State of Protest

Haven’t you heard it? If you’ve ever visited an atheist or skeptic forum, it’s quite likely that you have. It’s the “why won’t you leave us alone?” retort from believers. “Why do you hate us?” “Why do you hate God?” The more profound and underlying question we’ve been asked, and the question we should be asking ourselves, is, “How far should my activism reach, and why?”

You can scale the relative level of activism in most atheists similarly. Starting off as a believer, or at least a follower, we are quite often sure of ourselves. Perhaps we haven’t encountered any opposing points of view. Perhaps we’re stubborn. Perhaps we’re overwhelmed by the religious beliefs and practices of our families. Whatever the case, many of us start off on the theist end of the spectrum, and are quite often advocates of that way of life and belief.

Then we’re hit with some sort of doubt. Bart Erhman, for instance, was awstruck by the fact that the icon of his belief system, the Holy Bible, was severely flawed with contradictions, rewrites, and surreptitiously inserted new passages. How could the bible be inerrant, how could a real god endorse such a mishmash of not only contradictory but also violent and cruel edicts? Doubting is the catalyst that causes us to self-reflect, and to analyze all that we know about what we’ve been told. It’s required for the next stage of development - agnosticism.

Perhaps I’ve intentionally skipped a few minor middle steps, but the phase between doubt and disbelief encompasses a variety of positions, depending on the individual, from confusion to agnosticism to denial to relapse. I like to call this phase the “I don’t know” phase, which is why I associate it with agnosticism.

Eventually, hopefully, we reach a point at which we question why we’re even bothering with the question of “is there a god?” We realize that, since there’s no empirical evidence of the existence of, at minimum, the divine beings alluded to in every god myth, we narrow our scope of world view to two main areas:

First, the area of spirituality. This isn’t to say that spirituality exists or it doesn’t. It’s a concept, and there comes a time where most of us in some way address whether it has meaning to us. When a loved one dies, do you think he or she “goes to a better place?” How do you fit that into your world view? Do you think there is something invisible that is greater than you? Do you think there is destiny, fate, karma? These are things that even agnostics question, even after having rejected their former god of choice, and it’s something that, until all our questions are satisfactorily answered by science, we will be inclined to address.

What matters about that area of interest is that it may help determine your level of acceptance of certain types of activism, because even without a god or doctrine to guide you morally, you may reach for a more metaphysical state of moral choice based on your concepts of spirituality. Hardline skeptics and atheists tend to eschew this point of view, but they cannot deny that people are habitually, if not naturally, sentimental toward the supernatural and spiritual potential in the world.

Second, the area of society. This is not what you think, but how you deal with what others think, and how they deal with what you think, and the acts based upon such thought. This is your relationship with, essentially, the rest of the world. More specifically, it’s what’s mutually tangible. What kinds of laws, regulations, taboos, etc., affect you, and what kind of effect you can have. On our scale of development, this is often a stopping point (or sometimes a starting point for those who were never theists to begin with). It’s a plateau representing a static world view, with no inclination to have that world view affect society.

Beyond that plateau, there is a minority of skeptics, rationals, atheists who attempt to influence society in a variety of ways. The extent to which one is active is often based on the extent to which one has rejected religion. So, there are varying degrees of activism (degrees of intensity) and varying methods of activism. And there’s at least one person or group of people out there in the world opposed to every single type. Surprisingly, many are from the set of non-believers.

The degrees of intensity can be described in another abridged scale: start with the “closet” atheists, who, although in their own minds are atheists, either deny that fact to others, or try to hide it, lest they be reprimanded, punished, or shunned by family, work, friends, or others. Sometimes these closet atheists end up creating alternate identities for use on the Internet, a place in which they can freely express opinions without coming under personal attack. The next level is the avowed atheist — someone who isn’t afraid to tell others, but who doesn’t necessarily seek out others in order to tell them. Next is the conversational atheist — someone who actively tells others, perhaps seeking them out, in order to tell them about non-belief. That category can be split between those who seek just to converse and share ideas, and those who are on the fringes of being active deconverters.

Proactive deconversion is the next level, and it shares its spot with proactive lobbying — efforts either to convert believers into non-believers, or efforts to create a society where law, the government, and public places are secular. My opinion is that this is where most non-believers choose to draw the line. Beyond that line lies anti-religious activism. This is an activist state that actively attempts to purge society of all (or most) things religious. This category can be split between targeting only religious activities that cause specific harm, and targeting all religious activities, regardless of perceived harm (with the idea that all aspects of religion are harmful, because they’re religious).

An example of the latter point of view is where, recently, the Swedish government is making it illegal for any school, public or private, to teach religion as if it were true.¹

There are two more primary levels of activism. Next is targeting everyone, treating religion as a disease, in a sense, and trying to disinfect everyone, even parents who want to teach their children about religion. In 2001, Richard Dawkins wrote a letter to the British secretary of state, asking that the faith status of existing schools be removed, allowing children to choose for themselves what to believe, in a non-religious school environment.² Essentially, wipe away religious schooling institutions, and eliminate faith-based labeling for children, despite parental wishes. This is a step further in the direction of activism because, unlike Sweden’s attempt to eliminate teaching of religion “as if it were true,” Dawkins (at least then) advocates eliminating religion as a label of any sort — no religious institutions at all, no parental force-feeding of religion, and especially no state-based advocacy of religious belief.

