The Chris Moeller Archives

The outing of a non-believer

After much soul-searching, I've decided to share something personal about myself with all of you. It's been hinted at to such a degree that I'm not even sure how big a surprise it will be for many of you: I'm an atheist. For years I've considered myself an agnostic, but this label has grown to seem incomplete to me in the spirit of both the definition and the facts. To me, the absence of evidence for a deity is the absence of evidence. I stand entirely unconvinced.

Nobody becomes an atheist because it will make their life easier. Atheists are one of the most unpopular groups in America. A University of Minnesota study in 2006 found that 47.6% of Americans would disapprove of their child marrying an atheist, that's compared to 33.5% for marrying a Muslim and 27.2% for an African-American. (Try online dating for a while as an advertised atheist.) Thirty-nine percent of those questioned in the survey agreed with the statement that atheists "do not share (their) vision of American society," and that percentage is significantly larger than even the other marginalized groups appearing in the same survey-- 26.3% for Muslims and 22.6% for gays and lesbians. The head researcher for the project said at the time of the release that atheists represent "a glaring exception to the rule of increasing tolerance (in America) over the last 30 years."

There is only one member of either house of the U.S. Congress, California Rep. Pete Stark, who has said openly that he does not believe in a supreme being. That makes exactly half as many open atheists in the Congress as there are Muslims, largely considered otherwise perhaps to be the most marginalized group in America these days. At this point in history, it's a pretty absurd notion that an atheist could be elected president, a longer shot in probability than a woman, I would argue, or a second African-American. In 1987, incumbent vice president and presidential candidate George Bush (the "moderate" one) told a reporter, "No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God." Former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura has said that he was formally saying goodbye to his political career a few years ago when he made the public announcement that he was an atheist. Additionally, atheists are the only minority group that are boldly excepted in the U.S. pledge of allegiance. The words "under God" were added in the 1950s for the express purpose of excluding atheists and making them to feel uncomfortable.

Of course it's a long-popular notion that atheists are less moral than are god-fearing persons, but this is silly, as polls arguably confirm. For example, atheists more than almost any individual religious denomination are more likely to be opposed to tactics of torture, to war, or even to religious intolerance in general. There are few, if any, recorded incidents of atheist suicide bombers anywhere in the world.

It's important now that closet atheists like me come out into the open. In England last fall, the visiting head of the Roman Catholic church likened that country's growing legion of godless individuals to potential Nazis; and one of his cardinals, Walter Kasper, described his boss' arrival in multicultural London as landing in a "Third World country." The dynamic hypocrisy of these comments in regards to human morality recall, of course, that the first individual referenced, Pope Joseph Ratzinger, was himself a member of the Hitler Youth as a teen, and that he, first as a cardinal, and now as pope, obstructed and continues to harbor at the Vatican fugitives from a secular justice system that were wanted in connection with serial child molestations.

Earlier this year, Ratzinger also declared that the clerical ordination of women a sin equal to male priests of his church forcing children and young adults to suck their penises. These are extreme examples perhaps of institutional religious immorality (although never forget that Ratzinger is the head of a church of 1.1 billion people) and certainly not exclusive to one faith, but nevertheless, I would not hesitate to put the morality of American atheist leaders (whomever they are) up against the leadership of any religious sect that one could name, and I venture to guess that if there were notable moral failures on the part of these leaders, there would be less blind allegiance to those persons by atheists (and less group-think in general) when it came to protecting their public leadership. Atheists don't even recognize a leadership hierarchy behind their beliefs.

Last summer, as I was perusing the Des Moines Farmers Market with a friend and fellow atheist, it warmed our hearts to come upon an information table for the Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers. The group evidently had staffed a table at the popular weekend event all summer long, and Central Iowa atheists have clearly been working hard towards a more visible public presence.

The American Atheists' 37th Annual National Convention will be held in downtown Des Moines this coming weekend (at the Embassy Suites, Thursday through Sunday). The Iowa Caucuses, held early in 2012, clearly had a lot to do with the timing of the group's decision to hold this year's event in Iowa's capital city (many presidential candidates have been genuflecting in our state recently), but it would also seem that the organization of our local group has been doing a formidable job of getting the word out and warranting such a high-profile event for 2011's Easter weekend. Paid advertisements and billboards displayed last summer caused quite a public reaction, with a shot of media attention, and those ads have returned this spring along with the arrival of the convention. The Embassy Suites has graciously agreed to remove the Gideon Bibles from the guests' rooms for the weekend, and 500 to 700 participants are expected for the event, including me.

Attendance at the convention is one way that local atheists can be more visible, but activities to promote the cause come in all shapes and sizes. Coming out to your friends and family is very important. You can refuse to stand for that Irving Berlin schlock "God Bless America" at the ballgame. (What, the national anthem's just not enough anymore, Commissioner Selig?) In his book "I Drink For a Reason," comic David Cross suggests you can have subversive fun with that hotel Bible: "Next time (and every time) you are in a hotel/motel/Holiday Inn (say what?!), take the Bible and inscribe, 'Best Wishes, [Your Name here].' Then make notes randomly throughout the book, circling passages and writing things like, 'WTF?! Is this for reals? Bullshit!' etc."

