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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