My wife, who is even more of an avid atheist than I am, gave me an article she'd torn out of American Atheist, the publication of (no big surprise) the American Atheists organization, which she belongs to.
The article, "Why I Call Myself an Atheist," was by Kate Cohen, who wrote We of Little Faith, a book I've blogged about here and here. I liked the article, but couldn't find it online, probably because American Atheists doesn't want people to be able to read stuff in their publication without joining the organization.
But in searching for the article, I came across a piece in the Washington Post by Cohen, where she is a contributing columnist. It was great also. So here's some excerpts from "America doesn't need more God. It needs more atheists." That's a sentiment I heartily agree with.
(1) The Greek myths are obviously stories. The Norse myths are obviously stories. L. Ron Hubbard obviously made that stuff up. Extrapolate.
(2) The holy books underpinning some of the bigger theistic religions are riddled with “facts” now disproved by science and “morality” now disavowed by modern adherents. Extrapolate.
(3) Life is confusing and death is scary. Naturally, humans want to believe that someone capable is in charge and that we continue to live after we die. But wanting doesn’t make it so.
(4) Child rape. War. Etc.
And yet, when I was younger, I would never have called myself an atheist — not on a survey, not to my family, not even to myself.
...Studies have shown that many, many Americans don’t trust atheists. They don’t want to vote for atheists, and they don’t want their children to marry atheists. Researchers have found that even atheists presume serial killers are more likely to be atheist than not.
Given all this, it’s not hard to see why atheists often prefer to keep quiet about it. Why I kept quiet. I wanted to be liked!
But when I had children — when it hit me that I was responsible for teaching my children everything — I wanted, above all, to tell them the truth.
...Religion offers ready-made answers to our most difficult questions. It gives people ways to mark time, celebrate and mourn. Once I vowed not to teach my children anything I did not personally believe, I had to come up with new answers. But I discovered as I went what most parents discover: You can figure it out as you go.
Establishing a habit of honesty did not sap the delight from my children’s lives or destroy their moral compass. I suspect it made my family closer than we would have been had my husband and I pretended to our children that we believed in things we did not. We sowed honesty and reaped trust — along with intellectual challenge, emotional sustenance and joy.
Those are all personal rewards. But there are political rewards as well.
My children know how to distinguish fact from fiction — which is harder for children raised religious. They don’t assume conventional wisdom is true and they do expect arguments to be based on evidence. Which means they have the skills to be engaged, informed and savvy citizens.
We need citizens like that.
Lies, lying and disinformation suffuse mainstream politics as never before. A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 29 percent of Americans believe that President Biden was not legitimately elected, a total composed of those who think there is solid evidence of fraud (22 percent) and those who think there isn’t (7 percent). I don’t know which is worse: believing there to be evidence of fraud when even the Trump campaign can’t find any or asserting the election was stolen even though you know there’s no proof.
Meanwhile, we are just beginning to grasp that artificial intelligence could develop an almost limitless power to deceive — threatening the ability of even the most alert citizen to discern what’s real.
We need Americans who demand — as atheists do — that truth claims be tethered to fact. We need Americans who understand — as atheists do — that the future of the world is in our hands. And in this particular political moment, we need Americans to stand up to Christian nationalists who are using their growing political and judicial power to take away our rights. Atheists can do that.
Fortunately, there are a lot of atheists in the United States — probably far more than you think.
Some people say they believe in God, but not the kind favored by monotheistic religions — a conscious supreme being with powers of intercession or creation. When they say “God,” they mean cosmic oneness or astonishing coincidences. They mean that sense of smallness-within-largeness they’ve felt while standing on the shore of the ocean or holding a newborn baby or hearing the final measures of Chopin’s “Fantaisie-Impromptu.”
So, why do those people use the word “God” at all? The philosopher Daniel C. Dennett argues in “Breaking the Spell” that since we know we’re supposed to believe in God, when we don’t believe in a supernatural being we give the name instead to things we do believe in, such as transcendent moments of human connection.
Whatever the case, in 2022, Gallup found that 81 percent of Americans believe in God, the lowest percentage yet recorded. This year, when it gave respondents the option of saying they’re not sure, it found that only 74 percent believe in God, 14 percent weren’t sure, and 12 percent did not believe.
...Do you know what some of those atheists call themselves? Catholics. And Protestants, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists. General Social Survey data back this up: Among religious Americans, only 64 percent are certain about the existence of God. Hidden atheists can be found not just among the “nones,” as they’re called — the religiously unaffiliated — but also in America’s churches, mosques and synagogues.
