As an atheist, I am often asked how my atheism influences my life.  My theist friends cannot understand how it would influence my life in the same way that their belief in God influences them.  It is a fair question.  However, I will say that the feeling that I get is that theists believe that being an atheist can only influence one’s life in a negative way.  This is not a fair assumption.  Atheism influences the ways that people justify their actions and accept the consequences of those actions by defining how people think about responsibility, purpose, ethics and intelligence.  While the consequence of being an atheist is that the reasons we give will differ from those given by the theist, it does not follow that those reasons are in some way not as good, or ethically unjustifiable.  It can be argued, in fact, that the influence of theism on life is not a positive thing. Regardless, what influences our lives varies, I will admit, but our personal beliefs influence our lives in ways that we might not even be aware of.  This is the context in which this essay should be read. 

Responsibility

Atheism forces personal responsibility upon the individual.  Responsibility is defined here as being capable and willing to justify one’s actions and accept the consequences of those actions.  This capability and willingness is what differentiates the theist’s perception of responsibility and the atheist’s perception of that responsibility.  First, the theist can easily justify the means by justifying the ends.  The assumption made by the theist is that God exists and is able to justify the morality of our acts.  Therefore, if we act in the name of God, our acts can be automatically justified.  Such reasoning is called confirming the consequent, and is fallacious.  The atheist cannot confirm the good of a consequent simply by assuming that a god exists.  The atheist must give credibility to a proposition by assessing it as worthy of being justified.[1]  That is, an atheist must make the choice of not only of acting in a certain way and justifying it, but giving credibility to the justification of the action.

The nature of theism is founded upon the belief that God exists: a theist accepts the existence of God with or without justification.  Given this assessment the basis of theism is faith, not fact.  Because faith needs no justification a theist is free to justify acts simply by believing that the act is justified by God.  This one fact differentiates theists from atheists in that faith alone cannot justify acts for the atheist.  Before accepting a statement as true or false, the atheist must accept that the credibility behind the statement is strong enough to help validate his argument.  The atheist is not at liberty to act simply by faith and justify his act only by faith.  If the atheist does act simply by faith, he must admit as much.  While the theist can accept as true statements that are really based in faith if those statements are based upon their theistic beliefs, the atheist cannot accept as true statements that are really based in faith without being perceived as deceptive.  As Smith points out, if the credibility of the justification is considered as valid and true, the burden of proof “falls on the person who affirms the truth of [the justification].”[2]  Where the theist can affirm truth by appealing to his faith in God, the atheist must justify his acts in such a way that can be analyzed rationally. By appealing to rationality rather than faith, the atheist creates personal responsibility for himself; by appealing to rationality, the atheist also admits to understanding the reasoning behind his action.  While the theist is considered virtuous when he is perceived to “follow God’s word”, the atheist becomes virtuous by understanding why an act is good or bad.  The theist is bound by duty, while the atheist is bound by understanding.  The theist acts in accordance to his perceived responsibility to God while the atheist acts in accordance to responsibility to self and possibly those around him. 

Purpose

With personal responsibility, comes the responsibility of defining purpose for one’s self.  Purpose to the Christian must be related not only to their belief in God, but to God himself as well.  Kurt Baier, in his essay “The Meaning of Life”, describes the medieval Christian’s purpose in life.  He writes that the medieval Christian believes that life is a short stint on earth as a soul incarcerated in a body, fated to die in order to end pain and suffering.[3]  “What really matters, is the life after death of the body.  One’s existence acquires meaning not by gaining what this life can offer but by saving one’s immortal soul from death and eternal torture, by gaining eternal life and everlasting bliss.”[4]  The theist’s purpose can be nothing less and nothing more than that of the medieval Christian’s purpose because God is still the meaning and creator of life to the theist.

The atheist’s life is meaningful in the opposite sense of the Christian’s sense of purpose: by gaining what this life can offer rather than living for the purpose of attaining some “eternal and everlasting bliss”.  The atheist is free to define purpose in many ways: as a resolution, or a goal aimed at. The theist claims that without God life has no purpose, but the actual conclusion of such arguments is that without God, life can have many purposes.  Without God, the purpose of life is not necessarily meaningless, although it could very well be.  The point is that without God, we are free to give life purpose; we are free to define life as purposeful in any way or not at all. Finding purpose in life can become the meaning of life for the atheist, and as is clear, “meaning” can be defined in many ways. Writers find purpose in writing; philosophers philosophize; artists create art.  More to the point, atheists have the responsibility to create purpose, and must do so by educating themselves as to what that purpose might be. Without God, the responsibility of finding a purpose in life lies on the shoulders of the individual.

Just as a side note, many theists equate science with secularism and also with the seeming demise of religious thought.  Often atheism is pointed to as the promoter of science as well as the murderer of true purpose in life.  While it may be true that atheistic thought has helped science to free itself from the grasp of religious dogma and superstition, it has also given humankind a new purpose: that of learning about the universe in which we live.  Much of the theistic arguments against both science and atheistic thought is that they have robbed humanity of its purpose by chipping away at superstition: the mystery is gone.  Baier replies that “science has not only not robbed us of any purpose which we had before, but it has furnished us with enormously greater power to achieve these purposes.”[5]  Atheism, by freeing science from superstition, has opened the universe up to the curiosity of humanity through scientific methodology rather than closed the universe by limiting the ability to be curious.  Science and atheistic thought have created both the responsibility of humanity to act virtuously and a purpose by which to do so.

