Many atheists carry a theological crutch. Most are unaware of it. And, if you show it to them, most will deny it’s there.
It is the silent belief that, should they ever change their mind about God, God will always be there for them.
One of the great comforts of being an atheist is the assumption that if one day the skies parted and God appeared and said “thou shalt choose,” thou could choose God then. Or perhaps later in life, on your deathbed, or at some distant time in the future when you find yourself looking for something more – you could choose what’s behind “Door #2” then. Until then, atheists feel free to spend their Sabbaths partying or at the beach or at that quiet, new hipster brunch place down the street (before it’s overrun by hipster wannabes).
This is the atheist’s backup plan. A theological crutch. The belief that, should you ever decide to open “Door #2,” God will always be there waiting for you with open arms. It is a belief built on an assumption about the character of God: that He is more of a sap than any ex-boyfriend or girlfriend you have ever dumped, and He will gladly spend all of eternity waiting patiently behind Door #2 in the hopes that you will someday open it.
But what if there was a consequence to not believing in God? What if you opened Door #2 and God was no longer there?
What if God stopped believing in you?
My whole family are atheists, our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely soley upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we tend to distrust anything that contradicts science. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of knowledge.
Atheists tend to believe that their belief is not a belief; that their principles are not a faith. Yet, when one asks them why it is that science has not yet been able to place all the forces thus far discovered into a Grand Unified Theory of Everything, the answers they tend to give are somewhere along the spectrum of belief that if science is just granted enough time and tax dollars, then at some point scientists are sure to find all the answers, rather than just a whole lot of new questions, as has actually been the case since the days of Heraclitus, Parmenides, Aristotle, etc. In other words, atheists believe, in clear contradiction to rational evidentiary analysis, that a miracle will occur and something which has never before happened in the entire history of science will magically happen just this one time.
Moweryyour argument about how if asthiets are wrong nothing matters, but if you’re right, everything matters, has a simple answer. The logic you’re using is called Pascal’s wager, stating that it is better to believe and be wrong and not have anything matter, than to not believe and run the possibility of being wrong and risking hell. I find this thought process so incredibly disturbing, but I hear it so often, but you’re saying, best to pay lip service to a god you don’t really believe out of fear than risk going to hell I was raised in a christian household and it took me years to come to grips with me even questioning God let alone the full blown atheism I now profess. The fact of the matter is that I never felt this connection to god, or love, or anything I was told I should, even though I tried so very hard, I felt evil and wrong. But after a long time I came to realize that morally for me, Christianity, and the belief in any god did not make any sense to me. A big part of what kept me back from finding my atheism is that logic that you used though, so I’ll get back on topic. The response to your question would be what is called simply enough, the Atheist’s Wager . The logic goes like this: If I do not believe in a god, but live a good life simply because it is what I believe is right, and a benevolent god exists, my gain is infinite, since the god will not judge me based on whether or not I believed in them but rather on the basis of what kind of life I lived, plus I leave a positive legacy of my life on earth. Then there is a life where I do not believe in god, and no god exists, I still leave a positive legacy of my life on earth, and there are no consequences since there is no god. I can’t prove that there is no god, and I respect those who hold different beliefs than I, as I’ve stated I have an entire family of believers whom I still love dearly, but as far as I’m concerned, the idea of god doesn’t make any sense in my life, and even if I’m wrong, I don’t believe that a god would judge me based solely on whether or not I believed in him. I am good without god, and there are many people like me, ethics is not a thing intrinsically tied to religion.
One of the things I struggle with/am bothered by as an Atheist is the assumption that I am rejecting the Jewish/Christian God. The reason I say I struggle with this is because I feel like a lot of the mainstream conversation about atheism is Judeo-Christian centric. Some of this is by Atheists, some of this is by religious folk. I do not feel like this represents my atheism in any way, nor do I feel it is a good attitude for atheism in general.
I know that I have heard Catholics I have known & been around say things along the lines of God loves us, and God always forgives … also, isn’t the whole premise of The Last Rites very similar to the religious crutch you’re describing? (I am mentioning this, because this sort of religious teaching may partially be where this idea comes from). It may also be true for some people that they believe “Well, if there was a god, this level of forgiveness/acceptance would be characteristic of him/her/it”
Personally, I can say there are enough characteristics of the Judeo-Christian god (from the little I’ve read so far of The Bible) that bother me or are morally irreconcilable to me, that even if that god did turn out to exist, I would not follow him.