Last Friday, a New York Times headline declared: "Atheists Debate How Pushy to Be." This ongoing debate among atheists -- "Just how much should we confront the religious?" -- is nowhere near resolution.
Last year when I visited Minnesota to spend the winter holidays with my family, I spoke with a Christian friend about my budding efforts as an atheist promoting religious tolerance and interfaith work. She too was excited about the idea of bringing people together around shared values in spite of religious differences, but near the end of our conversation she asked me a pointed question: "I'm a little confused. Isn't part of being an atheist trying to talk people out of their faith?"
She's not the first to ask me that. In fact, it's one of the questions I get most often. It seems that because many vocal atheists cite "the end of faith" as their goal, atheism is often perceived as being actively anti-religious to the point of being almost evangelical. Reza Aslan lays the case out well:
There is, as has often been noted, something peculiarly evangelistic about what has been termed the new atheist movement ... It is no exaggeration to describe the movement popularized by the likes of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens as a new and particularly zealous form of fundamentalism -- an atheist fundamentalism. The parallels with religious fundamentalism are obvious and startling: the conviction that they are in sole possession of truth (scientific or otherwise), the troubling lack of tolerance for the views of their critics (Dawkins has compared creationists to Holocaust deniers), the insistence on a literalist reading of scripture (more literalist, in fact, than one finds among most religious fundamentalists), the simplistic reductionism of the religious phenomenon, and, perhaps most bizarrely, their overwhelming sense of siege: the belief that they have been oppressed and marginalized by Western societies and are just not going to take it anymore.
I'm not sure I'm in full agreement with Aslan. In my first piece for Huffington Post Religion, I noted the undeniable reality that atheists do in fact face discrimination in America. But his critique of the zealous nature of "new atheism" is difficult to deny. When a large and vocal number of atheists say that their number one goal is convincing people to abandon their faith, it comes as no surprise that our community is construed as extreme and aggressive.
This is a major problem for the nonreligious because it limits our reach. In the words of Carl Sagan: "The chief deficiency I see in the skeptical movement is its polarization: Us vs. Them -- the sense that we have a monopoly on the truth; that those other people who believe in all these stupid doctrines are morons; that if you're sensible, you'll listen to us; and if not, to hell with you. This is nonconstructive. It does not get our message across. It condemns us to permanent minority status."
The reason I do interfaith work is because I want to erode this kind of "Us vs. Them" thinking. The day before the New York Times raised the issue, I spoke to the Secular Student Alliance at Yale University about my work and addressed the question of whether the nonreligious should engage in interfaith work. Inevitably, our group conversation turned to the subject of "evangelical atheism" and whether this was an appropriate description of tactics applied by "new atheists."
"I may lose all of my credibility for saying this," I said with a chuckle, "but I have zero interest in talking people out of their religious beliefs. The only religious beliefs I take issue with are ones that infringe on individual freedoms -- for example, when someone's religious belief informs their conviction that I, as a queer person, should not be free to marry whoever I choose. But their belief in God, when it does not contribute to actions that inhibit my liberty, is of no concern to me."
All the more, I added, I actually celebrate religious beliefs that motivate people to engage in social justice work. Historical figures like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Thich Nhat Hanh, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and Monsignor Oscar Romero cited their faith as the primary impetus for their social justice work and launched their efforts through interfaith coalitions. Because of their efforts and the efforts of others like them, I actually believe that the world would suffer a serious loss if religion disappeared.
To my delight, many students in the room expressed their agreement.
The nonreligious have gained a lot of traction due to the voices of "new atheism," but I believe that we are at a crossroads: We have come to a point where we can continue to express our legitimate frustrations in a way that alienates the religious, or we can look inward to find a comfort in our own convictions that will enable us to begin the courageous and important work of looking outward to respectfully engage with others.
I am encouraged by a new generation of humanists, atheists, agnostics, skeptics, freethinkers and others who wish to operate in a way that is constructive instead of deconstructive. We are led by people like Lucy Gubbins, an atheist who co-founded the University of Oregon's Alliance of Happy Atheists, who is working to both create secular community and identify opportunities for collaboration with the religious. Gubbins and those like her are more concerned with these positive efforts than with striving to de-convert the religious. And our numbers are growing every day - several Yale students approached me after our discussion to ask how they could get involved in interfaith work.
A few days before my talk at Yale, I met with students from Tufts University's Freethought Society, which has been actively working to get a Humanist Chaplain for several years now. Inside Higher Ed wrote an article on their efforts last year that highlighted the need for nonreligious communities. In the article, Greg Epstein, the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University, said, "A lot of students come to campus knowing they're not religious, but also not knowing what they do believe. [Humanist communities can] help them learn more about the positive aspects of their identity, not just what they don't believe in."
It's just a hypothesis, but I wonder if fewer nonreligious people would actively try to dismantle religious communities if we had a more coherent community of our own. Perhaps if we spend less energy negatively "evangelizing," we'll find ourselves well positioned to reach out in ways that build bridges instead of tearing them down.
"How pushy should we be, then?" We're asking the wrong question. Instead, let's ask ourselves: What are we pushing for?
