Those of you who have been with me from the start know that I used to talk about religion a lot - sometimes thoughtfully, sometimes not. I also talked about my own lack of belief and the various ramifications of that, and in recent months - maybe even a year or so - I’ve kind of stopped. It’s hard to pin down why, exactly - granted, I don’t really feel like I’m suppressing myself, but that fact alone feels a little strange.
I think, at the centre of it all, is Reddit. Not just Reddit, but the reaction that Reddit provokes. Specifically, the atheism subreddit, which in general has a fairly sneering tone when it comes to faith. To reduce the entire board to this is stupid, of course - they’ve also raised a lot of money for charity, provide a groundswell of support to keep religion out of public schools and provide a decent level of support to people coming out as nonbelievers to their parents (still a phenomenon in the US, and not one that deserves to go unnoticed). I’m not interested in trying to defend it, though - for every good deed, there are a thousand generalising comments on how Muslims are naturally violent, unreserved praise for people like Bill Maher, and the scourge of all internet media that’s commonly referred to as a ragecomic.
But there’s the tone, really - one that says, without exception, I know more about your religion than you and you deserve all the mockery and vitriol in the world for believing such a stupid thing. It’s more of a celebration of a behavioural attitude than a hub for a belief system, and that sucks.
Before I explain why this sucks and how it forms other people’s attitudes, let me restate my opinion. I call myself an atheist. By this, I mean an absence of belief in God - and that’s different from what we might call “radical atheism”, which would constitute an active non-belief in God. I’m what Dawkins might call “agnostic in principle, atheist in practice”, which means that while I believe that it’s ultimately impossible to tell if the central tenets of the Judeo-Christian myth are horseshit (or any other, for that matter), the chances of any religion being right are so improbable as to make living on the off-chance that they’re right a colossal waste of time. Some of you disagree with me on this. That’s fine.
Part of what makes a Reddit attitude so tempting (and I’ll be abbreviating it to that, complications and all, for the rest of this piece) is that atheism can be - isn’t always, but certainly has the power to be - an extremely informed choice. Where faith is informed by gut instinct and cognitive dissonance, atheism can come out of prolonged study of the sciences, philosophy, and - yes - theology. In terms of sheer knowledge, there is no argument that religion wins, which is why it defaults to faith. Faith - and let’s get this clear - is belief in something without substantive evidence to back up those beliefs, and if you’re in a debating class then it makes you laughable. If you’re just going about your everyday life, it’s usually fine. Reddit sees the world, human society and a vast history of social development as one big debating class.
It’s also tempting because - surprise, surprise - religion has a way of fucking with people. One of the most unqualified, idiotic bastards ever to set foot on the earth might be on the verge of being elected President of the United States of America because there is a steady base of conservative Christians who will vote with their Bibles and not with their minds. There are countries around the world where blasphemy - as loosely defined a word as that is - is a punishable offence, sometimes by death. American schoolteachers are hounded for stating their lack of belief - by parents, by the press, and by religious figures who have no business opining about education in the first place. And this isn’t to touch on the long list of atrocities committed by the Catholic church, some of which have affected people I know closely. Religion - that is, doctrine, scripture and the weekly congregation - can fuck people up, and it’s short-sighted to say that it’s not easier to do so if you have faith to back it up.
Like I said, though, I don’t want to mount a defence, because if there’s anything I’ve learned since shutting up it’s that all of this is problematic. For all the bad things done in the name of religion, there are countless examples of good, kind actions with the same motivation. For every mouthy zealot screaming on a street corner, there are quiet churchgoing types who never let their beliefs hurt or marginalise others. And we have devoutly religious people at the top of their field. You don’t have to be an atheist to be a fantastic artist, or a world-class musician, or an engineer. There are thousands of areas where having faith shouldn’t count against you, and maybe even the odd one that might help your chances. There’s nuance when you’re talking about weighty subjects like this, because people are nuanced.
Unfortunately, it’s kind of hard to be an atheist and have others assume that you recognise this nuance. Let’s immediately assume that we’ve covered the religious people, however many (and it’s clearly not all), who might think less of you because you haven’t found faith. Weirder to me - and here’s where Reddit comes in - are… okay. This is where it gets tricky.
Here, I’m talking about moderates. People for whom religion, or the lack thereof, is largely irrelevant. Cultural Christians, apathetic agnostics, and everyone in between. Exactly the sort of people who would never dismiss atheists based on non-belief alone, but instead - and here’s the kicker - choose to do so because of what they saw on Reddit. Or because of Richard Dawkins, or Christopher Hitchens, or Bill Maher.
