On the Internet, cases of conflicts are not uncommon, the basis of the contradictions of which is religion. Despite the fact that we all live in the twenty-first century, the century of science and constantly updated information, faith still occupies an important place in the human heart.

Some followers of religions reproach people for either following a different faith, or generally denying the existence of the omnipresent Higher Forces.

The latter are called atheists and, unfortunately, they worldview is rarely accepted. Or rather, they do not even understand what is the meaning of such a view of life. Once and for all, we will deal with those who are called atheists, what is atheism in general, and how an atheist differs from an agnostic.

Definition of atheism

Atheism - system of views and worldviews which denies the existence of superpowers. Followers - that is, atheists - of this trend do not believe that our lives and destinies are controlled by an invisible, inexplicable force, which people usually call God.

They believe that there are no angels protecting a person, and demons that harm us in every possible way, and the afterlife, which is presented to believers as heaven and hell.

In general, they deny the existence of what scientists cannot explain or prove. It is interesting that atheists believe that people have a soul, but for them it is a clot of the electromagnetic field and nothing more.

Essentially, an atheist is a person denying the existence of invisible forces controlling or somehow influencing a person's life. Their unbelief extends to all religions at once, and is not directed to one branch of a religious trend.

To think that atheists are simply not believers is unfounded. Because their worldview is subject to certain laws and principles of science, morality and society. Many people notice that their views are similar to another system of worldview - materialism.

Atheists themselves can be divided into three categories:

1. Warlike. They are too carried away by their idea and actively attack the church and its ministers, ordinary believers, trying to prove to them that there is no God, trying to lure believers to their side.
2. Calm. They do not shout about their unbelief everywhere, they do not enter into disputes with believers. Disbelief in the supernatural is supported by the fact that science is not yet sufficiently developed to explain some things.
3. Natural. People who do not know or do not want to know about the existence of religions, God. They just don't care.

What is the basis of atheism

It is not necessary to think that the lack of faith in God is laid in the atheist from nothing to do. It's just that these people think quite rationally, draw conclusions based on scientific knowledge. They are close in spirit to the thinkers of ancient Greece, who still put a person at the center of everything.

Based on this principle, one can basics atheism:

1. Man is the highest stage of evolution. He is able to manage his own life, create something new and adjust the whole world for himself. Only he himself, his knowledge and experience, can help him in this, but not the intervention of gods and deities.
2. All processes occurring on earth can be explained from a scientific point of view. The more the world progresses, the less the unknown will remain in it.
3. All religions are ultimately man-made. The pages of sacred books are written by the hand of a man, from the lips of a man we hear that he had the voice of God or that he was a witness to a divine phenomenon. But not everyone saw it, could feel it.
4. In addition, why do all nations present God differently, while claiming that he is one? Or why do your good gods, who care about us, allow the existence of injustice, deceit and suffering in a world?

The principles of atheists are quite reasonable. We all know the saying: "There is nothing I haven't seen". And atheists cannot be blamed for wanting to find a logical explanation for everything.

How is an atheist different from an agnostic?

Many not only do not fully understand the essence of atheism, but also do not distinguish between its followers and agnostics. Who is an agnostic?

An agnostic is a person who cannot accurately answer the question Q: Is there a god in the world?

If an atheist seeks to prove that there really is no God, that everything can be fully explained by scientific language, then the agnostic does not prove anything at all. He believes that our world, in principle, cannot be fully known, and if so, then it is impossible to either affirm or deny the existence of the supernatural in human life.

They do not oppose religion but they don't stick to it. After all, neither atheists nor believers have any evidence that could finally resolve this issue.

Faith and religion are things that don't pick up the facts which would unambiguously read either: “Yes, there is a God!”, Or: “Yes, there is no God!”.

And the agnostics, one might say, are somewhere in the middle between the warring parties, not trying to join either the first or the second point of view.

Some people call themselves atheists. But not everyone clearly understands who an atheist is.

Why do people come to this worldview, and how has it manifested itself in history?

Let's try to figure it out.

What is an atheist

An atheist or atheist is someone who does not believe in the existence of God.

It is important that he does not share any of the various religions.

Atheism is a holistic worldview, a position that determines the entire style of life and thinking of an individual.

Such a person denies both God and the devil, questions everything miraculous, and tries to give a scientific explanation to the supernatural.

Why do people become atheists?

People become atheists for various reasons. Often this is the result of being raised by unbelieving parents who pass on their worldview to their children.

But it happens that a believer becomes disillusioned with religion and moves away from it. However, more often the reverse situation arises: an atheist suddenly gains faith and says goodbye to his former stereotypes.