Is our top priority trying to do away with religion altogether, or is it trying to make the world a better place? If it is the latter, then we must change our approach, reach out to religious liberals and moderates and work together.
Follow Chris Stedman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ChrisDStedman
Robert Wright: Why the "New Atheists" are Right-Wing on Foreign Policy
Evangelical atheist - Conservapedia
Atheist clubs are springing up in American high schools, warns ...
New Atheism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wired 14.11: The Church of the Non-Believers
New Atheism has five distinctive doctrines | Comment is free ...
Lose all credibility, with whom? That would describe most atheists. Even the 'new atheists' when they're not writing books, or debating religion on stage for money. People pay them for those views. They are not unsolicited.
This is bizarro world. None of the "New Atheists" ever stated that eradicating belief was their number one goal (though some like Sam Harris may wish for it). These were academics whose number one goal was 'education'. Atheists were criticized for not believing in God for so many specious reasons it practically begged for some academics to back it up or shut up. This elevated the most persuasive of them to prominence because A) believers now had solid targets to debate and B) there were a lot of people who felt that way, but could not verbalize it. There is no way to discuss atheism with a believer without appearing evangelical, other than not to discuss it at all. Which is pretty much what we've always done. How can you show respect for a belief while at the same time defending your choice to not believe it. It's your kind of faith-centric worldview that marginalizes atheists and falsely equates them with fundamentalists.
Seems atheist has taken on such a negative meaning in popular discourse, more Anti than A, including anti-spiritual, etc; Sooo, a lot of people are using Non-theist which could be spiritual but not religious or spiritual without the supernatural stuff, yada, yada, yada...
It isn't evangelical to protest loudly the influence and control by those that are religious of our government policies and laws. It isn't evangelical to protest loudly in our public commons with free speech. In a country that provides more rights to those that are part of religions, those that are not, must speak out. That the American tax code supports religions (no matter what they are) is having all citizens pay for this. This is not evangelical to protest, but an act of pure American citizenry.
Books are written by men.
he could have created the tv 2000 years ago and speak his word on tv ... of course that is why it doesnt make sense. an all powerfull god that can create the whole universe yet he is very silent these days...
So believers , did one of your really talked to god ? what does his voice sounds like ?
'Pushing For What' - There is no doctrine that dictates what atheists as a collective do and don't do.
I won't be an apologist for and towards systems of beliefs that disrespect and deny rights to women and gays. I will not treat bigotry with gentle hands. I will not stand for the discrimination that stems from fundamental religious convictions. In other words, I won't disrespect myself by appeasing the religious masses in order to 'not hurt someone's feelings'. They're worried about their feelings while entire groups of people are being denied equal treatment under the law because of religious beliefs.
The term "evangelical atheist" is an oxymoron. Fundamentalism is based on blind faith and atheism is based on reason. You are comparing apples to oranges here.
If you want to condemn atheism, you cannot do it by attempting to give it the same characteristics as evangelical fundamentalism.
How do you know your emperor is not the one without clothes? In any case, atheists are not the one revealing reality to us but I find it interesting that you imagine it that way. Feel free to believe whatever you'd like, but I agree with Blackyowe-- the hollow ridicule of the kind directed against Christians on a blog like this simply leads to a loss of willingness to dialogue. (I will answer your other post next, sorry I didn't have time to get back to it until now.)
Beliefs cannot be embarrassed; so I suppose "countless" is strictly true (ie, nobody can count it).
Whether any particular *believer* is embarrassed is an entirely separate issue, but I suspect not as often as you would like for believers to be embarrassed.
Embarrassment happens when a person realises his or her inadequacy. As many or most believers do not consider themselves lacking, it will be difficult to make a believer embarrassed for his or her beliefs.
I don't know why this didn't go through, below, but ...
mggwa: "You see, if the only thing binding atheists was disbelief in something, or a lack of belief, it makes as much sense to imagine a whole body of people organizing around the non-existence of dragons."
If the majority of people believed in imagined dragons, and that belief was having an effect on our government, our education, and our civil rights. And, non-dragon-fearing people were being marginalized and demonized ... I'm sure that there would be "people organizing around the non-existence of dragons."
I was also blocked when I credited hallucenagenics with the first conception of god
Your response is correct and helps fine-tune what the original assertion should have been -- the union of atheists is NOT strictly speaking the non-existence of God, a thing they should be no more concerned about than unicorns. The unity is the existence of perceived threats to their liberties, which to ensure, they are perfectly willing to impose upon the liberties of believers.
The First Amendment seems particularly wise. Basically it says "hands off" the whole topic at least so far as government is concerned. This was created in the day when the things you fear simply did not exist; there were no public schools for instance.
Now we have a situation where government is increasingly meddling in private affairs and a school cannot fail to take a side, either deliberately or by negligence, in affairs not permitted for it to take sides. Either it teaches there is no God, or it teaches that there IS, in a hundred subtle ways.
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/10/18/atheist-sam-harris-steps-into-the-light.html
You are right. People should read Sam Harris, follow his arguments, understand his view, and then and only then come to conclusions and perhaps criticism of his views.
Say what? Well it will give me something to dig up I suppose.
I am not really very interested in Dawkins. A non-theist involved in a theistic argument does not seem very useful.