Ask An Atheist Day!

Tomorrow (4/19) is National Ask An Atheist Day. There are a lot of misunderstandings about what atheists are, what they believe, and why, and this event is an attempt to correct that.

To use a personal example, here are some quotes from a conversation I have been having recently on facebook:

• ...while Atheism/Naturalism cannot fully fit the description of a religion (which is a word of considerable vagueness) it does rise to the level of a Quasi-religious worldview, postulating answers to the questions: Is there a God? How should we live? Is there life after death? What is our place in the universe? How are we related to other creatures? And the answers it gives are not based on conclusive reasoning, but require a faith in that particular worldview because reason is itself a matter of faith.
• The only response to ... Atheism would be a meaningless madness, deadening apathy, and suicidal insanity. 
• Now, if I was less consistent in my Atheism, I could try to sneak in some things which would allow for more sanity, joy, and hope in life. I could claim that Reason was reliable in spite of the lack of support and even contradictions to the consequences of starting from a materialist philosophy. I could claim that relationships matter. I could borrow ideas of order and objective truth and infuse them into my claims about the universe. All inconsistent with my Atheism, but who cares?
• If there is no God then evidence suggests that I have no reason to believe in reason, morality, free will, the veracity of my experiences or anything else.
• I know you say you wonder at the universe... But I live in a wonder-filled one.
• "The believer is quite free to believe that there is a considerable amount of settled order and development in the universe. But the materialist is not allowed to admit into his spotless machine the slightest speck of spiritualism or miracle." It seems obvious to me which are the free thinkers.

... the whole conversation has been incredibly frustrating, starting with his ideas of what an atheist really is (in spite of him not being an atheist himself). It frustrates me that everyone has their own idea of what it means when I say that I'm an atheist... and that they often do not listen when I correct them. Theists-- that is, people who are not atheists-- have some really odd ideas about what it means to be an atheist, and some even stranger ones about what it implies. 

In any case, for the entirety of the day, I'll answer any questions I am asked-- preferably about atheism, but silly questions are fun, too. We're setting up a table in the student center on campus tomorrow, hopefully we'll get a lot of interest, answer some good questions, start some good conversations.

And actually, as long as this blog post is up, I'll answer questions in the comments, too. :)