Many secular people are arguing these days that atheists should join interfaith groups in order to make the world a better place to live.
I disagree. But before you jump in with straw-man arguments, let me clarify.
Of course I’m not saying that atheists should not work with people who happen to be religious in order to make the world a better place. No one is saying that. Atheists work with religious people to make the world a better place all the time, in work, in education, in government programs, and a host of other environments. No one — even the most rabid anti-theist — really seems to disagree that we should do this.
And I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have close relationships with religious people. Most atheists have religious friends, family members, business partners, and acquaintances. Some of the people who hate religion the most even have very religious spouses. And these people often talk about religion in ways that seek understanding and respect the person without accepting compromise and respecting the religion itself.
Finally, I’m obviously not saying that we shouldn’t talk to religious people about religion. In fact, arguably, the most “strident” atheists are in conversation with religious people regarding atheism more than people who are just kinda “meh” about their atheist stance. No one remotely prominent in the anti-theistic crowd seems to really be saying this dialogue should stop.
Because no one is arguing against working with people who happen to be religious, developing relationships with them, and talking to them about our objections to religion, I tend to wonder what people mean when they insist that atheists should join with faith groups, and when they speak against anti-theists who refuse. Where’s the problem?
Best as I can tell, the problem according to the powers that be is that, even as we work with religious people and develop relationships with religious people, we atheists are generally not nice enough and inviting enough to the “religious” part of someone’s identity — either because religion isn’t going away any time soon and we need to make peace with that, or you supposedly can’t have a strong relationship with a religious person without respecting their religion, or religious people are doing good work and we should support it, or many forms of religion just aren’t that bad and should be encouraged instead of demeaned, or some combination of these reasons.
And that’s where we disagree. Because I think religious thought that is based on theism is more dangerous than atheists more friendly to religion imply.
For me, the concept of God or gods is problematic because it has a stranglehold on the identities of people, and does not usually have to answer to reason for the definitions it assigns.
It’s really dangerous to have an instrument labeled “divinity” that can define who people are and what they deserve, regardless of hard, tangible evidence to the contrary. That definition from God takes away people’s ability to really define themselves — which is a problem when you’re trying to encourage a society in which people care about the real versions of each other, not how well they measure up to a made-up definition by a divine being.
Then there’s also the fact that I am uncomfortable using God to coerce people into doing things, no matter how good or bad those things are. I think that even though honesty may not produce the results we want immediately, encouraging people to follow a rational way of looking at the world will, in the long run, benefit humanity much more than a lie.
When people tell me that I should focus on becoming more “interfaith” and less “antitheistic,” I think they’re saying — when I get close to nailing it down — that I should be OK with holding back criticism of religion while I forward the interests of a religious organization. While I think I understand that sentiment, I also think it’s a bit shortsighted. Yes, partnering with a religious organization can do good practical things like put bread on the table for hungry people. But they do that to earn respect for their religion and, through that respect, gain power over the identities and lives of people.
And several times, in real life, this respect has resulted in very concrete efforts to gain such power. I mean, on the issue of same-sex marriage alone, there are several well-known examples of religious discrimination in charities — here, for example. The Salvation Army has a well-documented history of discriminating against same-sex couples. The Illinois branch of Catholic Charities, which “provides foster care and adoption services for roughly one out of five children in the state of Illinois” even sued for the right to discriminate against same-sex couples.