David Ernst Chats with the World

Cassaundra has been sending me occasional emails updating me on the status of the deliberations of a pack of angry atheists. Led by such notables as Richard Dawkins, these folks are “sick and tired” of being tolerant of religious people and are out there daring to call Believers stupid, and far worse, in public appearances and in their books, which I gather are climbing the Best Sellers Lists.

This has been fanning the flames of my own personal brooding about this issue of being an atheist in a society where the main-stream is religious. The thing is, I hate proselytizing. I don’t care what the sect, whether I think you’re right or wrong, I hate it all. And when atheists start proselytizing, they are at least as obnoxious about it as any other religious group (or maybe I’m just more sensitive to it, since I would like to associate them… whatever, it’s bad).

Well, while driving to Urbana, I heard a piece on NPR’s All Things Considered about this band of (as NPR called them) “New Atheists” and their fundamentalist rants. I feel like the issue is going main-stream, I feel some compunction to … define my position a bit more, to ally myself but also distance myself from these “New Atheists”. So, the blog, of course, is as public as I easily get, and here goes.

A couple of years ago, when NPR started its version of This I Believe, I thought a lot about submitting something to them and even drafted something. It was an interesting process. I wrote a bit about what I consider to be my religious beliefs (which I refer to (endearingly, and mostly to myself) as Post-modern Mathematical Atheism), but I knew I wouldn’t get into much of the details of my religion. I mean, how can you sum something like that in 350-500 words? Plus, they (wisely) don’t want religious rants on that program. So, I just wrote about a sense of the main themes. But, what I quickly found myself veering towards was the fact that, more than the beliefs themselves, what was really compelling to me was that I have the freedom to believe what I want to, to think about the ideas, to discuss them with others as I see appropriate and helpful to my “spiritual journey”, and to challenge my own ideas and reevaluate them as I see fit. In short, my freedom to determine my own religious beliefs feels more dear to me than the beliefs themselves, even though the beliefs were what I felt more interested in writing about when I started the exercise.

Now, I do not believe that one actually comes to such beliefs by onesself. If I’m remembering correctly, I even typed into the draft, “there may not be a single original idea in what I believe”. I hear ideas from all sorts of beliefs from all sorts of people, and I don’t for a moment think that if I lived in another place/time or had different experiences that I would believe exactly what I do. But, nonetheless, I get to take all of that input and my own thoughts and come to the conclusions that seem correct to me. And anyone who tries to muscle their way into my head is bound to offend me, even if I agree with some or all of what they are saying.

So, my preferred style of religious debate is for people to speak and/or write about their beliefs, without being accusing or intrusive, and to allow others to listen or ignore them as they see fit. And thusly, I think, have most atheists presented their beliefs (take Bertrand Russell, for instance… or even Daniel Dennett for a more contemporary example).

Well, I think this is what people like Dawkins are sick and tired of. Or, more accurately, they are sick and tired of atheists feeling like this is the only appropriate approach. Because there is a small but (alas) unavoidable percentage of Believers actively engage in rhetoric and activities specifically designed to convert people, they think that atheists need to fight back. It’s basically the same thing as negative campaigning in political elections… People don’t like it, but if one side is doing it, the other side almost has to or they will surely get trounced.

And, of course, atheists have been getting trounced for a long time. The NPR story reported that only 1% of Americans identify themselves as atheists. That seems low to me based on other figures I’ve heard, but whatever the case, Evengelical Christians are huge in comparison, growing fast in number, and (at least many of their most vocal members) have no compunction about saying nasty things about atheists.

So why shouldn’t atheists say nasty things about evangelicals? They’re certainly justified in doing so. But, I still don’t like it. But this is what I can’t come to terms with. I don’t feel like I should have to be quiet at let the Christians control the debate. But I don’t feel like getting into a mudslinging contest with them either. So, what do people like me do?

Do we stand on street corners and start preaching about materialism? I don’t think this would help, everyone I’ve ever seen do anything like that was a wacko.

Do we organize a bit and start going door-to-door with smiles on our faces and nice clothes on our bodies, and hand out brochures about joyful and ethical living without gods? Although I think it could be fun, doesn’t everyone hate those people’s intrusions? I guess not, because it must work with some of them. I don’t know. I know the best thing I’ve ever said about such an uninvited visitor is that they left quickly and politely.
Do we raise a little money and start putting up billboards that go just a bit beyond the secular humanist messages that we already see? Something like “Live Ethically and Enjoy Life… you don’t need any god to do that.” I can only imagine the uproar such messages would cause among the Faithful, and it’s kind of fun to think about. But billboards are also pretty annoying, even if far less intrusive that people going door-to-door.

Of course, something that should be done if Atheism wants to get more credit as a religion is to congregate. There are efforts in this regard. The wonderfully named Center For Inquiry has an Indiana “Community” which gets together regularly for debunking sessions. And as many Unitarian Universalist friends have told me, atheists are welcome to their services, and many happily attend. The biggest problem with this is that people like me don’t really want to congregate like this. I’d rather spend my time elsewhere, in general… although I probably would go to the CFI sessions more often if they weren’t so far away from my home.

But I think the first step might be to redefine the mission a bit. There’s a problem with “atheism” as a term, because it defines itself as a negation of something else. I think this matters. I think Believers naturally and immediately take assertions of atheistic beliefs as an afront, because rather than sounding like “I believe in *this*” it sounds like “I don’t believe in *that*, or anything like it!” So, just professing the belief sounds like something of an attack. I think I should start using the term “materialist” more often, because it doesn’t suffer from this trait, even if to my ear it actually sounds *more* anti-religions (“not only do I not believe in your god or anyone else’s, I don’t believe in your soul or your spirit or any thing else that is supernatural”). And really, all of this focus on “belief” is probably misguided for me, too, because really it’s that I’m *disinclined* to believe in things, especially just because they seem like beautiful ideas or because someone else tells me that they are true. I believe in things that can be deomnstrated, the rest I just wonder about. This is why some people like me latch onto the word “skeptic”. It makes sense, but I don’t think it has religious legs, so to speak.

Whatever the case, the message that I would want to send to Evangelical Christians is not “we’re right and you’re not only wrong but also stupid” as seems to be coming from the New Atheists. Of course, again, since they are responding to a message from the Christians of “we’re right and you’re not only wrong but evil, and you should be put to death and start your eternal burn in Hell”, I can’t say I don’t understand the temptation to respond with such vigor. But, I didn’t like that kind of name calling on the elementary school playground, and I still don’t like it today. So, I’d rather send a message like “Look, you think I’m going to burn in Hell when I die. I think you’re consciousness is simply going to cease when you die. We each think the other is wrong. But we don’t have to agree, we can just live peacefully and talk about our beliefs civilly and let everyone else come to his or her own conclusions.” Of course many — probably the vast majority — of Christians in the United States already accept that message. But there’s obviously a vocal element that do not accept it, and I suppose that it’s natural and probably even good that some atheists are willing to get nasty in response to the nastiness. But, I myself have no interest in joining them. Let there be Peace on Earth, and let it begin with me.