Preface: The Courage to Ask Uncomfortable Questions
Monday: Why Become an Atheist?
Tuesday: Some Uncomfortable Questions
The Geography of Faith
The Vanishing of Spectacular Miracles
Evolutionary Biology and the Concept of the Soul
The Evolution of God
Wednesday: The Many Biases That Make Us Believers
Thursday: Religion Is Not a Reliable Guide
The Barbaric Morals of Sacred Texts
Institutional Atrocities
Innate Morality
Friday: Critical Thinking to the Rescue
Key Principles of Critical Thinking
Saturday: Religion Is Man-Made
Historical and Cultural Evidence
Science vs. Religion
Sunday: Own Your Life!
[This article is reprinted from the first chapter of Rafe Brena’s Becoming an Atheist in One Week. The version presented here has been slightly edited and modified in formatting. Used with permission.]
Preface: The Courage to Ask Uncomfortable Questions
If you are reading this article, it means you are willing to ask yourself and others fundamental questions about religious beliefs. Asking questions is an inherently brave act. Instead of going along with the crowd or passively accepting whatever you are told, you want to know how we actually determine whether things are true.
Questioning religion is particularly challenging because it risks upsetting people, often those closest to you: family, friends, and colleagues. If you live in a society where more than 90% of the population identifies as believers, expressing doubt can make you appear odd or even hostile.
This text is not an exercise in abstract philosophical debate. While some enjoy engaging in complex theological arguments, the core objective here is personal transformation. That transformation moves from a shapeless, nagging doubt to a clear understanding of how religious claims, combined with human psychological vulnerabilities, conspire to conceal a simple realization.
That realization is straightforward: it is unreasonable to base one’s life on stories invented thousands of years ago by ancient societies that lacked scientific explanations for natural phenomena. When you recognize that religious doctrines cater directly to human weaknesses—such as the existential fear of death—it becomes evident that religion is a thoroughly man-made invention.
This journey does not ask you to convert to a new dogma. On the contrary, it encourages you to think independently, evaluate empirical evidence, and apply critical thinking tools. Moving away from religion is not a “faith crisis” or a loss; it is a natural process of growing up and taking full responsibility for your own life.
Monday: Why Become an Atheist?
When many people hear the term “atheist,” they imagine an angry, aggressive individual who is inflexible in his ideas and eager to proselytize. The reality of thoughtful atheism is the exact opposite. It is characterized by openness to new ideas, a willingness to follow available evidence wherever it leads, and a refusal to defend unsupported dogmas.
Dictionary definitions often define atheism either as “not believing in any god or gods,” or as “the belief that no god exists.” In this work, atheism is strictly understood as the former: the absence of belief in a deity. It does not require aggressive hostility toward religious individuals, nor does it require claiming absolute knowledge about the origin of the universe. It is simply a suspension of belief… an honest admission of “I don’t know” when faced with claims that lack empirical support.
Here is how belief positions can be broken down along the spectrum:
- Absolute Dogma: Holding firm assertions such as “God exists.”
- Suspended Belief: Acknowledging uncertainty by stating “I don’t know.”
- Honest Atheism: Operating from a simple absence of belief in a deity.
Saying “I don’t know” requires courage, especially when religious zealots assert that they possess divine truth revealed directly to them. Some prefer the label “agnostic” to avoid the perceived social baggage of the word “atheist.” Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, for instance, prefers to state simply that he sees no evidence for a deity, avoiding political labels. However, if you do not actively maintain a belief in a god, you are functionally an atheist.
People leave religion for various reasons. Some walk away due to personal tragedy, finding it impossible to reconcile a loving God with profound suffering. Others leave out of moral outrage over institutional corruption, such as the widespread sexual abuse scandals within the Catholic Church. While these experiences highlight real institutional flaws, outrage alone does not answer the fundamental question of whether religious claims are true.
The most compelling reason to embrace atheism is intellectual consistency. As adults, relying on ancient, unverified myths or trusting fallible religious authorities who claim special knowledge is inherently unreasonable. Scientific research and critical thinking teach us to evaluate claims based on evidence, apply principles like Ockham’s razor—which favors simpler explanations over complex, supernatural ones—and recognize when hidden incentives color human assertions. Leaving religion is not an act of rebellion; it is an act of intellectual maturity.
Tuesday: Some Uncomfortable Questions
To evaluate whether religion is divine or man-made, one must confront a series of uncomfortable questions that believers frequently avoid.
