Being Atheist

Why I’m an atheist and how I view my atheism amid a culture that continually attempts to push back on my right to non-belief.

What I read: “Confessions Of An Atheist In America” by The Big Picture and Todd Beeton. Published August 3, 2023.

I’m an atheist. I’m among a growing group of people who self-identify as atheist. Along with those who prefer identifying as agnostics, it’s a growing number. Add in the “nones” (a type of irreligion) and the numbers who are abandoning religions and churches are growing significantly.

This post is not to advocate for atheism. That’s often the claim when any atheist proclaims their atheism or writes about it. Simply stating a preference or one’s reasoning behind their atheism can generate a slew of angry comments about atheists pushing their agenda or that atheism is just another religion (it’s not).

No, this post is simply to again state that many of us have always been atheist or have come to atheism and we want to live in a world in which our day-to-day rights are not dictated in any way by religion. Is that too much to ask? I know for some it is, but my readers tend to be a rather savvy bunch and my guess is they’ll understand what I’m saying here.

I’m not naïve. I know most of the United States and much of the world will remain religious long past when I leave this mortal plane. I know most of my readers are religious or at least believe in a god and will remain so.

Everyone has a right to their beliefs when it comes to whether there is a god or not. Everyone has a right to their individual spirituality.

Everyone does not have a right to inject religion or a god into secular affairs like civil rights. Everyone does not have a right to allow religion to dictate oppressive and discriminatory legislation.

The right of personal belief and religion should extend only so far and the perimeter of those rights ends at the door of a home or church.

Atheists really only ask two things of others. Leave us alone. Don’t push a religious perspective into anything having to do with our individual or collective civil rights. That’s it.

If you want to talk to any of us about why we’re atheists, great. If you want to listen to an atheist’s presentation or read their article or book, great. I believe the number of atheists will continue to grow, but the law of attraction versus evangelism is how most atheists operate. How often do you see an atheist standing on a corner with a “ Burn in hell sinners” sign, and of course atheists don’t believe in hell anyway. But you get the point.

Facts back up why I believe atheism, and certainly pulling back from religion, will continue to grow in appeal over time.

Yes, self-identified Christians still remain a majority of the U.S. population, but the “nones” have eaten into that dominance in a dramatic way. In just 14 years, the Christian to unaffiliated ratio went from approximately 5 to 1 down to just over 2 to 1.

These United States statistical trends have been repeatedly documented by various sources. Other countries are reporting similar trends. The most tracked group appears to be the nones and parsing out who among the nones is atheist or agnostic, or simply a believer without any religious affiliation, can be more difficult sometimes. But we know statistically that the number of atheists and agnostics is indeed growing.

But even as the nation becomes more secular, with thousands of churches closing each year, and with Millenials and Gen Z leading the movement away from religion, self-described atheists make up just 4% of the U.S. population, and agnostics make up just 5%, both up from just 2% in 2007. The remaining 20%: “nothing in particular.”

The gist of Todd Beeton’s article is that atheists still experience a significant amount of stigma. That stigma is real. I see it rear its head often whenever I post about being an atheist on social media. Interestingly, the biggest pushback seems to come from those who want to categorize atheism as a belief system on par with religion. No. To not believe in something is quite different than to believe in something, especially when that believing in something often spawns entire religions and those religions seek to enact their particular view of the world on everyone else.

In 2020, Gallup found that just 60% of Americans would elect an atheist for president, sandwiched between 45% that would elect a Socialist and 66% who would elect a Muslim. By contrast, Evangelical Christians come in at 80%, Jewish at 93% and Catholic at 95%.

Contrary to Beeton’s background, I was raised in a highly religious home. I attended eight years of religious schooling. Even the neighborhood in which I grew up was heavily populated with other families all of the same religious persuasion. Questioning the existence of a god or holding any views not blessed by the church wasn’t even on the table of possibility when I was a child.

