A goal on my blog is promote mutual understanding of different ideologies in hopes of reducing polarization. I had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Ejaz Naqvi, who writes for the Patheos Muslim channel. Here are my questions to him on his blog. In this post, I respond to Dr. Naqvi’s questions to me!

Ejaz: What is your “religious background”? Did you grow up in an atheist family? Has anyone driven you “away” from religion? Conversely, have you ever felt inclined towards one?

Matthew: I grew up Catholic and no one (to my knowledge) is an atheist in my family. No one drove me away from religion. I was fairly religious until I was 18 or 19. Once I went to college, I started learning a lot about philosophy, history, science, and other religions. I began strongly questioning my faith once I was exposed to so many other new ideas. By the end of my freshman year, I was pretty much an atheist, but wasn’t comfortable identifying as such for another year or so.

I didn’t know any atheists when I left my religion. I was actually attending a Christian affiliated college at the time! There wasn’t anyone I could talk to about it. I just came to the conclusion that there wasn’t enough evidence for me to believe in God and I stopped believing.

Ejaz: I would ask you a similar question you asked me. “One of the positive aspects of religion is how it can provide motivation for people to do good” is what you asked me. How does lack of an organized belief system or doctrine shapes your moral and ethical values to do good? What do you think are the origins of the humans to ‘do good to others’?

Matthew: For me, losing my religion seemed to make me more concerned with the well-being of others. Because I only believe we have one life, I feel like we should try our best to make the most of it and be as kind as possible to other people. And because I don’t believe there is any supernatural force protecting us, it’s on us to fight against social injustices.

I’m often asked, why I should care about others if I don’t believe in an afterlife. My answer is fairly simple. Empathy. I know what it is like to feel pain and I don’t want other people to have those feelings. Since I’m a social scientist, I also understand that we are motivated to maintain certain social rules to help us co-exist in a society.

So as far as “origins of humans to do good to others” I would say much of it is programmed in our biology. We feel empathy. We want our social groups to survive and flourish. Unfortunately, we can also learn really harmful beliefs that allow us to hurt others as well.

Ejaz: There are “unfriendly atheists” and “friendly atheists”. We have Bill Maher and Sam Harris who are more than just “unfriendly” and may be considered downright offensive. You seem to be clearly in the latter category. What made you choose that path? What shaped your “friendly” views towards religion?

Matthew: Religion still causes many problems in our world. So I definitely think it’s fair for atheists to speak out against the harm it can cause. That said, there are atheists who are abrasive in their language or even outright cruel to religious people. Sometimes they have terrible arguments against religion too such as Bill Maher saying religion is a “neurological disorder” and I have spent years fighting against atheists who try to claim religion is some sort of mental illness.

While I have my disagreements with Maher and Harris over a number of things, I think it’s important to think about some broader impacts of what they do. Despite their flaws, they are still are bringing atheist viewpoints to large audiences. As I said above, I didn’t know any atheists when I became one, so I had to rely on people like Maher, Harris, and Dawkins for showing me that there are others who share my beliefs.

My hope is a more diverse group of atheist public figures emerge. So that there isn’t so much emphasis on Maher or Dawkins representing us. But rather many different voices who, I would argue, can approach religion with much more sophistication than the early pioneers of New Atheism. And also provide insights of how atheism intersects with many social issues.

So while I appreciate the work of Dawkins and Maher making atheism more “mainstream” I am hopeful that we can move past those kinds of unsophisticated arguments about religion and dive more into nuance.

I have no problem criticizing religion, but I never want to attack religious people. Loud, abrasive viewpoints may generate lots of attention, which again, could be good for the early days of making atheism more mainstream. But at this point, I think being abrasive is simply counterproductive. Atheists still have a negative stereotype in our country. Being a jerk and an atheist doesn’t help that. So for me, I try to not perpetuate the stereotype of atheists being jerks and just try to show that you can be an atheist and a good person.

Ejaz: Most religions believe in some kind of afterlife, with the promise for the believers in God to end up in a good spot. What are your views on the afterlife, and if you don’t believe in it, has the thought ever crossed your mind, “what if…”?

Matthew: I don’t believe in any sort of afterlife now, but as I said above, I used to when I was religious.

I actually don’t wonder about “what if” very much. It’s possible I am wrong and there is an afterlife, but I feel fairly certain that there is not. I believe once we die, that is it. It is just like the experience of before we were born. It makes me try to cherish my time alive even more.

The idea of an afterlife actually makes me feel pretty uncomfortable. Being stuck somewhere for an eternity, whether it is a positive or negative place, doesn’t sound like a lot of fun. Also, the idea of a God controlling our existence also makes me uncomfortable.

So even though I see the allure of believing evil people will be punished in an afterlife, I still don’t like the idea of our universe being controlled by an all-powerful being. The uncertainty of our universe and awareness of my own mortality is actually rather calming in comparison.

Ejaz: Is it possible for society to be able to do good without belief in God beyond the altruism? What prevents an atheist from “sins” when ‘no one is watching’, such as adultery/premarital sex, cheating on taxes, backbiting, telling lies, pornography, not keeping promises and so on?

Matthew: As I said above, I believe a lot of it boils down to empathy. We are all capable of feeling empathy (well except for sociopaths), so we generally don’t want other people to hurt. Sadly, many of us do learn bad behaviors for our social groups.

I have no desire to hurt others. I want other people to be happy. I feel those are pretty standard feelings for humans as we are social creatures. Additionally, I feel like some sins can be pretty harmful. Homosexuality is often considered a sin for example. As a bisexual, I’m glad I don’t feel guilt from my religion telling me my sexuality is wrong.

So I honestly feel pretty perplexed by these kinds of questions because it’s hard for me to imagine doing good only for God or to avoid going to hell. Even, when I was religious, I didn’t constantly check if what I was doing was a sin or not. I had a basic understanding of ethics and avoiding harming other people.

Ejaz: Believers have long held that the complex universe could not have come into existence without supreme intelligence and planning. As a medical doctor, studying vastly complex mechanisms to maintain good health has often made me wonder, ‘how is all this possible to come into being without divine intervention, when millions of very intelligent human minds have been working for centuries to justunderstand how these systems work?’ And we are still able to scratch the surface of what we know.

Without that supreme intelligence, how do you explain the order and harmony we see in the universe, including human physiology, stemming from seemingly a spontaneous event (the big bang)?

Matthew: I can’t explain it! And that is what makes it so beautiful to me. Considering how old the Earth is, we are still a very new species. Of course we haven’t figured out very much! But it’s also amazing how much we have learned in a short time!

Also, while there is a lot of harmony in universe, there is also a lot of chaos. Stars die. Asteroids hit planets. Lifeforms die. Sometimes in very cruel ways. There is a lot of pain in the universe too.

So for me, I’m just so grateful to have been alive and have a conscious experience the of universe. Despite the chaos and pain, there is a great beauty too. All we can do is try and appreciate the good, reduce the bad, and hopefully leave our world a little better before we turn back into stardust.

PS: I now have a Patreon if you’d like to support my writing and podcasting.