|
Atheists
Gravatus
A call
to end the stigma.
“I am nothing,” she says, her eyes avoiding mine.
In her face I see contradictory tinges of apathy and embarrassment,
further complicating the interpretation of her already polysemous
declaration. I am nothing. Maybe she thinks her life is a failure.
Maybe she feels ineffectual in some specific regard. Or maybe
she has accepted her relative unimportance in the vast cosmos.
At least
explicitly, however, her statement was meant to convey none of
these. It was a response to a simple question: What’s your
religion?
We should
not be surprised by the linguistic implications of her answer.
The very term we use to describe her defines her by what she is
not. But she’s afraid of that term now. She’s too
often heard it used in a derogatory fashion: as an apocryphal
tag for Hitler, for the “Godless” communists, for
a whole array of evils that our Great Christian Nation toppled
in the 20th century.
Distrust
of atheists is certainly nothing new. John Locke, who of all philosophers
had by far the greatest impact on the founding of the United States,
was suspicious of atheists, believing them “immune to the
covenants and bonds that hold together human societies.”
That sentiment has reverberated through the intervening 230 years,
today as deeply ingrained as ever, and much more insidious.
In 2006,
a study conducted by the University of Minnesota found atheists
to be America’s most “distrusted minority,”
as well as the group that parents are “least willing to
allow their children to marry.” Journalist David Baltimore
observed in an American Scientist review that atheists occupy
virtually the same place in society today that homosexuals did
fifty years ago. Atheists are subject to at least as many everyday
exclusions and offenses as other minorities, and in turn enjoy
the least protections. Federal courts have repeatedly privileged
religious objections over identical arguments based on secular
morality. Groups like the Boy Scouts of America do not allow atheists
into their organization. Neither did the Veterans of Foreign Wars
until just recently rescinding their ban. Concordantly, statements
like “There are no atheists in foxholes” deeply insult
atheist men and women who have served in the military –
so much so that an organization called Atheists in Foxholes has
sprung up to protect their rights. A general assumption of religious
faith pervades the most celebrated periods of the lifespan, from
weddings to funerals to national holidays and almost everything
in between.
A Gallup
poll found that 51% of Americans believe it is impossible to be
a moral person without believing in God. This view is shocking,
considering the U.S. government’s principle of separation
of church and state implies theism is not a necessary component
of moral and just decisions.
But politics
remains an especially unwelcoming place for atheists. An intolerant
voting base makes it virtually impossible for an atheist to be
elected to public office. There are three openly gay congressman
and eleven Jewish U.S. Senators, yet despite there being more
atheists in the United States than Jews and homosexuals combined,
there are no atheists in either Congressional house. The President
of the United States is an evangelical who considers his international
policy to be an extension God’s Will. In a 2001 New York
Times article entitled “Confessions of a Lonely Atheist,”
Natalie Angier draws attention to the rhetoric used in one of
George W. Bush’s first speeches as President. Although meant
to be a call for conciliation, unity, and inclusion, Bush’s
speech asked “every American” for one thing: “to
pray for this great nation.” Senator Joseph Lieberman, whose
own religion’s history of persecution has apparently not
imbued him with empathy for similarly disaffected minorities,
is quoted by Angier as stating that our Constitutional freedom
of religion should not lead us to “indulge the supposition
that morality can be maintained without religion.”
Perhaps the
most surprising and ironic phenomenon, though, relates to the
high proportion of atheists among two of our country’s most
respected professions: scientists and professors. Far from having
a positive impact on the general acceptance and perceived trustworthiness
of non-religious individuals, it appears that scholars themselves
display a sort of self-loathing intolerance for atheists. How
else can we explain the disapproving and even mocking response
within academia to Richard Dawkins’ admittedly passionate
breed of atheism? Throughout history, religious extremists have
persecuted and oppressed freethinking individuals. Today, fundamentalists
viciously attack scientific principles that contradict their beliefs,
often using the public school system as a battleground. Yet when
a scientist offers a passionate defense and – scandalously
– even ventures to go on the offensive, he is ridiculed
as being overzealous and “fundamentalist” in his own
right. Perhaps most scholars’ long residency in secular
intellectual havens has made them forget just how atheists are
treated outside of those enlightened enclaves.
Clearly,
the very use of the term atheism needs to be rethought, and it
may need to be discarded. Not only does atheism encompass such
a broad range of belief systems that it’s difficult to offer
an essential definition that isn’t a negation, but the term
is inaccurate in its implication that there are only two categories
of ideologies in the world and offensive in its suggestion that
theism is the natural default from which all other belief systems
diverge. This argues for a subdivision of the classification of
atheists, which in turn calls for scholarly efforts to better
understand atheistic worldviews.
Politically,
however, there is a more immediate and workable remedy to the
unequal treatment of atheists. Over the past half century, our
society has (very) slowly honed its aptitude in protecting minorities,
and the most important step in this case is simply to add atheism
to the list of those in need of protection. And although some
extremists would call for a substantial reduction of religion’s
influence in the West, they represent a tiny fraction of atheists
in this regard. The overwhelming majority of atheists are models
of tolerance, perfectly comfortable coexisting with individuals
of all faiths and backgrounds. It is time they receive the same
respect.
By
Les Beldo
|
