It seems to me that organized creeds are collections of words around a wish. I feel no need for such. However, I would not, by word or deed, attempt to deprive another of the consolation it affords. It is simply not for me.
Somebody else may have my rapturous glance at the archangels. The springing of the yellow line of morning out of the misty deep of dawn, is glory enough for me.
I know that nothing is destructible; things merely change forms. When the consciousness we know as life ceases, I know that I shall still be part and parcel of the world. I was a part before the sun rolled into shape and burst forth in the glory of change. I was, when the earth was hurled out from its fiery rim. I shall return with the earth to Father Sun, and still exist in substance when the sun has lost its fire, and disintegrated into infinity to perhaps become a part of the whirling rubble of space. Why fear? The stuff of my being is matter, ever changing, ever moving, but never lost; so what need of denominations and creeds to deny myself the comfort of all my fellow men?
The wide belt of the universe has no need for finger-rings. I am one with the infinite and need no other assurance. — Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road
Recently I stated that I am not an anti-theist. This declaration, and its follow-up, have been mentioned in blog posts by five bloggers who seem to differ, in various ways, from my stance and/or its presentation: Stephanie Zvan, Alex Gabriel, Dan Arel, Kaveh Mousavi, and Galen Broaddus. I’ve interacted with several of these responses already, but I’ll go ahead and do so more fully here. Rather than respond individually to each one, I’m going to give general statements that will, hopefully, address much of what has been said.
Here’s my message to Theists:
If you can believe in God without endorsing, enhancing, or forwarding the mistreatment of or harm to human beings — the mistreatment of and harm to human beings in the world as it would exist if (in your case, theoretically) we left God out of the picture — then I have no beef with your belief in God.
To me, that’s not an antitheistic message. That’s opening the door to a theism that does not harm human beings, if the other side can figure it out. If they can’t then we’re going to have to fight. But we are fighting against the harm that their belief does to human beings, in concrete ways, and not necessarily against the raw belief in God itself.
I have this stance because I increasingly suspect that many of the reasons people believe in God may be difficult or even, in many cases, impossible to divorce from God, but may be relatively easier to divorce from God’s precepts or how a specific God is portrayed.
Anyone who says that I’m doing this simply because I’m interested in being polite doesn’t know what the fucking hell they’re talking about. I’m rude as shit to a shitload of people. I mean, have you read my blog? The no-holds-barred style is not unknown here. I’ve been known to cuss out a storm and shout angrily at people who have disagreed with me more than a few times on here. I take it and I dish it out. This is not about politeness, in that sense. This is about what it’s always been about for me — practicality in actually making people’s lives better. Everyone’s life, regardless of your background. Although I may be strong in my rhetoric at times, I am strong because I don’t want the larger world hurt. When I talked about “arrogance” of anti-theism in pressing it’s views on others, I was not referring to being polite, so much as I was referring to the way that, in my view, thinking I know what’s best for other people when I am not that other person can, when I’m wrong, be fundamentally harmful. Arrogance is not wrong just because it causes impoliteness; arrogance is disturbing when you’re arrogant about being wrong and that blindness causes you to inflict unnecessary pain on people.
There’s been talk about how leaving anti-theism for this reason dampens anti-theism, because I’m giving fodder to the people who say anti-theism is rude and thus making people who are vocally against theism look bad.
While that may be true, that does not obligate me to then become an anti-theist, and the consequences do not mean I have to lie about my reasons for making the break. I was constantly concerned, when I was a Christian, about how I would make Christians look instead of whether or not I was right, and in doing so I hurt people I was not even aware I was hurting. The most I can say is that I recognize a place for anti-theists, and that I want to protect that space. But I am not interested, with what I think I know now, in being drafted or press-ganged into that role. And if you ask, I’ll give my reasons.
It’s like that movie Hacksaw Ridge I saw recently. A conscientious objector named Desmond Doss wanted to be a medic. He was on the US side, but he wasn’t trying to kill people. He wasn’t trying to make his fellow soldiers look unethical, although that was the effect for awhile. It was his personal choice. And he had good reason. And being forced to carry a gun into battle was not for him. He wanted to be a medic. That’s more-or-less me. I want to decrease harm for humanity, around the board. But I’m not sure that belief in God itself is the main target here, or a target at all. It may be an incidental casualty to the work I’m trying to do, or it may not be. But what matters is that I decrease the harm in the world as efficiently as I can.
So I’ll defend anti-theist intentions and actions, where I can. I don’t have to be an anti-theist to do that. In fact, you might even argue that I’m more empowered to defend anti-theists as a non-anti-theist than as an anti-theist because this stance would, presumably, allow me to reach the non-anti-theist audience a bit more to do some more diplomacy.
