Ph.D. Eric Maisel - The atheists way : living well without gods

There are no gods (including God). Like all species, ours is a product of nature. This is not something either to celebrate or to mourn. But it can prove a transformational and mind-opening experience to put all gods, religions, and supernatural enthusiasms aside and to explore the world from the point of view of a human being who lives, dies, and is as natural as a tiger or a dove.

You may currently take comfort in gods, religions, and supernatural enthusiasms; or, having cast all that aside, you may feel cold and distraught, as if you were standing alone in the universe. If you are currently taking comfort in gods and religions, I hope that you will find more comfort by living the atheists way and by replacing those dangerous superstitions with natural beauty. If, having cast all that aside, you are feeling cold and distraught, I hope that this book will provide you with some warmth and relief, for the atheists way is a rich way, as rich as life itself.

The atheists way provides you with a complete life plan. You start with the idea that evolution explains you but does not completely dictate to you. Because you are built exactly as you are built, with an instinct for ethics alongside an instinct for self-interest, with a complicated sense of self from which flow your decisions about what self-interest means and what you value (a sense of self that you can modify by applying reason), and with all the other diverse and fascinating aspects of your humanity, you can plot a course that feels righteous and worthy to you.

Living the atheists way is more than living without gods, religions, and supernatural enthusiasms much more. It is a way of life that integrates the secular, humanist, scientific, freethinking, skeptical, rationalist, and existential traditions into a complete worldview and that rallies that worldview under the banner of atheism, choosing that precise word as its rallying cry. It chooses atheism to make clear that our best chance of survival is for members of our species to grow into a mature view of self-interest, one in which human beings can discuss their conflicting interests without one side betraying the other by playing the god card. That will be a great day, when conflicts can be aired without that card being played.

Most likely it is in your heart to do some good, to manifest your potential, to feel a certain kind of nobility as you face life squarely, to express outrage when you witness injustice, to love another person because the two of you feel drawn to each other, to celebrate human achievements such as freedom of speech, to appreciate beauty and perhaps to create some beauty yourself: the things that constitute a good life. But this good life does not require conjuring gods, joining religions, or indulging in supernatural enthusiasms. You can have this life by embracing the atheists way.