Austin Cline today wrote an article entitled, “Why Should I Consider Atheism?” I think it’s highly irrelevant. Many Atheists today believe Atheism to be a belief system, it follows rules, patterns of thought and such things. I think that’s a crock of bull.

It is in my opinion that Atheism is state of belief, there’s no process behind it, there’s no “considering” whether you want to be an Atheist. You simply are or you aren’t. It’s black or white, no gray area. It’s all a matter of asking yourself one simple question: Do you believe in the existence a god?

If the answer is anything but, “no,” then go dig around the multitude of superstitions out there and find which one suits you. Be happy in your delusions.

If the answer is no, you’re an atheist, content yourself with that. There’s no need to read books or study histories or sciences. There are no experts in the field. There’s no other unifying trait outside of that lack of belief. There is no higher authority that can tell you what is and what isn’t.

All these “leaders” of Atheism, they simply provide insight into what their personal thoughts are, they don’t dictate how an atheist is supposed to think. Now, it just so happens that a lot of atheists think the same. Let’s take the belief in evolution over creationism. The reason behind that is when an atheists think of how humans came into being, evolution is the only logical explanation currently available. You aren’t required to support evolutionary thought to be an atheist. If you could discover another logical reason, then you could support that and still be an atheist. Though, you’ll probably get into confrontations with a lot of prominent atheist scientists, those will just be debates on the plausibility of your ideas. There will be no doubt in either side’s mind that they’re both atheists.

Atheism is unique to each person. It may overlap with many others, but it’s unique in it’s restriction to one’s persona.

So, next time someone asks you why he should be an Atheist or why he should consider Atheism, just ask him the straightforward question. Do you believe in the existence of a god? An answer of no should end the discussion right there and then.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 3rd, 2008 at 4:25 pm and is filed under Atheists. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.