An Atheist Life Well Lived

May 17, 2021

When I was a Christian, I was taught that the second best way to evangelize was to live an exemplary Christian lifestyle. (The best way, of course, was to go out and literally tell people about Jesus).

The logic was that if I lived this lifestyle where I walked around being joyful all the time, was happy, nice, kind, empathetic, or whatever this “Christian lifestyle” was supposed to look like, then non-believers would see me and wonder, “What is it that he has? How can I have that?” Once they asked me, the next step of this fantasy would be to invite them church.

Needless to say, this is ridiculous. As I know now, I don’t need to be a Christian to demonstrate all of those positive characteristics that I listed above. It’s also quite presumptuous to think that people who didn’t believe in God would ever look at me and my nice-and-tidy Christian lifestyle and would actually want to transform themselves to be like me.

But not that long ago I began thinking of this concept flipped on its head—a well-lived atheist life that would make others look at them and wonder what it is they have (or don’t have).

That got me thinking… what is the lifestyle of a non-believer? That, of course, is near impossible to pin down because the beauty of not believing in God is that you are not confined to the Christian lifestyle (which is quite constrictive and one-note) and are free to interact with the world in any number of ways, all of which you get to choose. But in today’s online world, it would seem to many believers that the lifestyle of a non-believer is to spend hella time online posting heavily-researched atheist apologetic content while arguing with Christians. And I totally get why.

For many, deconstruction and subsequent deconversion from religion began with a lot of head knowledge. Maybe you read a Bart Ehrman book. Maybe you watched Christopher Hitchens videos online. Whatever the case, you gained some new knowledge that you didn’t have before and then used that knowledge to change your beliefs.

Since that knowledge set you free, you continue to do what, in my opinion, is a very logical thing—you keep acquiring more and more knowledge. After all, knowledge is what set you free from your nonsense religion in the first place. Gaining even more knowledge is surely a good thing, right?

Yes and no.

I realized pretty quickly into my deconversion that I didn’t want to become an amateur Bible scholar. I felt a bit guilty about this because listening to debates against well-read and well-researched believers and former believers helped me to come to my own conclusions. I felt that if I didn’t also do the same, I might be missing the chance to help someone else leave religion. In other words, I wasn’t giving back.

But even though a well-researched apologist might be able to run circles around me during a debate of head knowledge, that doesn’t mean God exists or the Resurrection happened. After leaving religion, my goal was to rebuild my life in practical ways, not merely acquire shitloads of knowledge about a religion I no longer believed in.

So instead of binge-reading a bunch of books and storing up head knowledge, I went out into the world and lived as an atheist. To me, the atheist (or agnostic, or all the labels that refer to unbelief in a religion) life well-lived is one that is filled with direct experiences that I wasn’t “allowed” to have while in the Church. That meant putting down the books and logging off the internet for a while and going out into the real world.

Living as an non-believer felt so much more natural and right to me. When I was actually in the thick of life, I realized that everything rang more true than life within my Church bubble—my interactions with strangers, my relationships, my friendships, how I view other people, what I believe is right or wrong. All that lived experience confirmed to me all I needed to know far better than a bunch of head knowledge. This was because feelings were involved along with my logical thinking. It’s strange for me to admit that as a hardcore INTJ (Enneagram 5) but it’s true. Also, living as an atheist was a lot more fun too…

Does this mean I think everyone should stop learning about Christianity after deconverting or cease all debates with Christians? Of course not. I wrote here how important it is to gain new knowledge and, in the immortal words of RuPaul Charles: “Reading is fundamental.”

But with all things in life, a certain balance is needed.

After all, one of the biggest laments of Deconverted Men is all the time they wasted believing in a religion that wasn’t true. Could it be that by studying up on Christianity and the historical Jesus and the contradictions in the Biblical manuscripts that you’re inadvertently still giving away your time to that very same religion, albeit in a different way?

I understand and empathize with the goal of acquiring all this knowledge, doing these debates, and putting out this kind of atheist apologetic content—it’s to get believers thinking and to hopefully guide them out of the chains of religion. I get it. It’s a noble endeavor.

But similar to what I was told when I was believer, don’t forget that an atheist life well-lived is perhaps an even more powerful tool in your anti-religious evangelism. After all, most Christians aren’t stupid people; they are just as capable as anyone else of reading something new, learning it, and using it to alter their beliefs and behaviors. What keeps them in religion is that they’re afraid to leave it. Fear is an emotion that trumps all the knowledge and logic in the world. By living and demonstrating an atheist life well-lived, you’re showing believers that there’s nothing to be afraid of on the other side, and that life actually improves after deconverting.