A quick Internet search suggests about 92% of humanity believes in some sort of god; with 1/3 Christians of one sect or another, a tad less than 1/4 claiming Islam as their own, 14% are Hindu, 6% Buddhist,with a mix of this and that making up a bit more than one out of 10. (I have heard Buddhists described as atheists with a sense of theater - but I'm going to include them in the "believer" column.) Go around the world, pick any 100 people at random, and barely a hand full will admit to not having a god belief. I would be among that handful.
Which is one of the reasons I am off the reservation. According to dictionary.com an atheist is, "a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings"; which sounds a bit more harsh than simply not believing in a god. Would they claim that the average person denies or disbelieves the existence of Santa Clause? (Actually, I'm not sure "disbelieve" is a word. I can conclude that what I am being told is true. I can conclude that what I am being told is false. I can conclude that what I am being told doesn't include enough information to decide either way. But how do I disbelieve something?)
Anyway, it isn't so much that I "disbelieve" in the existence of gods. It is true, I have concluded that all the gods and the religions that follow are inventions of human kind; myths, stories, analogies, anthologies, attempts at sharing moral teachings and efforts to explain things that are currently misunderstood. But that is just a surface objection, and a minor one at that. There is nothing wrong with sharing moral teachings or undertaking the task of explaining things. Often myths, stories, and analogies are the best and only way to share understanding and a bit of wisdom. (Sometimes wisdom is even more subtle than myths can convey, which is why we also need art, music, theater, poetry and dance to share what the heart can know.) But I am not an atheist just because all the gods are clearly human created characters in mythical stories.
Humanity is so new to, and such a small bit of, the cosmos, that it is impossible to think that we have much of anything right yet. Imagine an intelligent species one hundred million years further down the evolutionary trail then is humanity. (Not much of a reach actually, the dinosaurs roamed the earth for more than two hundred millions years.) How likely is it that they hold any concept of god at all, or if they do that it is one that we could even recognize? How likely is it that theirs is wrong as compared to ours? Is it even remotely possible that their concept of god is based on the idea that IT created the cosmos specifically for human kind, that humanity is at the very center of ITS attention? The shear scale of the universe makes our god concept little more than the imaginings of arrogant children. Still, I am not an atheist just because all of our god imaginings are most likely akin to a child's first attempt at coloring inside the lines.
In all of human history the only observations, the only things we have ever seen that were clearly created items, are items that we created ourselves. Everything else we have observed, everywhere in the cosmos as far as we can see, has turned out to be the manifestations of natural processes. We have even uncovered the natural processes that lead to us. But because we create things we make the assumption that everything must be created. All through our history we have attempted to inflict this "created assumption" on the rest of the universe in the guise of one god or another.
Centuries ago human kind had no clue that lightning and thunder were natural phenomena eventually to be explained by thermodynamics and Maxwell's equations; and so invented Indra, Thor, Perun, and Zeus. The concept of nature was wrong, the concept of what the god needed to explain was wrong, and the invented gods were nothing more than myth. Today's gods are no better. Nothing could be further from the truth than the Jewish fable of creation. It errs in every possible detail yet believers cling to its basic claim that god did it! The Greeks said the same about Zeus and lightning.
The very foundation of our god concept is based on a human view forced on the cosmos. Based as they are on ignorance the gods we invent are a direct reflection of humanity. At times they call to the best of what we hope for; love, forgiveness, tolerance, justice and peace. More often they mirror humanity at our worst; jealous, hateful, scornful, easily offended, war loving and vengeful. There are hells of eternal torture, regional wars over this bit of desert or that bit of mountain, genocide and slavery. And every god seems to be the worst sort of petulant child if someone dares not worship it. Really? If you were god, could you imagine yourself being so petty, churlish and infantile? There is something seriously wrong with the very concept of a god that so closely parallels the evolution of a species of tribal ape just recently climbed down from the trees.
I am not an atheist because all the gods are human created characters. I am not an atheist because humanity is too young to have any concept of the universe that is likely to be anywhere near the truth. And I'm not really an atheist just because the very idea of "god" is so clearly a human construct.
