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17 september 2019
Here some clarifications why I am an atheist. These clarifications may be useful in further discussions on religion.
I was raised in the Catholic culture and initially the Catholic belief had even an important emotional value for me. However, over time, I could not make it connect with my strong rational mindset.
I realised that an assumption that God had created the world did not clarify anything at all. Even assuming that a creature would have created the world, the questions would become (1) what kind of animal that was, where it came from, what it’s chemical substance was, if it could think… (2) what it’s motivation was to create the world… (3) if it still alive , and so many other questions.
In the area between ontology and ethics it was off course always difficult to accept that an all powerful God allowed so much suffering in the world.
In the purely ethical area I had two additional problems. In 1981 Ronald Reagan became the new president of the United States and soon observers noted that he had, what was called, a teflon-image, meaning that if something positive had happened, all the honours were for him while, if something went wrong, some assistant was to blame. At that moment I noted the similarity with the guilt-concept in Catholicism and Christianity. If something went wrong I was to take the blame while if something went well, I had to praise the Lord. This seemed completely unfair, especially if the all powerful had created myself.
A second ethical problem which bothered me was that the concept of God seemed to imply that we humans had to obey blindly. At school we learned not to accept a “befehl ist befehl” logic but when it came to relgion, suddenly the rules changed. The story of Abraham willing to sacrifice his son Isaac was in that context deeply disturbing. Should an ethically aware not revolt to that creature who called himself God ?
It was also difficult to understand why 2000 years ago a man died on a cross for my sins while I was not yet born.
Further, I could early on in life not believe in a concept of eternal life after death or a resurrection at a certain moment at the end of times.