For centuries, calling someone an atheist has been intended as an insult. Only a few centuries ago, admitting to being an atheist was to open oneself to severe consequences. For example, one of the greatest British poets, Percy Bysshe Shelley, was expelled from Oxford University after he and a fellow student published the pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism in 1811 (Jager). In 2013, a student stating publicly that he or she is an atheist is unlikely to be expelled from a university, unless the university is a private religious institution. Yet there are still some serious consequences to a public declaration of atheism. One only need look at national politics to see what could occur. In the United States, would either major political party endorse candidates for president of the U.S. who openly acknowledged themselves as atheists? Perhaps in another decade or two, such an event might occur, but presently announcing oneself as an atheist is political suicide for most candidates seeking public office. However, the number of atheists and others unaffiliated with religion is on the rise in the U.S., and so there may well come a point in the next decade when mainstream political candidates who are atheists will seek and attain prominent public office.
Atheism is considered by many to be a controversial subject and a very polarizing one as well. For many people who are religious, it seems that having someone express disbelief in religion is a personal affront. If one listens to right-wing commentators such as Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, atheists are engaged in a huge conspiracy to destroy religion in the U.S. by taking prayer out of schools, challenging the use of federal sites to display religious symbols, and engaging in other activities, such as persuading large retailers to have employees wish customers “happy holidays” instead of a more specifically Christian greeting of “merry Christmas.” If one believes these commentators, then it seems that people’s religious beliefs will remain intact only if no one ever challenges them or expresses a different viewpoint.
How large is the group of atheists who are supposedly threatening the religious rights of believers in the U.S.? As noted by Harris about U.S. atheists and others who identify as nonreligious, “One study by the Pew Research Centre puts them at about 12% of the population, but another by the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture at Trinity College in Hartford puts that figure at around 20%. Most experts agree that the number of secular Americans has probably doubled in the past three decades - growing especially fast among the young. It is thought to be the fastest-growing major "religious" demographic in the country” (para. 1). In spite of these growing numbers, politicians by and large still list their religious affiliation as part of their credentials when running for office. Harris, for example, notes that there is only one openly atheist member of Congress, although he interviewed a leader of a secular organization who claimed that there are between 25 and 30 members of Congress who have not yet openly identified themselves as atheists.
One has to wonder exactly what distinguishes atheists from religious adherents, aside from their religious views. There are some striking differences. As noted by Cheyne, “Approximately 90% of all the studies ever conducted have reported a negative correlation [between intelligence and religious belief]. That is, as intelligence goes up, religious belief goes down. Moreover, not only does belief decrease from childhood to adolescence - suggesting a negative association between intelligence (or, strictly speaking, mental age) and religiosity - but the negative correlation also increases with age” (34). Cheyne goes on to point out that among groups with extremely high intelligence, such as scientists who are members of a prestigious national organization, only 7% report any religious beliefs. These figures do not absolutely imply that only people of lower intelligence possess religious beliefs, but they do offer conclusive evidence that people with higher intelligence and more emotional maturity are more likely to be atheist than people of lower intelligence and lower emotional maturity. One explanation for this difference might be that more intelligent people are likely to be better educated, and trained in critical and analytical thinking, leading them to be skeptical of moral belief systems based on faith.
What seems peculiar about the ongoing controversy and social stigma of atheism is that by and large, all people are atheists of one sort or another and would readily characterize proponents of nontraditional religions as ignorant or insane. For example, if person A engaged in conversation with person B and stated that he firmly believed in the Norse myths and worshipped Odin as the all-father, person B would most likely have no qualms whatsoever in telling person A to his face that he is crazy and needs to seek professional help. Yet if person A states that he believes in a current religion that claims an omniscient, omnipotent creator exists who sits back and lets evil occur but still demands absolute worship from humans or else they will suffer eternal damnation, then person B is expected not only to refrain from calling this person insane, but to join in with a hearty “Praise the Lord.” Why is believing in Odin supposed to be crazy and a sign of mental illness, but believing in God supposed to be normal and desirable?
Admittedly, the controversy is probably not helped by current popular culture trends of teenagers and young adults who openly mock some religious beliefs. For example, most people in the U.S. are familiar enough with passages from the Bible to know that Jesus commented to the disciples that it was his blood that they drank and his body that they ate, in reference to the last meal they shared as an intact group. A polite yet still pointed critique of this passage might be that Jesus seems to advocate ritual cannibalism. However, among the teenagers and young adults who use social media such as Twitter, these remarks have been interpreted to mean that Jesus was actually both vampire!Jesus and zombie!Jesus. Perhaps it is no wonder that Bill O’Reilly feels that Christianity is under attack.
Yet it should be possible for atheists and other secularists to be open about their non-belief. Richard Dawkins and others like him seek to popularize what has been called “militant atheism” (Kitcher 1) to the general public in an effort to convince more people that religious fundamentalism has no useful place in modern society. Others follow an approach termed by Rowe as “friendly atheism,” (7) in which atheists and secularists respectfully acknowledge the emotional validity of people’s religious beliefs while still maintaining their own intellectual skepticism of those beliefs. It is not possible to know with certainty which approach might work better to enable atheists to co-exist peacefully with believers. What seems inevitable is that as atheists will follow the pattern established by the gay community over the past few decades, of coming out of the closet and refusing to be labeled as something they are not. In a society where up to 20% of the population is not religious, it makes no sense that the immediate assumption is that everyone around us is religious, and what is more, almost always assumed to be not just religious in general, but specifically Christian. Unlike many of their religious family, friends, and colleagues, atheists generally do not seek to proselytize. They do, however, seek tolerance and acceptance instead of automatic rejection, insult, and discrimination. This particular controversy should be a non-controversy.
Works Cited
Cheyne, James Allan. "Atheism Rising." Skeptic 2009: 33,37,72. ProQuest. Web. 12 Mar. 2013 .
Harris, Paul. "World: Rising Atheism in America Puts 'Religious Right on the Defensive': The High Profile of Faith-Based Politicians Masks a Steady Growth in Secularism." The Observer: 30. ProQuest. Oct 02 2011. Web. 12 Mar. 2013 .
Jager, Colin. "Shelley After Atheism." Studies in Romanticism 49.4 (2010): 611,631,697. ProQuest. Web. 12 Mar. 2013.
Kitcher, Philip. "Militant Modern Atheism." Journal Of Applied Philosophy 28.1 (2011): 1-13. Academic Search Alumni Edition. Web. 12 Mar. 2013.
Rowe, William L. "Friendly Atheism Revisited." International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 68.1-3 (2010): 7-13. ProQuest. Web. 12 Mar. 2013.