Christopher Hitchens is even a more ardent supporter of this “no religion” point of view. Even from the title of his best selling book “God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,” one can infer that Hitchens decries all things religious, and would probably, if in a position to do so, wipe the world clean of religious practice (but for the sake of scholarship, not religious history, I’m sure). Some would call this “militant atheism.” My view is that that term is misused, and should apply only to the final niche in the spectrum of activism.

Real militant atheism is literally taking up a weapon and fighting those who support religion, and in some cases those who merely don’t support real militant atheism. Consider the Crusades. Real militant atheism is similar. It’s a purge of religion, similar to what Hitchens seems to desire, but instead of doing so through legal means, it’s doing so with violence. Have we seen much of this? Hardly. Perhaps none at all, at least in what’s commonly displayed on the news. There are countries, though, that will torture and kill some believers.³ There are also, assuredly, individuals and factions worldwide who, like their religious counterparts, would take up arms in order to fight for what they consider to be freedom from religion (especially if they think that a purported secular government has overly mingled its affairs with religion, effectively creating a theocracy).

Inevitably, those who fall somewhere on the active side of the scale will be directly or indirectly criticized for such activism by those who believe they are the targets. Here’s a fine, succinct, example of what I mean, thanks to Atheist Eve:

To be an activist at any level, one must expect some criticism. My analysis here isn’t about criticism, however, it’s more about ethics. Obviously, the more advanced on the activism scale, the more criticism, but is there a point on the scale that clearly goes too far?

One potential way to analyze what’s an appropriate level of activism is to consider what “the other side” is doing or has done to promote religion. Religious groups have been spending centuries sending missionaries all over the world, establishing churches, shrines, meeting places. They’ve been creating supposed charitable organizations and activities, hospitals, (and in Mother Theresa’s case, places to go suffer and die), youth organizations, private schools, camps, heavily funded lobbying groups, and more. They’ve started and perpetuated military campaigns, sometimes backed by governments, sometimes by radical militants outside of the government. Entire nations currently sway with the religious breezes blown by zealots on both sides. What hasn’t been done in the name of religion? If we are to take the religious as examples of anything, it’s that they have overwhelmingly dotted the landscape of history and the world with religious activism spanning the entire scale. Therefore, citing what the religious are doing or have done is not a good way to measure the ethicalness of our own activist behavior.

Another way to think about where we should fall on the scale is from the consequentialist point of view. Let’s not think too much about what we’re doing on the small scale (whether it be handing out atheist pamphlets or assassinating religious zealot leaders), but what we’re trying to accomplish for the sake of humanity. This point of view may require the activist not only to believe that religion is wrong, but also that religion is so harmful that it must be eliminated by any means necessary. However, that is not the only side one can take as a consequentialist. It could be believed that a well-balanced world is, in the long run, more beneficial for humanity, and that the actions that must be taken should be limited to those which would ultimately treat religion and non-religion as essentially equal. There are those who already think this is the case, and there are those who think that we have a long way to go to accomplish something even close to a balance. Consequentialism, is, then, too ambiguous and subjective to use as a guideline. The same could probably be said of any utilitarian theory — they’re all quite subjective, and goal-oriented.

Let’s just say that I carried on with an analysis of every ethical theory that I could come up with. I don’t think I would find a satisfactory answer to my query. The reason? I don’t know all there is to know. I don’t know and I cannot know what’s in store for humanity. I only know what I’ve seen, what’s occurring right now, and what has apparently occurred in the past, with regard to the rife between secularism and religion, and the firm grasp that religious groups have on so many aspects of the world today. I’m not advocating violence or war on behalf of non-religion. What I’m saying is that I’m not quite sure that it’s unethical, depending on the situation, and from whose point of view it is making the decision.

Most assuredly, though, if the religious zealots of my nation stood up in arms and attempted to create a theocracy by force, I would retaliate in kind. I think that’s essentially happening in some parts of the world today. What’s happening here is that the religious have infused themselves into the government and essential positions in society in order to perpetuate that hold on power and control, and we, as rationals, as skeptics, as atheists, need to do at least the minimum of what it takes to reverse that trend and keep it reversed, regardless of any criticism from any source. I just can’t tell you exactly how that’s to be done, and how far we need to go in order to get it done.

1. God’s Honest Truth, Andrew Brown, Guardian.co.uk. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/oct/18/godshonesttruth [↩]
2. Children must choose their own beliefs, Richard Dawkins, Guardian.co.uk. http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2001/dec/30/schools.religion [↩]
3. China, among others, has had a blemished history of military-backed opposition to religion. [↩]