50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God (11 page)

I am not suggesting that atheism guarantees happiness. Of course
it doesn't. But one can look around at the world today and see that
belief in gods does not guarantee it either. There are many factors that
determine happiness. Belief may indeed bring joy in many cases, but
there is no reason to think that nonbelievers cannot find just as much
happiness in their own way. For some, having a free mind that is
unburdened by ancient beliefs is the best road to a happy and satisfying life. I suspect that security, health, food, shelter, family, romantic
love, and friendships all weigh far more heavily than one's belief or
nonbelief in influencing happiness. The important point here is that
people can be happy without believing in gods and people can be sad
even if they believe in gods.

Those who believe in a god and attempt to defend the reality of
that god by claiming it is the source of their happiness are overreaching. Deriving joy from belief is not evidence that a god is real. It
only means believing can bring joy for some people. Of course it can;
no one disputes that. Those who go even further and claim that belief
in a god is necessary for happiness need to consider the millions of
Danes, Swedes, Swiss, Austrians, Icelanders, Finns, and Canadians
who don't believe but are happier than most nonetheless.

Anyone who fears losing a bit of joy from life by daring to question his or her belief might consider that losing imaginary gods does
not mean losing religion necessarily. There is no law that says one must
believe Jesus is a god to enjoy singing "Silent Night" at Christmastime.
One does not have to believe Allah exists to enjoy friendship and conversation at a Mosque. One does not have to believe that Kurma is real
in order to enjoy participating in the beautiful rituals of Hinduism. Find
your happiness where you can, but never cling to it at the expense of
thinking freely and vigorously about everything-even gods.

"Buddhists `Really Are Happier."' BBC, May 21, 2003. http://news.bbc.co
.uk/2/hi/bealth/3047291.stm.

Kurtz, Paul. Living without Religion: Eupraxophv. Amherst, NY: Prometheus
Books, 1994. An excellent book capable of calming those who are worried about life with no gods.

"Psychologist Produces the First-Ever `World Map of Happiness."' Science
Daily, November 14, 2006. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/
11/ 061113093726.htm.

Zuckerman, Phil. "Atheism: Contemporary Rates and Patterns." In The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, ed. Michael Martin, 47-65. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Fear was the first thing on Earth to make gods.

-Lucretius

Suppose we've chosen the wrong god. Every time we
go to church we're just making him madder and
madder.

-Homer Simpson

here is a snappy comeback that many believers are quick to use
whenever someone suggests the possibility that their god may
not be real. They declare that believing in and worshipping their god
is the smart move, the safe option. Atheism, on the other hand, is both
dumb and dangerous. Believing in their god, they say, is like placing
a bet with your life and it's safer to gamble on the god being real than
gamble on the god not being real. Better safe than sorry. After all, if
believers are right the payoff will be spectacular. One might be
rewarded with divine protection here on Earth and maybe even an
eternity in heaven after death. If, however, their god turns out not to
exist, that's okay too because they haven't lost anything. Atheists,
however, take a terrible risk by not believing and worshipping
because, if the god is real, they will be on the wrong side of judgment
day and suffer severely for not believing. They might even end up in
hell, the worst fate of all. So why not just play it safe and believe in a
god? After all, hell sounds like a pretty scary place.

This suggestion to play it safe by believing in a god may seem reasonable at first glance, but give it a little thought and it quickly
becomes clear that it makes no sense at all. First, there is no reason to
feel threatened by any god's wrath because no one has ever been able
to show that any gods are real. Why should we be concerned with
judgmental gods and terrible places that most likely are not real?
Before one fears hell and worships a god in order to avoid it, I think it
is important to establish that hell is real. No one has managed to do
that yet.

Whether they realize it or not, believers think about the threat of
hell in much the same way as atheists do. For example, Christians do
not fear the hell that Muslims say they will suffer in for rejecting the
teachings of the Koran. Likewise, Muslims do not fear the hell that
Christians claim they will burn in for rejecting Jesus. Each group of
believers dismisses the threats of the other because they don't see any
evidence or hear any compelling arguments to suggest that these alternate hells are real. They don't lose a wink of sleep over it because they
know those claims are totally unsubstantiated. Meanwhile, atheists
don't fear anybody's hell because none of them are backed up by any
evidence. If believers want to use hell as a scare tactic or heaven as a
lure to get people to believe, they first need to meet the challenge of
showing that these places are real.

Another big problem with the "play it safe" idea is that believers
are wrong about not losing anything if their gods are not real. People
certainly do lose something if they spend a significant portion of their
lives believing in and worshipping gods that do not exist. Consider the
time and energy spent reading religious books, traveling back and
forth to places of worship, praying, worrying, talking about, and
fussing over a god who was never there. The total time wasted over a
lifetime could be immense.

If we are lucky, we get about three billion heartbeats and then we
are gone. Time is not something we should squander. Time spent carrying on one-way conversations with gods who may not exist is time
that might be spent with family, writing letters to friends, exercising, and doing positive things for society. The fewer distractions we have
in our lives the more we can get done. How many more sick people
could Mother Teresa have helped if she had been less preoccupied
with prayer and converting people to her religion? What else might
Isaac Newton have achieved if he had devoted less time to magic and
the Bible and more time to mathematics and physics?