Then one day my amazing and devoutly religious father sat me down at breakfast in the restaurant we ate at after every Sunday church service. He told me I was now 13 years old. He considered me a man. He asked me if I still wanted to go to church. Surprisingly, I didn’t hesitate for a second with my answer. No, I did not want to keep going to church. My father accepted that, and we went on with our meal. I never attended another church service after that.

My father exemplified the mindset I wish every religious person embraced. Believe what you want. Practice the religion that brings you peace. But don’t push that religion on anyone else individually or collectively.

Even at a young age in Catholic school I remember not buying into the religion that was all around me at home, at school, and in church every Sunday. In catechism class I asked a lovely nun who had always been kind to me why she couldn’t be a priest. She took a beat, then parroted the “It’s not God’s plan” narrative that I later realized she had been brainwashed into thinking. It made no sense to me. Even then, I realized how sexist and misogynist many religions are and it didn’t sit well with me. I didn’t have the words for gender equality back then, but clearly I was a feminist even as a child.

I’ve known I’m gay since a young age. Really young. The moment I was aware of sexual attractions of any kind my mind immediately went to same-sex attractions. I never recall feeling heterosexual in any way. I even tried to contort my sexuality and orientation for a while in my teens. Still clinging to theism and my religious upbringing, I’d question why God would make me feel this way. Was I a sinner? Was I doomed to hell?

The fact that I turned to God in my moment of crisis when I never acknowledged God at any other time, the fact that I only turned to him when I needed something, didn’t actually give me comfort at all. It did the opposite.

It made me realize not just that I didn’t believe that praying that night had saved my leg, but that I didn’t believe God was real, and hadn’t for a while.

That day wasn’t the moment I became an atheist, it was the moment I realized I already was, and finally allowed myself to admit it.

And it was a moment of profound clarity for me.

My brief affair with questioning my gayness through the lens of a god and religion luckily subsided quickly. Much like Beeton, the moment I rejected religion’s condemnation of who I am was the beginning of my dabbling in agnosticism and then eventually settling on a name that was more in line with how I truly felt, atheism. If the religion I was raised to believe was the direct word of a god was so wrong about homosexuality and the place of women in society, perhaps they were wrong about a lot of things.

In the article, Beeton goes on to describe how he was surprised at the pushback he got once he became an atheist. It wasn’t just religious people questioning Beeton’s atheism, even some non-religious people did so.

In the rest of the article, Beeton explains his theory about why there is such a pushback in American culture against atheism. They fall into two categories. Godlessness equals wickedness, and atheism equals arrogance. I’ll let you read the article for his elaboration on these two points.

Beeton concludes with his justification for the use of atheism over agnosticism. I’ve had this same discussion countless times with people who want to apply the agnostic label to me because somehow we have to label nonbelief when it comes to religion whereas we don’t do so in the rest of life.

But, I have never read a more clear explanation of how atheism and agnosticism can coexist while atheists can still rightfully claim that label.

But in fact, being an atheist and being an agnostic are not mutually exclusive. While theism and atheism are about belief or non-belief in a god or gods, gnosticism and agnosticism are about whether the existence of a god or gods can be known.

At the end of the article Beeton makes his case for the normalization of atheism. Stigma against atheism is quite real, but like Beeton I see hope in younger people. Younger people don’t seem nearly as reactionary when the topic of atheism comes up.

I am heartened by younger generations’ seeming immunity to the persistent built-in anti-atheist sentiment that seems to be inherent in so many of us. The more people openly discuss atheism, the less fraught the subject will be, and perhaps we can become an even greater percentage of the “nones” as our numbers continue to grow.

My hope is that those reading this who are religious realize I and other atheists have a right to nonbelief just as the religious have a right to belief. I will still fight against attempts to inject any religion or theistic perspectives into government, legislation, or coercive culture. But I will also champion others having the right to believe or practice whatever they want.

Aligned with this approach is that when I state my reasons for being an atheist, why I don’t believe in a god, and why I believe religion has and can have a corrosive effect on society, that not be construed as me denigrating someone’s right to believe in a god and practice whatever they wish to celebrate that.

In short, I really hope atheists, agnostics, non-religious believers, and the religious can simply get along.

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