ponder-this

What do the modern, Western Atheists believe?
There is no definitive text to which Atheists adhere. Therefore, there is no standard
Atheism. There is, however, a common Atheism, and this may be derived from the
writings and public comments of their popular spokespersons. Their writings,
however, are almost exclusively concerned with what they don't believe. The greater
part of Atheism is disdain for God as evidenced by derogatory terms for the God of
the Bible - 'skydaddy' is popular at the moment. This 'biblegod', as they say, seems to
draw most of their ire and attention. It is instructive to go beyond the unbeliefs of
Atheists to discover what they do believe. Unfortunately the lack of defining texts
and their reticence to take a stand forces me to collect data by means of emails and
blogs, for the most part. What follows is largely the result of these personal and
informal correspondences over the last decade, or so.

By definition, they believe there is no God. Atheists believe on faith that they were
created by their environment. Their faith is in naturalism. They believe that the
thermodynamic law of energy conservation must have been violated sometime in the
distant past by an unknown process that occurred exactly (or at least) once, in spite
the contrary, scientific evidence. This, they contend, is the mechanism for the
original creation of time, space, and energy. They believe in abiogenesis, that the
information stored in countless living cells developed spontaneously and increases
steadily of its own accord, again, in spite of science. They believe that adding energy
to a living system decreases its entropy, while adding energy to a non-living system
increases its entropy, except in the singular case of life's spontaneous creation. This,
in their belief system, allows processes like protein synthesis to occur without any
prompting. Finally, they believe unwaveringly in uniformitarianism. This is the belief
that the present is the key to the past.

They believe firmly that all of this is logical and scientific, and that any deviation
must therefore be illogical and unscientific.

What follows from this foundation is the belief that souls do not exist, and life arose
aimlessly at multiple places throughout the universe. An individual's highest
achievement, they believe, is the sating of its nervous system, the eventual death of
which marks the owner's effective erasure from existence. In addition, they believe
that optimizing pleasure for the greater society of humankind is the immediate goal,
insofar as encroachment upon nature is minimized. More radical Atheism asserts that
since the environment created humankind, the environment is respected above
humankind. All goals and aspirations of Atheists are ultimately without purpose,
since in their model, life began without purpose and death will eventually overcome
the biological part of the universe.

In the main, Atheists believe that the world would be a better place, that is, more
pleasurable, if all other beliefs were eliminated. This was (and is) amply demonstrated
by Atheist political regimes.