To further clarify, I’ll say: I’m not at all sure it’s necessary or even desirable to now or ever eradicate theism from the world. Is it a beautiful picture to imagine a world full of people who don’t believe in God and love each other deeply? Sure. But is this a realistic utopia? I don’t know. I’m not certain enough that it ISN’T to condemn the types of anti-theists who advocate for such a world (not saying all of them do), but I know that trying to craft out a utopia vastly different from the world that we live in has done a lot of damage in the past, both among people who believe in a God and heaven, and among people who don’t believe in God and have a strong political vision (or “atheist heaven”) that fundamentally requires others not to believe in God. I am not at all certain that a world so radically different from the one we live in is the best goal to pursue, based on what I have seen concerning what seems to be a low likelihood of getting there. Because I’ll tell you the truth: when I study people who did damage in the past, their motivations are portraits of utopia. And before they got carried away, these visions of utopia sounded pretty good. They just required a shitload of people to completely change their lives. And in the frustration over people not changing their lives, and being more connected to their lives than originally anticipated, eventually…well, you likely know how sadly these stories often end.
One rebuttal I anticipate to this is that, unlike the harmful utopias, a world without God is a more realistic picture of utopia (if your rebuttal is that a world without God, even if unrealistic, really WOULD be a better utopia, please reread the previous paragraph, where I addressed this viewpoint). Maybe you’re right. But I’m not all that sure you are. Again, I am opening the door to, and beginning to suspect, the view that maybe people can be theists in some way, shape, or form without endorsing, enhancing, or forwarding the mistreatment or harm to human beings.
In my book, that means I’m not an anti-theist in the sense of being against theism. I’m agnostic about anti-theism, true, but I’m not actively even remotely working to eradicate all forms of theism anymore because, frankly, I’m beginning to suspect that’s a waste of time. Just like you can be agnostic about God and yet not be a theist, you can be agnostic about anti-theism and and not be an anti-theist.
In a way this puts me in between a rock and a hard place. I still get turned off by faitheists who insist we gotta treat offensive forms of theism with kid gloves when they are actually hurting people, and I can’t join the anti-theists who say that eradicating God is a necessary or desirable optimal outcome or goal. So I don’t necessarily have a group on one side or the other. I can live like that; I just gotta go where the honesty takes me.
If you’re still confused, maybe this would help.
I wouldn’t mind living in a secular country.
But a secular country wouldn’t necessarily be an anti-theistic country, right? And it also wouldn’t necessary be an anti-anti-theist country. It would be, optimally, secular and working for the good of all in the country, day by day, year by year, decade by decade.
And that’s kinda the level I’m thinking at, more or less. I’m not fighting for an anti-theistic country. I just think in a secular way and look out for people to be treated fairly and without harm from that secular perspective. That doesn’t necessarily mean I’m anti-theistic. I can still think in a secular way without necessarily being against theism, and I’d still be making the world a better place.
This also does not me I’m anti-anti-theistic. I can still support anti-theists and theists, so long as I am ensuring that people are being treated fairly and without harm.
OK, now to the controversial bits (oh, you thought that last part is controversial? Hold on).
There is a lot of sensitivity around this topic. But the fact is, as Neil Carter has said:
I’ve watched how non-theists handle themselves both privately and as a group, and I’m telling you they’re not much better than religious people when you really get down to it. I will agree that it benefits people to develop a greater appreciation for the scientific method and for critical thinking skills. On paper it seems like we should be better than our religious counterparts. But I’ve watched how atheists behave in large groups, and I’m telling you they don’t really behave in ways that are significantly better than the rest of the world.
And yes, I know about Scandinavian countries, and I realize that within my own country it is the least religious states that measure highest on all of the things you want to see in a region. I also know that it is the uber-religious states like my own which score the highest on all the things you don’t want. I’ve countered with that myself as well. But I’ve also learned from empirical observation and hard life experience that atheists can be just as tribalistic, just as prone to emotional bias, and just as likely to treat others badly when resources are limited and social competition is introduced.
Which means that religion isn’t the problem, WE ourselves are. The theism/atheism divide isn’t the one that’s decisive, here. Obviously this doesn’t mean I think we should go back to telling people they’re fundamentally wicked or that we should seek forgiveness from an invisible supreme being. I no longer think there is sufficient evidence to believe in such things myself. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t observe that most of the things we hate about religion can be found in non-religious environments as well (yes, violent extremism included). What’s more, the presence of religion alone doesn’t necessarily mean that all the other anti-humanistic things will also be there. It just depends on which kind of theism we’re talking about. They’re not all created equally.
Maybe religion isn’t a discrete thing that can be eradicated from the earth. Maybe instead it is a manifestation of things woven into who we are as a species—things which we must own up to and figure out how to harness and steer into a positive, more humanistic direction.
