I’ve started this a new page, called “Ask an atheist.” People can write in with their questions about atheists and atheism, and we’ll get an genuine Tacoma Atheist™ to answer! E-mail your questions to me (you can also Tweet us @TacomaAtheist), and we’ll send the responses to you and post the questions and their answers here!

Q:

From reader A.D., of Boston:

“Would you say that Atheists are by nature Existentialists in the Sartre tradition? And doesn’t it get tiring, having to take responsibility for your mistakes, rather than blaming them on a comfortably removed, silent deity?”

A:

From Neil, of Tacoma:
Atheist Existentialism, in the Sartre tradition (as opposed to the theistic works of Kierkegaard) necessitates the living of life in a passionate individualistic way in spite of the fact that the universe doesn’t give a damn about us, and indeed has no perception of us, being unconscious. We as humans are the only consciousness, and that is distorted by our limited sensory perception and intellect to direct experience. In other words, a dreary, desperate attempt to live a good life in the face of unending despair of the oncoming grave. Sartre himself wrote of this in his novel Nausea, which is largely unreadable as literature.

My own feeling is that atheists are quite different from this, in that the lack of supernatural influence is freeing, rather than restrictive. We are not desperate, but appreciative of our experiences, and more capable as a result of not being allowed to push responsibility for our lives onto a distant spirit. We are actually able to make our own decisions and are free to take responsibility (and credit) both for good and bad, which makes us better people. It’s said that good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement. Theists are free from being responsible for their actions, being only the puppets of a divine plan, while we get to actually reckon with the consequences of our decisions.

And yes, it’s tiring to take responsibility for your own mistakes, but not as insufferable as giving some absent spirit all the credit for the good and a lesser spirit all the blame for the bad in your life.