So, it’s lunchtime and I’ve been having a lovely day sitting at home working remote with my girl.  I got up early, got the kiddo off to school, came home, learned how to make hollandaise sauce, threw together some eggs benedict, and set about my day.  I decided to take a peek at my Google Reader feed over lunch and I read an infuriating little article about some bobsledder named Lyndon Rush who has taken advantage of his position as an Olympic athlete to tell the world that he doesn’t believe atheists exist.  He goes on record as stating that there are no atheists at the top of bobsled runs, that he doesn’t believe in atheists, and that really, the people who claim to be atheists are simply living in some sort of denial or just not at the point in their life where they are ready to accept God.

Out of all the ignorant and offensive things that theists say, I’m not sure there is one that bothers me more than this one, the flat out denial that I exist.  Oh sure, says the Christian, Ryan thinks he’s an atheist, but it’s all a cover for living his sinful immoral life.  He’s not really an atheist because nobody can really be an atheist because there is a scripture that says that all humans actually believe in God on some level.

So, if I am to understand the logic properly, the theist is saying:

1. I (the theist) believe in God AND

2. I also believe that God writes literature AND

3. I also believe that this particular book (the Bible) was written by Him AND

4. There is something in the Bible that I think says that atheists don’t really exist THEREFORE

5. Atheists don’t actually exist.

Wow.  No arguing with that chain of, er… reason.  I mean, why actually talk to one of your fellow humans about their beliefs and accept that those beliefs are held with the same conviction your own are when you can just use your closed little world of circular logic to deny the very existence of alternate beliefs?

I see literally no difference whatsoever between the idea of Jehovah and the idea of Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny or Bart Simpson.  These are fictional characters and they only exist as cultural symbols and shared points of conversational reference.  They are not actual personages and never where.  This is not something I wrestle with, not something I wonder about, not something that keeps me awake at night, not something I secretly doubt.  It’s a settled question.  There is no deeply buried part of my psyche that knows Bart Simpson is a real person.  I know that “he” is a character, invented by Matt Groening, voiced by Nancy Cartwright, and drawn by hordes of people working in dark animation studio dungeons.  It would never occur to me to wonder if somewhere, due to the prevalence of Bart Simpson in my culture, he actually exists as anything other than a fictional character.

This is precisely how I feel about the Biblical God.  There is literally no difference.  I don’t mistake my fiction for non-fiction.  Not even in my library.  I am far from alone.

Would this ignoramus go on record as saying that he doesn’t believe people who don’t like winter sports exist?  How about people who don’t like pizza?  Would he deny that Republicans or Democrats exist?  No, of course not.  Whatever other opinions he holds, he will at least acknowledge that there are other people who honestly hold alternate opinions.  But, where his opinion that there are invisible people who talk to him is concerned, he cannot even fathom that somebody else might actually disagree even if those people tell him so.

I think this bothers me so much because there is literally nothing more disrespectful of a person than to tell them that they don’t believe what they say they believe.  It says, “you’re whole life is a lie”.  It nearly always implies that the non-believer is secretly some sort of pervert or immoral person because that’s the only logical rationale available for why somebody would choose to make their entire life a lie.

I look at the Sodom and Gomorrah of my own life and I can see their point.  Did you know that I actually ate bacon this morning?  Bacon!  Pork!  The forbidden meat of the Jews!  I mean, sure, it was untreated, locally sourced, hormone-free, co-op bacon, but I doubt God cares.  At least according to some.  Then there is my sex life.  Marriage!  Without the intention of having children!  My wife and I are together because we like to be, not because we’re intending to make babies for God!  I bet the old fella would hate that.  Whoo boy.  Good thing I’m an atheist.  Let’s see, what else…  Science!  I enjoy the study of the natural world!  I accept the evidence of the natural world rather than stories and traditions!  Truly, I must die at Armageddon.  The world just cannot handle an environmentally conscious, nature loving, family guy with a wife and kid and job and three cats.  I mean, what if we were all like that?  The horror.  I shudder.

