The rise of activist atheism: an explanation

Around the web and the media, a lot of opinionists have noted with varying degrees of alarm the rise of activist atheism. Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion is a huge international bestseller. A number of books sympathetic to Dawkins have also found success: Sam Harris’s Letter to a Christian Nation, Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell are the most prominent. Most of the opinionists have not ventured to explain why this brand of atheism is on the rise, at least in public perception, and the only argument I have seen offered is that it is a reaction to the rise of religiosity around the world, but especially in the US. While true, that answer only works on the most superficial level, treating people and ideologies as corks in a swimming pool reacting to nothing but currents and pressures. The actual answer is very simple, but you won’t have heard it because many opinionists just don’t want to accept it let alone give voice to it.

Let me start by explaining something very important: I am not particularly motivated to convert people to atheism. In fact, I wouldn’t be all that bothered if I was the only atheist on the planet. It would annoy me in the same way that I am annoyed that the world’s best-selling science fiction writer is Michael Crichton. That is, I would like everyone to share my opinion of religion in much the same way that I would like everyone to go out and buy books by Howard Waldrop and Terry Dowling instead of Mr Crichton. What I am passionate about is not atheism but secular humanism and Enlightenment values.

Regardless of one’s beliefs about the nature of god and/or gods or lack thereof, the Enlightenment and secular humanism promote reason and science, universal human rights, the separation of church and state, and freedom of speech and religion. It is quite possible to be both religious and a secular humanist (Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin) and it is also possible to be an atheist opposed to every tenet of the Enlightenment (Josef Stalin). I would rather stand beside the authors of the Declaration of Independence than the Soviet purges.

An obvious objection at this point would be to question why I want to defend atheism when I really care about humanism. Am I conflating the two? Not at all. The reason I am forced to argue this point is because it is the opponents of humanism who are doing the conflating. Those who are implacably opposed to separation of church and state or scientific rationalism are fully aware that they can’t take open potshots at the founding philosophy of modern Western politics, but they can happily attack atheism as a stand-in. When Phillip Johnson launched the Discovery Institute and the modern anti-evolution movement, he wrote a secret manifesto (since leaked) called The Wedge Document.

The objective is to convince people that Darwinism is inherently atheistic, thus shifting the debate from creationism vs. evolution to the existence of God vs. the non-existence of God. From there people are introduced to ‘the truth’ of the Bible and then ‘the question of sin’ and finally ‘introduced to Jesus.’

Johnson’s strategy is not to undermine the scientific evidence behind evolution but to smear it as “inherently atheistic,” knowing full well that many of his target audience will find that reason enough to go along with him. And, just as I am not especially interested in promoting atheism, Johnson is not really interested in attacking atheism. It’s a given to him, and to millions of Americans, that atheism is bad. Why expend all this energy knocking down a tiny, politically weak minority? Well, because atheism is really a stand-in for modernism and humanism. The Wedge manifesto has two defining goals, one of which is:

To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies.

And you thought this was about evolution! Suddenly we’re talking about morals, culture and politics. Johnson is rather coy in the Wedge Document about what those “legacies” are, mentioning only broadly the five-year objective of “positive uptake in public opinion polls on issues such as sexuality, abortion and belief in God.” Notice how Johnson has shifted the goalposts? One minute he’s talking about atheism, the next he’s using that as leverage on sexuality (a codeword for homosexuality), abortion (a procedure opposed almost exclusively by religious groups), and religious influence. He’s not really politically threatened by atheism. It is just a boogeyman to help him raise a cultural army. His real enemy is liberal humanism.

So what has happened that has created the recent whirlwind of atheistic activity? The answer is not simply that religion has risen in influence, it is this…

Not too many years ago, I was of the persuasion that the most important thing in the world was learning to get along with other people. I especially applied this to atheism and religion. I knew that atheists had been burned at the stake by the Inquisition, beheaded by Caliphs, imprisoned by Kings, and so on, but I also saw that the Enlightenment had already taken place; that whatever the influence of the church, there were no true theocracies in the West; that slavery had been abandoned in every Western nation; and that, by and large, things were improving over time. That is, I bought the old notion of progressivism. The world is always getting better.

Under these circumstances, I thought the best way forward was to make compromises and be firm but polite in argument against those who would wind back the Enlightenment. I reasoned that, with time, people would eventually see that what the world needed was more freedom, more tolerance, more willingness to accommodate. I knew that many others shared this view. And I was happy, at least moderately.

Then I noticed a few things. Despite the clear idiocy of creationism, it wasn’t losing ground. It was gaining ground. That was my first inkling that all was not right with my way of thinking. Then I noticed that the Muslim states were also not advancing. In fact, the overthrow of the Shah in Iran, which was fully understandable in terms of mass uprisings against oppression, was followed by the installation of a terrible, noxious theocracy. The Iranian people, inheritors of the vast Persian empire, had thrown off the yoke of the Shah only to replace it with the straightjacket of the Ayatollah. And although there were many Iranians who did not want this outcome, the fact remains that as a nation Iranians chose theocracy. And then, against all belief, an even worse theocracy sprang up: the Taliban, which made the Iranian religious police look like hippies. Finally, I saw that in the most advanced nation in human history, the US, science was losing ground to rank irrationalism — and worse, the irrationalism was gaining traction in the highest offices of the land. My belief in progressivism was shattered.

I still believed in firm-but-polite action. To some extent, my story “Written in Blood” is an argument against both fundamentalism and over-reacting against fundamentalism. I was encouraging Westeners to reach out to moderate Muslims, to give them the opportunity to distance themselves from the homicidal wing of their religion. Unlike progressivism, I still believe in creating dialogue between moderates. But my belief has been tempered by recent experience.

You see, over the last twenty years or so, when I’ve been advocating reaching out to moderates, I’ve seen the complete failure of religious moderates to reach back. Friends of mine who are Catholic and who openly oppose the official church position on contraception, homosexuality, and abortion, nevertheless decided to have their children baptised in a Catholic church and to continue with their regular Sunday mass. Now I just can’t understand that. If I belonged to a voluntary social organisation that was vocally and implacably opposed to me on major moral issues, I would leave. Even though my friends believe in Enlightenment values, when it comes to actually speaking up for their beliefs they instead give support (both financially and as respectful attendance) to the most powerful anti-Enlightenment organisation on Earth. It’s a very tribal dynamic.

Next week: Tribalism in action