I am an atheist. There, I've said it. It took me a long time to realise it, and longer still before I was really comfortable with it. But having got there, I'm happy and philosophically contented.

These pages are about my personal beliefs concerning religion and gods. I believe quite simply that there are no such things as gods, and that religion and belief in gods is nothing more than myth and superstition, which we would all be much better off without. I believe that religion encourages intolerance and hatred, and by its (often forceful) adherence to centuries-old myth and dogma holds back the collective development of humanity. Having been brought up in the Christian tradition, most of what I have to say is directed against the Christian religion because that's the only one that I have direct experience of. Most of the arguments, though, I think, hold good against any religion that believes in gods.

I believe that science provides satisfactory explanations for most of the "mysteries" of life and our world. Of course, there are still many things that we don't know or understand, but science is making continuous progress and constantly narrowing the gaps in our knowledge and understanding. There is absolutely no reason to invoke supernatural reasons and gods to explain those things that we don't yet know. Invoking gods to fill in the missing gaps shows a collective human immaturity and weakness of character - there's nothing wrong with simply "not knowing" some things, and we should just mentally grow up and have the guts to say "we don't know yet, but we're working on it". In any case, invoking gods just shifts the explanation one step further down the line (where did the gods come from?).

I do understand, however, that a lot of people feel the need for some kind of spiritual or religious belief to fill a "God shaped hole", but this need arises largely out of poor education, a lack of scientific understanding and an unwillingness or inability to indulge in critical thinking. Inventing and believing in fables as some sort of placebo is not the answer. Sure, it's probably a nice comfortable feeling to think there's someone watching over us and to think that when we die we go on to somewhere infinitely better. But wishing something true doesn't make it true, and the sooner we accept the fact that this life is all there is and concentrate on making the best of it for the sake of ourselves and those around us, the better.

There are few religions in the world (I can think only of Buddhism in my personal experience) that have not been the inspiration for hate, division, bigotry and numerous acts of murder and barbarism. Starting with the Crusades, through the Inquisitions of the Middle Ages, the burning of Cathars and witches, to the modern day with hatred between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland, Jews and Palestinians in the Middle East, Hindus and Muslims in India, we see a continuous stream of events where the followers of one religion regard their religion as the only True religion, and anyone who doesn't accept that should be punished or killed.

Of course, I accept that the more extreme acts in any religion are perpetrated by a small minority of its followers, but given the huge misery and suffering that these minorities cause through their actions I am not convinced that the good of the majority outweighs the evil of the minority. Many religious people would no doubt point out the virtues of love, kindness, charity, and so forth promoted by their religion (while ignoring, or being ignorant of, the darker side of their teachings - more of this elsewhere ). But you don't (or shouldn't) need religion in order to show love, charity, kindness and so on - you just need plain, simple humanity.

As Karen Armstrong wrote in her book "A History of God" - "In the beginning, man created gods". Gods, and religious belief in general, are an anachronism, dreamt up by mankind in an earlier, uneducated age to explain to simple minds the wonders they saw around them. We now have much better explanations for the way things are, and it is time for mankind to outgrow childish notions of gods and religion. We don't need them anymore, and we're better off without them.

 

"Suppose you had never heard of Christianity, and that next Sunday morning a stranger standing in a pulpit told you about a book whose authors could not be authenticated and whose contents, written hundreds of years ago, included blood-curdling legends of slaughter and intrigue and fables about unnatural happenings such as virgin births, devils that inhabit human bodies and talk, people rising from the dead and ascending live into the clouds, and suns that stand still. Suppose he then asked you to believe that an uneducated man described in that book was a god who could get you into an eternal fantasy-place called Heaven, when you die. Would you, as an intelligent rational person, even bother to read such nonsense, let alone pattern your entire life upon it?"

- Ruth Hurmence Green, in the introduction to The Born Again Skeptics Guide to the Bible