The Geography of Faith
Why do people almost universally adopt the specific religion of their parents and geographic region? A person born in Italy is likely to be Catholic, while someone born in India is likely to be Hindu, and someone in Saudi Arabia, Muslim. With over 4,300 recognized religions and denominations globally, almost every believer maintains that the 4,299 other faiths are false, while theirs happens to be the sole truth. Is it reasonable to assume you were simply fortunate enough to be born into the one true religion, or is it more logical to conclude that all religious systems are cultural constructions?
The Vanishing of Spectacular Miracles
In ancient texts, public miracles were reportedly frequent and dramatic: dead people were raised, seas were parted, and food was multiplied instantly. Yet, as recording technology, medical diagnostics, and scientific standards have advanced, such overt violations of physical laws have vanished. Modern “miracles” are invariably subtle, subjective, or restricted to unverified personal anecdotes. The frequency of clear supernatural events dropped precisely as the quality of observational tools increased.
Consider the miracle-recording paradox across history:
- Ancient Era: Relied on oral history and hearsay testimony, recording resurrections, parting seas, and instantaneous healings.
- Modern Era: Equipped with 4K video recording, rigorous medical data, and double-blind studies, recording only subjective, unverified, or easily explainable phenomena.
Consider the famous 1917 “Miracle of the Sun” in Fatima, Portugal, where thousands claimed to see the sun spin and plunge toward the Earth. Given that the sun contains 99.8% of the solar system’s mass, any physical movement of the sun toward the Earth would have instantly incinerated the planet and destroyed the solar system. The event was clearly a phenomenon of atmospheric optics combined with mass hysteria among a traumatized, war-weary population, rather than a cosmic suspension of physics.
Evolutionary Biology and the Concept of the Soul
Theologians assert that humans possess an immortal soul while animals do not. But evolutionary biology demonstrates that modern humans evolved gradually over millions of years alongside other hominids, such as Neanderthals and Homo erectus. At what precise point in this gradual evolutionary ladder was a soul introduced? Did Neanderthals, who buried their dead and created cave art, have souls? Because modern humans carry roughly 2% Neanderthal DNA, the rigid theological distinction between “soul-bearing humans” and “soulless animals” completely breaks down under scientific scrutiny.
The Evolution of God
If God is eternal and unchangeable, why has the character of God evolved so dramatically across history? The early Yahweh of the Old Testament was a local, tribal war deity: jealous, vengeful, and demanding the slaughter of rival tribes. Over centuries, as human societies grew more interconnected, religious concepts shifted toward a universal, abstract, and loving deity. God did not change; human culture evolved, and religious texts were rewritten to reflect shifting social norms.
Wednesday: The Many Biases That Make Us Believers
Psychological research shows that the human mind did not evolve primarily to discern abstract objective truths, but rather to ensure survival and social cohesion. Our brains rely on cognitive shortcuts—biases—that make us naturally susceptible to religious beliefs.
Here are the key cognitive biases involved in belief:
- Uncertainty Aversion: Preferring a false answer over the discomfort of doubt, leading people to accept dogmatic religious assertions to avoid existential anxiety.
- Wishful and Magical Thinking: Confusing personal desires with objective physical reality, inventing concepts like eternal life and divine protection to cope with death.
- Hyperactive Agency Detection (HADD): Attributing conscious intent to random natural events, assuming storms, disease, or luck are driven by gods, spirits, or demons.
- Intuitive Dualism: Naturally viewing the mind and body as separate entities, leading to the belief that a “soul” can survive independent of physical brain function.
- Teleological Fallacy: Assuming everything in nature exists for a specific purpose, concluding that nature was custom designed for human benefit by a creator.
- Patternicity and Narrative Fallacy: Finding meaningful connections and stories in random data, interpreting coincidences as “answered prayers” or “divine plans.”
The Hyperactive Agency Detection Device (HADD) is a prime example of an evolutionary survival mechanism. To an early human in the savanna, assuming a rustle in the grass was a dangerous predator (false positive) carried little cost, whereas assuming it was just the wind when it was a predator (false negative) proved fatal. As a result, humans naturally overattribute intent and agency to inanimate forces. When applied to the cosmos, HADD leads people to imagine an invisible, conscious agent controlling weather, health, and fate.
Similarly, developmental psychology reveals that humans are “born dualists.” Children naturally view their thoughts as distinct from their physical bodies. While science demonstrates that mental activity is strictly the product of biological brain function, our intuitive dualism makes the concept of a “ghost in the machine” or a surviving soul feel natural. We do not hold religious beliefs because they are supported by empirical evidence; we hold them because our brains are hardwired with cognitive shortcuts that religious narratives exploit.
