Can an Atheist Choose Among Religions?

By Ed Buckner | 5 June 2026
Letters to a Free Country

(Image by Marc Pascual from Pixabay)

About the Friday Freethought Perennials in general: This subset of my blog is to answer questions, nearly always already answered by me and by many others but posed again and again—over many years and in many places—on freethought, atheism, secular humanism, secularism/church-state/”This is a Christian Nation,” and similar topics. These answers are mostly not intended to be original analyses, breaths of fresh air, so much as just putting a whole series of things on the record (I’d say “forever,” except I know better). One source for many of these answers is the 2012 Prometheus Books book by me and my son (Michael E. Buckner), In Freedom We Trust: An Atheist Guide to Religious Liberty. It’s available in many libraries and pretty readily in the used book after-market. I’ll cite writings of others that answer these things in more depth if I’m aware of them when I post these.

Theology versus Religious Culture

As most readers know, I’m an atheist—and that means I disagree with all the religions I have much understanding of on a point of great importance to its adherents. (I’ve been told that Buddhism doesn’t necessarily involve any supernatural beings, but I’m not sure.) And, unlike Pete Hegseth, I don’t pretend to be able to define what should count as a religion for anyone else.

I wouldn’t be likely to choose among religions when it comes to ideas or beliefs about god, since I have no beliefs in any gods, however defined.

So Christians believe there is only one true God and that God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost (the Trinity) created everything and deserved to be worshipped and obeyed. Makes no sense to me, but it’s not up to me.

And Muslims believe that Allah is the only God and Muhammed is his Prophet. Makes no sense to me, but it’s not up to me.

And Jews believe that Jehovah spoke directly to Moses and gave him commandments to pass on to his followers. Makes no sense to me, but it’s not up to me.

Does that mean I reject everything that religious believers think is valid and important? Nope, not even close.

(Like Maude—the TV character played by the late great Bea Arthur—”I believe in several of the Commandments.”)

Cultural Religion

As an atheist (and unlike those who are devout members of any religion), I believe religions have developed over hundreds of generations as part of cultural growth and progression. Much of what has evolved can, I think, be considered by outsiders as pretty arbitrary and as matters that are things followers should be left alone to engage in as they see fit. And I think on such matters, atheists like me should butt out.

But not always.

There are differences among religions that really aren’t tied to beliefs I gods—and on those matters—cultural matters—I do can and do pick and choose among religions, accepting many ideas from many religions.

When, if ever, can we rightly judge/condemn/praise another culture, including values promoted by a religion? Can I be critical of Muslims or others having rules requiring women to cover their hair and still support my own culture’s rules that women must cover their breasts? Only if I can correctly cast the difference in terms of what Massimo Pigliucci has called “human flourishing.” Pigliucci addressed this in a recent post on meta-ethics, explaining wisely about the need for care in weighing cultural differences and when it’s justified to oppose or criticize those differences. You can find that essay on his site, Figs in Winter: A Community of Reason (link below).

So I’m comfortable denouncing some of the practices of some Muslims who take what seem to be clear steps to keep women as second-class, subservient people. The same goes, of course, for some Christians who champion “trad wives,” who accept and even extend Paul’s admonition in his first letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 14:

34 Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law.

35 And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.

That is dangerous and manifestly absurd—and it deserves to be denounced.

When religions promote love and kindness and compassion, the religious leaders promoting that should be encouraged. When hatred and violence against others (or against believers who allegedly have misinterpreted what God wants or who have changed their beliefs), that is a clearcut threat to human flourishing and deserves fierce opposition from all.

State Religions

Israel is a Jewish state. The United Kingdom is a Christian state. Saudi Arabia is an Islamic state—and so are Iran and quite a few other nations. I am a strong secularist—someone who thinks that complete separation of government and religion is generally the best, securest means of protecting liberty of conscience for everyone. But religious liberty varies tremendously among states with an official theocratic position—and it’s the religious liberty that matters more than the technical degree of separation.

The Jews

As is by now clear to all readers, I reject the “religious” part of religions—the god-bothering bits. But most religions, as cultures, have valuable things to offer, and I do choose some values more often than others.

Christian charity and commands to “love thy neighbor as thyself” are profoundly positive, whether Jesus was real or mythical, died for my sins, or was just an itinerant preacher.

Islamic welcoming of strangers and commitment to helping the downtrodden are admirable whether Muhammed had many things right or not.

Jewish values that treasure education and thoughtful questioning of authority are well worth cherishing and emulating.

But one recent trend has taken me sharply aback—the renewal of malicious, unreasoning, hate-filled anti-semitism.

On the day after 7 October 2023, when Hamas terrorists viciously, barbarically, and sadistically attacked civilians in Southern Israel, I fully and more or less automatically assumed there would be a world-wide (or at least throughout Western liberal democracies) wave of condemnation of Hamas and deep sympathy for Israel and Jews.

I was gob-smacked that in far too many places, including on American college and university campuses, Jews and Israel were attacked, blamed, and condemned. An acquaintance—a woman I considered a reasonable, decent, liberal person—even asked me. “Well what did you expect when Israel acted as a colonial oppressor as they have?”

None of this was, by the way, mere criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu and his government for responding too harshly against Gaza, nor was it limited to (I think probably deserved) condemnation of West Bank settlers who had persecuted Palestinians or perhaps overreacted to rock-throwing protesters or acted with understandable anger and outrage at terrorists blowing up buses and cafes in Israel. There were, from the onset of the 7 October news, chants of “From the River to the Sea, Palestine must be free” and “Death to the Jews” and tearing down pictures of completely innocent hostages then being held in tunnels in Gaza.

I do not trust or admire Donald Trump or Benjamin Netanyahu—both are going to outrageous lengths to engage in war that seems, seriously, designed to win political points and maybe individual political survival for themselves over justice and improvement in the lives of the people they lead.

All that to say that—

  1. Israel has as much right to exist as the US or Iran or Egypt.
  2. Palestinians deserve a nation (even though their leaders have repeatedly turned down chances to have one), but only if they unambiguously renounce blind hatred for Jews and the willingness to martyr themselves to wipe Israel off the map.
  3. America’s allies—like Israel or Ukraine—do not deserve to get automatically anything and everything in foreign military aid and weapons that they might ask for. But those allies DO deserve real help, money and munitions, when they are wantonly attacked.
  4. Every nation—including the US and Israel—must be fair game for serious criticism as to actions it takes and things it does. But promoting hatred and violence against people who represent that nation or even who just have the same religion or religious-cultural practices is stupid and dangerous.

As an atheist, I pretend to no acceptance of any religion’s theocratic claims.

But as a human, I stand forthrightly for Israel and the Jews.

Ed Buckner is an American atheist activist who served as president of the organization American Atheists from 2008 to 2010. He served as executive director for the Council for Secular Humanism from 2001 to 2003 and was once the Council’s southern director. He is the author (with Michael E. Buckner) of In Freedom We Trust: An Atheist Guide to Religious Liberty (Prometheus Books, 2012).

“Letter to a Free Country” by Ed Buckner (with Q&A)

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