Atheist Arguments

In their beliefs, atheists rely primarily on science. From it they take arguments for disputes. After all, many phenomena that were previously explained by divine intervention, eventually gained scientific justification.

For example, the study of the structure of the solar system once greatly shook the religious view of the creation of the universe. Or the theory of evolution, which many perceive as the main proof of the absence of God.

Atheists often make the argument that if the presence of the Lord cannot be confirmed by the methods of science, then he does not exist. They also look for contradictions in the foundations of beliefs. Another favorite hobby of atheists is the presence of evil on Earth, which is incompatible with the idea of ​​an All-Good God.

Religion for atheists

According to non-believers, all world religions were invented by people. Some believe that the main purpose of religious institutions is to keep the adherents in obedience and subordination to the authorities.

However, some atheists are quite loyal to religions, while others actively fight against the Church and similar institutions. It was they who invented the term "militant atheism", so popular in Soviet times.

Which country has the most atheists?

If we take statistics, then most of all non-believers live in communist states, or in countries with a communist past.

Also leading the list are Europe, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. There are slightly fewer atheists in the southern states and the USA.

Philosophers atheists

Leonardo da Vinci

The philosophy of atheism arose in antiquity. The first recorded evidence can be considered the ancient Egyptian "Song of the Harper", which questions life after death.

The ancient Greek thinkers Diagoras, Democritus and Epicurus thought in the spirit of godlessness. The Roman philosopher Titus Lucretius Carus in his poem "On the Nature of Things" put scientific knowledge in place of religion. Leonardo da Vinci, Niccolò Machiavelli and François Rabelais criticized Catholicism during the Renaissance.

In modern times, Thomas Hobbes and David Hume developed arguments against theology. The Great French Revolution was marked by a wave of anti-clericalism. Then, already in the 19th century, Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche criticized the religious consciousness.

Notable atheists

Bernard Show

In the recent past of our Motherland there were many atheists.

Among them are well-known personalities: statesmen - Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev and the entire top of the party; Soviet writers - Maxim Gorky, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Mikhail Sholokhov and others.

However, there were no less atheists in Western countries: these are writers Bernard Shaw and Jean Paul Sartre, psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Erich Fromm, film directors Stanley Kubrick and James Cameron and other celebrities.

What do atheists believe

There is an expression that an atheist is one who believes in the absence of God. It turns out that he also has to rely on faith, that's the paradox!

According to the classical views of atheism, the universe consists exclusively of matter. Spiritual substances do not exist. If there is a soul in the body, then it is explained as some kind of material substance, usually it is associated with the activity of the brain.

The human being is the pinnacle of evolution, and humanism is the basis of morality. Science is the only tool for understanding the world.

How are atheists buried?

Atheists do not recognize the afterlife, so they are opposed to church rites.

They are buried in a secular manner, without worship. During the civil memorial service, everyone can say goodbye to the deceased.

Quite often, atheists agree to cremation, some of them will bequeath their organs for transplantation. On the graves of atheist soldiers in the Soviet period, five-pointed stars were installed instead of crosses. Now this role is played by various monuments. Thus, by the burial of a person it is possible to determine whether he believed in God during his lifetime.

Nowadays, everyone is free to choose whether to give preference to any religion or to ignore them all. The main thing is that this should not be a screen, an attempt to get away from important life issues, but one's own hard-won position.

Atheism(from Greek ἄθεος - godless, atheist) - 1) direction of philosophy that denies existence; 2) godlessness, denial of God.

Atheism can also be seen as a form of suicide, because atheists consciously reject God, the Source of life. A person's commitment to atheism makes him spiritually blind, limits his life horizon to the physiological and spiritual levels of being, prevents the comprehension of the higher meaning of life, the realization of the higher destiny.

In essence, atheism is a faith, because its fundamental provisions are scientifically unprovable and are hypotheses.

From the point of view of Christianity, materialistic philosophy is one of the forms of pagan pantheistic philosophy. Like all other forms of pagan pantheistic philosophy, it sees the first principle of being in impersonal nature, absolutizes the impersonal being of nature, endows it with Divine properties. As a form of pantheistic philosophy, materialistic atheism was considered by many representatives of Russian religious and philosophical thought - N. A. Berdyaev, N. O. Lossky, S. A. Levitsky, and others.

S.A. Levitsky:
Atheism, which denies God the Creator, cannot fail to see the root cause of the world in the world itself. For an atheist, the world is not created, but has existed and will exist forever. Everything in this uncreated world is explained by the omnipotent "laws of nature."

However, the laws of nature can (theoretically) explain everything except the existence of the laws of nature themselves. It is enough to ask an atheist the question of the origin of the laws of nature, how he will have to answer with a tautological, i.e., meaningless reference to these laws of nature themselves.

