I came across an article in Salon about how the New Atheists merged with the far-right. I have read it and read it and read it some more, probably 10 times total (it was the first thing I read in YEARS about New Atheists, so as I was typing this essay, I read about 10 other long articles about the New Atheists (links to those articles are at the bottom of this)). The author of the article (Emile P. Torres) has done a great service for liberal-progressive religious people and some other groups in our society (like atheist women). They seem to be a very solid atheist and might not like helping the former group, but they're also very intellectually honest and when they realized what kind of people the leading New Atheists are, they contributed to publicly exposing them as the scum that they are.
(I discuss what I mean by liberal here (my brief non-philosophical definition is someone to the left of Bill Clinton and to the right of Senator Elizabeth Warren))
(You might want to read part of my post about things Catholic. Read the stuff towards the bottom starting with “Some of this is repetitive but I’ll describe the politics of Catholics,” and ending with the asterisks above the very last section).
I’m going to offer some thoughts about the New Atheists in general, thoughts inspired by reading the Salon article. I’m sure Torres will disagree with some of it, but it is not meant as an attack on them. I encourage you to read their article first and then read this essay.
I believe that the New Atheists cross the line in terms of their hostility to religious people. I will also describe how I am both religious and secular. I will explain that I believe New Atheists were clearly more right-wing than left-wing many years ago.
(I’m going to assume that there are rank and file members of the New Atheist community who are liberal or progressive like Torres)
New Atheism crosses the line
I am fine with atheists in general. I’m close or very close to at least a few if not several. As I’ll explain below, I am very secular. But I believe that the hostility New Atheists have for religious people is so extreme that it is close to bigotry. I would say that even if they were completely even-handed in their hostility to religion, but they’re not. They are much more hostile to Muslims than they are to Jews. I’ll say more about that below.
New Atheists are hostile to religious people because they have a different belief about God (atheists don’t KNOW that God doesn’t exist anymore than theists KNOW that God does exist).They act as if great harm is done by believing in, for example, the Trinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Great harm is done by the right-wing POLITICAL beliefs of many or most religious people (there is nothing right-wing, left-wing or centrist about the Holy Trinity (for example)) but no harm is done by believing, for example, that Christ was the Son of God. In all honesty and fairness there are some miscellaneous non-political ways that religion can harm, such as Catholic priests abusing altar boys, but that miscellaneous stuff isn’t much compared to the political work of right-wing religious people- they are the main problem with religion, and as I explain below, can be dealt with in ways that don’t put down all religious people.
New Atheism wants to make everyone an atheist. One problem with that is that if it were attempted through some kind of coercion (such as treating religious faith like alcoholism) a successful effort would be akin to genocide. And there are many things about religion that bleed into culture and history and philosophy that would also be lost if everything religious was eradicated.
They believe that religion poisons everything and that getting rid of religion would make the world a better place. First, a better place for whom? Based partly on Torres’ article and some other articles I’ve found, the New Atheists are more right-wing than left-wing. Also, the connection between being liberal or progressive and being an atheist isn’t as strong as they think. Same with the connection between being conservative or right-wing and being a theist. There are plenty of exceptions on both sides of that- plenty of liberal or leftist theists and plenty of conservative or fascist atheists. And the idea that attacking the religious beliefs of most conservatives and right-wingers is a short-cut to making them re-consider their noxious political beliefs is likely flawed. I have no idea why it would be easier to change someone’s religious beliefs than it would be to change their political beliefs. And focusing on their religious beliefs makes it easier for them to claim that it’s the liberals and leftists who have crossed the line by attacking their religious beliefs. I say, ignore the religious dimension of the religious right as much as you can and simply oppose, for example, their homophobia as if they’re NOT referring to the Bible.
What’s Good About Religion?
There are other reasons why the New Atheist agenda of eradicating religion is bad. Here’s a list of a few good things about religion.
1) To whatever degree you need to believe in God to believe in Heaven, religion provides a theory for what, if anything, happens when we die. For many people, including myself, this helps with dealing with loss of a loved one.
2) Reading the children’s Bible 3 times around the age of 11 planted the seeds that blossomed into my socialist beliefs about 7 years later (there were other factors, like the music I listened to in High School).
3) There’s a strong sense of community. Although the fairly partisan socialist in me sees that as a bad thing when it’s a conservative community, when it’s a liberal-progressive one it’s great.
4) I’m tempted to say that without the Black church in America, we’d still have segregation. In all fairness it’s likely that if that church had not developed, something secular would have played a similar role in overthrowing segregation, but the fact is, the Black church was a major part of the Civil Rights Movement.
It’s not an exhaustive list at all, but there are a lot of good things about religion that would be thrown out with the bigotry, etc. if (the more liberal or progressive) New Atheists had their way (the others (the ones Torres describes) don’t seem interested in getting rid of the injustice and inequality in our society).
I’m both religious and secular
I have been religious almost all of the time since I was about 5 or 10. But I have also been secular in many ways. When I used to wear a “medal” (like a cross but a little different) I wore it under my shirt. I wasn’t embarrassed or anything like that, but I wasn’t interested in promoting religion, it was just something to remind me of my relationship with God.
