Those Small-Minded Freethinkers

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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Atheist Activism Analysis: A Study in Contrasts

Atheists are in the news a lot these past few weeks. Though not headlining the nightly news casts every evening, there has at least been a lot of pixel space taken up by articles and blogs concerning the doings of activist atheists. These three separate phenomena (the bus campaign in Europe, Michael Newdow’s inauguration litigation, and the Freedom from Religion Foundation’s solstice “holiday” display) can serve as useful examples of contrast in the goals of atheists in the political/social realm.

Examiner.com’s Trina Hoaks (the site’s “atheism examiner”) raises an important question about the bus campaign:

. . . I do imagine that [the bus campaign] will encourage more atheists to come out. It has been a counter to religious ads that appear. It lets people know they have a choice. Aside from that, I am not sure what purpose this campaign will serve. I am left wondering how this bus will be steered toward its intended end.

And in that same vein, what are the intended ends of a suit to remove God from the presidential inauguration and the display of a holiday sign declaring that religion “hardens hearts and enslaved minds”? They are provocative actions, of course! But what are all three trying to provoke?

Kate Lovelady, leader of St. Louis’s Ethical Society, raises more doubts:

I don’t see the point in challenging the beliefs of those who do believe in a god. You’re not going to argue anyone out of their belief (certainly not with a bus ad), and you may in fact annoy them into clinging to their beliefs all the more.

So even supporters are feeling somewhat dismissive of the idea that any significant change can result from the bus ads, but at the same time I don’t think that anyone within the British Humanist Association believes they would suddenly alter public consciousness and usher in a religion-free world by the time the ad buy runs out. Rather, the ads seem to be a simple, polite, yet bold way to begin easing the path for, at first, tolerance for nonbelievers, and later, acceptance. Indeed, it may also catch many less-devout believers unawares in the midst of the day, spur them to ask themselves questions they never thought to ask. None of these “goals” are terribly definitive, nor need they be. Like any ad campaign for a product, these bus ads may simply serve to build a positive association with nonbelievers and the idea of a deity-free universe.

Compare that with FfRF’s solstice sign with its less-than-charitable take on religious belief. There are probably few within the atheist community who disagree with its sentiments, and Dan Barker, the organization’s co-president, told his supporters in a recent e-mail that the vast majority of responses he has received from fellow atheists concerning the sign has been overwhelmingly positive.

But while the bus campaign seems aimed at lifting one idea up, the solstice sign seemed designed to tear another down. This is not an inherently bad thing! Bad ideas ought to be torn down. The question becomes one of tactics, and I have had my reservations about the kind of rhetoric Mr. Barker and the FfRF have used in discussing religion…not because I disagree with their substance, but because I do not always see what their goal is.

I wrote to Mr. Barker about this, and he was kind enough to take the time to respond.

Mr. Barker told me:

Our point [with the wording of the solstice sign] was to be deliberately provocative, for state/church reasons, and it seems to have worked. If we had simply put up a nicey phrase, it probably would have been ignored. The resulting fury from our sign, and the resultant religious signs protesting our sign, made the point that the state capitol is not the place for such fights.

It appears that the governor is going to disallow all signs in the future, so that is a victory.

If he’s right, and the practice of allowing religiously-based holiday signs on government property is ending, then they have indeed accomplished their goal, and a good thing, too.

I also asked him about other examples of what could be construed as needlessly-combative rhetoric in media appearances, and he didn’t address those directly (my letter was, I now think, unnecessarily verbose, so I don’t blame him in the least). But I think they are important to note.

For example, on the nauseating Fox & Friends, Barker accused Christians of “stealing” the winter season “from us human beings” and calls Jesus a “little baby who became a dictator.” Meanwhile, on the equally revolting Headline News channel, Barker’s fellow co-president Anne Gaylor told the (blowhard) host, “I’ve never seen a nativity display that didn’t offend my aesthetics.” As far as fellow atheists are concerned, these sentiments might be 100 percent on the mark. But what do we hope to accomplish by using these tactics? And on Fox and Headline News, of all places, right on the enemy’s front porch, and certainly not a place where complex ideas are debated on their merits.

Perhaps their approach serves to encourage fellow atheists and would-be activists, as any red meat political speech puts fire in the bellies of supporters. But it is hard for me to see how these tactics help nonbelievers find an equal place at the cultural and political tables among the vast majority of the American religious. Because believers today don’t think they are ruled by a baby dictator, they don’t remember stealing a holiday from anyone, and they like their nativity scenes just fine. Nothing Mr. Barker or Ms. Gaylor says will change that.

