Today is an exciting day - this post contains our first submission! The author is Emily Speed. Emily is an 18 year old atheist from Pensacola, FL. She ironically stopped believing in religion during a freshman religion class at Catholic High School. She'll eventually be a neuroscientist looking into the question of consciousness. So without further ado, here it is -
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has this to say on the subject of space. “Space,” it says, “is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space.”
In light of the fact that space is vastly big, I find Christianity to be a remarkably arrogant religion. I mean, the Universe is a remarkably big place and getting bigger all the time. So why, pray tell, would anyone think that the Universe was specifically made to have them in it? That sounds like a lot of hubris to me. Granted, the fact that human beings are not the most important things in the entire world (or indeed Universe) is a pretty big thing to wrap your mind around. It takes a huge chunk out of your ego, for sure. Taking deities out of the equation requires the clarity of mind to think “Hey. I’m just one person, a tiny speck in the grand scheme of things. There’s no way that whatever set the Universe into motion actually cares if I envy my neighbour’s SUV or if I steal a candy bar from the store.” You have to be able to wrap your head around the fact that you are not important to the cosmos. You could be the President of the Whole World, but Alpha Centauri still doesn’t know who you are. The whole idea is extremely humbling.
The Friendly Atheist blog said:
“The more we understand the universe, the more we realize just how small a part of it we are. Creation myths in various cultures portray a god or gods creating the Earth specially and giving humans a special place in it. But we have since discovered that our species is simply one of many in the tree of life, the Earth isn’t even the centre of our solar system let alone the universe.”
Just because we don’t matter a bit cosmically doesn’t mean that we aren’t important though. We’re just important on a smaller scale. We can be important to the people around us, to the people we love, to the homeless person we give our leftovers too on Friday after lunch. We can be important to the pet fish that relies on our remembering to feed it, or to the child whose scraped knee we clean up.
Greta Christina’s Blog has this to say about a sense of importance outside of religion:
“Being an atheist doesn’t mean that life isn’t important. It means that we get to create our own sense of importance. The human scale is where we live. It’s what we have. And if we decide that that’s the most important scale for us, there’s nobody out there to tell us otherwise.”
When I started “coming out” as an atheist to the religion teachers and priests at Catholic High School, they made me go to Reconciliation (or Confession, for those not indoctrinated). The Father there asked me quite a few questions. Keep in mind that this was 4 years ago, so my memory of the conversation isn’t perfect. I’m probably putting words in my mouth, but this was the gist of it –
“Do you think good or evil exists?”
“No. There are always two sides to the story if someone is ‘evil’”
“Do you believe in morality?”
“Yes”
“If there’s no God, where does your morality come from then?”
“The law. If I did things that were, in the eyes of the law, immoral, I would be sent to jail and I certainly don’t want that to happen. But-”
“Are you moral only because you don’t want to go to jail?”
“No. Doing things that are ‘immoral’ usually deprives other people of the right to be happy and to live as long as they can. Even though I don’t believe that people have souls, it’s still wrong to kill, because that deprives them of those rights. I don’t think people need to be constantly trying to please God in order to be good. Keeping in mind that other people have the right to be happy can keep people ‘moral’ too.”
From Greta Christina’s Meme of the Day:
Atheists have morality, as much as religious believers. We just don’t think our moral compass is planted in us by God or supernatural forces, and we don’t think fear of God’s punishment is necessary to be a good person. We base our morality in this life: our empathy with others, and our observations about what causes suffering and happiness.
Religion is not required to be moral, healthy, or happy. This is true even in relation to entire nations. For instance, non-religious societies are actually, according to Common Sense Atheism, among the most “well-developed, wealthiest, most democratic, most free, most entrepreneurial, least corrupt, least violent, most peaceful, healthiest, happiest, most egalitarian, best educated, most charitable, and most environmentally compassionate societies in the entire world”.
