"All thinking men are atheists."
– Ernest Hemmingway
As stated back in chapter 2, when I was attending University I took a course titled 'Introduction to Religious Ethics'. I had been an atheist since high school and had absolutely no intention of being quiet during this course. During that summer, a question was fielded that I thought was very interesting. Someone asked our professor what was in his opinion the number one cause of atheism. His answer was given without hesitation: education.
A lot of people in the class who were religious were infuriated by this answer, but he stood by it. Education is the number one way to becoming an atheist he said. The more educated a person is, the less likely they are to follow any organized religion. There are exceptions to this case, but his premise was and is true. The more education a person attains and the more that person learns to think for themselves, the more likely they are to make their own life choices and not follow the crowd.
This isn't just a theory; there are numbers to back it up. According to a recent Gallup poll conducted in the United States in 2011, almost twenty percent (17%) declared the Bible a book of fables written by people. That's only eight percent away from a full quarter of those polled. It's a far cry from the number I've heard from those who are devoutly religious. They are under the impression the number of atheists in America is roughly around six percent, which is not even close to the actual figures according to the previously mentioned Gallup poll.
According to these figures, the percent of people who believe that the bible is the actual word of God drops by more than twenty percent just between high school and some college. That drop increases to thirty percent when you poll people who actually graduated from college. The number of people who believe the bible is nothing more than a book of fables increases in the same poll, going from thirteen percent and climbing as education increases up to twenty-five percent at the post grad level. These are solid numbers that cannot be ignored. The more a person is educated, the less likely they are to believe religious dogma. I'm willing to even speculate that if religion was forced onto people at such an early age before their education begins, I am confident that a lot more people wouldn't willingly follow or support organized religions.
Now one of the biggest retorts I receive from those who are devoutly religious that happens to be my biggest pet peeve is that the only reason why I don't believe is because I didn't read the bible. Not only is that hypothesis false, but the actual reality of it is the exact opposite: the more you actually read, the less likely you are to believe it. Reading religious holy books doesn't make you more religious as examining them shows you what they actually have in common and what they may have plagiarized from one another. The more you actually read, the more you realize that the books people are worshiping are racist, sexist and most of all evil in their apparent natures. As examined in previous chapters, many books call for the oppression of women, slavery and even the death of people who don't follow their guidelines to the tee. The more educated a person becomes with regards to religion as a whole rather than just stick to one small branch, the quicker this educated person is to concluding that they are all man made fiction and not the works of an almighty, omnipotent being.
The gallop poll posted above seems to prove the claim as the number of people who think the bible is a book of fables increases from thirteen percent for people with an education of high school or less to an amazing twenty-five percent when asking people who are post-graduate. The number of believers also fell when more education is present to a person dramatically as the people who thought the bible was the exact word of god dropped explicitly from forty-six percent when polling people with high school or less education to just sixteen percent of people who believed that after post grad. This kind of drop, an enormous drop of thirty percent cannot be ignored: the more educated a person is the less likely they are to buy the bullshit being shoveled out on a daily basis by organized religions.
It's evident that when it comes to non-believers, it isn't that atheism gets the smarter people but rather that atheism is positively linked with education. The more educated one becomes, the more likely that person is to become a non-believer. Switching to atheism won't make you smarter, but going to college will make you more likely to become an atheist. The more educated a person becomes, the more then think. With that thinking come questions and that's when the ball starts rolling with regards to belief. Thoughts become questions and then questions become doubts. Eventually without any evidence to support their side, many people who educate themselves at a high level often come to a very rational conclusion: Religion has no basis in fact and should be disregarded until sufficient evidence is presented.
In earlier years, children are taught to listen to our teachers, this does not always guarantee we become intelligent and knowledgeable. That form of critical analysis is diametrically opposite to teaching students to consume everything the teaching staff claims as truth. We're often told not to question it, apply it and then shuffle on to the next subject matter. Students who raise their hands in elementary school are often reprimanded and accused of interfering with the process. It is at the university level where students are often taught to critically assess everything their professors say. University students are expected when composing papers to check everything against independent sources, make sure it makes logical sense and gain a personal view (supported by evidence) of the subject to hand. This attitude of critical assessment and independent collaboration contributes greatly to the higher rates of atheism at institutions of higher learning.
