The Honest Atheist

Atheists are known for what they don't believe in: they don't believe in god, or ghosts, or souls, or magic. Seldom are they asked, and seldom do they tell, what they do believe in. After all everyone has to believe in something. A person who truly believes in nothing, absolutely nothing at all: neither god, nor ghosts, nor his own body, his mind, feelings, senses, comfort, discomfort, the sun, the stars, light, darkness, good, evil, and even thoughts and words ... that person becomes silent. He no longer cares for the world, or himself and recedes from it as a hermit. A person like that is an atheist of the highest order. Indeed I would travel far to pay homage to him (or her). But to my knowledge no such person exists. However, what this means is that the atheists that we do encounter are not as extreme and therefore believe in something. I know the obvious answer some would like to scream to me: Atheists believe in science! That may be true, but science cannot stand on itself. Science is a tool, like a hammer. A hammer without anything to hammer it with is useless, pointless even. There has to be something that a tool can be used on. I am trying to find out what it is that the hammer of science hammers.

But before we proceed let's first look at the word believe. "Believe" is a loaded word and it is burdened with multiple meanings. What does "believe" mean in this context? When someone says "I believe", it can mean:

• "I know it for a fact"
• "I can deduce it logically"
• "I take it for granted without proof"

In this context, belief is not a statement based on facts, nor is it a logical deduction. For this argument, belief is something that is taken for granted a priori. It is an unspoken axiom. Something that you cannot question, and something you cannot deduce. Something you must accept to proceed to the next step. Now, with that in the background: what does an atheist believe in? Let me venture an answer to that: the atheist believes that matter (and/or energy, since they are interchangeable, but I'll just use the word "matter") is all that exists. Pause to think about that for a minute. When you discard god, ghosts, spirits, ghouls and all manners of supernatural phenomena, all that remains is matter. To the atheist, matter is all there is. This position cannot be disputed, queried or deduced. The universe is simply a giant soup of matter. In philosophy this belief is called materialism. Hence, and I am tempted to say, as a matter of fact, atheists are materialists.

Now, as long as you are consistent in your beliefs and arguments, there is nothing really one can complain about. So why am I writing this? Because I find a lot of atheists are not aware of their belief and therefore are inconsistent with their arguments. They haven't examined their position. They haven't looked at it hard enough, or long enough, to realize the logical conclusion of their position. And I am going to do it for them.

The basic underlying doctrine of atheism, materialism, says that everything is matter and matter alone. All that we see arises out of matter interacting with itself: moving, moulding and modifying. The natural laws we discover are just the ways matter behaves, or our understanding of the ways matter behaves. Matter can neither be destroyed, nor be created. Matter simply IS. It changes form: from an indescribable condition to a uniform spread to tiny globules which can stick together to form bigger chunks, from palpable bulk to ephemeral waves, forever changing form, but never going in or out of existence. The galaxies are matter; the stars are matter; the planets are matter; all living things: the cat on the couch, the fish in the aquarium and the potato in the microwave are matter; you are matter; I am matter. Matter flows in from outside into the shape of my body and flows out again, like a leaky bucket. Right from birth,  indeed even before birth, matter has been flowing into the shape of this body. It stays there for a while, and flows out again. At least for the bucket, the bucket itself never changes, but for the body, the shape changes too.

Indeed if that is the case, that this body, and yours too, is simply matter and not the same matter either, but a flow of it (can't step in the same river twice) then who am I? Who are you? What is my mind? What are the thoughts that arise in that mind? It can be said that the mind and its thoughts are like the circle drawn in the darkness by a swinging light–there is no circle. The light alone is real, the circle an illusion. The brain, made of matter, is real and the mind and its thoughts are illusions. For how else would a materialist describe it? And how real is even the brain? At least the ship of Theseus† retained its form, but here both the form and substance undergo change, making the brain itself illusory. And that makes the mind an illusion on top of an illusion! And the products of the mind: identity, self, ego, thoughts, feelings... all become illusions riding an illusion on top of another illusion! Then who is it that perceives the illusion? And why is the illusion of the wise any better than that of the fool? And if the same matter makes both of them, what is going to decide which one is wise and which is not? Matter is all there is: the wise and the foolish, the atheist and the theist, the saint and the murderer, the living and the inanimate. How do you differentiate? The you is an illusion. There is no you. Who is going to differentiate? There is no who. Matter is all there is. Matter interacting with matter. There is no mind, there are no thoughts, there are no words. No good, no evil. And no god indeed. Matter is all there is.

This materialist revelation is no less grand than the bodhi† of the Buddha, and it probably is the same. The honest atheist, if he pursues his argument to the unfaltering end, also becomes silent.


† Ship of Theseus refers to the logic problem where the substance of an object is changed but its form stays the same. The question then becomes, is it still the same object?
† Bodhi–awakening, illumination, enlightenment. Buddha means the one who is awake. Bodhi is the awakening.
§ I realize that my arguments here may be similar to Jainism which is an atheistic "religion", for lack of a better word, with roots in India.