But that does mean they should not say it. Certainly believers–and everyone else–should be educated and have their views challenged. Might there be better ways of doing so that do not exclusively inspire anger? That is a more difficult challenge. Trina Hoaks notes that any questioning of a person’s religious beliefs, no matter how reasoned or polite, is immediately construed as a personal attack:

People’s beliefs are as much a part of who they are as is, for example, their gender. They believe the purpose of their lives is to work toward an afterlife… remove that purpose then you, in a sense, remove their reason for living. You invalidate their very existence.

Considering this, it is easy to see why they feel attacked. And, when you attack people, they will automatically become defensive. When people are on the defensive, they do not listen.

But there must be degrees. The response to the bus campaigns has been, for an atheist initiative, remarkably positive. But that might mean that it is too weak, too milquetoast to have any lasting impact or relevance. The response to the FfRF’s anti-nativity campaign has been, outside the atheist community, almost entirely negative. But that might mean that it is reaching a wider audience, being heard through all the cultural noise, and bringing a marginalized group’s concerns to the forefront.

But I do know, just accord
ing to my Google alerts, that the bus campaign is getting significant coverage (especially in Europe, but the American papers are rapidly catching up). What I don’t know is if anyone is reading it. The solstice sign was sexier due to its critical message, and roused the theatrical ire of folks like Bill O’Reilly, so many more Americans not only knew about it, but were told that it was of grave importance.

And this week, Michael Newdow gets his hearing on his inauguration suit. He has been relatively mild on matters of rhetoric, but he is also a little odd, and his suit expectedly makes a lot of people unjustifiably angry. There has been a great deal of derision hurled at Newdow and all atheists over the suit, but support has also come from some unexpected places.

So when Barack Obama is finally sworn in, when the buses have lost their element of surprise, and when no one is thinking about waging wars on this or that holiday, how will atheists have emerged in the public consciousness? Will we be more or less accepted? Will people have a better or worse understanding about their atheist neighbors?

The atheist stock is volatile this season. Are we headed for a boom or a bust? I hope it’s the former, because I’m not sure atheists can take many more busts before we’re simply asked to leave.

Olympia Overreaction of the Day

Christmas Day edition!

Will this be the last in this series? Probably, at least until another secular group puts up another sign.

Today’s overreaction comes from Townhall.com’s Mary Grabar who rattles off the usual claptrap about the inherent Christianity of the United States, but reserves most of her fire for the FfRF’s mention of the winter solstice on their sign.

What they forget, or don’t know (thanks, public schools), is that child-sacrifice was common among polytheistic, “pagan” religions.

I doubt they’d forgotten that, but thanks, Mary. Now we know that the Freedom from Religion Foundation supports child sacrifice.

But how does she really nail the atheists? Surely you already know the answer. Cardinal rule: when unsure of how to really take someone down, compare them to Nazis! Yay!

. . . the literature of the Nazi regime reveals a deliberate attempt to transform Christmas into a pagan holiday in line with the pagan ideological goals of the Nazi regime. While the other socialists, the communists, presented a full frontal assault on religion (meaning Christianity) by dismissing it and denigrating it as the “opiate of the masses,” the Nazi socialists were a bit more clever.

For example, in a Nazi journal article, “New Meanings for ‘Inherited’ Customs?” archived by Calvin College’s Randall Bytwerk, author Hannes Kremer calls for creating “new ideas and new customs,” while also adjusting “those customs which have grown out of the people to the new ‘community of the Germans.’” These customs would be given new “content,” i.e., that which would advance the goals of national socialism over traditional Christian beliefs.

Similarly, Nazi Wilhelm Beilstein, in a 1939 brief titled “How We Celebrate Christmas,” advises taking the Christmas traditions back to their pagan roots, thus using them to promote the national socialist ideal of the “eternal life force of our nature”—a nature predicated on the belief in the biological superiority of the race.

Blah, blah, blah, Nazi, Nazi, Nazi. So, if you’re not keeping track, atheists are pro-baby killing and pro-Nazi. Wow. Mary got all that from an ill-conceived PR stunt. You really have to hand it to those scholars at Townhall.

But lest you think you’ve heard enough nonsense, Grabar hits us with this tired gem:

Freedom From Religion should remember that we have freedom of religion, not from religion.

So to all atheists: there’s nowhere to hide!!!