It seems to me that over the centuries even some religious and spiritual teachers have stumbled onto these same kinds of thoughts about gods. Often they are known as "mystics" and inhabit the fringe (or the core - depending on your point of view) of many a religious ideology; including most of today's mainstream religions. They don't start at the fringe (or the core) and must make some inner journey to "mystic". Since that inner journey happens in a human mind and heart which lives in the cosmos as it actually exist, it is no surprise that many of them end up in nearly the same place. Along the way they notice that the gods bare a remarkable resemblance to humanity and, realizing that is unlikely to reflect the true nature of a god, shed those perceptions as they journey toward understanding. Eventually they end up with an experience of a god that is beyond description, bereft of all vestiges of humanity, where language fails and the mystics find they have little to add to wisdom. They are left with an experience impossible to share, "The Divine mystery" is about the best they can do, (probably why we call them "mystics".)
I am just an airplane driver and an arm-chair philosopher. (An arm-chair philosopher is a claim any thinking person should make. Why bother using up good air if, at least once in a while, you don't think about this stuff?) But it seems to me a very similar journey can be made even if one doesn't start from religion. Believing in a god is not a prerequisite for wondering about the cosmos, one's relationship to it, and one's position in it. The same inner journey is made in the same human heart and mind that inhabits the same cosmos as it actually is. The atheist doesn't have to shed the erroneous perceptions of a god that the mystic must contend with, but that just leaves the atheist with a slightly shorter path to tread. The atheist and the mystic are likely to end up at a very similar place.
Both will find themselves gazing out at a cosmos that stuns with its complexity and shear existence, but that completely dwarfs the human scale. Both will find it a beautiful mystery that they exist to hold such a wonder in thought. And,(though I can only speak for myself and take as honest the words of other atheists and mystics alike) both will often find a knowledge of intimacy and belonging, of being part of an unimaginable whole. (Which is a pretty good description of being loved.) Most importantly both will find an experience that is beyond words, a mystery so deep as to be impenetrable, a vision (if you will allow me to use the word) to be spoken about but beyond description.
Do they discover the limits of what is? Of course not, something they both joyfully admit. Are they connected somehow to what they perceive Yes, though the mechanisms of that connection are also a mystery. Do they fear what they have encountered? Not usually, though it seems there is often a profound mixing of the knowledge that they are, at one and the same time, infinitesimally small yet of unimpeachable value. The believer now turned mystic assumes to have been touched by the divine. The atheist is content with the idea that a bit of wisdom and a touch of understanding have swept by. Both are often deeply moved by the experience, understanding, or encounter; call it what you will. An almost universal reaction seems to be a quieting of demands, a willingness to be a bit more gentle in judgments, a deeper appreciation for both the differences between individuals and the connections we all share. It is nothing to be dismissed out of hand, but the interpretations of the experience need to be handled with care.
While I haven't the slightest hint of god belief I find mystics of any religion to be kindred spirits. Though they cling to religious rituals of various types, taking communion, making the sign of the cross, going on a pilgrimage, meditating on a set schedule, repeating selected words at selected times, attending worship services; they know the rituals to be illusions, nearly transparent reflections of a mystery, reminders of what they don't understand but hope to experience in a continuing way. The rituals are a way to quiet the mind and brush against the mystery. There is no vice in such rituals, no evil intent on the part of the practitioners. By their own words the intent is to keep the mystery center in their lives, letting it infuse their whole being with joy. It is an impulse I completely understand.
What I do not understand is the mystic's insistence that the flawed human idea of god is somehow necessary to the mystery. The cosmos has no need of any human offering, understanding, or concept. Insisting that some human idea of a god must be responsible for a cosmos we barely understand isn't humility, it is a nasty piece of hubris that hides a vital bit of truth and dims the heart just that little bit.
Until we embrace the cosmos as we find it to be we will forever remain ignorant children. What we find is beyond fascinating; space is warped, time is pliable, what we can see in the universe is less that 5% of what is, (dark matter and dark energy making up about 96% of what is) entangled particles that share something akin to information beyond the edge of the individual particle's light cone, reality is probabilities until a observation is made. Does this sound like the day your are having? Yet this is the world as humanity goes about growing up. And those are just the edges of some of the easier mysteries. Things we suspect include multiple dimensions and universes (Universes!) uncountable. The cosmos is as much a thought as it is a machine with both analogies being equally misleading.
Religions claim that the fear of god is the beginning of wisdom. Observing the universe suggests the beginning of wisdom lies with laying all human prejudices aside, including the one for gods. Even the mystic can not quite find the wisdom sought so long as the human concept of a god is allowed to block the way.
Which is the real reason I am an atheist.
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