“If you added up all the nominal Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, etc. — those who are religious in name only,” Harvard humanist chaplain Greg M. Epstein writes in “Good Without God,” “you really might get the largest denomination in the world.”
Atheists are everywhere. And we are unusually disposed to getting stuff done.
...Atheists must accept that people are allowing — we are allowing — women to die in childbirth, children to go hungry, men to buy guns that can slaughter dozens of people in minutes. Atheists believe people organized the world as it is now, and only people can make it better.
No wonder we are “the most politically active group in American politics today,” according to political scientist Ryan Burge, interpreting data from the Cooperative Election Study.
That’s right: Atheists take more political action — donating to campaigns, protesting, attending meetings, working for politicians — than any other “religious” group. And we vote. In his study on this data, sociologist Evan Stewart noted that atheists were about 30 percent more likely to vote than religiously affiliated respondents.
We also vote far more than most religiously unaffiliated people. That’s what distinguishes atheists from the “nones” — and what I didn’t realize at first.
Atheists haven’t just checked out of organized religion. (Indeed, we may not have.) We haven’t just rejected belief in God. (Though, obviously, that’s the starting point.) Where atheism becomes a definite stance rather than a lack of direction, a positive belief and not just a negative one, is in our understanding that, without a higher power, we need human power to change the world.
I want to be clear: There are clergy members and congregations all across this country working to do good, not waiting for God to answer their prayers or assuming that God meant for the globe to get hotter. You don’t have to be an atheist to conduct yourself as if people are responsible for the world they live in — you just have to act like an atheist, by taking matters into your own hands.
...Peel back the layers of discrimination against LGBTQ+ people, though, and you find religion. Peel back the layers of control over women’s bodies — from dress codes that punish girls for male desire all the way to the Supreme Court striking down Roe v. Wade — and you find religion. Often, there isn’t much peeling to do. According to the bill itself, Missouri’s total abortion ban was created “in recognition that Almighty God is the author of life.” Say what, now?
Peel back the layers of abstinence-only or marriage-centered or anti-homosexual sex education and you find religion. “Don’t say gay” laws, laws denying trans kids medical care, school-library book bans and even efforts to suppress the teaching of inconvenient historical facts — motivated by religion.
And when religion loses a fight and progress wins instead? Religion then claims it’s not subject to the resulting laws. “Religious belief” is — more and more, at the state and federal levels — a way to sidestep advances the country makes in civil rights, human rights and public health.
...In fact, when certain believers wield enough political power to turn their God’s presumed preferences into law, I would say it’s dangerous to claim you believe in “God” when what you actually believe in is awe or wonder. (Your “God is love” only lends validity and power to their “God hates gays.”)
So ask yourself: Do I think a supernatural being is in charge of the universe?
If you answer “no,” you’re an atheist. That’s it — you’re done.
But if you go further: You’ll be doing something good for your country.
It says a lot when the list of the happiest counties/people in the world are those from Europe – mostly the Scandinavian countries and many say they have no religious beliefs at all. None of these countries are particularly religious, in fact, the most religious countries are the Moslem ones – often awash with troubles. The western world generally has become quite nonreligious – America being the exception.
America may still have a large Christian following but they also have (as Kate Cohen states) a culture where: - “Lies, lying and disinformation suffuse mainstream politics as never before.” It has been noted that “The stronger the religious influence on the national movement, the greater the likelihood that discrimination and human rights violations will occur.”
When it comes to happiness alongside the increasing mental health problems throughout the world, I would not blame the lack of religion. I accept that our frantic lifestyles do contribute but I also wonder that when people, particularly some young people are calling mental health problems are just ex-pressing the everyday problems of living. It often seems that being bored, pissed off, not getting the latest phone etc., results in being addressed as adversely effecting mental health.
And I’m sure that being part of a religious community, feeling part of something bigger than ‘me’ can help one to be less troubled – but on the other hand, being part of any caring community, neighbourhood or a member of the welfare and caring professions can also give one a sense of purpose and contribute to being happy.
Posted by: Ron E. | July 30, 2024 at 02:33 AM
It is my understand of life that humans can be devide in groups according the way they participate in these activities. One division is that between the producers and consumers
It does matter what level of knowledge each has in each group. be it
Politicians and voters
scientists and the people that use the outcome
Arists and those that enjoy themselves with their products
The same holds for religion.