In other words, the atheist will have to transfer the predicates of the Absolute (primary essence, primary cause, eternity, unconditionality, etc.) to the world itself or to the laws that reign in it.

Thus, the negation of the Absolute avenges itself by absolutizing the relative. In other words, it is easy to lead an atheist capable of consistent thinking, provided he is intellectually honest, to pantheism as a doctrine that deifies the world as a whole.

So, atheism is unconscious; as such, atheism is just as logically untenable as pantheism.

Reverend:
Pride prevents the soul from entering the path of faith. To the unbeliever I give this advice: let him say: “Lord, if You exist, then enlighten me, and I will serve You with all my heart and soul.” And for such a humble thought and readiness to serve God, the Lord will certainly enlighten... And then your soul will feel the Lord; she will feel that the Lord has forgiven her and loves her, and you will know this from experience, and the grace of the Holy Spirit will witness salvation in your soul, and then you will want to shout to the whole world: “How much the Lord loves us!”.

Deacon Andrew:
The Christian view does not narrow the horizon, but broadens it. Everything that is familiar to secular people is also familiar to religious people. What secular science says is also clear to religious scientists. But apart from the "laws of nature" we really see something different. Yes, a miracle, yes, freedom, yes, hope. But this is not instead of and not at the expense, but together.

An atheist is a person who believes that God does not exist. This worldview concerns not one single religion, but all known beliefs in general. Because of this position in life, atheists have become enemies of believers, which, in fact, is not surprising. But the problem is that many do not understand the whole essence of atheism.

Therefore, we will consider this issue in more detail, discarding prejudices and established views. After all, this is the only way to understand what is actually hidden behind this loud concept.

What is atheism?

Atheism is a special way of life, which is based on the fact that there is nothing supernatural in the world: God, devil, angels and spirits. Therefore, an atheist is a person who fully supports this philosophical concept.

In his convictions, he denies any manifestation of divine forces, including the creation of the world by the will of the omnipotent Lord. He also denies that a person has a soul, at least in the form in which the church presents it.

History of atheism

The atheist and the believer are two opposing sides that appeared at the same moment. After all, there have always been people who question the words of a leader or priest, seeing in them selfish thoughts and a thirst for power. As for more accurate information, the first written evidence of atheism is a harpist's song written in ancient Egyptian. It describes the poet's doubts about the afterlife.

The following signs of atheism can be seen in the writings of the ancient Greek philosopher Diagoras, who lived at the time of Plato. The same opinion was shared by the Roman philosopher Titus Lucretius Car, born in 99 BC.

When the Roman Catholic Church came to power, the followers of atheism diminished, because no one wanted to anger the already violent Inquisition. And only with the weakening of the authority of the Pope, science, and with it atheism, began to develop rapidly again.

Fundamentals of the worldview of atheists

Religious people are sure that an atheist is a person who believes in the absence of God. That is, atheism itself is also a kind of religion, but instead of a deity, its supporters worship the cult of man, and dogmas are replaced by scientific articles and theories.

A thinking atheist, having heard such a statement, will only smile, because if you follow this logic, then baldness is also a kind of hair. There is even a humorous expression: "If an atheist does not smoke tobacco, then he smokes its absence." And yet the position of believers on this issue remains unchanged, despite all the convictions of their opponents.

As for the foundations of the worldview of atheists, they are all quite simple and can be easily formulated.

1. Everything in the world can be explained with the help of science. And this despite the fact that there are a huge number of questions that scientists still cannot answer accurately. But atheists are sure that this is more likely due to the low level of progress than with the divine principle of certain phenomena.
2. There is no God, at least in the form in which modern religions present it. According to atheists, all beliefs are absurd, as they are invented by people.
3. Man is considered to be the highest creature, therefore life must be lived in the study of oneself, and not in the service of an invisible being.

These are the main principles of atheism. But you need to understand that, as in any philosophical movement, there is also room for disagreement. So, there are non-believers who are inclined towards humanism, others are closer to naturalism, and still others are completely radical in relation to the clergy and their flock.

stumbling block

Now let's touch on the disputes with believers themselves, or rather, what prevents any of the parties from definitively conveying their correctness to their opponents. Everything is simple - the lack of direct evidence.

If we take believers, they cannot present real evidence of the existence of God. Sacred texts are written by a human hand, miracles are just stories from the lips of the righteous, the afterlife - if it exists, then none of it has yet returned. All religion is built on blind faith, therefore, it is virtually impossible to prove it.

