The people who are hand-wringing about how Atheism Plus is “divisive” are basically saying that they are entitled to me. They may not intend to say that — but that’s the upshot. They are saying that they are entitled to my work, my ideas, my fundraising efforts, my late nights, my grueling travel schedule, my passion, my exhaustion, my efforts to make atheism stronger and more visible. They are saying this about me… and about every other feminist woman in the movement, and every feminist man, and every feminist person who doesn’t identify as either male or female. They are saying, “If you want to be in this movement, it has to be on our terms. And if those terms means putting up with hate, abuse, harassment, violation of privacy, threats and more… well, I guess those are the breaks.” And they are acting as if a group of people in the movement deciding that they get to choose who they work with, and deciding to form a subset of the movement with people who share their core values, is some sort of horrible betrayal.

Fuck that.

As a nearly life long Atheist I get asked a lot (sometimes, rather confrontationally) by christians how it is I can live a moral life without god and without the bible. For many years I took great offense to this question when it came up because it was almost always directed in a very nasty way at me, like they were inferring I was less than them because I lacked faith and I couldn’t possibly be a moral person. After decades of trying to help people understand that morality and religion are not mutually exclusive, I came up with a new completely non-confrontational answer that doesn’t belittle or try and dress them down the way they were trying to do to me.

I live a moral life because of comic books.

It took me a long time thinking about my life and how I got to where I am to understand this idea, but quite frankly, I owe my moral view to superheroes and comics. I owe my understanding of a moral life to the 4 color printed pages of Marvel and DC superhero books.

Growing up reading comics I learned that heroes did good because it was the right thing to do. They took it upon themselves to make sure that those in need had someone to turn to for help. They did good because there was a possibility that if they didn’t, nobody else would. They help those in trouble because, even as superheroes, they understood the value of a helping hand and the idea of being in need of support.

They didn’t do good things for those in need for praise. They didn’t help those in need of a hand because of reward. They didn’t step in and stop bad people from doing horrible things because someone told them too. They did all those things and so much more because they understood the human connection that we all share and that doing something for someone without expectation is the best feeling someone can know.

Living a moral life isn’t about going to heaven or hell, or the promise of eternal life, living a moral life is living a life based on the idea of love. The love for the human race, the love of family, the love of connecting with others and finding a bond that is stronger that anything else we as humans experience. That is the moral life I lead, a life focused on finding and sharing love among the people I know and have grown to care about. I don’t need a bible or a god to tell me those things are important or right, I know in my heart and mind that those are the things life is really about.

So now I tell those people, I live a moral life because of superheroes and because of love, and because I love superheroes haha :D