There are many ideas in the atheist community that we have some well-established responses to and attitudes toward, but I think some of these responses and attitudes need to be reconsidered. I think we have some “knee-jerk” reactions that, when you step back, don’t make a whole lot of sense.
The first idea is that religion is the main problem plaguing humanity. As Hitchens put it, “…but for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” To this I say, no; religion is not the problem. The problem is humans’ ability to believe in baseless ideologies. For example, Stalin and Mao used secular ideologies to drive their people; it did not take religion to make good people do these bad things. While religion makes up a large chunk of these baseless ideologies that motivate good people to do bad things, we have to remember that religion is not the entire problem, and we shouldn't label the entire problem “religion”.
The second idea is our reaction to Christianity violating the separation of church and state. Every few weeks, there’s a news story about atheists protesting some new form of government-endorsed Christianity (prayers in school, signs on public property, etc), and it’s not a bad thing to uphold the Constitution. But you know what I’d like to see more of? News stories about atheists protesting laws that protect faith healers who kill their children, or about atheists fighting to outlaw childhood circumcision. No one has ever died from a slyly placed nativity scene; no one has ever been mutilated by seeing the Ten Commandments in a government building. These are much more important issues than establishment clause violations, and yet they seem to get very little attention from the atheist community. I think we often take the easy route of defending the separation of church and state at the expense of more important, and more difficult, issues.
However, this may just be appearance (i.e. news companies prefer to cover the issues about the establishment clause), so I admit that this criticism may be skewed.
However, this may just be appearance (i.e. news companies prefer to cover the issues about the establishment clause), so I admit that this criticism may be skewed.
The third idea is liberalism in the atheist community; atheists tend to be more liberal. There’s nothing wrong with that, but the problem arises when atheists begin to think that liberalism is, itself, a part of atheism (this is largely what gave rise to “Atheism Plus”). Not only does this alienate conservative atheists, but it paints an inaccurate picture of atheists for the general public. Atheism does not dictate anything about politics, and atheist communities should not be taking sides on non-secular issues or treating conservative atheists differently.
We need to watch these “knee-jerk” reactions so that we can keep our priorities straight, keep our philosophy straight, and represent our beliefs accurately.
2 comments:
Bad standards on the ISSA blog.
Were this a discussion of only atheism, you may have had a leg to stand on. But in broadening your argument to apply to living, breathing "atheist communities", you fail to account for one of their primary attributes. While atheism is simply a lack of belief in God, full-stop, atheist communities almost without fail have added an extra component: A commitment to reason.
Take your first grievance. The worlds of Stalin and Mao were not so dissimilar to the that of the North Korean dictatorship which now teaches its citizens that their ruler is divine. Iconography abounded, an all-seeing governmental eye manifested itself more evidently than that of any Abrahamic deity. A devotion to leader and country was inculcated in these dictatorships which crossed the line into unreason and could be considered sectarian but certainly not secular. Hitchens argued as much: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRhczvtmbWE
As to your second gripe, you underestimate the steepness of the grade on which these uphill battles against religion are being fought. Tilting at windmills is not the sign of a community with a commitment to reason and limited resources. There was a campaign, for instance, to ban circumcision in California that ended in charges of anti-semitism and a huge popular backlash. The demography and culture are unfortunately not ripe for successful campaigns in the areas you suggest. To build off of past successes, removing the iconography which normalizes Judeo-Christian symbols in our everyday lives is appropriate. And if you think that's an easy task, maybe you should have a word with Damon Fowler.
"Liberal" and "conservative" are not static labels. Rather, they shift to define what comes on either side of what passes for the center in any given political epoch. Therefore, it is untrue to say that liberalism is not synonymous with the atheist community in the modern context. There is not a solitary social issue on which one can say with a straight face that the American right wing has come to their conclusion through reason. Growing mountains of economic data suggest that proactive governments, not those who have promoted austerity, have best weathered the global economic crisis. And yet, the conservative credo remains a dogmatic embrace of small-government principles as the cure for our ills. Libertarians may be atheists, but I've yet to converse with one who has a strong enough commitment to reason to fit in which the atheist community at large.
Nor should he. Without that commitment, we may well just show up every week to our meetups, pat each other on the back for our non-belief, and call it a day.
Those are all pretty good criticisms expressed very eloquently. I thank you.
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