When I went to confirmation class at my church in 12th grade, I may have been more interested in the material than most of the other students, but I chose not to get confirmed at the end of it. Although I kind of regret that decision, I felt that I didn’t need the ultra-official sanction of the Church to be a Catholic. And I didn’t need it. I continued getting communion after I declined to be confirmed.
Although the Bible was part of what made me a socialist and I have no problem with religious socialists, I don’t identify as one myself. I’m not sure exactly why, but just in general I am very secular outwardly and fairly religious and spiritual inwardly.
I don’t believe in trying to convert people and I believe that religions should be fairly passive in trying to get new adherents.
I believe in Intelligent Design, the idea that Evolution was guided by God.
On foreign policy New Atheists are mostly right-wing
In addition to being universally and incredibly hostile to Islam, New Atheist leaders have MOSTLY also sided with Israel in the Middle-East conflict and, years ago, (mostly) with the US administration of George W. Bush in the War on Terror and specifically the Iraq War 2003-2008. As others have more or less pointed out, the Palestinian struggle was dominated by secular forces for decades before Hamas won an election in 2006- and although they haven’t lost an election since then they also haven’t won one either- there’s reason to believe that a majority of Palestinians don’t share all of Hamas’ beliefs. There were a lot of complaints among Palestinians about the PLO that had nothing to do with it being secular. I’m not sure to what degree this is true in Gaza since 2006, but in the West Bank the Christian minority of Palestinians is treated just fine by the Muslims. It’s the Israeli state that’s tough on minorities. Christians and Muslims are not considered full members of the Israeli nation. And although there are a lot of atheists in Israel’s Jewish population, the Jewish identity of the State is partly about religion- but many New Atheists are so anti-muslim and pro-American imperialism that they support Israel anyway.
(I offer evidence for calling Israeli policy towards the Palestinians “Israeli Apartheid” here and discuss Zionism here) (UPDATE 7/13/21 most of my thoughts about the War on Terror are here)
Are atheists in America oppressed?
American atheists in general don’t have much to complain about. Based on various answers given on wikipedia, I believe that the percentage of the US population that is atheist is somewhere around 15 to 20. And I doubt that more than 1-2% of the US Congress is atheist, so they have a legitimate complaint there. I’m sure most atheists in America have experienced at least a little harassment because of their belief about God, and I take that pretty seriously. They sometimes have to fight efforts by government to blur the boundary between church and state, a fight I join them in.
Does hostility towards Atheists result in the kind of job discrimination that creates disproportionate poverty? Apparently not. According to Pew 30% of atheist households earn $100,000 or more and only 24% earn less than $30,000 (in that graph I just linked to, they’re the 5th richest religious group in America, out of about 25-30). I have not heard of anti-atheist police brutality, or mass incarceration, or a low rate of graduation from college, etc..
In general, American atheists don’t have much to complain about.
Religion and The Troubles
For the most part I suggest you start with reading some of my posts here, here, and here. If you want more than that, I recommend the books “Northern Ireland: The Orange State” by Michael Farrell and “McCann: War and Peace in Northern Ireland” by Eamonn McCann.
Although religion is a big thing for most of the anti-Catholic bigots, A) there is also nationality, and B) from what I have heard there are some anti-Catholic bigots who are atheists- not many at all, but some. On the Catholic side there is very little anti-Protestant bigotry and very little religious motivation. When Catholics experience bigotry they don’t quote those parts of the Bible that make it clear they’re Christians. They don’t even use the Bible the way Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. did- when they refer to America in their quest for equality, they sometimes focus on the secular actions of this country’s black population and in general they say little if anything about the Bible which inspired the civil rights movement here.
The British introduced sectarianism to the population of Ireland as a way to (on one hand) divide the settlers and the indigenous people and (on the other hand) keep the Catholics down (which helped with the former goal). They maintained a colonial presence in N. Ireland for several reasons and religious solidarity with the Protestants was only one of them. It was basically because of imperialism.
The white male class privilege of the New Atheists
Torres accuses the New Atheists of worrying about the erosion of their white male privilege. I think there’s something else as well as that. They decided that advancing an atheist agenda was incredibly important. They clearly weren’t concerned about economic justice or social justice. I say that partly because you need to build coalitions for those things and you aren’t going to organize a coalition for economic or racial justice if at the same time you’re putting down everyone religious. And I need to say that I’m sure those theists who would be attracted to a coalition for social, and/or economic, and/or racial justice are unlikely to be the kind that would try to start a fight with atheists in the coalition.
*******
Articles I read to refresh and add to my understanding of New Atheism:
Atheism and the Class Problem
Gaza Has New Atheists Split Over Which Religion is more wrong
When It Comes To Islam, New Atheists Sound A Lot Like Christian Fundamentalists
Why Are There So Few Atheists In Israel?
American New Atheism and Israel
Sam Harris, the New Atheists, and anti-Muslim Animus
Why the “New Atheists” are Right-wing on Foreign Policy
The Trouble with the New Atheists: Part II
*******
The posts on my blog that are partly or entirely about religion are here.
