out of the closet?

It's been rattling around my head that it might be time I came out of the closet. It's not that I'm gay, it's that I'm an atheist.

I grew up Catholic, and was serious enough about it that I spent my college years in a Catholic seminary studying to be a priest. When Catholicism didn't work anymore, I went to the Quakers, and joined, first Montclair Meeting, then Princeton Meeting. (I continue there because they don't care if you come to meeting as an atheist, as long as you show respect for the beliefs of others. Since I'm not a Dawkins-style militant atheist, this is not a problem.)

I've thought and read a lot about religion, in additon to my studies. I don't think that anyone who knows me can say that I don't know enough about religion, and that's why I'm an atheist. And I don't think the specific details of my change in belief are important here.

All my life, I've thought about the problem of the existence of
suffering, what C. S. Lewis calls The Problem of Pain. Neither his work, nor When Bad Things Happen To Good People, nor the book of Job, nor any other God-centered solution to this problem ever worked for me. But when I gave up belief in God, the solution was clear: suffering just is. The solution to it is what we are going to do about it.

As for the "Where did it all come from?" question, the God solution is no better than the scientific one, or any other. The scientific one at least has the advantage of being predictive; the God solution is not. Petitionary prayer, for example, doesn't seem to have any appreciable effect on outcomes. (This doesn't mean I think all prayer is unimportant. As I've said elsewhere, there is place for prayer in atheism, in wonder and forgiveness. And it is probably helpful for people to know that others care for them and are thinking of them.)

As for the source of morality (some theists say that without God, there can be no morality), I think that the stuff we call morality comes in a few types. First, there are the things we do because they work best for human groups, and these are generally common among all humans. Not killing, not stealing, respect for marriage and family, for example, seem to be among these. These could have evolved as humans did.

Other things, it seems to me, are about ensuring the propagation of humanity, which, until the industrial age, was not a surety. Forbidding masturbation and homosexuality seem to fall into this category; if you're doing that stuff, you're not makin' babies. (I think there's also an "ickiness" factor that comes into morality: it what you're doing seems icky to me, then God forbids it. Piffle.)

Other things, though, are just things that separate my team from yours. My team doesn't eat pork, or meat on Good Friday. My team wears this kind of hat. This brings up what is, for me, one of the biggest purposes of religion (not God), and one of religions' biggest failings.

Most people need to belong to groups. If the group is too big, it will subdivide into smaller, manageable groups. That's not a problem; it's normal: if you look at young adolescents, you'll usually see large, same-sex groups hanging around together, and some of this behavior, with appropriate changes, carries on throughout our lives. Religious groups, however, will often demonize people who are not members of their groups. This is one of the problems with religion, and one of the reasons why there is a small group of people arguing that religion should be abandoned. (Do NOT outlaw religion. Some of those people are ALREADY nutballs; can you imagine what they'd be like if they had the added cachet of being outlaws?)

I've read somewhere, that I've never been able to find again, that there are more men than women in corporate boardrooms and high political offices, but also more homeless and criminal men than women. Male behavior tends to be more extreme than female behavior. I think religious behavior tends to be extreme, as well. It's true that there are horrendous things done in the name of religion. It's also true that there are wonderful things done. Much healthcare in this country is through religious systems. Many people trace personal heroism to their religion. Some of the energy that is spent on religion is about the religion itself, so nit may not be clear that this energy is a good, but I think the people who want to abandon religion are lookng at only one side of a many-sided edifice.

One of the things I like about the kinds of liberal Quaker meetings I attend is that they are radically welcoming. (This can also be a flaw, though; Quaker potlucks suck, because people make food that will not irritate anyone's allergies or upset the most arcane food preferences. What we tend to get is a lot of bland, low-salt vegan gruel.)

I think the people who get most upset about atheism, and the removal of religion, are the people who want to believe that there is something special about humans (or about their particular kind of humans, like the "America is a city on a hill" folks). While I don't go as far as these people, I would not say there is nothing special about humanity. Humanity is reponsible for loads of destruction, but we are also responsible for heroism and meaning, for creating and understanding beauty. We didn't need God for that.