Religion's appeal to the dim-witted is not difficult to grasp; for the church provides people with simple, trouble-free answers to questions that are and likely always be well above their pay grade. But these issues are never that straightforward, and scientists work very hard to find logical explanations everyday and their work is often ridiculed by those who do not appreciate it and refuse to even hear them out of plain ignorance. Many religious propagandists often refuse to even consider alternate theories despite the absence of evidence to back up any of their claims.
It seems obvious that critical thinking leads to questioning and doubting the simplistic and naive 'explanations' that religion provides. There have been numerous studies that verify this finding. Without a doubt, it's easy for one to look at numbers and polls to conclude that religion has no place in our schools other then to be studied as mythology and literature. God has no place in the classrooms, especially with regards to science and history. The more a person educates themselves in those subjects, the more they will comprehend how redundant and clichéd religion truly is.
If someone chooses to study theology at a later time, they should be allowed to without any interference. But at no time should something as complex and daunting as religion be ever forced onto someone who doesn't want it, especially if that person is a young and very impressionable child. Before a child should be burdened to answer questions of where do we come from or how the cosmos came to be, they should be allowed to be taught how to think first before embarking upon some of lives largest problems. Asking a child to tackle religion as such a young age would be like asking them to learn how to ride a motorcycle instead of going with a bicycle instead. By asking kids to include God in their early studies, it's tossing a monkey wrench in their ability to learn how to properly access situations and think through them adequately. Life isn't full of easy answers, to telling them that there is one is just setting our children up to fail at life. I prefer to teach a child how to think first before unloading some serious stuff on their plate. To adhere to the old cliché they must learn how to crawl before they try to walk, let alone sprint away. Schools much change their ways and allow children to question things rather than rush them through the system like a fast food burger. Questions and queries should be cherished and nurtured rather than dismissed as rebellion. Children need to learn at an early age that asking questions and seeking answers is a good thing and that no one should interfere with that. Find your own answers rather than accept them from someone else without evidence.
Thinking for ourselves removes the blinders of society, allowing us to see things as they are rather than as people want us to think they are. Yet organized religion doesn't want kids to think because thinking is what creates doubts and exposes people to the truth. The truth being that we have lived here a lot longer than six thousand years. We are the product of an evolution that has gone on for thousands if not millions of years. It's a complex and very layered answer, but one that teaches us where we came from and how we move forward. Religion should never be abolished, just re-categorized for what it truly is; fiction. Man made stories that are no truer than any other superstition that has come out in the past several thousand years. The seeds of my atheism started in high school, but quantified to the extreme when I attended an institution of higher learning. I read religious books to realize not how they differed but what they had in common, which provided me with my answers. I learned a great deal from my professors but never hesitated to challenge them when I felt it was necessary. I gained a lot of my confidence from those days and apply that to everything I do in life. Education opened my eyes to how things are in the real world, and is why I am sure education is without a doubt the number one cause of atheism.
I know a lot of people who are religious will look at this chapter and conclude that I am accusing all religious people of being stupid. That is not true. I have met people who actually prove this theory false. I've met people who are far more educated than I who happen to believe in angels and talking snakes. I lost a lot of respect for that person the moment I realized their allegiance to supernatural superstitions, but that didn't change the fact that on other subjects these people were far more critical than I ever could be. This was the part that really stuck with me. These highly intelligent people were more than capable of being critical when it came to other subjects, but the moment religion came up they were unable to use that astute brain power to break down and be just as critical over their own religious views. They were beaten and scolded early in life to revere religion as sacred, so no matter how smart or brilliant that person would grow up to become, the would never turn their advanced mental prowess against their own creed. They were scared to even question it. I found the whole thing quite shocking, but it's a product of systematic brainwashing, which to me is nothing more than child abuse. If you threaten a child with eternal damnation and burning in hell if they break your rules, you are abusing that child. So these intellectuals were abused as children, to the point where they are afraid to even talk about religion, let alone attack it as fiercely as they would their own designated subjects of study.
The point of this chapter is not to call all religious people stupid. What it could mean is that religion targets people who are not that bright, in the hopes that they can been tricked into believing that leaving their hard earned savings into a collection plate will give them good graces with the Lord above, who will in turn forgive their sins. The studies above prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the more a person is educated, the less likely they are to fall for this act of smoke and mirrors. That doesn't mean educated people are not fooled, many are... but most atheists I have met and had the pleasure to associate with at minimum were all high school graduates, if not a graduate of a institution of higher learning.
This leads me to conclude that education is the greatest cause of Atheism. Not the only cause but one of the most likely factors.