The Right To Have No God
by Paul VanRaden
1983 to 2025
“Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?
Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of
God.”
James 4:4,
Holy Bible (year 48 A.D.)
Private letters
Dear family, I am an Atheist
(1983)
A Christian response, by Walter
VanRaden (1989-95)
Popular songs
In God Most Of Us
Trust (2002)
How to become an Atheist (2025)
Should I convert others?
Christians often want to convince
you to believe in God and Jesus, but fewer Atheists want to convince you to
believe in no God. The difference is in our view of your future. I believe that
after you die, you will not be punished for not believing in God and not be
rewarded for believing. While alive, you can spend as much free time as you
choose praising God, playing sports, watching movies, or whatever makes you
happy. But if you truly believe that after I die I will burn in hell forever,
that makes you sad and you want to do something to help me. Thank you for your
concern for my eternal wellbeing.
Since 1738, the St. Petersburg
paradox uses probability to explain your gamble and my gamble. Betting $1
to get 100% chance of winning $1 back is not worth my time or your time.
Betting $1 to get a 50:50 chance to win either $2 or $0 is an interesting bet
to some people, but not to me. Betting $1 to get a 1 out of a million chance to
win the million-dollar lottery ($1000000) is very popular, but I do not play
that game. I believe that your chance to win an eternal reward is 1 divided by
infinity, which is exactly 0. I will not spend even $1 for a chance to win
eternal life. My life will end. After that, I will not collect any everlasting
prize or pay any everlasting debt because I have no everlasting soul.
What do Christians believe?
Jesus was a refugee. He and his
parents immigrated to Egypt from Israel to protect him from potential harm.
Jesus asked us all to be like the good Samaritan, a foreigner who helped
someone in need as if they were his neighbor. As an Atheist, I still practice
what Jesus taught us: to love everyone as much as yourself. The command to
“love your neighbor as you love yourself” is in the Bible 9 times. Many
Christians now hate their immigrant neighbors and want no refugees in their
neighborhoods.
Jesus asked his followers to give
their belongings to the poor and come follow him. He said that rich men will
have an extremely hard time entering heaven, but entering the White House is
now easy if you are a billionaire, but off limits for the rest of us while they
build a grand ballroom for the rich. Billionaires now run our US government and
seem to hate the poorest people.
The 10th commandment
says “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house or land or anything that is
your neighbors” (Exodus 20:16) but in 2025 Trump threatens to take
Canada’s land and tariff them if they complain. He wants to deport all
Palestinians from Gaza and build a resort for the rich there instead. Many
American Christians will be pleased if they can force their new, un-Christian
beliefs on everyone.
Converting believers to
nonbelievers was a low priority for me in the previous 42 years but is urgent
now because many American Christians are lost and have become dangerous. If
your central belief is based on lies, you are more willing to accept other
lies. Christians now vote for politicians who hate many of the moral values
taught in the Old and New Testaments that I still love.
What do Atheists believe?
The University of Maryland had an
Atheist Student Association in 1996. I gave them a November 18 seminar “Better Beliefs for Nonbelievers”
at 5pm in the Student Union. My topics were 1) Belief in Santa Claus and why we
give that up even if we can’t prove that Santa does not exist, 2) statistics on
how many students believe in God, 3) Jefferson’s quote on why In God We Trust
is “sinful and tyrannical”, 4) the St. Petersburg Paradox, 5) questions on what
God does, where he is, and what a soul does, 6) my belief in the infinite
universe, 7) faith vs. scientific knowledge, 8) a list of prominent Atheists,
and 9) goals of my life that are now reported more fully in Solutions to World Problems.
My 1996 conclusions were 1) An
infinite universe requires no creation, no God, no Santa, no doubt, 2)
Knowledge and truth are better than faith, 3) Good Christians are better than
bad Atheists, and 4) Good Atheists are the best until better Atheists evolve.
That was the only time I spoke on Atheism.
A problem for Atheists can be a
lack of social networks to get support from people who think like you. Most
religions set at least one day per week for believers to congregate together.
On Sunday mornings for many years I sang Rock and Roll songs that support my
beliefs. I still sing those same songs, but not always on Sunday.
Holy Days are now called holidays
so that is some progress. As an Atheist next Christmas day, I will spend more
time thinking about Christ than most Christians do. I plan to add teachings of
Jesus to my Holiday
History report, just like I question the value of independence on
Independence Day, document the crimes of our president on President’s Day, and
reread Lincoln-Douglas debates every Juneteenth, my favorite holiday.
Who named you Paul?
My parents named me Paul after the
apostle who changed his religion from Jewish to Christian and his name from
Saul to Paul when he heard the voice of Jesus talking to him on the road to
Damascus (Dimašq) in about 33 A.D., a few
years after Jesus died (Acts 9:1-19). Three days later, inside the city limits
of Damascus, disciple Anani’as also heard the voice
of Jesus telling him where to find Paul, to lay his hands on him, and thereby
heal Paul’s temporary blindness, which Anani’as did.
Paul later wrote about 1/3 of the
pages and 14 of the 27 books in the New Testament of the Bible. He sent his letters
to groups or to individuals in the Middle East. He had a global and
long-lasting impact on billions of people’s beliefs.