Most people are to be labeled as "consumers" with a higher or lower degree of knowledge, understanding and practice.
Those that frequent mosques, churches, temples, the buildings are the consumers. They go there to "HEAR" a message and few will heed those messages and transform them in the practice of their daily life,
In that sense most visitoirs of buildings, are not interested in what they consume in the building, they could in fact be called atheist as the lady describes herself.
There is little difference between the building frequenters and those that have made up their mind.
I suppose the lady still considers herself to be "jewish" in stead of human and american.
Religion, the consumers variety, has only meaning in relation to functioning in society. It is a kind of attribute people carry around by which they are to be seen or want to be seen.
In fact these are all people that frequent restaurants according their social status and their knowledge of cuisine is most of the time nothing more than their like or dislike.
To use their opinions as a means to evaluate practitioner of the cuisine might have meaning for them talking with friends, making themselves seen as knowledgeable, but in the field of cuisine their opinion has no meaning and value attributed to.
Most of them are just pedantic consumers, trying to impress family and friends.
Posted by: um | July 30, 2024 at 04:18 AM
And ...all this talk about religion, atheism rev. can easily be or become an diversion of something else ... with .. the .motive behind these conversions, motives that have NOTHING at all to do with religion but identity, being seen, acceptance by community or a person act.
There were days one could easily score and impress peers and others with eastern mysticism... these days are gone ... but not that underlying mentality...today these people pose as proud atheist .. it is all fodder for psychologists
Posted by: Um | July 30, 2024 at 08:41 AM
The same weak, tired arguments. Child rape, really? Allowing children to go hungry? Hoo boy. And the other lies, such as the one about American Christians forbidding abortion to save the life of the mother. Patently untrue.
So-called progressives really make me chuckle when they declare they're patriotically standing up for democracy. "We live in desperate times, and democracy is under attack," In the same breath they'll tell you how outraged they are at the people who disagree with their social and political beliefs, and how these people must be silenced. As we've just seen, that includes their own president. Biden was legitimately elected, right? But let's allow a few people with money to pull him from the race. Boy is that democracy in action, progressive style! Then there's their efforts to game SCOTUS because not every decision it renders goes their way. Abortion is now a matter of state law. Ida thought that would be welcomed as democracy in action. "Noooo!" cry the atheists progressives.
Their claim to stand for democracy is a joke, and they still have no argument that America's believers have a demonstrable negative effect on society. And they still have no idea why the majority of this country has had its fill of their BS.
Posted by: sant64 | July 30, 2024 at 11:22 AM
@ Sant
Society and culture are like a house built with many materials and made as a whole with a binding substance.
Years ago I had these feelings of a nearby coming thunder, but I was not able to find out what it was.
These days I know what happened, the mortar, the binding substance has lost its power. It is no longer able to keep the blocks bound together ... the house has become an pile of lose elements, that can come down any moment.
It could not be prevented, it has to happen.
BUT ... To think that a man the like of Trump has the vision how Americans have to cross their rubicon and built a new house for themselves is beyond words. .. it is like believing that a robber will and can look after a bank.
Mind you and those idealist that think that they can, and have the duty to save the world, are in my book even more dangerous.
The solution must come from understanding what the natural role of humans is and mainly come to the understanding that they can only handle a small environment and that there must come an and to GROWTH.
Find ways to end or to curb the globalization as they cannot handle that,
Have a look at the udders of Holstein cows how they have grown, how much milk these cows give in comparison to older times ..See how the cow walks and what a burden it is on her legs ... and then you will understand what is growth and what is wrong.
Posted by: um | July 30, 2024 at 01:37 PM
um. Good observation, one l can emphasize with - particularly the analogy with the cows.
Posted by: Ron E. | July 30, 2024 at 02:23 PM
@ Ron
Hahaha ...honour to the one that deserve to be honoured.
Listeninng for many years to the late MCS and digesting what he said has developed my natural skills of observing and understanding human behaviour.
Hahahaha ... unfortunately not the spiritual skills, as I have come to understand to lack the needed love and devotion that is needed for this spiritual practice.
Even today, what he said about human behavior, is bearing fruits and I am convinced it will continue to the end of my days
Was he a great psychologist or did I attribute it to him ..I do not know.
It was certainly not his role. nor mine to use his words in that way.
Posted by: um | July 30, 2024 at 02:45 PM