Today I was hoping to publish a "victory parade" diary celebrating MakeChessNotWar's victory in the 2009 DKos chess tournament. I've been working on it for the past few days, collaborating with the winner via e-mail, and I'm quite proud of it. However, my plans have now changed.
I've now had the "wonderful" privilege of reading some of the more ignorant anti-atheist bigotry from the same user in each of the last three days (here, here, and here). For those who don't want to sit and actually read through such tripe, I'll briefly summarize his main points:
- All atheists are in favor of things like warfare and torture because some of the more prominent atheists in the media (Christopher Hitchens & Same Harris) support them.
- Popular culture dictates that atheists are allowed to say whatever terrible things they want about religion but are exempt from criticism.
- Atheism is an intellectual vacuum.
- "There are no moral principles of atheism which forbids prejudice, bigotry, hatred, violence and warfare."
- Atheists are unhappy, thin-skinned people who are just crying "victimhood."
Oh, and let's not forget this rather bizarre observation of his on Tuesday:
There's no future for humankind in space. There's no future for humankind on Mars. There's no future for humankind on the moon.
Nor is there any future for humankind on the Earth. Humans have chosen a dead-end path leading to extinction and nothing else.
Humans really should have lived differently but our species never was peaceful and could never choose peace over self-destruction.
I'm not going to speak for all atheists -- the only person I speak for is me. But allow me to respond to each of these gross misrepresentations of atheism separately. You can also read from a previous diary of mine in the Atheist Digest series where I and others tried to debunk some of the same dangerous myths about atheism.
One, atheism doesn't have any leaders. Not all atheists are in lock-step with one another. I, for one, don't take any cues from atheists such as Hitchens and Harris and hold up their opinions on religion as fundamental truth. I don't hold up anything as fundamental truth, though as a scientist, I do marvel and the vast mysteriousness and wonder of the world and universe around me. Actually, I don't consider myself a fan of either Hitchens or Harris at all, specifically BECAUSE of the former's vehement support of the Iraq War and the latter's disgusting defense of torture, not to mention his attempts to demonize Muslims as evil. Just because I might share a lack of belief in a deity like these two men do, doesn't mean that I agree on everything (or even most things) they espouse.
Two, it's actually been my experience that atheists are the ones who have to keep their mouth shut about their skepticism, lest they be derided as "offensive." That's why star athletes are more than comfortable with offering their praise to God for winning games, or why sports commentators like Rick Reilly can bash atheists on the air as though we're all subversive fanatics who are secretly rooting for religious athletes to fail, and why Liddy Dole can create an anti-atheist ad called "Godless" to shamelessly smear her opponent, as though being an atheist were any reason to denigrate another person.
By contrast, there's a well-documented religious litmus test in this country that says in the court of public opinion, you basically HAVE to believe in God before voters will feel comfortable casting a ballot for you.
The diarist to whom I'm responding complains that skeptics like Bill Maher gets off scot-free for making jokes about Christianity or Islam. I typically find his political humor to be pretty sharp and funny, though I sometimes find his humor a little too edgy for my own personal taste. But so what? He's a comedian. It's his job to push the boundaries of humor, and I don't have to consider his word the gospel. I don't consider him my "leader" just because he and I might both be atheists. I wouldn't call Jon Stewart a "leader" of Jews or Stephen Colbert a "leader" of Christians either (although that would be pretty damn funny), and Stewart also has no problem mocking religious zealots.
I should also point out that I didn't see this anti-atheist Kossack complaining at all about how someone like Bill O'Reilly can comfortably use his religious faith to demonize the late George Tiller as a "Tiller the Baby Killer," or how a prominent religious figure like Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor can rip atheists as being "less than fully human."
My general feeling is that nobody -- nobody -- is immune to criticism. Similarly, no one is immune to prejudice -- atheists can be prejudiced too. If I have a problem with organized religion, maybe it's because there are religious institutions in America that are dedicated to convincing its followers that things like gay marriage and abortion and atheism are evil. That's not to say that all religious Americans believe as such, or even that most of them do. Rational, progressive voices -- and that includes Americans of all stripes -- know better than to prop up everything a pastor or reverend says and accept it all as truth.
