How to Understand an Atheist

I am afraid there is a general trend in certain segments of the population to assume that anyone who is an atheist is a bad person. This is simply not the case and my purpose here is to argue this point.



To be sure, there are some people who do not believe in God at all and who are also unprincipled. Because they are unprincipled, they can be known to do things most of us would consider bad. If they do too many things we consider bad, we begin to say of them, and rightly so, that they are bad people. But I maintain that this type of person is not likely to call himself an atheist. In fact I am pretty sure this type of person gives little or no thought to whether he believes in God or not and no thought at all to how such a belief might alter his behavior. A totally unprincipled person would generally fall into the category of M. Scott Peck’s Stage One (see my paper on Religious development for Dummies) These people are motivated by their own will and are not inhibited by the strictures of conscience that govern behavior for most of us. It is not because of their beliefs that we would call them bad, it is because of their actions and their motivations.

Now, for the most part, someone who has thought things through enough to actually call himself an atheist does not belong to the above group. Self-proclaimed atheists in general are people who actually care what they believe and have thought it all through enough to discern that they do not have need of the rules of an organized religion (and threat of punishment) to hold their behavior in check. These people are generally self-reliant and self-governing. For the most part they were once religious at some point in their life – or at least were brought up within some sort of religion and have reasoned themselves out of that belief. In Peck’s stages, they are Stage Three – that means they have surpassed the traditional believers in Stage Two and have moved on a higher level of growth. Now this may be hard to accept for any traditional believers reading this but I think it is clear if you read some of the other true faith stories on this site. You can see that these folks have moved on from traditional faiths and yet they are more solid in a way because they accept nothing on faith and are strong enough to draw their own conclusions.

At least half of the people reading this will see these folks as quite unfortunate – either they are to be feared because they don’t seem to need the same supports the stage two’s do – or they are to be pitied because they have not yet glimpsed the mystery and miracles of the world that keep the Stage Fours enthralled.

And if someone chooses to see them as unfortunate, well, so be it. But please don’t call them evil! In most cases they are very principled and in many cases much more deeply so than those whose source of principle comes primarily from rules laid down by their church or some other external institution.

FOR MORE ON THE SPIRITUAL GROWTH STAGES, SEE MY BLOG: BELIEFSTAGESANDGROWTH.COM