5 Things Few (If Any) Atheists Believe

1. That there is nothing greater than myself

Being an atheist does not mean I think there’s “nothing greater than myself.”

When I got married, I was immediately part of something greater than myself. When I had kids, that “something” got larger. That feeling you get when you sing in a choir, or in a stadium at a concert, or play in a band or on a team, or work with any group of people toward a common goal — all are experiences that put a person in touch with something greater than him or herself.

Evolution takes that feeling beyond humanity, connecting me in a very real way to all living things, past present and future. I am a cousin not just of apes but of the sequoia and the amoeba, of mosses and butterflies and blue whales.

I’m part of a family, a neighborhood, a community, a nation, humanity, the course of history, the web of life. Each connects me to others, creating something larger than the sum of its parts. And instead of making me feel like a colossus astride the world, each of these is humbling, reinforcing the idea that I’m just a very small piece in a lot of much greater things.

Adapted from Atheism for Dummies by Dale McGowan (Wiley, 2013).

Images: Joker and “I Believe in Me” via Pixabay; Civil War bone dice by Kolby Kirk via Wikimedia by license CC 3.0; Religious symbols by Sowlos via Wikimedia by license CC 3.0 Unported; Martin Luther King public domain (pre-1978 no mark).