Okay, so you know dang well that's wrong, and even know a bunch of atheists who will say so. Take a good look at them and watch how they go about performing their atheism. When you have observed that, write me a message and let me know the results. I am not holding my breath.

We can best recognize atheism as only one component of many secular philosophies, rather than a philosophy in itself. It can be more truly described as a status referencing one's state of belief as absent. It means, most simply, "without theism", the same as atheology means "without theology". Trying to make a philosophy of that equates with trying to make a philosophy out of any 'ism' that describes a status or condition, and only serves to confuse the issues.

That said, however, conditions and statuses require explanation, usually also accompanied by the name of whatever is being explained: So, 'atheism' also serves as an explanation for the condition or status involved with being 'atheistic'. As in many such cases, the makeup of the word implies an absence of the condition, and indicates a healthy status because the diseased condition of theism is absent.

Explaining why oneself remains healthy when all around are those suffering an illness does, of course, require that many subjects be dealt with. It is that which confuses the issue, especially among the sufferers. Compare it with feeling fit and fine when everybody else is suffering from convulsive coughing, and trying to define why your abnormal status is to be desired and how you arrived at it. Think about that, and the atheist problem will be made obvious, especially when the sufferers are convinced that you need to be sharing their misery.

Of course, when one demands to know the reasons for his or her own good health, one will study and philosophize about it, all of which will most likely be done as a furtherance of the explanation (as above), but also in association with and quite inseparable from all the philosophies regarding good health and personal strength. Approaches that work will be adopted to become components of many good health programs, the same as atheism is a component of many philosophies, although not a philosophy in itself.

Once understood this way, it is easy to see how we have taken lemons and made lemonade. Our many ways of explaining our own immunity to the germs of theism all work together to express how and why we have done that, and provide an information base that sufferers of theism can use to cure themselves, once they realize the status of their own real illness. I call that information base "colligion", even though nobody has yet gathered it all up, put it into simple language, and put it all in one easy to find place.

How does one go about understanding atheism in this way? To begin with, take for granted that it is true. That is how theists learn about their version of theism, and it appears to work very well. It is not a scientific approach, but that has to be the case because you cannot apply science to something that does not exist and prove anything that would stand up in court. You have to take it for granted that atheism is a pretext and go from there. Its condition of nonexistence, like that of a god, enforces that, just as in dealing with any disease, its absence can best begin to be understood by learning about the disease and applying your new knowledge to the subject called "health", rather than naming it acoldism or similar, and having people forever afterward argue that you should have chosen another name, such as hotism, astoicism, or starkism and forcing you to explain why those names do not apply to your absence of a disease, and that the status of your condition is that, in you, the disease does not exist.

If something does not exist, it cannot be very important, so why all the fuss about it? Time does not exist, either, and think about how your statement applies to that. Values are also not things that exist, but how far will your money go if nobody values it? How much togetherness would you enjoy—how many of the things you consider worthwhile in life—if we started thinking about love as something unimportant?—and had no value to it?—and had no time for it?

People recognize many abstract concepts to exist only by their unspoken agreement to do that. By accepting the role of atheist, those involved in that role have adopted a set of concepts that allows others to demonize them, worry about them, avoid them, look down upon them, hate them, and write laws against them and what they are supposedly about. If you can understand how true that is, you can go on to learn the Philosophy of Atheology.

You begin, as we agreed, by taking it for granted that atheism is nonexistent and looking at it in that light. If someone says otherwise, you must take it for granted they are wrong, or maybe have an agenda to push onto you. You must take it for granted that people learned how to pretend things are true by believing in gods, and that if you want to free yourself from that, you need to struggle to gain a firm grip on the concept that atheism does not exist, and that everybody is pretending that it does. Think of pretending acoldism into existence, of trying to defend it under that name, of trying to explain it to everybody else including other people without colds.

One by one, little lights will blink on in your head as you gain new insights about this. Your life will gain new directions and meaning as you arrive at a full realization of the depth to which we have been manipulated, almost from birth, by the pretensions that dominate us. That being so covert and transparent to us explains why it seems so hard to get a handle on atheism. People have been struggling with it for generations, trying to make something of it that it is not—making mountains out of molehills, my mama used to call it.

People are born without belief in gods, and that gets spoiled by their parents and their communities. All a believer ever gets to hear about atheism, for most, comes from the believers around him, who demonize us in every way they can, for what they (having inherited it hook, line and sinker) believe to be all the right reasons. Were they born suffering from a common cold?— No! Other people made an effort to give one to them.

So, in order to find his/her way back to atheism (good health), each person goes through phases. In my mind, the early phases are those of innocence: curious and dissatisfied minds seeking answers. At the early stage of loss of belief, you will find what has become known as the "weak" atheist, also described as "soft" or "passive", who is simply not suffering from theism and is not too worried about it.