I can sit around and get all righteously indignant over this kind of lunacy all day but it’s so silly it’s hardly worth the effort.  Instead, I’m going to take the approach of arguing their point in reverse.  I am going to argue the point that theists don’t really exist.

To begin with, the default state of all babies when born is to not believe in anything in particular except eating and pooping.  They don’t look at a pretty flower and think “God made that”, they simply see a pretty flower.  If their parents tell them “God made that”, they will believe that.  If the parents says, “Allah made that”, they will believe that.  Basically, the kids brains get wired in response to what they are taught and every theist in the world is also an atheist when you change the subject to a God they were not indoctrinated into believing in.  Try convincing an adult to believe in Odin when they grew up believing in Jehovah.  Ain’t gonna happen.  So, the deal is, that theism is a system of belief grafted onto an initially atheistic person.

But doesn’t that mean theists still exist?  Following their anti-atheist logic, I’m going to argue no.  Here’s why.  Sure, there are people who claim to be theists.  Perhaps those people even think they really do believe in God, but when it comes right down to it, they don’t and they secretly know it.  The evidence lies in the fact that theists have to spend massive amounts of time and energy in reassuring themselves that God exists by reading devotional books, telling everybody just how much they believe, praying, and committing many other such acts of self-selling.  The entire life of religion is based around trying to keep yourself believing, keep yourself from doubting.  This is the only sphere of life in which people have to work to convince themselves of things they supposedly believe.  You don’t go around obsessing over the fact that you need oxygen to survive, writing hymns about it, saying prayers about it, swallowing down doubts about it, cultivating faith about it.  You simply breathe.  Fundamentally, the entire process of “cultivating faith” is the process of suppressing your basic, intuitive, inborn understanding that the stuff your parents told you doesn’t actually make a whole hell of a lot of sense.  Theists go nuts looking for evidence of God in their lives, without realizing that they don’t expend similar effort on proving anything else.  They don’t build up their faith that their car exists, or their house, or their dog, but somewhere in the innate, pattern-matching, problem-solving, sapien brain is something that says, “oh sure, mom and dad said god exists, so He certainly must exist, but He’s, well, invisible, and um, I can’t, you know, actually demonstrate this to myself without trying really hard, and, um…”.

This is like nothing else in the world.  Faith is only required because in our natural state we know that things that exist only inside our heads, that can’t be touched, tasted, seen, heard, or smelled are in all likelihood not there.  We know we can imagine anything but only experience through our senses.  Part of us knows this and throws up a little internal voice that says, “Sure, I think I feel God, but how do I know that’s not just an emotion?  A neuro-chemical?  No, no, no, don’t doubt, doubt is bad, go look for some external proof, or better yet just stop thinking like that and pray more, or preach, or read about how other people really believe and emulate them.”  Religious belief is a non-stop exercise in self-selling and stopping your brain from reaching a conclusion consistent with all of it’s non-God experience.  The whole God thing is a huge exception to all other rules we’ve ever encountered and it’s only through careful indoctrination on the part of parents, and diligent effort on the part of growing children and adults that this exception to the rule can be maintained.  And the exception cannot generally be maintained for other gods.  ”My god is undeniably obvious, but yours is so obviously ridiculous that I feel sorry for you.” is a pretty common theistic attitude.

So, my argument is that there are no theists.  There are only people who really really really want to be theists, people who sincerely want there to be a God and have dedicated their lives to denying the voice in their head that tells them it’s all nonsense.  They’re all secretly atheists because they were born as atheists, and they are atheists about other Gods, and they require physical proof of everything else.

Atheist: “You have a Ferrari in your garage.”

Theist: “No I don’t.  I don’t see a Ferrari there.”

Atheist: “But it is, you just need to have faith.  You only think you’re not a Ferrari owner because you’re in denial.”

Theist: “You’re a loony.”

That, my theistic fellow humans, is exactly how insane you sound when you say that we don’t exist.  Call us wrong, call us late for dinner, just don’t tell us that we secretly believe your story.  It’s crazy, it’s disrespectful, and it’s highly offensive.  And, if you thought my argument that you don’t exist was offensive, or disrespectful, you get my point.

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RyanSutter has content marketing with Arkayne Socialize.

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