Religion on Facebook
I’m not the biggest fan of Facebook, but I have an account because it’s an effective way to get and keep in touch with people. Like most people I know, I don’t have every field of personal info filled out. Most of those omissions are things like “Favorite TV Shows,” stuff that doesn’t really pertain to me or which would make me feel silly to have taken the time to enter. There is one field which I have a real purpose in leaving blank, though, and that is “Religious Views.”
Facebook thinks that my religious views fall in the category of “Basic Information” about myself. I guess for most people, religion is a very prominent part of their identity. And, I’ll be honest, not being religious is an important part of mine, though I don’t think it’s important in the same way. I like to write about atheist issues on this blog because I don’t think they get enough press, and this feels like my own small contribution to the cause. But I don’t talk about atheism all the time. I don’t wear clothing or jewelry that proclaims my atheism, I’m not a member of atheist clubs or activist groups, I don’t go up to people on the street and ask them if they’ve heard the Good News about atheism.
There was a push a while back for people to list “atheist” as their religious views, as part of a sort of atheist coming-out day. I just feel like that’d be listing “teetotaler” in the “Favorite Alcoholic Beverage” field. That is to say, missing the point.
For me at least, being an atheist isn’t an active thing. It’s a lack of being anything else. Because of that, I don’t feel a need to proclaim it, any more than you feel the need to announce that you haven’t shaved your head. Having a shaved head isn’t a fundamental part of being human, and no one (assuming they couldn’t see you) would assume that your head was shaved. Similarly, I don’t think being religious is something “basic” about all people, and I don’t think religiosity should be presumed. By not filling out the “Religious Views” field, I cause the line not to show up on my profile. That’s a much more accurate description of my religious beliefs than a label could ever be.
Secular, not atheist
For the third post of Atheist Week, I want to talk about a common complaint I hear and read with regard to rules that restrict things like teaching creationism (or “the controversy”) in science classrooms, or singing Christmas carols at school assemblies in December, or including an invocation at government events. Some people argue that failing to mention or include religion is equivalent to teaching children to be atheist or enforcing atheism upon the nation. Steven Novella’s recent post rebutting Michael Egnor includes an example of this. (Responding to a blogger, Egnor writes, “Perhaps Mr. Sandefur desires to indoctrinate children in atheism, perhaps he doesn’t.”)
This complaint is incredibly misguided. I think it’s fairly obvious why, so this post will be relatively short. It’s not an explanation I usually see given, though, so I think it’s still worth putting out there.
A lack of prayer or a lack of Christmas carols is not equivalent to forcing everyone to chant together, “There is no God.” It’s merely an omission of something which applies to the beliefs of some but not all. Very few people actually incorporate religion into every moment of their lives. Even people who would describe themselves as devout don’t continually sing hymns or thank God aloud in a speech before every action. Ten more minutes of the day spent not praying or not singing hymns or not talking about how awesome God is doesn’t actually make much difference.
The fact is, “secular” does not mean “atheist.” From Merriam-Webster’s:
1 a: of or relating to the worldly or temporal <secular concerns> b: not overtly or specifically religious <secular music> c: not ecclesiastical or clerical <secular courts> <secular landowners>
While it may be true that atheists aren’t interested in an alternative or supplement to the secular aspect of life, it’s clearly also the case that religious people’s lives do involve the secular aspect too. The secular is what we all have in common. Because of that, common events we all share in such as public schools and government functions should be restricted to secular activities.
Surprising as it may seem, religious values and secular values do not have to contradict each other. In the vast majority of cases, religion teaches, “X is good because God says so,” and secular reasoning says “X is good because it promotes general welfare and is socially expedient.” Secular values aren’t the negation or antithesis of religious values. Unless proponents of religion really want to argue that they absolutely don’t care at all about their (or anyone else’s) well-being in the here-and-now, they have secular concerns. Secular events allow the religious and nonreligious to be represented, but once you include religion, you make your event exclusive.
Do you have to believe?
The topic for the second installment in Atheist Week also comes via Friendly Atheist. Hemant Mehta posts a reader’s query about answering the question, “If you don’t believe in God, what do you believe in?” and explains the issue like this:
There are also a lot of similar [answers] most of us tend to give: I believe in the goodness of people, I believe in nature, I believe we all find different ways to answer that question, I believe in the Golden Rule, etc.
It’s really just a bad question. Just because we don’t believe in a God doesn’t mean we don’t believe in anything. And just because someone says they do believe in God doesn’t mean we know anything else about them.
Yes, those are reasons why it’s a bad question. But my revulsion toward it is a lot deeper. I reject the premise of the question entirely.