But atheists have the same problem. Let the scientists be able to explain what a rainbow, rain, shining stars and even death are, but they are not able to do the main thing - to bring real evidence of the absence of God. After all, God is a transcendent being, therefore, it is impossible to measure him using the methods known to science. Therefore, the theory of higher powers cannot be refuted at the moment.

Based on this, the dispute between atheists and believers is a double-edged sword. True, in recent times the church has begun to lose its positions, and the reason for this is the rapid progress that can shed light on many divine questions.

The main arguments of atheists

Both atheists and believers always strive to win over as many people as possible to their side. Not surprisingly, there are former atheists who have adopted a particular religion, as well as vice versa. It all depends on what arguments a person considers more reasonable.

Consider the most common arguments against believers.

1. An atheist is a person who looks at the world through the lens of science. Therefore, it is not surprising that many of their arguments are based on explanations obtained through the research of scientists. And every year this approach becomes more and more effective. After all, now a person can logically explain how the universe, planets, and even what led to the emergence of life on Earth. And the more secrets science reveals, the less room for evasion remains for the clergy.
2. Also, atheists are always interested in believers why they consider their religion to be true. After all, there are Christians, Muslims, Jews, and also Buddhists - which of them is closer to the truth? And why does the true God not punish then those who believe differently?
3. Why create evil? Atheists often use this question, because if God is omnipotent, why is he inactive when there is so much suffering in the world. Or why did you have to invent pain at all? The same applies to hell, in which souls will be tormented forever. Does this look like an idyll of a good Creator?

Notable atheists

There are atheists whose names are known to everyone. Whether their worldview was the reason for their success is difficult to answer. But the fact of their glory remains undeniable.

Notable personalities include Bill Gates, Bernard Shaw, Clinton Richard Dawkins, Jack Nicholson, and Sigmund Freud. And the famous atheists of Russia are Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Ivan Pavlov and Andrei Sakharov.

As for ordinary people, here everyone must decide for himself: to be a believer or to accept the arguments of science.

Somewhere on our planet, a man has just kidnapped a little girl. Soon he would rape her, torture her and then kill her. If this monstrous crime is not happening right now, it will happen in a few hours, maximum days. We can talk about this with confidence by the statistical laws that govern the lives of 6 billion people. The same statistic says that right at this moment, the girl's parents believe that an almighty and loving god is taking care of them.

Do they have reason to believe it? Is it good that they believe it?

The whole essence of atheism lies in this answer. Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a world view; it's just an unwillingness to deny the obvious. Unfortunately, we live in a world where denying the obvious is a matter of principle. The obvious has to be stated again and again. The obvious has to be defended. This is a thankless task. It entails accusations of selfishness and callousness. Moreover, this is a task that an atheist does not need.

It is worth noting that no one has to claim to be a non-astrologer or non-alchemist. As a consequence, we have no words for people who deny the validity of these pseudosciences. On the same principle, atheism is a term that simply shouldn't exist. Atheism is a natural reaction of a reasonable person to religious dogmas. An atheist is anyone who believes that the 260 million Americans (87% of the population), who, according to polls, never doubt the existence of God, should provide evidence of his existence and especially his mercy - given the constant loss of innocent lives, which we are witnessing every day. Only an atheist can appreciate the absurdity of our situation. Most of us believe in a god who is as believable as the gods of ancient Greek Mount Olympus. No man, no matter what his merit, can claim elective office in the United States unless he publicly declares his belief in the existence of such a god. Much of what is called "public politics" in our country is subject to taboos and prejudices worthy of a medieval theocracy. The situation we are in is deplorable, unforgivable and terrible. It would be funny if there wasn't so much at stake.

We live in a world where everything changes and everything - both good and bad - sooner or later comes to an end. Parents lose children; children lose their parents. Husbands and wives suddenly part, never to meet again. Friends say goodbye in a hurry, not suspecting that they saw each other for the last time. Our life, as far as the eye can see, is one grandiose drama of loss. Most people, however, think that there is a cure for any loss. If we live righteously - not necessarily according to ethical standards, but within the framework of certain ancient beliefs and codified behavior - we will get everything we want - after death. When our bodies are no longer able to serve us, we simply dump them like unnecessary ballast and go to the land where we will be reunited with everyone we loved in life. Of course, too rational people and other rabble will remain outside the threshold of this happy haven; but on the other hand, those who, during their lifetime, drowned out skepticism in themselves, will be able to fully enjoy eternal bliss.

From the fusion energy that powers our sun to the genetic and evolutionary consequences of that light that have been unfolding on Earth for billions of years, we live in a world of unimaginable, wondrous things—and yet Paradise responds to our smallest desires with the thoroughness of a Caribbean cruise. . Indeed, it is amazing. Someone gullible might even think that man, fearing to lose everything that is dear to him, created both paradise and its guardian god in his own image and likeness.

