Our freedom comes from God and atheists don't believe in God. So where does freedom come from in their eyes? Perhaps my atheist commenters can answer that question.You've got it backwards: in many ways god and his representatives are the antithesis of freedom. Freedom isn't a thing in and of itself: it is an absence of constraint, oppression and intimidation. Freedom is the default state of the world. It disappears as man multiplies in number, spreading oppression and restricting other people's actions as their religious prohibitions and quests for dominion over others grow.
Animals in nature are free. A lone man in the wilderness is free. Small family groups of cavemen were free. Hunter gatherers on the African plains were free. It is only when large tribes of men organize together into communities is it necessary to formalize rules of interaction, causing the concept of freedom to arise. These rules preserve order and prevent the exploitation of the innocent by the ruthless. We can be bound voluntarily by rules and still be free. In the past you could just leave if the rules chafed too much. But the primitive version of freedom disappears when you can no longer flee to unoccupied territory.
Rule-based freedom is easily maintained in a homogeneous community, but when different communities collide it falters. It is easy to deny the freedoms of those different from you: the stronger community imposes their rules on the weaker, infringing upon others' freedom for their own gain, be it for land, slavery, or economic gain. When it becomes us versus them it's much easier to deny the freedoms and rights of "them." And nothing is better than religion for separating "us" from "them."
In the American mind freedom and democracy are inextricably linked. But hierarchical monotheistic religions are profoundly undemocratic: the pope in Rome, the ayatollah in Teheran, the archbishop of Canterbury, the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church aren't elected by a democratic vote of the faithful. They're chosen behind closed doors by the churches' elites. These organizations are hierarchical and autocratic: the faithful must adhere to their dictates or be excommunicated (or worse). And that's why there are so many different sects: people rebel against the lack of freedom and splinter off.
Another concept that goes hand-in-hand with freedom is equality. Theistic traditions dictate a top-down hierarchical structure: gods, Jesus, Mohammed, Mary, pharaoh, the angels, the saints, the king, the nobility, the priesthood, men, women, animals, the earth. This leads naturally to justifying inequality based on perceived importance to god. It becomes very easy to separate humans into classes who are lower in the hierarchy: Jews, Muslims, pagans, serfs, slaves. It becomes easy, necessary and good to deny the inferior their rights and freedoms and even lives, under the guise of preventing them from committing blasphemous, impious, immoral or illegal acts, stopping them from tempting the righteous into immorality, or simply because they are not the chosen people. It becomes easy to justify wanton destruction of wildlife and habitat as "god's will."
Religion disguised as the will of god has thus been used for millennia to justify slavery, the subordination and degradation of women, persecution of homosexuality, genocide against Jews, Christians, Muslims and pagans, mass murder of both Catholics and Protestants, the burning and drowning of countless "witches" in the Middle Ages, the caste system in India, and so on. Religion has been used to fight those injustices as well -- many abolitionists were devout Christians -- but in the end it's just a matter of how the preachers interpret the dictates of men dead for thousands of years. It's not what god says that matters, but what self-proclaimed keepers of the holy scripture say god says.
Thus, if god was right to exterminate all the people of Sodom and Gomorrah because they pissed him off, then the faithful can justify the Inquisition torturing and killing witches, Christians invading the holy land and murdering Muslims during the Crusades, and Ugandans passing laws that make homosexuality a crime.
Inequality and the right of one group to kill "the other" are integral parts of the most basic texts of monotheism. The promised land of the Israelites was Canaan. How much freedom flowed from god to the Canaanites when he told the Israelites to obtain the promised land by killing the original inhabitants?
We now know that most homosexuality is developmental, not a choice. If your brain developed such that you have an attraction to your own sex, are you really free if god threatens to kill you for doing exactly what god designed you to do? Some Christians deny that's god's intent, but the bible explicitly says homosexuality is wrong. But we have no way to know whether that dictate came from god, or from some prig who didn't like homosexuals, pork and shellfish. This is the core of the problem of religion: there is no logic, there is no rationality, there is no consistency, there isn't even morality: there is only faith that god -- by proxy of his preachers -- is right. Like Nixon, no matter what atrocity god commands he is righteous by definition.