Thursday: Religion Is Not a Reliable Guide
A common assertion among believers is that religion is essential for morality, and that without divine commandments, society would collapse into lawlessness. Empirical history and ethical analysis demonstrate that religion is neither necessary nor reliable as a moral guide.
The Barbaric Morals of Sacred Texts
Sacred scriptures contain commands that violate fundamental modern ethical standards. The Old Testament contains explicit instructions for genocide, ethnic cleansing, and chattel slavery:
- Divinely Mandated Warfare: In Numbers 31, Moses commands the Israelite army to execute all Midianite male children and non-virgin women, while keeping 32,000 young virgins as captives. In 1 Samuel 15, God commands King Saul to “utterly destroy” the Amalekites, specifically ordering the execution of “both man and woman, infant and nursing child.”
- Institutional Slavery: Exodus 21:20-21 explicitly permits a master to beat a slave with a rod without legal punishment, provided the slave survives for a day or two, explicitly citing that the slave “is his property.”
- Capital Offenses: Leviticus 20 prescribes the death penalty for minor or non-harmful acts, including working on the Sabbath, cursing one’s parents, homosexual acts, and apostasy.
If a modern leader ordered the execution of infants or protected the right of owners to beat workers, those actions would be condemned as war crimes. Believers instinctively filter out these appalling passages, relying on their own innate human empathy to judge right from wrong. This proves that human morality exists independently of scripture.
Consider the evolution of moral codes:
- Biblical Law: Highly tribal, explicitly pro-slavery, and relies heavily on capital punishment for nonviolent cultural infractions.
- Modern Secular Framework (UDHR): Focuses on universal human rights, individual equality, bodily autonomy, and nonderogable protection against violence.
Institutional Atrocities
Throughout history, religious organizations with unchecked power have committed severe moral failures:
- The Crusades: Sanctioned by papal authority, religious campaigns offered spiritual indulgences to soldiers who slaughtered Muslims, Jews, and fellow Christians.
- The Spanish Inquisition: Employed torture, secret informers, and public executions (autos-da-fé) to enforce dogmatic conformity and seize the assets of targeted groups.
- Colonial Exploitation: Systems like the Spanish Encomienda forced Indigenous populations into labor under the justification of saving their souls through forced conversion.
- Modern Institutional Abuse: Systemic child abuse and subsequent cover-ups within major religious organizations illustrate how hierarchy and dogma can protect perpetrators at the expense of the vulnerable.
Innate Morality
Sociological and biological research confirms that human morality is rooted in evolutionary biology, social cooperation, and empathy, rather than supernatural dictates. Primates like chimpanzees and capuchin monkeys demonstrate clear concepts of fairness, reciprocity, and grief. Highly secular modern societies—such as those in Scandinavia—consistently rank among the safest, most peaceful, and most ethical nations in the world. Empathy, fairness, and mutual respect are human traits, not religious inventions.
Friday: Critical Thinking to the Rescue
To evaluate religious claims effectively, one must employ the basic principles of critical thinking. Critical thinking is not negative cynicism; it is a systematic method for assessing arguments based on reason and evidence.
Key Principles of Critical Thinking
- Independent Thought: Evaluate arguments on their merits rather than accepting them blindly because an authority figure, book, or tradition demands compliance.
- The Burden of Proof: The obligation to provide evidence rests entirely on the party making an extraordinary claim. If someone claims a man walked on water or rose from the dead, it is not the skeptic’s job to disprove it; it is the claimant’s job to provide objective proof. As Christopher Hitchens famously noted, “What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”
- Standards of Evidence: Evidence must be observable, measurable, repeatable, and falsifiable. Subjective feelings, unverified personal testimonies, and ancient oral tradition do not meet scientific standards.
- Ockham’s Razor: When presented with competing explanations, the option that requires the fewest unproven assumptions is usually correct. Explaining a natural event through physical laws is logical; attributing it to an invisible deity adds unnecessary complexity.
- Sagan’s Standard: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Asserting that the entire universe was created by a conscious entity demands a massive body of verifiable data.
- Auditing Incentives (Cui Bono?): Always examine who benefits from a belief system. When religious institutions gain wealth, political power, or social control from faithful adherents, claims of divine authorization must be scrutinized for hidden conflicts of interest.
Applying these analytical tools reveals logical fallacies in religious arguments. The Ad Hominem fallacy attacks the character of the skeptic rather than addressing the evidence. The Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc fallacy assumes that because a person recovered from an illness after prayer, the prayer caused the recovery, ignoring medical treatment, immune response, and chance. Critical thinking provides the clarity needed to see through these flawed deductions.