The biggest problem of all with the "play it safe" idea, however, is
that it is impossible to play it safe! Just how, for example, does one
decide which god and which religion to line up behind? The majority
of the world's believers cannot possibly be spending their worshipping
time wisely because all religions can't be true. Most religions are far
too contradictory in their claims for all of them to be valid. Some
believers may promote the idea that all religions are paths to the same
place and that all belief systems are expressing the same thing but this
is nothing more than sweet-sounding double-talk. Islam, Scientology,
and Jehovah's Witnesses are not on the same page, for example. They
are mutually exclusive belief systems. Somebody is wrong. The fact
is, a great number of the world's believers, possibly all of them, are
wasting their time worshipping imaginary gods. Think about the hundreds of millions of people who are allowing belief in a god who is not
there to consume valuable hours of their lives. Think about the hundreds of millions of people who base important real-life decisions on
the imagined desires of a god who does not exist. It seems like an
awfully inefficient way to run a species.

The difficulty with figuring out how to play it safe and worship the
right god is that no god is more or less likely to be real than any other.
There have been hundreds of thousands of gods that humans have
claimed to be real, either in the past or today, and not one of them has
a superior argument for his or her existence. So how in the world does
anyone who wants to play it safe choose the right god to believe in?
Simply going along with the religion of your parents and neighbors is
too risky. It is also intellectually indefensible. That's an accident of
birth, not rational decision making. Even if one is able to choose the
right god, how does he or she decide which religion worships that god in the correct way? It seems like a believer faces a risky roll of the dice
there as well. To really be safe, shouldn't believers spend several years
studying at least a few hundred of the many thousands of religions and
gods available so that they might have a better chance of making an
intelligent decision? Like believers say, better safe than sorry. Surely
it's too risky to just go with the first god one hears about in childhood.

Believers can never be sure if they made the right choice when it
comes to a god. But even if they were fortunate enough to pick the correct god and correct religion in general, there still would be plenty to
worry about. Can Christians, for example, simply repent their sins and
accept Jesus and leave it at that? Or should they also try to follow the
Bible's instructions and rule out shaving, lobsters, and a whole lot
more? What about people who work on the Sabbath? Should Christians kill them, as the Bible commands? Should Christians hate their
own family as Jesus demands in Luke 14:26 of the Bible? Should
Christians accept the Book of Mormon as the word of their god, every
bit as valid as the Bible? Why? Why not? Are communion and baptism necessary or not? Was David Koresh a modern-day prophet that
all Christians should have listened to or was he a criminal who should
have been ignored? Does Jesus want me to go to church on Sundays
or Saturdays? Can I mow my lawn on Saturday? On Sunday? With
more than thirty thousand versions of Christianity alone available
today, choosing the right religion is anything but simple. What about
Islam? Shouldn't we all be Muslims? Better safe than sorry. But shall
it be Sufism, Sunni, or Shi'ite? Remember, you don't want to gamble
foolishly with your life and your afterlife, so place your bet carefully.

In order to really play it safe, one could try worshipping all gods
in all ways. Unfortunately, that would take about twenty-four hours
per day, seven days per week-and a few hundred lifetimes! Just
learning the names of the gods would take a lot of time and effort.
Saying one brief daily prayer to even a small fraction of the gods
would take all day and night. Work and family life would suffer. But
since we're talking eternity here, it might be worth it. But then there
is the problem of jealousy. Believe it or not, some gods are very jealous and they don't condone any worshipping of rival gods. The
penalty for promiscuous worshipping is death in some belief systems.
So we can't even spread our bets without risking trouble.

Face it, there is no safe bet when it comes to believing in a god.
There are too many gods and too many religions to pretend that there
can be a simple choice between belief and nonbelief. The choice is far
more complicated than that. Perhaps the safest bet of all is to be an
atheist and simply appreciate every second of life because it is probably all we get. One thing is certain, however, billions of believers
around the world today are unable to agree on who the real gods are,
how we are supposed to worship these gods, and what happens to us
when we die. This uncertainty should give all of us reason to pause
before gambling on belief with the precious hours and years of our
lives.

Chaline, Eric. The Book of Gods and Goddesses: A Visual Directory of
Ancient and Modern Deities. New York: Harper Entertainment, 2004.

Jordan, Michael. Dictionary of Gods and Goddesses. New York: Checkmark
Books, 2004.

This book is not to be doubted.

-Koran 2:2

It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me,
it is the parts that I do understand.

-Mark Twain

any people depend heavily on a book to justify their belief
in a particular god or gods. Where would Judaism be
without the written Torah or Christianity without the Bible? The Bhagavad Gita is precious to Hindus. It is unlikely that Islam could have
been so successful without the Koran. The Book of Mormon was the
catalyst of a new religion in North America in the nineteenth century.