Douglas Adams (more info) has been one of my favorite writers for years, but, until I read “The Salmon of Doubt”, a collection of essays and articles collected after his death, I only had had contact with his fiction work. But a particular entry in “Salmon” changed my life.

That entry is here, it was an interview Adams did for the American Atheist magazine.

I had a Christian education (Catholic, in fact), and, until I was about 26 or so, I really believed in it. Why? I tended to be rational in most of my life, but there was a part of it about which I apparently refused to think. It’s as if it was something so fragile, that I didn’t let anything near it – like reason or logic – , because I was afraid it would collapse, that I would “lose” it. If faith couldn’t withstand logic, then I wouldn’t let logic come anywhere near it. Why did I want to keep it? In part, I guess, because I loved the person (now deceased) who was responsible for my belief, and I wanted to respect her memory. And maybe I also felt alone – the existence of an all-powerful, all-loving God was something that would keep me company. And there was, too, the promise of “eternal justice” – that the injustices we suffered on Earth were only temporary, that eventually there would be justice, and the good would be rewarded, and the evil would be punished. I wanted it to be true, so much… therefore, I believed it.

Until I read that interview. It certainly got me thinking. And, in a way, Adams had gone through similar experiences, so I could relate. He put into words what I had only felt – that faith and religion, in me, only “survived” because I had a defense mechanism – I refused to think about it, like I thought about anything in the “real world”. But if faith and religion can’t survive a “closer look”… why is that, and, most importantly, what does that tell us about them?

That they are a lie.

Afterwards, I thought a lot about it – what I should have done during all the years before. Is there a God? I don’t think so; reality and the universe can be perfectly explained without one (Occam’s razor), and a God creating the universe in 6 days is no more believable than an Invisible Pink Unicorn or a Flying Spaghetti Monster. But assuming that there is a God… then where is he? Why is there so much suffering? Why do people pray, if it doesn’t work (any scientific test shows it, and there have been some)? Why would a god create a world, then hide all traces of doing it, then stay completely invisible except for some ridiculously minor appearances to a person or two, every couple of centuries? Why would God hide, then damn to eternal suffering everyone who didn’t believe in him?

And the existance of a god is certainly something extraordinary. That, to a scientist, requires extraordinary proof. Where is it? And no, ancient books are not proof. Many people believing in him are not proof either.

I realized that I had been guilty, through most of my life, of two of the worst forms of irrationality: wishful thinking, and refusing to think about something. I had been dishonest with myself. I had put something “above” reality, about the truth. And that is wrong.

But it’s better to open one’s eyes later than never to do it at all.