Category: Atheism

Why I Am Not a Christian: The Gift of Unbelief

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ Leave a comment

Note: I have moved to Substack! Please subscribe to my work there.

This is the finale of my Why I Am Not a Christian series.

In part one, I explored why I came to doubt claims of the miraculous, thereby undermining my core Christian convictions. In part two, I explain why I came to doubt the veracity of inner experiences of God. In part three, I describe how my fear of a godless universe kept me from accepting nontheism, and how I came to understand that my fear of such a universe was no argument against it.

I could cover quite a bit more: why I came to doubt the historical claims of Christianity, for example, or why I no longer believe the Christ story is unique. I could also tell of how my near conversion to Roman Catholicism permanently hobbled my faith. Perhaps I will, at some point, tell those stories.

But, for now, I will bring this series to a close. I want to circle back to where I started, and the podcast conversation that launched this series.

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Why I am Not a Christian: The Problem with Fearing Godlessness

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ Leave a comment

Note: I have moved to Substack! Please subscribe to my work there.

This is the third installment in my Why I am Not a Christian series. I invite you to read the other articles, but they are not necessary to follow what I will argue in this post.

One of the things that kept me from accepting my disbelief for so long was a fear of what the universe would be like without God. As Soren Kierkegaard wrote in Fear and Trembling:

“If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair?”

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Why I Am Not a Christian: The Problem With Experiencing God

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ Leave a comment

Note: I have moved to Substack. Please subscribe to my work there!

This post is a continuation of my series on why I am no longer a Christian. In my last post, I explored how I came to doubt the core miraculous and supernatural claims of Christianity. I invite you to read that post, but it isn’t required to follow what I’m arguing for here.

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Why I am Not A Christian: The Problem of Miracles

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ 1 Comment

NOTE: I have moved to Substack! Please subscribe to my work there.

In a recent podcast with my Christian sister, she pressed me on the reasons why I don’t believe. I always struggle with answering this question because the reasons are so complicated that I’m never prepared to give a succinct answer.

Instead, I gave a more meta answer: doubt is something that happened to me. I can’t say what it was that made me the skeptic, and why my skepticism was so relentless when others in my life were content to just believe. That is a mystery of temperament. To this day, I continue to believe that, ultimately, faith and lack of faith are not conscious choices, but forces beyond our control that emerge from the depths beneath conscious cognition.

But the questions keep coming, and they probably won’t stop. Prompted by my sister’s question, I decided to sit down and write out my post hoc reasons and the story I tell myself about why I lost my Christian faith. The document started to run long, though, and this is just one portion. If readers enjoy this essay, I might release the other segments.

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The Ravenous Need For Religious Order

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ 5 Comments

Several weeks ago, a dear friend of mine told me, “I thought I could handle being an atheist. But I just can’t. The world is too terrifying without a religious structure. So I’ve chosen to go back to church, and go back to believing.” He said it with a downcast look of shame as if he was confessing something terrible. I didn’t think he was. I appreciated his honesty.

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Sacredness in a Godless World

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ 6 Comments

Theists often struggle to understand how I can maintain a deep sense of sacred awe without believing in the supernatural. They seem to assume that a life without God is a dry, artless, wonderless existence. As I discussed with Matt Langston in a recent episode of Sacred Tension, my personal experience is much the opposite. I feel like nontheism has ripped away the veil between me and the fundamental mysteries of reality. The utter inexplicability of being, without a God to rely on as an answer, is the most sacred and mysterious thing I have ever experienced.

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Breaking Down God

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ 15 Comments

I live in a strange, interstitial space between atheism and theism. While I no longer consider myself a Christian, I refuse to cut ties with the Christian world and my progressive Christian community. At the same time, I feel a great deal of kinship with the pagan and witchcraft communities, as well as the atheist and skeptical communities. My own religious home is The Satanic Temple, and I consider myself a practicing Satanist. I call myself a nontheist and reject unverified claims of the supernatural.

To many people, the question of God’s existence is simple: either there is a magical sky daddy or there isn’t. For me, however, this question is getting increasingly complicated. God is about more than just existence or nonexistence: it is also about definitions, worldview, and culture.

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Atheism, Kindness, and Hospitality

Teacup
~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ 4 Comments

Several weeks ago, I interviewed pastor and astrophysicist Paul Wallace. On my website, there was one lone comment in response to our conversation, and it managed to encapsulate everything I struggle with in the atheist community:

Unsurprisingly, Wallace can’t let go of his fantasy about how important he is and that an omnipotent being agrees with him. It doesn’t take much, just making up his god and his religion in his own image and ignoring the inconvenient parts.

Alright atheists, let’s talk. It’s time for a huddle. If the following rant doesn’t apply to you, then congrats. But if this rant does apply to you, then I hope it inspires some reflection.

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On Forfeiting the Word “Atheist”

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ 8 Comments

Since my Christian deconstruction I’ve started to try on various labels for size. Among these labels have been: post-Christian, nontheistic Christian, esoteric Christian, nontheist, Satanist, and, of course, atheist.

(Some annoying hippie in the back will, at this point, ask “why do you have to have a label, man? Why can’t you just be yourself?” Suffice it to say, I like identities, and I am pro-label. That other people are less comfortable with that is fine.)

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