Imagine saying to a person on a diet: You don’t eat chocolate cake? Well then, what desserts do you eat? Or, imagine saying to a person born blind: You don’t know Picasso’s work? Well then, who is your favorite painter? It would be absurd to demand these answers. It’s completely possible not to eat desserts or not to have a favorite painter, particularly if you’re a person with any sort of inclination against doing those things. I think belief is similar. When someone says, “What do you believe in?” they are saying, surely everyone must have groundless faith in something. As an atheist, I’m not the sort of person who tends to do that stuff.
In the same way that “bananas” isn’t an answer to “What time is it?”, I don’t see how you can answer this question with things like the Golden Rule, humanity, or scientific inquiry. It’s just playing a semantics game — I don’t “believe” in those things the same way someone else believes in God. I value humanity and I value science. I believe in doing good things and refraining from and/or stopping others from doing bad things, but that follows from a sort of axiomatic definition of goodness as a quality of which there ought to be more. Good things are good. There’s no faith there. If I found out that one of the moral precepts I try to follow actually does more harm than good, I would shed it and figure out a new one.
No, I think that valid answers to “What do you believe in?” (instead of the Christian God) would be things like deities of other religions, unicorns, leprechauns, the Tooth Fairy, supernatural powers. Those are things you have to “believe” in… but I don’t think anyone really has to believe in at least one thing in that set. My answer, assuming I’m brave enough to say it out loud to the person who asked, would be: “I don’t believe in anything. I look for proof, and I make my best educated guess when no perfect proof exists. Why do you think I need to believe in something in order to be complete?”
And honestly, if you asked me what I believed in, and I told you that instead of God I believed in Santa Claus, or Ouija boards, or invisible flying grapefruits… would you find any of those answers satisfying or even acceptable?
Violent fundies
We never wanted this to be an “atheist blog” or a “skeptical blog” or a “political blog,” or anything in particular like that. But I tend to go through phases in what I read and get excited about, and holding out for an assortment of post ideas sometimes means that I don’t post anything. In an effort to get back into the swing of things, I’m declaring this week Atheist Week here at It’s the Thought that Counts, and I’ll have one post on atheism and associated issues every day until I get it out of my system.
Let’s begin with a discussion of this ad from Answers in Genesis. (Thanks, Hemant… I think.)
Complete transcript of the voiceover: “If you don’t matter to God, you don’t matter to anyone.” Yep, that’s the word on the street from Answers in Genesis. (Motto: “believing it. defending it. proclaiming it.”) It’s not a new ad, but I guess it’s cropped up again.
I want to believe that the point of the ad is something like, if you don’t realize how much God loves you, you’ll feel unloved by the world and lash out with violence. I mean, I object to that message, but it’s a lot less horrible than the alternative, the easier interpretation: God hates you, so we have no problem with telling this child to shoot you in the face. (Crusades, anyone?)
I don’t take comfort in the idea that a man was gruesomely killed, in some sense by his own father, thousands of years ago in order to save me from eternal punishment and torment which his father set up for us in the first place. There’s no part of that that makes me feel particularly loved. I also resent the implication that I should be grateful and worship the people or entities responsible for such a monstrous plan, executed well before my birth and without my consent or even interest. But I thought that, at the very least, the explanation we’d associated with it was that God loves everyone, and that all you have to do to be saved is to acknowledge the love God already has for you. A weird explanation, to be sure; an emotionally scarring explanation, I think. But it was at least, at the end of the day, a desperate and sad attempt to reach out and be kind to others.
Answers in Genesis betrays the real message when they make this ad. That gun isn’t aimed at a vague someone; the child isn’t committing random acts of violence. Your impulse when viewing the ad isn’t to reach out to that boy and maybe tell him about Christ’s love so he doesn’t hurt a stranger. That gun is pointed at you. Your impulse is to be frightened for your life. AiG is saying that their God only cares about people who already worship him in the right ways, and that if God doesn’t care about you, you don’t deserve even the most basic of human courtesies from anyone else.
Fundamentalist Christians (as well as many not-so-fundamentalist ones) ask how it is possible to be moral without the rules given to you by a supernatural being and without the threat of eternal damnation as well as the promise of eternal reward. The typical atheist response is to point out that it’s the Christians who admit that without religion, they would be unable to stop themselves from stealing, raping, and murdering, yet somehow atheists manage without a problem. That’s troubling enough. But here, AiG is admitting that even their fabulous religion that teaches them to love their neighbors and turn the other cheek wouldn’t stop them from murdering us.
Do you see now why I have such a problem with the term apologetic?
Still here…
I’m still here; it’s just that real life is taking priority over blogging these days. So much has been happening in the world lately, and I wish I had more time to write about it! Hopefully I’ll be back soon. In the meantime, please take ten minutes and watch this great video about critical thinking and having an open mind.
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