Think of Hurricane Katrina that devastated New Orleans. More than a thousand people died, tens of thousands lost all their property, and more than a million were forced to leave their homes. It's safe to say that at the very moment the hurricane hit the city, almost every New Orleans person believed in an omnipotent, omniscient, and merciful god. But what was the god doing while the hurricane was destroying their city? He could not but hear the prayers of the old people who were looking for salvation from the water in the attics and eventually drowned. All these people were believers. All these good men and women prayed throughout their lives. Only an atheist has the courage to admit the obvious: these unfortunate people died talking to an imaginary friend.

Of course, there had been many warnings that a storm of biblical proportions was about to hit New Orleans, and the measures taken in response to the catastrophe that had broken out were tragically inadequate. But they were inadequate only from the point of view of science. Thanks to meteorological calculations and satellite images, scientists made the mute nature speak and predicted the direction of Katrina's strike. God did not tell anyone about his plans. If the inhabitants of New Orlen had relied entirely on the mercy of the Lord, they would have known about the approach of a deadly hurricane only with the first gusts of wind. However, according to a survey conducted by The Washington Post, 80% of hurricane survivors say that it only strengthened their faith in God.

As Katrina engulfed New Orleans, nearly a thousand Shiite pilgrims were trampled to death on a bridge in Iraq. There is no doubt that these pilgrims devoutly believed in the god described in the Koran: their whole life was subordinated to the indisputable fact of his existence; their women hid their faces from his gaze; their brothers in faith regularly killed each other, insisting on their own interpretation of his teachings. It would be surprising if even one of the survivors of this tragedy lost faith. Most likely, the survivors imagine that they were saved by the grace of God.

Only an atheist fully sees the boundless narcissism and self-deception of believers. Only an atheist understands how immoral it is to believe that the same merciful god saved you from disaster and drowned babies in their cradles. By refusing to hide the reality of human suffering behind a sweet fantasy of eternal bliss, the atheist is acutely aware of how precious human life is—and how unfortunate it is that millions of people subject each other to suffering and forgo happiness at the whim of their own imagination.

It is hard to imagine the magnitude of a catastrophe that could shake religious faith. The Holocaust was not enough. The genocide in Rwanda was also not enough - even despite the fact that there were priests among the killers armed with machetes. At least 300 million people, many of them children, died of smallpox in the 20th century. Verily, the ways of the Lord are inscrutable. It seems that even the most glaring contradictions are not a hindrance to religious faith. In matters of faith, we are completely off the ground.

Of course, believers never tire of assuring each other that God is not responsible for human suffering. However, how else are we to understand the statement that God is omnipresent and omnipotent? There is no other answer, and it's time to stop dodging it. The problem of theodicy (justification of God) is as old as the world, and we must consider it solved. If a god exists, he either cannot prevent horrendous disasters, or is unwilling to do so. Therefore, God is either powerless or cruel. At this point, pious readers will resort to the following pirouette: one cannot approach God with human standards of morality. But what yardstick do believers use to prove the goodness of the Lord? Of course, human. Moreover, any god who cares about little things like same-sex marriage, or the name that worshipers call him, is not at all so mysterious. If the god of Abraham exists, he is unworthy not only of the grandeur of the universe. He is not even worthy of a man.

There is, of course, another answer - the most reasonable and the least odious at the same time: the biblical god is a figment of the human imagination. As Richard Dawkins noted, we are all atheists towards Zeus and Thor. Only an atheist understands that the biblical god is no different from them. And, as a consequence, only an atheist can have enough compassion to see the depth and meaning of human pain. The terrible thing is that we are doomed to die and lose everything that is dear to us; it is doubly terrible that millions of people needlessly suffer even during their lives.

The fact that much of this suffering is directly blamed on religion—religious intolerance, religious wars, religious fantasies, and the waste of scarce resources on religious causes—makes atheism a moral and intellectual necessity. This necessity, however, places the atheist on the fringes of society. By refusing to lose touch with reality, the atheist is cut off from the illusory world of his fellow man.