I changed my religion from
Christian to Atheist in 1983 and wrote a nice letter to family but did
not send it even to them and thus it had little impact. My family had a history
of mental illness. A stable Christian life could be much better than trying to
find a better religion but risking life in a mental hospital instead. My brother Dave ended
his life by suicide in 1992 after much mental illness and many hospital stays.
I advised him to always try to just live a normal life, but he could not. Like
me, Dave was a workaholic but he got depressed when he could no longer work, as
stated in his final
letter.
My connection to the city of
Damascus is less direct than the apostle Paul’s. Just before changing my
religion, I shared a house in 1982-83 with Bassam Al-Safadi, a Syrian student
studying plant breeding at Iowa State. Five years later at the University of
Wisconsin where he earned his PhD and I was a postdoc, Bassam was my best
friend and even loaned me his Quran in English. I read most of it and noticed
its overlap with the Bible, but the Quran excluded much of the nonsense and the
love in the Bible. We talked about research but not much about religion. During
the next 35 years, we emailed occasionally while I was in the US government and
Bassam worked in the Syrian government, becoming the Director of Biotechnology
Research in Damascus. I did not hear from my friend Bassam recently but heard
much good news from Damascus this year. I hope he is well.
How did I learn?
Every Sunday during my
first 22 years I attended church, sometimes also on weeknights or in summer
Bible School. I asked God to forgive my sins every week in the Lord’s prayer.
My experience as a Christian was normal except that my mother was invited to
sing solos at many churches. My father was a deacon or elder and often taught
Sunday school, as his parents routinely did. We in Sunday school often took
turns reading Bible verses and together we read the whole Bible from cover to
cover at least 3 times.
At the University of Illinois in
1979 I got an A and 3 college credits in Religious Studies 101: The Bible as
Literature: I wrote my term paper on the book of Job. My church in Urbana once
invited a Mark Twain impersonator to give a sermon making fun of Christianity
which was unthinkable in my hometown but okay near a university where people
are supposed to think.
The religion that my church taught
predicted that I will go to heaven. I was baptized at age 3 months in the
Forreston, IL Reformed Church. I accepted Jesus as my Savior in the Prairie
Dell Presbyterian Church when I was 16 years old. I still follow most advice of
Jesus. When I was 23 years old, I stopped following commandment 4 to “remember
the Sabbath day by keeping it holy” but I still have an excellent record on 9
of the 10 commandments. We Atheists by definition all follow commandment 1 “You
shall have no other gods before me,” whereas some religions do have other gods.
How did I convert?
My 1983 letter to those
I loved most explained my decision as honestly and clearly as possible but was
only 1 page. Back then I had no experience at being an Atheist so I did not say
more and had no advice to give. After 43 years of being a true nonbeliever I
can add some advice.
The 1977 book Classics
of Free Thought by Paul Blanshard was very helpful after I converted. I
bought 5 or 10 copies to give away like we used to give away Bibles. The
chapters are short segments from people telling you why they believe in no god.
My copy has the chapters ranked by most convincing and I reread the highest
ranked 3. They were about: 1) the evil of the Christian funded crusades from 1094-1291 that
killed millions of people while trying to take ‘Holy Land’ from Muslims and
Jews who lived there, 2) about the Church executing tens of thousands of people
for being
witches, and 3) about telling lies
to support the Vatican that reminds me of the lies of our current U.S.
government. I did not rank Absurdities of
the Bible highly because author Clarence Darrow said he was only agnostic
and not an Atheist and so had not fully convinced himself, also because I had
already noticed most of those obvious absurdities, but I remember his article
more than most.
Since 2020 my 4 siblings and I meet
for 40-60 minutes to talk about life in general. My oldest sister Miriam
started our family zoom meeting during the pandemic to give each of us more
social support. Our sibling meeting includes 1 Quaker, 2 Christians, 1 Atheist,
and 1 SBNR
(Spiritual But Not Religious). We usually discuss topics more important than
religion, and none of us are likely to change beliefs since we are 65-73 years
old and set in our ways.
Our mother would be proud because,
by invitation, she attended services in Rockford, IL for almost every religion
and place where they meet. You can hear
her describe that. Our father thought the end of the world was near and
would be surprised that his children are still enjoying life here on earth in
2025. The apostle Paul would be even more surprised because he predicted that
Jesus would return and the world would end 2,000 years ago within Paul’s
lifetime. Do not plan on a second coming of Jesus any time soon.
If you change
religion, the most important thing is to continue having a normal daily life.
You still must earn a living, pay your bills, interact with family, and get
along with others. For example, 2 months after I spoke to the Atheist Student
Association, their founder and president of the club Ali emailed the 60 members
that “I’ll be resigning my seat as President of the ASA due to time constraints
and a horrible Grade Point Average.” Like me, Ali discovered that earning a
living is more important than proving that God does not exist.
After becoming an Atheist, you
might not feel any need to convert others to your new religion if Christians do
not attack your right to exist and to think. You and I can each believe what we
have found to be true. I do not expect any infinitely large present from Santa this
Christmas or from God at life’s end. Instead, we can help make life on this
earth more heavenly.
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