I never had belief. Now, I shed the need to talk about my lack of belief. It’s called leveling up. Atheism will not fill religion’s void.

Important read about our “Angry Atheists” – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-tegmark/angry-atheists_b_2716134.html

Upshot: “We need to make sure we don’t try to stop religion’s intolerance and fundamentalism by being atheists who are intolerant and almost cult-like fundamentalist”.  It’s pretty obvious. My personal belief is we need more wonder and awe, empathetic kindness, a la Carl Sagan, than the intellectually insecure anger from Dawkins.

I just realize you can’t fight insanity with madness.  It won’t work.

As a life-long non-believer, I am basically over discussing God in any form, especially with believers. It’s a waste of time.  I note that all the meaningful discussion within the “non belief”, or atheism world, that I find compelling is about science, and not much else.  I always suspected that you can’t convert religious people, because they don’t have the critical faculties to understand what a lack of faith is. They think atheism is believing in something, which sort of proves they can’t understand the concept.  They just don’t have the tools to get hip. Why waste your life energy on them?

So, In the last 5 years, the schism between the mellow atheists and angry ones has been concerning.

There was a HUGE discussion after Katrina amongst humanists and non believers (except for the new asshole atheist jerk faces) about how to donate, who to donate to, etc.  The Dawkins atheist faction was like “DO NOT GIVE TO CHURCHES”.  Some non-partisan groups did put together slapdash humanist charities for awkward marketing photo ops. It’s so weird to see belief systems vying for attention like that.  It felt gross, and insecure. I am sure some of you saw that Wolf Blitzer thing with the atheist, after the tornado, which started a group movement of non believers to help other non believers recover after disasters.

DID WE ALL GO INSANE?  The other side of the coin is mine, and there’s a bunch of humanists or non faith people who thought like this:

LOOK AT ALL THESE AWESOME AND AMAZING FREAKING PEOPLE DOING GOOD WORK.

Churches have incredible existing infrastructure and culture that (shock! EGADS NO!) people who lack belief do not have.  It’s like expecting a club that doesn’t exist to be able to create systems and infrastructure over night. LOL

Community churches have solid networks or fast moving people doing awesome work.  I hate established religious institutions, but if you know where to donate, your money will be water in a Haitian refugees home, within 72 hours, etc.  You donate to a missionary heading over, every penny of your dollar heals and helps.  Be careful you aren’t giving to a general fund, etc. (Of course)

But no, say the new atheists.  NO WAY!  It’s absurd.  The new atheists seem like dicks and wildly intellectually insecure, and it’s obvious that they are not me.  I never had faith. I always questioned, deeply. If Santa would burn up in the atmosphere due to friction, what chance does God have?  I am fairly confident this anger is from people who fell into atheism by losing belief, which made these “new” atheists very bitter, coupled with the need to fill that lack of previous active belief.

Atheism is like not believing in ice cream not floating in front of you. If you put energy into that, you are an ass, wasting time.

I get that you feel empty because you shed previous beliefs, but atheism isn’t going to fill you back up b/c it is a passive lack of belief.

You need humanism, pantheism, or Buddhism or something.  But, frankly, I have to admit… you’ll probably always be looking for answers.

I never had belief, so I see this.  I think there is an important difference between passive atheists who lack belief, and atheists who are actively denying the existence of god.   It’s spending negative energy denying something that doesn’t exist.  That will give you cancer, guys.  But, I think new atheists that just lost organized structures for belief are so unbelievably angry at religion, because they have this hollow of where belief used to be, and atheism isn’t filling it up.

I never believed in religion, so I never needed to create a belief structure to replace it.  But I think this gets to the root of why so many “new” atheists are being angry and irrational.

You will not refill the empty belief system structure of religion, that you lost, with Atheism. You can talk about atheism all day, and you can form a club or community – but it isn’t going to resolve that emptiness that comes from shedding your belief system.  I am NOT saying, in some cold and mean way, that atheists are empty or bad.  Generally, we’re warmer, kinder, more active and loving because we get this is the real deal, and you get one shot at life. Jilette being a bit of a punk, he illustrates that quite well, here: http://www.npr.org/2005/11/21/5015557/there-is-no-god

But I am currently noticing an obvious schism of our own, in atheism:

Those who never had belief, IE happy moderates totally into science and nature, and those modern “new” atheists who are SCREAMING ANGRY at having bought into religion for so long.  The issue is that you had this powerful and rigid belief system in place.  Now that that belief system is gone. Atheism moves in as a lack of belief.  But modern atheists try and “fill” that hollowed out emptiness of their belief structures with atheism. But you cannot fill up your heart with a lack of something. You need to find something else – charity, humanism, community, etc.  But thinking a lack of belief will bolster you and make you feel value and worth in life is a flawed approach.

As an atheist my whole life, this is a disturbing trend.  People talking about atheism while fundamentally misunderstanding that it cannot be a belief system, by the sheer nature of what it is.

There is no god. There’s no point going on about that fact.  Atheism is a passive lack of belief.

So I don’t talk about it anymore, namely to religious people. I stopped trying to convert believers or “faith” based people back in college. They don’t have the critical faculties or tools to understand inductive/deductive logic.

In the end, “God” is a diversion and red herring.  The christian god is a waste of time, and those people are quickly becoming irrelevant. What we need is to spend all our energy NOT WASTING TIME talking about some magical space pixie, and have a concerted and mitigated effort at scientific literacy and critical thought being taught in schools. When you teach critical thought, children question adults, and the systems in place are relatively self-reinforcing and don’t like being questioned.  Hence the obvious lack of real skills at critical thought.  This has been an incredible road block since before Carl Sagan. We should be focused on debunking superstition across the board…

And now… Carl Sagan, folks!