The Nature of Religious Faith

According to the latest polls, 22% of Americans are absolutely sure that Jesus will return to Earth no later than 50 years from now. Another 22% believe that this is quite likely. Apparently, these 44% are the same people who attend church at least once a week, who believe that God literally bequeathed the land of Israel to the Jews, and who want our children not to be taught the scientific fact of evolution. President Bush is well aware that such believers represent the most monolithic and active layer of the American electorate. As a consequence, their views and prejudices influence almost every decision of national importance. Clearly, liberals have drawn the wrong conclusion from this and are now frantically leafing through the Scriptures, puzzling over how best to appease the legions of those who vote on religious dogma. More than 50% of Americans have a "negative" or "very negative" attitude towards those who do not believe in God; 70% believe that presidential candidates should be "deeply religious". Obscurantism is on the rise in the United States—in our schools, in our courts, and in every branch of the federal government. Only 28% of Americans believe in evolution; 68% believe in Satan. This degree of ignorance, which permeates the entire body of a bumbling superpower, is a problem for the entire world.

Although any intelligent person can easily criticize religious fundamentalism, the so-called "moderate religiosity" still retains a prestigious position in our society, including academia. There is a certain amount of irony in this, since even fundamentalists use their brains more consistently than "moderates". Fundamentalists justify their religious beliefs with ludicrous evidence and untenable logic, but at least they try to find some rational justification. Moderate believers, on the contrary, usually confine themselves to listing the good consequences of religious faith. They don't say they believe in God because Bible prophecy has been fulfilled; they simply claim to believe in God because faith "gives meaning to their lives." When a tsunami killed several hundred thousand people the day after Christmas, fundamentalists were quick to interpret it as evidence of God's wrath. It turns out that God sent humanity another vague warning about the sinfulness of abortion, idolatry and homosexuality. Although monstrous from a moral point of view, such an interpretation is logical, if we proceed from certain (absurd) premises. Moderate believers, on the other hand, refuse to draw any conclusions from the actions of the Lord. God remains the secret of secrets, a source of comfort easily compatible with the most nightmarish atrocities. In the face of catastrophes like the Asian tsunami, the liberal religious community readily spouts sugary and mind-numbing nonsense.

Yet men of good will quite naturally prefer such truisms to the odious moralizing and prophecy of the true believers. Between catastrophes, the emphasis on mercy (rather than anger) is certainly the merit of liberal theology. However, it is worth noting that when the bloated bodies of the dead are pulled out of the sea, we observe human, not divine mercy. In days when the elements are tearing thousands of children out of their mothers' hands and indifferently drowning them in the ocean, we see with the utmost clarity that liberal theology is the most blatantly absurd of human illusions. Even the theology of God's wrath is more intellectually sound. If a god exists, his will is not a mystery. The only thing that is a mystery during such terrible events is the willingness of millions of mentally healthy people to believe in the incredible and consider it the pinnacle of moral wisdom.

Moderate theists argue that a reasonable person can believe in God simply because such a belief makes him happy, helps him overcome his fear of death, or gives meaning to his life. This assertion is pure absurdity. Its absurdity becomes apparent as soon as we replace the concept of "God" with some other comforting assumption: imagine, for example, that someone wants to believe that somewhere in his garden a diamond the size of a refrigerator is buried. Without a doubt, it is very pleasant to believe in such a thing. Now imagine what would happen if someone followed the example of moderate theists and defended their faith in the following way: when asked why he thinks that there is a diamond buried in his garden that is thousands of times larger than any known one, he gives answers like “this belief is the meaning of my life”, or “on Sundays my family likes to arm themselves with shovels and look for him”, or “I would not like to live in the universe without a diamond the size of a refrigerator in my garden.” It is clear that these answers are inadequate. Even worse: either a madman or an idiot can answer like that.

Neither Pascal's wager, nor Kierkegaard's "leap of faith", nor the other tricks that theists resort to, are worth a damn. Belief in the existence of God means believing that his existence is in some way related to yours, that his existence is the immediate cause of belief. There must be some causal relationship or the appearance of such a relationship between the fact and its acceptance. Thus, we see that religious statements, if they claim to describe the world, must be demonstrative in nature - like any other statements. For all their sins against reason, religious fundamentalists understand this; moderate believers, almost by definition, do not.

The incompatibility of reason and faith has been an obvious fact of human knowledge and social life for centuries. Either you have good reasons for holding certain views, or you have no such reasons. People of all persuasions naturally recognize the supremacy of reason and resort to its help at the first opportunity. If a rational approach allows one to find arguments in favor of a doctrine, it will certainly be adopted; if the rational approach threatens the doctrine, it is ridiculed. Sometimes it happens in one sentence. Only when rational evidence for a religious doctrine is weak or completely absent, or when everything points against it, do the doctrinalists resort to "faith." In other cases, they simply give reasons for their beliefs (eg, "The New Testament confirms the prophecies of the Old Testament", "I saw the face of Jesus in the window", "We prayed and our daughter's tumor stopped growing"). As a rule, these reasons are insufficient, but still they are better than the complete absence of reasons. Faith is just a license to deny the mind, which is given to themselves by the followers of religions. In a world that continues to be shaken by the squabble of incompatible creeds, in a country that has become a hostage to medieval concepts of "God", "end of history" and "immortality of the soul", the irresponsible division of public life into questions of reason and questions of faith is no longer acceptable.