I recommend the writings of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens for thought-provoking material, and I want to thank my atheist friends for their insights and for our many probing discussions. People of faith, by definition, can't easily be swayed by arguments of logic or reason, but, in my opinion, Dawkins, the author of "The God Delusion," came up with the best analogy in the support of evolution and in support of critical thinking.

To paraphrase a question posed by Dawkins, a British biologist, if one sees a skyscraper standing tall in the urban landscape, do we ascribe to it the opinion that it was placed there by a crane, or rather by an invisible hook dropping from out of the sky? In other words, is it more probable that the building was the product of various materials and building blocks, of gradual construction involving increasing levels of complexity, or an inexplicable hand, of sorts, reaching down from the clouds? This analogy speaks to the often-heard argument from theists that the complexity of our life is too great for it to all be accidental. It's easy to be deceived by our eyes and by our limited comprehension of all the elements. Yet it's not accidental when we understand how that complexity has evolved through the theory of natural selection. Darwin's famous theory is really just "chance plus time," and there's great peace and tranquility for me in contemplating that indifference of our universe.

When atheists boldly express their opinion of a godless universe, they're often accused of being as arrogant, intolerant, or even dangerous in their absolutism as religious fundamentalists. This is a false parallel through and through. I don't know of a single atheist who believes that he or she wouldn't be swayed by evidence. This is the complete absence of prejudice. To be absolute in your religion is to dismiss all of the others and to close your mind to any number of different ideas. Every Christian I know, for example, dismisses the concepts of Greek gods, of wizards and witches and warlocks and spells and potions, but many will readily admit simultaneously that the source of their faith is likewise unprovable. They've made a random selection of belief that-- unsurprisingly-- often has almost everything to do with the cultural influences that have surrounded them throughout their lives.

To the contrary, being absolute in your atheism is to not discriminate against any theories until they can be safely dismissed according to the evidence, as so many have been over the years, such as the idea that the world is only five thousand years old. This concept of free-thinking, and even some of the terminology that's used, causes confusion for people of faith. Evolution will always be only a "theory" despite all of the existing evidence supporting it because to meet the rigorous standards applied by science, we must always be able to attempt to prove or disprove it. This is the same standard applied to the "theory of gravity," which has not been nearly as politicized as the theory of evolution in the United States. Yet evolution has been examined in connection with virtually every living and non-living entity in our studied existence, and has never been disproved. Just one animal or plant or microorganism on Earth, out of millions and millions that exist, has the potential to disprove Darwin's brilliant theory, yet none has. Scientists would throw out the theory immediately if contradictory evidence was discovered. Indeed some of Darwin's original theory has been discarded over the last century and a half for discovery of conflicting evidence, while other elements still have been improved upon from the time of his published hypotheses on "The Origin of Species."

Our belief in something that cannot be proved or disproved may or may not have a value or currency for ourselves or for our collective existence, and that question about the merits of religion can be debated, but whether it has that value or it doesn't, it still doesn't make those individual unsubstantiated beliefs any more true. Under the inherent guidelines of that irrational thought, if the evidence doesn't match what's written in the ancient text, it's the evidence that must be thrown out, not the ancient text. As the writer, actor, and now-public atheist, Ricky Gervais, eloquently wrote last year in the Wall Street Journal, "You can have your own opinions. But you can't have your own facts."

When half or more of an ancient text has been discredited for logic's sake, at one point to do we discontinue the desperate clinging to the remaining part and just throw the whole thing out entirely, filing it under the category of human fallibility and error? Throughout history, science has disproved many, many suppositions that were presented as fact in ancient religious texts, and today, basically as a result of this, we have "liberal/reformed" and "conservative/fundamentalist" sects found within almost each different faith. Many religious people try to find ways to reconcile the newer conflicting evidence with the beliefs of old, for the good of mawkish sentiment, I guess (this is your "liberal/reformed" category), or they simply choose to go "full-cocoon" and attack the science. The religion stubbornly survives in either case and more children than not are still being raised with the idea that unquestioned faith is a virtue when it isn't.

I believe atheists are unpopular because their presence in the world forces people to think critically about our most culturally-ingrained beliefs. It's considered a social faux pas-- in fact, an act of outright hostility-- to challenge somebody's religious beliefs in a public setting. The brilliant attorney Clarence Darrow famously put William Jennings Bryan's religious beliefs on trial during the Scopes court proceedings in Tennessee in 1925. Darrow's cross-examination of the witness wound up serving essentially as the end to the elderly Bryan's long career as a politician and moral leader. This frowning-upon of confrontation by society is what causes many atheists and rationalists to stay silent, yet we see the troubling results all across our cultural and political landscape when non-rational and non-proven assertions (about subjects even beyond religion) take hold. Oh, do we ever!

That's why I find it important now to speak out and to encourage others to do the same. Our beliefs about our cause in life and our existence should be forced to withstand public challenge and scrutiny. Persons in power, as well as our own fellow citizens, should know that atheists and humanists are tuned in to the world, that we're engaging ourselves in it, and that we're prepared to hold each of them to the same rigorous standards of logic and rationality that we hold our own most cherished personal beliefs.

posted by CM @ 4:22 PM