We can't talk about "god's will" as if there was a single god, because there are too many religions that come to too many completely different conclusions -- even in the same denomination. In Christianity alone we have the tribal Hebrew god who commanded his people to commit genocide against the Canaanites, the psychopathic god who mauled 42 children for deriding a bald man, the sadistic god who commands Abraham to kill his own son, the mercantile god who blithely condones slavery, the vengeful god who kills all the men, women and children in two cities, the beneficent god who commands the rich to allow the poor to eat once every seven years, and the universal "turn the other cheek" god of the New Testament.
And then there's free will: god can't make you do anything, can't give you a hint as to whether he really exists or not. It's up to you to accept his existence without any proof. But you have to find the one true faith without a lick of real evidence which one it is, and then live -- or die -- with the consequences. A core tenet of our legal system is the idea that you cannot be bound to a contract entered under duress. This threat of eternal torment drives millions of people into churches. It's extortion in the extreme.
Are people who believe in god really making a free choice? And do they truly believe in god? Or have they simply succumbed to the cynical logic of Pascal's Wager, and profess belief in god under duress, betting that if god doesn't exist they've lost nothing.
Other concepts closely linked to freedom are innocence and guilt. In Anglo-American jurisprudence one is assumed innocent until proved guilty. That is, we should be free unless our proven bad acts make our freedom dangerous to others. One cannot be punished for the independent actions of another, such as a parent.
Protestant theology cuts the heart out of the very concept of innocence with the dogma of original sin. According to Luther we are all filled with evil lust from our mother's wombs, sickness and hereditary sin because Eve (those evil women!) chose to eat from the tree of knowledge.
This dogma presumes that every generation of humanity is guilty of a trivial crime committed by a single woman thousands of years in the past. It is this kind of blind acceptance of guilt by association that leads to misogyny, anti-Semitism (the Jews killed Jesus!) and other ethnic hatreds.
Now, there are religions that don't have a monotheistic god. Some animists, Jains and Buddhists believe in no gods at all, and perceive all living things to be equal in a certain sense. They are concerned with finding inner peace, accepting the fact that suffering is a part of life and coexisting in harmony with the world.
But Western society and the Middle East are monotheistic. Part of the reason is that it's simpler, and it mirrors the way we construct our own societies and fits with our politics, with wise and important people on top who tell us what to do: the pope, the king, the CEO. Most people just want do what's right, so they turn to those who claim to know better. They want straightforward answers to the important questions of life and death -- where we came from and where we're going.
They're looking for certainty in a world that has never had it. They don't turn to religion to find freedom, they are seeking safety and stability, which are frequently at odds with freedom. Humanity has always been wondering at the vastness of the heavens and questing for the truth. We always will. There's a reason that we're still creating religions -- like the Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormonism and Scientology -- three thousand years after Moses left Egypt: the old religions have too many injustices and inconsistencies and leave too many questions unanswered.
There are more than 20 major religions in the world. Most of them have splintered into thousands of sects, many of whom are actively trying to kill each other. The Shiites and Sunnis are at each others' throats today in Iraq, and Catholics and Protestants were still killing each other in Europe 20 years ago. Theism breeds so much intolerance and violence that heresy often elicits greater hatred than being an infidel.
So when you look at the current state of the worlds' religions, the confusing miasma of dogma and apologetics, the lack of freedom in theocratic states, and the history of murderous internecine religious warfare, it's obvious that god provides no straightforward answers and no freedom. Various religions directly sponsor the oppression of women, gays, ethnic minorities, and adherents of other religions. People inspired by monotheistic Middle Eastern gods are no more noble and just than adherents of Eastern mysticism or pagan animist religions.
In discussions of religion believers constantly interject with, "But I don't believe that! That's not what my god says! My religion doesn't do that!" Others argue that you have to separate god from the human institution of religion. How can we claim to know what god says when he never speaks for himself? We only hear what the self-appointed prophets of god claim he says.
And more often than not, they speak against freedom and equality for all.
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