living 300 years ago.
The scientific method operates on the principle of making observations that different people can test and confirm. The double-blind randomized control drug trial is one shining example of what we have created. And it has determined that a great many medical treatments that people thought were effective turned out not to be.
The scientific method has also laid to rest claims of alchemy, phrenology, telepathy, and astrology. I suspect most religious believers would applaud the use of science to debunk false beliefs.
Now, well into the scientific age, we can be skeptical of any claim about the world unless it has been tested scientifically and evidence found for it.
To my knowledge, all mainstream religions hold beliefs about things that happen in the real world, or that happened in the past, that involved divine intervention. Some non-material stuff or thing (likely called "God") made things happen in the observable world. Armed as we are now with the scientific method, the question we should be asking is, What is the evidence for this claim? If there is no evidence, then we should not believe it. Note that science has never proven that alchemy, telepathy and astrology are false. It is possible that they only operate in special circumstances -- perhaps only when no one using the scientific method is paying attention. But the absence of evidence is enough for most of us to decide that they are ideas to be discarded. Claims of "serious" religions deserve the same treatment. And we can confidently say that there is absolutely no evidence in favor of any religion as an explanation of anything.
The burden of proof should be on the believer to come up with some evidence that meets the standards of the scientific method. The reply to any argument of the form, "But how can science explain X?" starts with "There is a great deal that science cannot explain. If you are proposing that your particular religion can explain X, show me some evidence."
There are various ways of thinking about the world. If everyone in your social circle as you are growing up is Christian, you will typically become Christian too. We all rely heavily on the authority of people we trust to determine what is true. You might well decide that determining literal truth is not important to you. However, on any occasion where you decide to explore truth from the perspective of the (immensely successful) scientific method, you will find there is zero evidence for your religion.
Despite people tending to believe what their parents believe, change does happen. We all now believe that the earth revolves around the sun, which is part of one galaxy among billions of galaxies. The Christian Science religion is famous for its belief that health is to be achieved through prayer, not through drugs and medicines. This wasn't an obviously bad idea back in the 19th century when there were few effective medical treatments and some were downright harmful. With the fruits of scientific inquiry in hand it has become a bad idea if your goal is physical health. Religion could and should dwindle to become only a subject for study (albeit a very interesting one) by the fields of history and psychology, both parts of the edifice of science.
The scientific theory of evolution by natural selection has offered an explanation for an enormous variety of things that used to mystify us. It seems to occupy a large place in the thinking of fundamentalist believers, who have a passionate conviction that it must be false. But there is nothing special about it from a scientific point of view.
In 1600, it was hard to know what to believe about a great deal of the world. Religions were a reasonable explanation; there were no clearly better ones. In 2024, the scientific method has established its success in explaining a great deal and debunking many superstitions. It is now far and away the best foundation for understanding the world. And while it certainly doesn't explain everything, it does suggest that every religious belief involving something Divine (or even just non-material) is false.
