I’ve been thinking about writing this following a discussion on atheistmemes because it gave me a lot to think about.

The idea is quite simple. I acknowledge there are multiple visions of atheism but never really took the opportunity to discuss it with people.

So here are the main cornerstones of my vision of atheism. Do you share them or reject them ?

-Gods, as religions define it, do not exist. There might be some kind of metaphysical supreme entity, but it would be more akin to an abstraction.

-Spiritual beliefs, per se, are not a good or bad thing. I admire quite a lot of religious minded people. Abolitionist quakers, anarchist christians, muslim thinkers, poets, activists fighting for emancipation from colonial/theocratic rule, etc. That being said, I believe I’ll live and die as an atheist.

-Religious institutions are quasi-inherently evil. I write “quasi-” because I don’t know enough about all beliefs system. What about animist/pantheist institutions ? I don’t know. I come from a family of African immigrants and I hear mixed things about those.

-Being an atheist do not make you better or worse than being a believer, and, quite importantly, not “wiser”. Wisdom is earned from character and mind. That being said, being a fundamentalist and being wise are mutually incompatible imo.

-I deeply hate and resent all missionaries. Religious ones, especially fundamentalism of all shapes and forms, for sure, but also atheist ones. I believe there’s no god, I don’t need my friends to accept this. If they want to learn about atheism, I’ll tell them. I often question them about religion, because I sometimes have trouble understanding how they can be great people while believing in what are basically myths to me. But that’s all. That’s just me who don’t understand. I don’t think they would be “better” as atheists.

-I have an ambiguous relation to Islam. While I reject it as a set of institutions, like all other religions, and absolutely despise it’s fundamentalist current, I do understand that some large part of anti-Islam movements are actually ethnoracists in (a bad) disguise. I tend to favour alliances with muslim individuals/groups i’ll be able to talk with without it being infuriating. Tbh, the only fundamentalists I actually talked with irl were Christians and Jews. But that’s just my social position. If I was born in another context, another place, another family, it who would be different. I don’t doubt all religions produce fundamentalism in a somehow equal measure.

-I truly think reason is not a quality which is restricted to atheism. Even if, like wisdom, I think some conceptions of religion bar people from living according to reason. But I can’t respect people waving the “reason” flag like a title, an honor or an automatic consequence to being an atheist. Reason is a way of life, certainly not an authoritarian one, it’s hard earned and always fragile. And it’s certainly not restricted to “maths”. Although mathematics are a part of it. Understanding what’s good and bad for your own complexion is, for me, the beating heart of reason. Easier said than done.

-Despite all I said, I understand and won’t criticize a very strong stance against any religion from someone who’s been oppressed by them. Although, and take it with a grain of salt because it’s only my experience of those people, I don’t feel like they’re the first ones to wave atheist as the flag of a nation or a pride backed by a superiority complex.

To end this wall of text, here’s a summed up version of how I was raised. My parents are far from perfect, but this they did fine.

Both were religious. Jewish and Muslim, with various degrees of adhesion/rejection/deviation from their faiths (quite complicated for my mother). They had us participate in both religious rituals when we were young. We sang prayers (as we sang folk songs, we didn’t make a difference). But they didn’t give us any kind of religious education. When we were 14 or 15, they gathered my siblings and I and basically told us this :

“We are religious. But that’s just us. You’ve experienced what is religion. You should make a choice about it. Either now or later. There will be no consequence to your choice under this roof.”

There were three of us. We all choose to be atheists. They acknowledged our choice add we never once discussed that again.

That’s it. I’d like to hear your opinions about all this, if any. Thanks for reading !

Edits : typos