Faith and the public good

Believers regularly claim that atheism is responsible for some of the most heinous crimes of the 20th century. However, while the regimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot were indeed anti-religious to varying degrees, they were not overly rational. Their official propaganda was a terrible hodgepodge of misconceptions—misconceptions about the nature of race, economics, nationality, historical progress, and the dangers of intellectuals. In many ways, religion has been the direct culprit even in these cases. Take the Holocaust: the anti-Semitism that built Nazi crematoria and gas chambers was a direct legacy of medieval Christianity. For centuries, believing Germans viewed the Jews as the worst heretics and attributed every social evil to their presence among the faithful. And although in Germany hatred of Jews found a predominantly secular expression, the religious demonization of Jews in the rest of Europe never stopped. (Even the Vatican up until 1914 regularly accused Jews of drinking the blood of Christian babies.)

Auschwitz, the Gulag, and the killing fields in Cambodia are not examples of what happens when people become overly critical of irrational beliefs. On the contrary, these horrors illustrate the dangers of being uncritical about certain secular ideologies. Needless to say, rational arguments against religious belief are not arguments for blind acceptance of some atheistic dogma. The problem pointed out by atheism is the problem of dogmatic thinking in general, and in any religion this kind of thinking dominates. No society in history has yet suffered from an excess of rationality.

Although most Americans consider getting rid of religion an unattainable goal, a significant part of the developed countries have already achieved this goal. Perhaps research on the "religious gene" that causes Americans to resign their lives to dense religious fantasies will help explain why so many people in the developed world seem to be missing this gene. The level of atheism in the vast majority of developed countries completely refutes any claim that religion is a moral necessity. Norway, Iceland, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Japan, the Netherlands, Denmark and the UK are all among the least religious on our planet. According to the 2005 UN data, these countries are also the healthiest - this conclusion is made on the basis of such indicators as life expectancy, universal literacy, annual per capita income, education level, gender equality, the number of homicides and infant mortality. In contrast, the 50 least developed countries on the planet are supremely religious—everyone. Other studies paint the same picture.

Among wealthy democracies, the United States is unique in its level of religious fundamentalism and rejection of the theory of evolution. The US is also unique in its high rates of homicides, abortions, teenage pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, and infant mortality. The same relationship is seen in the United States itself: the states of the South and Midwest, where religious prejudice and hostility to evolutionary theory are strongest, are characterized by the highest rates of the problems listed above; while the relatively secular states of the Northeast are closer to European norms. Of course, statistical dependencies of this kind do not solve the problem of cause and effect. Perhaps belief in God leads to social problems; perhaps social problems reinforce faith in God; it is possible that both are the result of another, deeper problem. But even if we leave aside the question of cause and effect, these facts convincingly prove that atheism is fully compatible with the basic requirements that we place on civil society. They also prove—without any qualifications—that religious belief brings no benefit to the health of society.

Significantly, states with a high level of atheism show the greatest generosity in helping developing countries. The doubtful connection between a literal interpretation of Christianity and "Christian values" is refuted by other indicators of charity. Compare the pay gap between the top management of companies and the bulk of their subordinates: 24 to 1 in the UK; 15 to 1 in France; 13 to 1 in Sweden; in the US, where 83% of the population believes that Jesus literally rose from the dead, it is 475 to 1. It seems that quite a few camels hope to squeeze through the eye of a needle without difficulty.

Religion as a source of violence

One of the main challenges facing our civilization in the 21st century is to learn to speak about the most intimate - ethics, spiritual experience and the inevitability of human suffering - in a language free from blatant irrationality. Nothing hinders the achievement of this goal more than the respect with which we treat religious faith. Incompatible religious teachings have split our world into several communities - Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, etc. - and this division has become an inexhaustible source of conflict. To this day, religion relentlessly breeds violence. Conflicts in Palestine (Jews vs. Muslims), Balkans (Orthodox Serbs vs. Croatian Catholics; Orthodox Serbs vs. Bosnian and Albanian Muslims), Northern Ireland (Protestants vs. Catholics), Kashmir (Muslims vs. Hindus), Sudan (Muslims vs. Christians) and adherents of traditional cults), Nigeria (Muslims against Christians), Ethiopia and Eritrea (Muslims against Christians), Sri Lanka (Singhalesian Buddhists against Tamil Hindus), Indonesia (Muslims against Christians of Timor), Iran and Iraq (Shia Muslims vs. Sunni Muslims), in the Caucasus (Orthodox Russians vs. Chechen Muslims; Azerbaijani Muslims vs. Armenian Catholics and Orthodox) are just a few of the many examples. In each of these regions, religion has been either the sole or one of the main causes of death for millions of people in recent decades.