Three....an intellectual vacuum? Huh? Because I don't believe in God, I'm therefore devoid of having rational discourse? I have plenty of great conversations with people in my family about religion. Civil discussion, even! In fact, some of them are religious themselves! Being an atheist doesn't mean I haven't thought about religion clearly or carefully. Actually, I find the history of religion in America, from the Puritans to the Quakers to the rise of today's Religious Right, to be quite fascinating, and well worth a read. But more importantly, even we atheists do find great wonder and beauty in the world -- I can even find the photographs of this prejudiced Kossack to represent beautiful images, even if I don't accept that their beauty is proof of God's existence.
Four, I've heard that argument way too often. That atheists are inherently immoral, that there is nothing to prevent atheists from becoming the next Stalin or Pol Pot. Yeah, I know -- we atheists all have a Secret Atheist Button in our souls that we're all just DYING to push, and when we push it, we'll set our inner rage loose on the rest of the world.
All kidding aside, it IS possible for atheists to have a moral center. There is something that prevents me from committing crimes -- it's called the law. I don't believe in God, and live my life under the assumption that there isn't one. But I don't steal from or murder other people. The reason I don't steal from or murder other people has nothing to do with fear of punishment in the afterlife, or eternal damnation of the soul -- I don't believe in those things. The golden rule of doing unto others as I would have them do unto me, the need to be a good person, and the fear of punishment in this life (imprisonment) are enough to keep me from committing crimes.
Lastly, I'm actually a quite happy person. I have a pretty good job with a salary and decent (though not perfect) health care. I went to a great college, got a master's degree, and made lifelong friends in the process. I have a loving and supportive family, a family that happens to be full of skeptics like myself. I also have the best girlfriend a guy could ask for, who happens to be Catholic (though not a frequent churchgoer). I have all of these things, and I'm also a person who doesn't believe in God. I suspect that there are many atheists in this country just like me. I also realize that I've been pretty fortunate in my lifetime, and I'm especially grateful for that.
Yet, in this demented bigot's mind, all of us atheists are unhappy, angry, bitter people with nothing better to do than to tear religious people down. Apparently, all we're good for is being miserable and making everybody else around us miserable too.
You know, it's pretty amazing, but believe it or not, when I wake up each day, I really don't ponder all the ways that I can disprove God's existence. Being an atheist is just one part of me. But according to that diarist, it's a terrible part of me that must be shunned and kept at bay. I dare him to replace the word "atheists" in his diaries with another historically disenfranchised group, like say, blacks or Jews, and let's see if he comes to the same conclusions -- because I fail to see how that prejudice is any different.
If I'm unhappy about anything, it's probably because there are discriminatory laws in six states which prevent atheists like me from holding public office or testifying in court as a "competent" witness. It's because there's a whole conservative TV network whose pundits find no fault with bashing atheists as though we're the scum of the earth, and it's because the general public generally and irrationally distrusts atheists outright. I just wish that these things would change so that we're treated as equals by the rest of society. These things I've mentioned don't really make me angry, as much as they make me sad. There are lots of things that upset me -- the downturn of the economy, two wars, stalled health care legislation, etc. I don't really see myself as a "victim," per se -- I haven't really experienced lifelong, systemic prejudice for being an atheist (though others may have). But all in all, I think my life is pretty good at the moment, and I can roll with the hand that I've been dealt.
I realize I might be preaching to the choir. I also feel pretty confident that if he responds to this diary, that bigot will ignorantly use my arguments as evidence for how "angry" all of us atheists really are -- of course, I'm the "angry" one despite his doomsday belief that man is quickly headed for extinction. Frankly, I think he's publishing his prejudiced rhetoric for no other reason than to get attention. But you know what? The choir to whom I preach is a rational choir -- and that choir includes atheists AND religious Kossacks. So, as I often do at the end of my atheism diaries, I'll end with something I wrote a few months ago:
Atheism is, for better or worse, a part of my identity. I will not run from it. I will not accept being demonized for it. Yet I still dream of the day when it no longer matters if one believes in a god or not. I do not feel I need the guiding principles of a higher power to be a good person. I will respect the choice of religious Americans -- their choice is guaranteed by the Constitution. I just ask for respect for my choice.