Positive Atheism

How in the world can the rejection of something that so many consider positive be itself positive?  Answer: If those people are wrong and the thing is in fact harmful or a hinderance to greater happiness.

Many citizens of North Korea believe that their Supreme Leader is supremely good.  Loyal North Koreans would not for a second consider the possibility that life would be better under another leader.  Yet these people live in abject poverty, are blocked off from the rest of the world, and risk life long prison sentences if they merely speak the wrong words.  North Koreans born and raised under the watchful eye of Kim Jong Il simply know nothing better.  The don't know that they're being oppressed. They have been convinced that they live in the greatest country ruled by the greatest leader-a leader so revered he is spoken of as a god.

And so we see one basic formula for the indefinite continuation of oppression:  Get the oppressed to believe they are actually blessed by convincing them that truth comes from one divine figure, and that that god or god-like figure alone cares about them (or cares about them more than anyone else could), and that he is the only thing standing between them and some great evil.  There can be many more factors thrown into the formula to make it more affective, but from this simple equation oppression finds free reign.

I know-this is dramatic language for someone trying to make a point about modern religion.  Churches today are not instruments of mass oppression (not anymore), certainly not in the way that Kin Jong-un's totalitarian state is.  No, the severity of modern religious oppression is several degrees less, but a milder form is nonetheless prevalent.  Its just that we can't detect it-we just don't know any better.  We've been convinced that life is best lived according to instructions from our religious leaders and doctrine.   We're told that these leaders care for us and that religious adherence will save us from some great evil.

The rejection of the belief in God and the abandonment of our religious affiliation is positive in the sense that our minds are freed from the chains of prudish censorship, truth bias, and in-group/out-group identification.  Freed from our religious programming, our minds are simultaneously opened to all information and closed to all but the most convincing truth claims.  We are humbled by what little we know, but emboldened to discover that which is knowable.

Anything that increases freedom to seek happiness in as many legal ways possible is a positive thing.  The denial of a God who sets arbitrary commandments and limitations on our actions allows us this freedom.  Without religion, a selfish, greedy individual will still find that social dynamics and the rule of law will impose controlling limits on his victimization of others.  But most people are not purely selfish and greedy-we don't find empathy hard to muster, nor good works difficult to accomplish.  Morality is ingrained in our DNA as well as our culture.  Harming others is rarely a choice the average person willingly makes.  My point is that there are natural and easy to abide by restrictions on our behavior, and that most of us will only find life more pleasurable and enriching when we abandon the artificially devised moralities of religion.  We will literally be freer to do and say more.

I could go on and on about the positive aspect of the logically negative assertion that God does not exist.  Perhaps I will in the next post.  Hopefully the reader will be able to see how my last post and this post are not completely contradictory.  Atheism can be the catalyst for tremendous positive change in the world, but it won't be if it doesn't rise to compete with religion on a higher level: a level that speaks directly to the human heart-the same level that religion has owned and operated on for thousands of years.