Most people will stay that way for years, maybe for life, their worldview much like that of an agnostic: They don't believe and they don't know why. I have seen, in my acquaintances, that people born into atheist families may not go much beyond this. They see no reason to, since they have never felt the sense of loss (of self) that former theists often endure.

In my own case, curiosity knows no bounds but the natural constraints imposed upon all physical beings. I was raised by an argumentative family (a trait I apparently inherited). The accusations and condemnations flew and brewed a simmering pot that left a creosote-like burning in my gut (I at first thought it was the cough medicine my dad treated us with in an effort to induce acoldism). That inspired me to ferret truth out of all the snake oil and BS buzzing past my head.

My wife's folks were of a different Protestant sect than either of my parents, who were not at all close to similar in their own beliefs. All were sinners in the eyes of all the rest, and I was worst of all. "Somebody in this mess is dead wrong. They can't all be right," became my motto. The more I learned, the more convinced I became that nobody knew what the hell they were talking about, and that I needed to look elsewhere if there is a truth to be found.

As a result, I went through a long period wherein I believed atheism to be just another religion that I wanted nothing to do with. Communicating with Madalyn O'Hare made that a concrete conviction that took a good two or three decades to get beyond. Bitch! We owe her a lot, but a lot of what I see going on convinces me her spirit lives on in our community.

The regaining of innocence is a tedious process many of us have endured on our own. We each are the guinea pigs for our own experiments, and ought to realize all the phases of belief we went through if we made it all the way from true believer to hypocrite to agnostic to a "weak" or "soft" atheist to the point where we are firm in our convictions that all that gets told about supernatural existences is pure bullshit and worse.

That is why some of us insist it is not a black and white issue. It is an ongoing process that involves people at various stages within it (some with theistic sniffles, some who don't know whether good health is something they dare to adopt, and some with full-blown rage at all the suffering going on around them by people who refuse to learn the difference and take their medicine). Some are uncertain, some are weak and some are firmly entrenched. All of us are students of materialism and all the philosophies related to that, but not all of us are good students, and not all of us can find our lessons or teachers. There can nothing truthful be said about there being something wrong with being an honest, inspired, truth-seeking student.

Before science's rise, all that could be said about atheism came from the various forms of theism, and were true because they said so. Things changed when science loomed into the picture. Science said, "If something is true, we will find ways to test it so we can know that. If something is true, we must know that so we can find good uses for it, or learn to live better as a result." After that, some people opted to follow the ways of science, and most others the ways of their religions.

Inherent to atheism is everything that it had under religious dominance: the stigmata, the heresy, the attempts to understand something that, like a god, really does not exist. All of the ascribed qualities, all of the misunderstanding and ill-founded arguments, comes out from attempts to describe and impose qualities onto something nonexistent. "Acoldists are evil people trying to lead us onto a sinful path that will take us straight to Hell by their proclamations that the passing of germs is immoral. It is good health that is immoral!" So, where do we go from here?

First, we must agree that we are atheists only because we do not believe in gods, and that is all that makes us so. From that, we will eventually understand that, if nobody believed in gods, we would have no reason to call anyone an 'atheist'. The problem goes away when theism goes away, not when atheism goes. If our simple precept, that atheism does not exist, were not true, then the same result would occur no matter which condition disappeared first. If one should evaporate, no matter which, the other should also, no matter which. It won't, and atheism persists because theism remains with us and, because of that religious presence, it is here because people said so.

It is true, what someone said in an attempt at humor, "If there were no gods, there would be no atheists." That there are gods is thought true only because religious people said so. Believers are called 'theists'. Were there no theists, there would be no 'atheists', because nobody would be saying gods exist. Gods exist only in people's minds, but that is enough for there to be atheists. If that ever gets corrected, atheism will no longer be anyone's concern. When god-beliefs stop being perpetuated, there will be no atheists.

The philosophy of atheism can be completely stated in one short sentence: "No reason has ever been made apparent to assume that a god exists." It can be furthered by adding, "No reason has ever been made apparent to assume that atheism exists." If we adhere to the methods of science, we will not assume something exists just because somebody said so. That is the basic premise of colligion.

If something does not exist—whether gods or atheism—why argue about it? Arguments persist when atheists make an effort to discover ways to deal with the onslaught of threats imposed by overzealous theists, all of whom are angered because we do not share their viruses. This can be deposed only by a major shift of attitude throughout our ranks, that can only be brought about by making common the recognition that we have not (in spite of heralding it) applied science to the things we still, as atheists, believe and so have not colligated the facts needed to support them. We have built our sets of favorite precepts upon nothing more real than our opinions about all kinds of matters and have not insisted upon first testing them. It is that, and nothing else, that makes whatever portion of atheism that represents into nothing more than a secular kind of religion. That is the part that gets argued about, that stirs up anger in our midst and helps the theists keep us divided so we do not become a force against them.

Copyright ©2006 by Lloyd Harrison Whitling. All rights reserved.