In a world ruled by ignorance, only an atheist refuses to deny the obvious: religious belief makes human violence staggering. Religion stimulates violence in at least two ways: 1) People often kill other people because they believe that this is what the creator of the universe wants from them (an inevitable element of such psychopathic logic is the conviction that after death the killer is guaranteed eternal bliss). Examples of such behavior are countless; suicide bombers are the most striking. 2) Large communities of people are ready to enter into a religious conflict just because religion is an important part of their self-consciousness. One of the persistent pathologies of human culture lies in the tendency of people to instill in their children fear and hatred of other people on religious grounds. Many religious conflicts, caused, at first glance, by worldly reasons, in fact, have religious roots. (If you don't believe me, ask the Irish.)

Despite these facts, moderate theists tend to imagine that any human conflict can be reduced to lack of education, poverty, and political divisions. This is one of the many delusions of the liberal righteous. To dispel it, we need only remember that the people who hijacked the planes on September 11, 2001 had higher education, came from wealthy families and did not suffer from any political oppression. At the same time, they spent a lot of time in the local mosque, talking about the depravity of the infidels and about the pleasures that await the martyrs in paradise. How many more architects and engineers have to hit a wall at 400 miles per hour before we finally understand that jihadi warriors are not born of bad education, poverty or politics? The truth, as shocking as it sounds, is this: a person can be so well educated that he can build an atomic bomb, still believing that 72 virgins are waiting for him in paradise. Such is the ease with which religious belief splits the human mind, and such is the degree of tolerance with which our intellectual circles treat religious nonsense. Only the atheist understood what should already be obvious to any thinking person: if we want to eliminate the causes of religious violence, we must strike at the false truths of world religions.

Why is religion such a dangerous source of violence?

Our religions fundamentally exclude each other. Either Jesus rose from the dead and sooner or later will return to Earth in the guise of a superhero, or not; either the Qur'an is the infallible covenant of the Lord, or it is not. Each religion contains unequivocal statements about the world, and the sheer abundance of such mutually exclusive statements already creates the ground for conflict.

In no other area of ​​human activity do people postulate their difference from others with such maximalism - and do not tie these differences to eternal torment or eternal bliss. Religion is the only area in which the "we-them" opposition acquires a transcendent meaning. If you really believe that only using the correct name of a god can save you from eternal torment, then the cruel treatment of heretics can be considered a perfectly reasonable measure. It might be even wiser to kill them right away. If you believe that another person can, just by saying something to your children, doom their souls to eternal damnation, then a heretic neighbor is much more dangerous than a rapist-pedophile. In a religious conflict, the stakes of the parties are much higher than in the case of tribal, racial or political hostility.

Religious belief is taboo in any conversation. Religion is the only area of ​​our activity in which people are consistently guarded from having to back up their deepest convictions with any arguments whatsoever. At the same time, these beliefs often determine what a person lives for, what he is ready to die for, and - too often - what he is ready to kill for. This is a very serious problem, because at too high stakes people have to choose between dialogue and violence. Only a fundamental willingness to use one's mind - that is, to adjust one's beliefs in accordance with new facts and new arguments - can guarantee a choice in favor of dialogue. Conviction without evidence necessarily entails discord and cruelty. It cannot be said with certainty that rational people will always agree with each other. But one can be absolutely sure that irrational people will always be divided by their dogmas.

The likelihood that we will overcome the divisions of our world by creating new opportunities for interfaith dialogue is vanishingly small. Tolerance for written irrationality cannot be the ultimate goal of civilization. Despite the fact that members of the liberal religious community have agreed to turn a blind eye to the mutually exclusive elements of their creeds, these elements remain a source of permanent conflict for their fellow believers. Thus, political correctness is not a reliable basis for human coexistence. If we want to make religious war as unimaginable to us as cannibalism, there is only one way to achieve this - by getting rid of dogmatic faith.

If our beliefs are based on reason, we don't need faith; if we have no arguments or they are no good, it means that we have lost touch with reality and with each other. Atheism is just adherence to the most basic measure of intellectual honesty: your conviction must be in direct proportion to your evidence. The belief that there is no evidence—and especially the belief that there simply cannot be evidence—is both intellectually and morally flawed. Only an atheist understands this. An atheist is just a person who saw the falsity of religion and refused to live by its laws.