The Value of Atheism Stems From How It Bequeaths Personal Autonomy

I did something I ought never to do as a fervent atheist. I wrote a letter to God. Allow me to explain. 

As I enter into the seminal years of my thirties, I have found myself yearning, in earnest, to become a mother and wife. This is after a decade of being supremely certain that I did not want to embark on this trajectory. My knowledge of evolutionary biology was guilty of dampening this dormant desire—in particular, my learning of how the phenomenon of monogamy only became widespread among Western societies as early as 1,000 years ago (although monogamy has roots going back tens of thousands of years in human hunter-gatherer groups). I also knew that scientific studies show that social monogamy evolved as a social mechanism to prevent male infanticide—the act of primates killing dependent infants in order to force mothers to mate, which encouraged females to stay with single, protective male partners. 

So sterile, I once thought, is our acceptance of a social phenomenon that has such primal underpinnings. However, the resilient mind adapts with age and I later awoke to the notion that perhaps motherhood and marriage could indeed be part of my path. 

I shall be very clear about my principles, first and foremost. It was Christopher Hitchens who taught that the essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks. Being a fervent atheist is a source of tremendous pride for me as it has put me in the possession of unarguable facts. I strongly advocate that to believe God exists is to believe that one stands in some relation to his existence such that his existence is itself the reason for one’s belief. To put it bluntly, if God exists, either he can do nothing to stop the most egregious calamities or he does not care to. God, therefore, is either impotent or evil.

It is truly and only the atheist who is compassionate enough to take the profundity of the world’s suffering at face value, thus making atheism a moral as well as an intellectual necessity. As Richard Dawkins notes, we are all atheists with respect to Zeus and Thor—only the atheist has realised that God bears no contrast. 

Now to my reasoning behind the letter. The writing process was admittedly wince-inducing. My hand quivered, and I almost convulsed at seeing the words ‘Dear God’ on a piece of paper. Yet I was determined to write the letter. Why, you ask—well, it was my litmus test. I’ve never held an emotional desire in my heart as profoundly as my wish to become a mother and wife. The feeling follows me throughout my day—everywhere I go and in each moment. The wish is planted in my heart, which I regard as fertile enough soil, but what I wanted to test is the rather lamentably fashionable notion that God could in some way be comforting.

To no surprise, the test data came back and I can say with delight that the letter had no impact whatsoever (as expected) on my psychological or emotional well-being (religious folk tend to claim otherwise in regard to this). My mind kept returning to how the onus is most definitely on enlightened individuals to promote and emphasise the fact that freedom is our only birthright in society; all else originates from one’s own doing. 

I’ve long secretly held onto the notion that religion is somewhat lazy escapism from self-actualisation, since outsourcing life’s moral impetus to a celestial dictator or imaginary friend in the sky frees one of the metabolically demanding burden of deliberate thinking or action in the short-term, while robbing one of agency in the long-term. 

For example, I love learning about how 30% of the brain’s cortical surface is dedicated to processing visual information or how electrons and light exhibit both wavelike and particle-like characteristics, according to the wave-particle duality theory in quantum physics. Were I to relegate knowledge like this, knowledge of the nature of reality, to belief in a deity’s design, I’d be starved of intellectual appetite and thus consequently made to be miserable. When I state that atheism is an intellectual necessity for all individuals—I wholeheartedly mean it. 

I’ll take it even further. Atheism is as necessary as the act of thinking itself, for it is the underlying foundation for independent thought—without which thinking would be redundant. Atheism is the brick that sustains the house of one’s existence. My life has been a tapestry of joyful and enlightening experiences precisely due to the fact that I am the sole junta of my existence. No fabricated entity enters the picture. Lest we forget, atheism is grounded in intellectual and moral liberation—a liberation that bequeaths erudition and increased personal autonomy.