Saturday: Religion Is Man-Made
When we step back and examine sacred texts objectively, the evidence that religion is entirely a human creation becomes overwhelming.
Historical and Cultural Evidence
- Geographic Limitations: The Bible contains no knowledge of plants, animals, or civilizations outside the ancient Near East. If the text were dictated by an omniscient God, it would not completely omit the Americas, Australia, polar regions, or species like llamas, kangaroos, and bison while detailing local Middle Eastern livestock.
- Borrowing from Older Pagan Myths: Key biblical motifs were present in older Mediterranean and Near Eastern religions. The concept of a miraculous virgin birth appears in Persian Zoroastrianism (e.g., the Saoshyant) and Greek mythology (e.g., Danae and Perseus, Attis and Nana) centuries before the Gospels were composed.
Consider these parallels in ancient mythology:
- Saoshyant (Persian Tradition): Foretold as a savior born of a virgin who heals the world and raises the dead.
- Attis (Phrygian Tradition): Born to the virgin nymph Nana, representing death and rebirth.
- Perseus (Greek Tradition): Born of the virgin Danae after divine intervention by Zeus.
- Jesus (Christian Tradition): Born of the virgin Mary as a divine savior.
- Authorial Bias and Exaggeration: The Gospel accounts reflect the literary styles, biases, and theological agendas of their human authors. For example, Matthew’s account of Jesus’s death describes an apocalyptic scene with earthquakes and risen corpses walking through Jerusalem; dramatic details omitted by other chroniclers of the era.
- Historical Selection and Editing: The biblical canon was not delivered whole from heaven. It was edited, voted on, and curated by human councils (such as the Councils of Rome and Carthage in the late 4th century) operating under specific political and ecclesiastical pressures.
- Androcentric Bias: The scriptures reflect the patriarchy of the era in which they were written. In Exodus 20:17, a neighbor’s wife is listed alongside real estate, slaves, and livestock as property not to be coveted. In census counts, such as Matthew 14:21, women and children are explicitly excluded from the official tally.
Science vs. Religion
Both science and religion are human developments, but their methods are fundamentally opposite. Religion is dogmatic; it asserts absolute, unchanging truth based on ancient revelations and resists opposing evidence. Science is provisional, humble, and self-correcting. It embraces curiosity, tests hypotheses, and discards theories when they are contradicted by empirical data.
The core differences between religion and science include:
- Foundation: Religion relies on ancient revelation, dogma, and faith, whereas science relies on empirical observation and hypothesis testing.
- Adaptability: Religion resists change and claims absolute truth, whereas science is self-correcting and updates continuously with new evidence.
- Core Method: Religion demands belief without physical proof, whereas science demands falsifiable proof and independent replication.
Sunday: Own Your Life!
Realizing that religion is a human creation is not a tragic loss; it is a profound step toward living an authentic life.
Abandoning religious belief is similar to outgrowing the childhood myth of Santa Claus. As children, believing in Santa is a comforting fantasy. But once you learn the truth about how the gifts arrive, you cannot force yourself to genuinely believe in Santa again. An adult who continues to insist that Santa Claus is real would be viewed as lacking maturity. Moving past ancient religious stories is simply applying that same adult maturity to the rest of life’s narrative.
Consider the maturation of belief across stages:
- Childhood Fantasy: Believes in magical figures such as Santa Claus or miraculous ancient myths.
- Adulthood Maturity: Outgrows Santa Claus and religious myths to face physical reality directly.
Living without religion means adopting a secular moral compass based on universal human rights, empathy, and personal responsibility. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) provides a framework built on bodily autonomy, equality, and justice. Unlike religious systems, secular morality does not rely on promises of heavenly rewards or threats of eternal torment. Doing good simply because it respects and supports fellow human beings is far more authentic than acting out of fear of hell.
Facing reality without religious filters requires courage, particularly when dealing with grief. When a loved one dies, an atheist does not indulge in the false comfort of claiming the person is watching from above. Instead, an atheist faces the reality of loss directly, honoring the person’s memory and feeling gratitude for the shared time.
Navigating relationships with religious family members requires patience, boundaries, and honesty. You do not need to seek out argumentative confrontations, but living authentically without pretending to hold beliefs you have outgrown is vital.
Leaving religion behind allows you to step away from inherited guilt and fear. It unlocks intellectual curiosity and replaces dogmatic certainty with open inquiry. As Carl Sagan noted when asked where natural evolution leaves humanity without a creator:
“On our own.”
Being on our own is not a burden; it is an invitation to take full ownership of our lives, our choices, and our shared world.