This is where you run into stereotypes. That atheists are duty-bound to sit you down and critique your approach to life. That we get together and laugh about how the rest of the world is so fundamentally wrong. That we believe that ganging up on isolated, innocuous believers and delivering them a Truth-Punch to the face is always justified. That - fuck, I dunno - we think Facebook is a fertile breeding ground for intelligent conversation. That we all resent our mothers. That we think atheists are the worst-treated demographic in the world. They’re frighteningly common, to the point where some of the kindest, most thoughtful people in the world don’t blink when they substitute “atheist” for “Reddit user” and follow it up with a bare-faced insult.
This didn’t used to be common. Of course it didn’t - as recently as 2010, I was talking about atheism around once a week, sometimes in less-than-tactful terms (that is, the kind that disparage people of faith and not the faith itself), without the knowledge that people might look at me differently because of it. Maybe I was sheltered, maybe I’ve just run into more people who stand by these stereotypes since, but it feels like there are more now. Every month that passes, the Internet’s presence in our lives grows. I can’t help but think that might have something to do with it.
It… I don’t know. I don’t want to be too simple and just say “it sucks”, because wherever this originates - and I think stereotypes are self-perpetuating, and that even if r/atheism turned around overnight and became Puppy and Cute Bunny Central people would still find a reason to keep those stereotypes going - it convinces decent people that it’s okay to not be decent when it comes to a certain segment of the population choosing to espouse their beliefs.
Part of what spurred this on was thinking about what atheism means to me, other than non-belief. I guess, above all, it means being good for goodness’ sake - clawing out a system of ethics based on trial and error, on learning from your mistakes and sticking to your guns when you get things right, and on recognising the intrinsic value in the happiness of others rather than doing it all to secure myself a place in heaven. It means celebrating the knowledge we have and the pursuit of more, with no restrictions apart from ensuring that we hurt as few people as possible along the way. It means engaging with people as ends in themselves - figuring out how they work, both as individuals and as members of larger groups. These are big, weighty concerns, but they’re all things that religion tries to answer in a different - and, I believe, inferior - way.
And let me embellish that last sentence: when I say that I think another belief system that contradicts mine is inferior, that shouldn’t be controversial. It’s just natural - and if you’re a Christian, or a Muslim, or Jewish, or a member of any of the other plethora of faith-based ideologies out there, you by default think that atheism is an inferior viewpoint, because it doesn’t prioritise faith - something that matters to you, obviously. Call that sense of exterior inferiority belief, or knowledge, or something in between (and it’s usually thought of as knowledge by the subject), but it’s ultimately irrelevant - it’s what you do with that sense that matters.
Navigating atheism in conversation is difficult, because there are red flags everywhere - opportunities to go the stereotypical route and say “no, but you’re wrong, and this is why”. I used to do this a lot, until I realised that no-one was listening. It didn’t stop the red flags - it just altered my attitude towards them. I’ll still point them out when they’re harming others - that’s why I’ll savage Catholic doctrine and hierarchy when it’s being used to legitimise the worst possible crime I can think of - but in conversation, it’s a point of conflict that isn’t necessary. Better to learn someone else’s outlook, no matter how wrong it seems, than futilely attempt to stop it in its tracks.
But, then again, let’s say that you’re talking about religion. (Let’s assume that these conversations happen, because they do.) There’s this assumption that if you’re talking about a faith in an all-powerful, all-knowing benevolent God who has explicit instructions on how to live your life, and that you’re talking about how that faith has impacted on your life, then when it comes to the atheist’s turn then their only justified response is to say “I don’t believe in God” and never say why or what we do believe, even if we’ve just heard exactly how Mr and Mrs Jones came to believe in Jesus in the first place.
The non-existent atheist congregation isn’t an inevitability, it’s a missed opportunity.
What is this, then? A plea would sound a bit desperate. Since I restarted this blog, I’ve been attempting to make it more of a personal record (though success as far as that goes has been limited) than speaking to the masses, simply because those masses aren’t there anymore. Maybe it’s just me expressing my frustration with people - the intolerant bigots on one side, and the people who should know better on the other. Then again, maybe it’s a re-affirmation of beliefs I used to hold close to my chest - beliefs I’ve let stray away from me over the last year or so to my detriment. Maybe it’s a bit of both.
Goodness, is that the time? I have to go to work tomorrow. Dear oh dear.