I had an easy time without those pressures. Yet I went through my school years forever asking myself, how can I alone be right to doubt in this situation of mass belief and worship—one in which the other pupils and otherwise-clever teachers are wrong about the concept of what I see as a self-evident illusion? Why are they so prejudiced and uncritical? Why do they kneel or prostrate themselves before something that was never more than an image stuck fast inside their heads?

I guess I understand how it’s difficult for a believer who believes that this was all made for him to give that up. I guess I see how they would feel they lost something. But you also gain something of great value! Control of your own destiny! A mature responsibility to your fellow man, not because you owe some debt over a piece of fruit you never ate but because as a species natural selection has chosen group welfare as a survival strategy. If we need a greater cause, why not our own survival and that of our home? Why not set our sights even higher and do as Sagan suggested, make ourselves a multi-planet species?

For me, as an inquiring atheist, there is far too much purpose, too much to discover and marvel at, too much joy to share. There are people who rely on me for their well being and there are wrongs to put right. There are too many religious idiots to smack against the walls of evidence and reason. No matter when my life ends I will not have had enough time for all I have to do.

Emma Goldman (1869-1940): “The philosophy of Atheism represents a concept of life without any metaphysical Beyond or Divine Regulator. It is the concept of an actual, real world with its liberating, expanding and beautifying possibilities, as against an unreal world, which, with its spirits, oracles, and mean contentment has kept humanity in helpless degradation.”