Disappointment

I'm sure it is possible that there are many former believers who became atheists because they heard sound, logical arguments against the existence of God. But atheists are humans, and like their religious counterparts, are more often swayed by emotion. (It is the sad case, in my opinion, that atheists cannot win the battle with believers, the hearts and minds of religious people for precisely that reason --- the heart still trumps the mind for most humans. So much for the sapien in homo sapien).

The emotion that gets some believers to stop believing is anger. A dangerous emotion since it usually makes the atheist into a missionary, railing against God, religion, and anything that threatens the church and state separation. They are the mirror image of the Christian fundamentalist, and just about as scarey.

For me, the emotion that turned me from God is disappointment. As Woody Allen once quipped, God is a bit of an "underacheiver." If I were his teacher, his report card would say, "He needs to pay more attention and apply himself." There was a character in the show Babylon 5, who had just saved his true and unrequited love from what appeared to be certain death. But now as he lay dying, he reflected:

• You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe.

If God exists, and he has any control over this universe and what happens to us, I would think he should be on his knees asking us for forgiveness. Or, perhaps he hopes that we will all become atheists and therefore escape our judgement. Anyways, a generally hostile and unfair universe is infinitely more comforting than a universe with such a disappointing God in it.