Those Small-Minded Freethinkers
by Paul Fidalgo
Mark Fefer of Seattle Weekly critiques recent moves by atheist activists, and just when I think he may be on to something, he loses me. While Fefer (a believer who nonetheless opposes religious encroachment into government) praises attempts to remove prayer from the inauguration ceremony, he has no patience for the Freedom from Religion Foundation’s much-derided solstice sign, which I had reservations about as well.
Fefer:
. . . what keeps me from sending the Foundation a check is that they’re also the ones who installed that pro-atheism sign in the state capitol building in Olympia at Christmastime—the one that was picked up by Bill O’Reilly and caused Governor Gregoire’s phone to ring off the hook for days.
And no wonder: The sign read in part “Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds”—exactly the kind of boneheaded provocation that undermines the cause. The Foundation also paid for the “Imagine No Religion” billboard that was up this summer along Denny Way.
Okay, okay, I understand you so far. Tell me more.
The atheist lobby and its standard-bearers, like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, attack all religion as dangerous and delusional. But religion is no different from sports, music, or any other part of our culture. It can be a life-enriching experience that promotes community feeling and social values. It can also lead to destructive extremes. Should we Imagine No Sports because of steroids, concussions, and Pioneer Square knife fights?
Ooooh! Lost me!
Now this analogy is actually really clever from a rhetorical standpoint, I have to give him that. But those “Imagine No Religion” signs don’t imply that without religion, a few bad apples will merely be thrown in the trash. Many of those signs, at least, show the Twin Towers, reminding us that the stakes are not something on par with steroid abuse, but death and suffering on a massive scale, all for someone’s mythical version of piety. Rather, my understanding is that the phrase is meant to evoke thoughts of the calamities that have been wrought in religion’s name. As FfRF’s Annie Laurie Gaylor said about that campaign, “The Twin Towers would still be standing, for example. If people couldn’t pretend ‘God told me to do this’ or insist ‘God is on my side,’ most wars could have been avoided.”* Fefer’s is a funny, yet woefully mistaken analogy.
Just to put a bow on it, he advances an old canard, one which I think might be the most popular these days: atheists-as-fundamentalists:
Fanaticism, bigotry, and the divisive intrusion of religious dogma into our public life are what we should be fighting against. And we’ll have more success when atheists stop being as small-minded and doctrinaire as their enemies.
At its worst, the FFRF’s sign was bad PR. But doctrinaire? There was no doctrine involved, no code of behavior demanded; activist atheists’ battle is not to squelch the rights of the individual, but to keep government from endorsing religion or imposing it upon those who do not wish it. That is an opposition to doctrine.
But as usual, it’s easier to deal with the discomfort or cognitive dissonance atheists can engender in otherwise smart people by categorizing them as “just as bad” as the bad folks on their own side. It’s a misunderstanding of the atheist outlook and the atheist cause, but it also helps moderate believers feel better.
I think it’s a good thing for activist atheists to hear critiques on strategy, even from those who don’t necessarily share all our views. But it’s also important for misconceptions to be corrected and discouraged, because nothing can be learned when we’re not talking about the same thing.
* Update/Correction: Loyal reader Kenzoid corrected my misunderstanding that the FfRF had been responsible for an iteration of the “Imagine” billboards that featured the Twin Towers. They were not; those particular images are, in fact, someone else’s doing. Apologies. This is what happens when your team of researchers falls down on the job! Stupid interns! They’re all fired!**
** I have no interns or researchers of any kind.
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“you’re being intolerant of my intolerance” and “if you’re so open-minded why don’t you believe what i believe” appears to be the height of logic for some people.and since when did people start strapping bombs on their backs and blowing up innocent bystanders in the name of football?
Or wait…have they??? *shudder*
Good article, Paul, but one thing…every photo of the FFRF billboards I’ve seen are their stained glass motif, not anything to do w/ the Twin Towers:http://ffrf.org/news/2009/portlandbb.phpNot a big deal, but just an FYI. They don’t really try to make that point in their signage, at least.
Oh HO, it looks like they weren’t actually responsible for that iteration. Prepare for a correction!
Nicely done, Paul! Very transparent correction, yet the addition of Annie Laurie’s quote kept the point the same. Well played.
Should we Imagine No Sports because of steroids, concussions, and Pioneer Square knife fights?Ooooh! Lost me!Actually, this point makes perfect sense to me. I confess that when the first “Imagine No Religion” posters appeared I rather liked them, not being religious myself and thus having no religious sensibilities to offend.But then I thought how atheists would feel if the message were reversed. Just as some atheists have pointed out that not a few theists would loathe seeing “We Trust in No God” on their money, so too, how would atheists feel the first time they glanced at a billboard with a picture of open Cambodian graves and/or Pol Pot with the slogan, “Imagine No Atheism.”When you put yourself in the shoes of the religious, it’s very easy to see why “Imagine No Religion” is over the top.
Anonymous,As you saw with my amendments here, the actual sign did not have the Twin Towers as I had thought. That said, it seems to me that the comparison you make is not quite apt: religion was a motivator behind the 9/11 attacks and others, while Pol Pot, et al, were not committing their crimes because of or in the name of atheism. Those hypothetical ads would be misleading, so offensive on a whole different level.
Yes, a specific radicalized religion was the motivation for the 9/11 attacks, but “Imagine No Religion” over a picture of the Twin Towers lumps elderly old ladies who go to a local Methodist church with suicide bombers.How about a different poster: A photograph of a lynching with “Imagine No White People” on it? (After all, race was a motivation for lynchings, so what’s the problem, eh?)Incidentally, a religious person could make the case (erroneously, I believe) that atheism did not motivate people like Pol Pot, but that it did enable them: a world without postmortem rewards and punishments might not inspire genocide, but it might be remove one more deterrent or obstacle to already genocidal individuals, making the path from thinking about genocide to actually doing it an easier one.
I don’t see any reason why they use the word “free.” Free from what? Free to what? Does the one which they are freed from make them an asset of the society? I actually took a moment to experience a little bit of being a freethinker, look at what I got. http://glassee.wordpress.com/2011/02/13/on-freethinkers-shoes/