From PZ's Place: Jim Mader, on Why I Am An Atheist:

[Note: a very long "little story" has been omitted here; to read it go here]

What does this little story have to do with “why I am an Atheist?” When I was growing up in a Catholic home, we were told repeatedly that in order to ensure our place in Heaven, we had to do good because “God is watching.” After my father died, I began to question everything. The “Doing good because God is watching” was what stood out to me the most. WHY should I only do good because I am constantly being judged? I should be good for goodness’ sake.

If the God I was raised to believe in was all-loving, why do we suffer? Why do the helpless lose someone close to something as horrible as a brain tumor?

If I pray for something and it is not received, then why did Jesus say, “You have not because you ask not?”

If God GAVE us free will and expects us to use it, why would I be condemned to hell for not believing in him? (He would understand that I “freely” used his gift to come up with my own conclusions.) These were the thoughts of a child. In adulthood, once I actually began to enjoy reading, the lack of anything concrete in evidence of a deity and the science backing reality, pushed me further and further away from the desert god of my father. It’s not just the science behind reality, it’s the lack of anything outside that science that guides MY “free will” to be a better person for myself, my children, and perfect strangers I meet along my life’s path.

To “be good for God” has no meaning for me. I am good because I am a Human being who knows how to BE Human.
Jim Mader
United States

Mader makes the common “Why is there Evil” argument and the anti-Free Will argument, and then claims those are the arguments of his childhood, dismissing them making ready for his next claim. Having rejected his Catholic upbringing and the ecclesiasticism attached to that, he now sees a ”lack of anything concrete in evidence of a deity and the science backing reality…”.

The unsupportable belief that science addresses all reality meshes just right with the need for “concrete” evidence for a non-physical deity. The irrationality of the Materialism which is gained automatically through the rejection of a church is never seen, because it is not a logical acquisition, it is added to one’s worldview thoughtlessly and without analysis:

IF the tenets of the Catholic Church are rejected,
THEN Materialism is all there is.

But that logic is implicit and never analyzed for validity and grounding.

Startlingly, Mader makes a claim that science guides his “life path”, in a moral sense. Or is that the claim? It's an odd statement.

” It’s not just the science behind reality, it’s the lack of anything outside that science that guides MY “free will” to be a better person for myself, my children, and perfect strangers I meet along my life’s path. “

The lack of concrete evidence, the belief in an irrational Materialism, these “lacks” of anything outside science guides his free will? No, not really; he makes a different claim in the next short paragraph:

” I am good because I am a Human being who knows how to BE Human.”

And what does “being human” mean? It actually entails both the sublimely empathetic to the most vile and despicable. “Being human” cannot even begin to be a reason for “being good”. Even the most superficial analysis would reject that claim. But that analysis has not been done by Mader.

Once absolutes are rejected, the mind may allow any thought to seem rational just because the thinker believes himself to be rational. The defense against that sort of parasitic irrationality is to engage in logical procedures to confirm one’s thoughts as valid, or reject them as logically faulty. The statement above is a great candidate for that sort of basic analysis.