Hi Dena,

I am an atheist and I will attempt to give you my answers to your questions. Let me also refer you to the American Humanist Society, of which I am a member, for their explanations of how we can organize “without theism or other supernatural beliefs, [to] affirm our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good.”

1. Do you miss the comfort of your faith? I have never to my conscious memory had a spark of anything that could be called faith in a God. My father, formerly a strict Lutheran, lost his faith in Vietnam, before I was born. My mother was raised -ish Catholic, and I think if you ask her will acknowledge she still has some kind of sense of God. Growing up, however, religion played no role in our lives. My father has never denigrated faith or believers. In fact, he told my sisters and I he would be happy to drive us if we ever wanted to attend a church, synagogue, mosque or whatever. We never took him up on this offer. (Well, my older sister technically converted to Judaism when she married her husband, but that had little to do with religious faith.) I find believers really struggle to grasp this following assertion: faith just wasn’t an important question for us.
2. Does that mean I am weak-minded in your eyes? No. I acknowledge that faith in God can be a powerful source of inspiration and strength.
3. Please tell me how you cope with the chaos and pain in this world if you don’t believe that there is something bigger than yourself out there. I “cope” (although I would quibble with this word and the presumption behind your question) by understanding there is also order, goodness and beauty in the world. We humans have the ability to shape things for the better, both individually and collectively. At least we can try.
4. How do you cope with loss? By remembering and celebrating the lives that were lived, both after death and while still alive. I was just remembering a babysitter we had who committed suicide at the age of 28. She had a very tough life, and I mourn that, but I was also thinking through all the ways she was a wonderful person. My parents are in their 70s. While currently healthy, the odds are they will be dying sometime in the next ten to 15 years. My mother recently told me she has no regrets. I will mourn her when she does pass, but I will also bear witness to the fact that she lived a life that made her happy.
5. How do you deal with the grief of losing someone you love when you believe their existence is over and the separation is forever? You answer this question in your question: by believing death means existence is over. This is neither good nor bad. It’s a null state and the “separation” is not forever. I too at some point am going to die, and I will be joining them in that null state. This is not something to be feared. As Mark Twain said, “I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”
6. What do you think of Christians, in general? I know many good and decent Christians doing their best to live their faiths. Heck, for years I’ve sent my kids to a Baptist summer camp run by a pastor who is an amazing human being But I also know people who call themselves Christian for whom their “faith” is little more than a tribal marker. What fundamentally offends is the hypocrisy. I also resent the attempts to impose religion on others. When we humanists talk about “religious freedom,” we do genuinely mean the right to live lives with dignity on individual terms; when Christians talk about “religious freedom,” what they mostly seem to mean is denying service to gay and transgender people. Do you see us as judgmental hate mongers? Some of you, yes. Did you know that many Christians cringe at those people too? I hold out hope that those of you who do cringe will step up more forcefully to those judgmental hate mongers amongst you.
7. How do you explain the mysteries and the wonders of this world? I had a crush in high school on a girl (Hi Leah Robertson, if you somehow read this!) who saw God in everything. I think we were contemplating a flower. She saw God in its beauty, I just saw a beautiful a flower. I do see and feel mysteries and wonders of the world, but it doesn’t bother me to not necessarily know what engenders them. Let me quote the physicist Stephen Hawking here: “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.” Also: “Before we understand science, it is natural to believe that God created the universe. But now science offers a more convincing explanation.” This could be called having faith in science, which is I guess true, but that faith is in our ability to make judgments about the world/universe/reality by observation, measurement and validation (the scientific method), which is not the same thing as accepting as truth an explanation based on nothing more than the authority of a religious text.
8. If you could have a calm, loving conversation with a Christian, what questions would you have for them? I have no questions about your faith. I also have no issues with you trying to live your lives in accordance to your faith so long as you give me space to live my life according to the dictates of my conscience. I do ask you to not evangelize and try to bear witness to me. If there are points of conflict that arise from our positions about how we co-exist, I will default to believing that an individual’s right to live his/her life with dignity supersedes any attempt to deny that right. When it comes to something fundamentally irreconcilable, such as beliefs about abortion, then it is simply going to come down to the rule of law.
9. What made you an atheist? Nothing made me an atheist, I just am. A term for people who have become atheists after the loss of faith is “exvangelical.” This, however, is not my story. You would have to talk to them directly if you are interested in their stories. One such group is here.

These are my answers to your questions, Dena. Please keep in mind I am just one atheist and I do not presume to speak for the whole. Atheism, agnosticism and humanism encompass a wide spectrum of lived experience. I believe it is possible for faith and lack of faith to be in harmony in society so long as we attempt to apply the Rawlsian principle of least harm. (John Rawls, philosopher.) I am happy to continue this conversation with you if you have any responses.

— Matt