Ethics

With the responsibility of the individual’s purpose laid firmly upon their own shoulders, individuals are also responsible for defining ethical systems that are both pragmatic and worthwhile.  With ethical theories such as the social contract theory, and utilitarianism, it is clear that atheism has influenced the ethics that are held by many societies. Atheistic perspectives allow for ethical decisions to be intertwined with pragmatism and rationality rather than faith-based duty alone.  The atheistic perspective is not encumbered by universal but ambiguous obligations such as a duty to a deity, and so is not susceptible to such things as voluntarism or natural law ethics.  A voluntarist is defined as a person that contends “that something is right because God wills it, whereas natural law theologians [natural law ethics] say that God wills something because it is right”.[6]  These theories would seem to be two sides of the same coin.  Whereas the theist is forced to accept one or both of these theories regardless of the innate contradictions[7], the atheist can make the claim that an action is morally reprehensible because it cannot be justified rationally.  The atheist is free to make the claim that an action is not necessarily moral because of its pragmatic ramifications: such as the good of society (utilitarianism), or because of one’s intuitive perspective, such as the good of the individual (hedonistic).  Atheism does not fall prey to another fallacy: that of the false dilemma.

Historically, religions and religious ethics have been upheld not because they are necessarily based in truth, but because they are upheld by tradition and custom.  Atheism is able to offer an ethical system that is not based on religious, and is not necessarily based on individual, or social opinions.  As such, it is not obligated to religious, individual, or social norms often accepted on grounds of fear, ignorance, or authority.  Rather, the ethics of atheism have allowed moral opinion based in credulity to be overturned by moral rationality based in intellectualism.  If an action is deemed wrong, the atheist is free to ask why the act is deemed wrong. “Murder”, one might say, “is wrong, and I knew it was wrong long before it was intellectually explained to me.”  While that may be true, “a credulous person who has invested little, if any, mental labor in his opinions, will produce nothing of real value, nothing that others can learn from, even if he is right.  We can learn more from the reasonable errors of a great mind than we can from the opinions of a fool.”[8]  While the atheist is able to explain why something is wrong, the theist must answer “because God say’s so…”

Intelligence

Where religious belief allows individuals to rest the responsibility of life upon God’s shoulders, the atheist accepts the responsibility for his or her own life.  Given this responsibility, the atheist is free to define purpose in life by using rational thought and our innate human curiosity.  Furthermore, while theists are forced to consider or accept contradictions in theistic forms of ethics, the atheist can dismiss contradictory ethical theories and replace them with logical, rational, and intuitive forms of ethics.    All of these positive aspects of human life have been made possible because the atheistic perspective is free to broaden the intelligence rather than limit it.  If religious history is analyzed, it is not difficult to conclude that it is a history wrought with ignorance and defined by deception rather than intelligence and honest curiosity. 

The acceptance of the atheistic perspective into one’s life allows for the possibility of intellectual growth, stimulation, and curiosity because it is not limited to the acceptance of a single, necessary conclusion: that a god exists and that god is the cornerstone of human existence, the reason for human responsibility, the definer of human purpose, and the justification of human morality.  One who makes the conscious decision to be an atheist is free from the obligation of assuming that there is a God, and is given the freedom to prove whether or not there is a God rather than being forced to assume that one exists.  Atheism demands that we ask, rather than accept, and this demand is precisely what influences the atheist the most.  We must enact our curiosity and in doing so we become intellectuals. Intellectualism, like science but unlike religion, does not make the assumption of laws, but “looks for laws [and] whenever a possible law occurs to him, he conscientiously tries to disprove it by all reasonable tests.”[9]  The intelligent person, be that a scientist, a construction worker, or a secretary differs from the religionist and the theologian in that they are not forced to be irrational given that they are free to ask questions rather than accept unfounded dogma.  The atheist has the responsibility to define purpose and morality in a rational way, while the theist has the responsibility to eradicate rational thought for the sake of faith.  The theist, while claiming to be rational, must in the end give up that rationality.  It must be understood that religion does not influence life in a positive way because it asks people to have faith, but because it asks people to only have faith.   “The main irrationality of religion is preferring comfort to truth; and it is this that makes religion a very harmful thing on balance”.[10]

In conclusion, atheism influences all aspects of life.  Atheism influences the way that we define responsibility by making the individual responsible for the justification and consequences of actions.  It has also allowed individuals and societies to free themselves from superstitious credulity as to their purposes in life.  Furthermore because of the atheistic perspective, ethical obligations can be based on moral rationality and pragmatic reality.  Lastly, atheism has led the way for the intellectual freedoms that human beings are capable of by ridding questions of religious assumptions and replacing them with intellectual skepticism.  The influences of atheism on human life have freed humankind to choose faith if they so desire, but not at the cost of rational enquiry.  While atheism may not influence all aspects of life, it certainly influences the important ones.

What Aspects of life does Atheism Influence?