Now, I just read that for the first time a couple hours ago. And yet, I wrote this similar statement in May of 2016, just a week or so after Neil Carter wrote his, in response to several scandals in atheist organizations that I was aware of:
I’m not as eager to advocate atheism, after the last couple weeks, as the most important part of the solution to the problems we face.
Of course I’ll speak from an atheist perspective in my criticisms of culture. But I’m thinking, now, that I may not be promoting atheism specifically, so much as the values that I hold and the logic I think is important that come as a result of my atheistic thinking. Like…not as fixated on atheism, but fixated on things like love, logic, justice, knowledge, etc.
And also on things like bowling, running, reading novels, working, laughing, and helping people.
In a lot of ways, this isn’t a big change. I still think religion is harmful. I’m also against trying to reach out to religion just to boast that a bridge is made; I think religion contains faith, which offers fundamental harm in our efforts to solve the very real problems we face in culture today.
I still think that the atheist organizations carry some importance — atheists need to be less marginalized, people need to recover from religion, and so on, and groups helps this happen.
But in a major way, this is a big change, because I also am much more hesitant, now, to say that atheism is the beginning of making everything better. Like religion, there are some things in many atheist movements that are good, and there are some things that aren’t. Very little of anything is exactly the way we’d want it to be, or exactly as good or bad as it may initially appear. And that doesn’t mean that the good things aren’t good or that the bad things aren’t bad. Life is just complicated.
So I’m an atheist who thinks religion is a terrible idea, but that’s not the entire definition of who I am, and even though it’s important, a lot of other stuff in my life is important, too — and focusing too much on atheism means that those other things (like, for example, honesty) get left at the wayside.
I need to have a broader focus. That’s what this taught me. Atheism isn’t the answer; no one thing is the silver bullet for making the world a better place. The world is more complex than that, and the people — people working to make the world a better place and the people we are trying to make the world a better place for — are more complex than that.
As you can probably see, this isn’t about Sarah Morehead; it’s about an error in atheism I made, personally, that I need to correct. It’s time for me to stop having and preaching illusions about it, and start showing that atheism, while it’s part of many solutions, doesn’t automatically fix a lot of the very real issues we have.
I don’t exactly know how realizing all this is going to change the way I move forward, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and the disillusionment has been broadening and challenging my vision.
I guess that’s a good thing.
Let me remind you: This was back in May of 2016. Some people have ascribed my change to The Amazing Atheist. That played a part, but this happened before that.
Now, this post didn’t make as many waves. I still insisted I was an anti-theist. Truth be told, I was afraid to walk away from a title I had defended so hard. I tried to hold onto it. But I kept seeing evidence that theism isn’t the only problem, and may not even be the real problem. I mean, forget yesterday, with the controversial example of Stalin and all that. One of the most nonreligious countries in the world today is Russia, and we know how they treat the LGBTQ community…absolutely horrendous. Like…having a more atheistic country doesn’t necessarily help.
So the typical rebuttal to this is that these facts are compatible with an anti-theistic position, because anti-theism isn’t saying that atheism is going to magically make everything better — just that it’s a superior option. But here’s the thing — why not just focus on making “everything better,” if that’s really our priority? I just don’t see any reason I should be obligated to tie myself to anti-theism, in the sense of consistently arguing atheism is the superior option, when my focus is more on making the world a better place for people. And I have no interest in pushing for an atheism that has, as Neil discussed above, many of the faults, and potentially more of the faults in some places, than many forms of religion.
Now, the common rebuttal to that is that anti-theism was never primarily about (or, depending on who you talk to, at all about) making people nonreligious. That’s a side effect; anti-theism is the admission that belief in God is harmful.
And here is my most controversial opinion: I am not sure that belief in God is necessarily harmful. It is harmful in many circumstances, true. But I strongly suspect, based on my own experiences, things I have read, and the experiences of others, that there may be instances in which belief in God is less harmful than no belief in God. “Instances” don’t refer merely to circumstances, but also to people, as in their personal, from-birth tendencies. I mean, we’ve discovered evidence that some people are simply more predisposed to be religious than others. So while some may be jerked out of theism, others may have theistic sentiments buried in a much deeper place. And I am increasingly suspecting that it may be a waste of time for me to focus, even remotely, on getting rid of their attraction to theism when it is far more productive for me to urge their focus more on connecting to and understanding human beings, and on attacking the particular parts of their belief structure that seem to prevent their doing so. They may eventually find that they have to leave God wholesale to be consistent. Or they may find another way. I don’t expect everyone to agree with me. I just want people not to hurt each other.
So I can’t really call myself an anti-theist, because I’m no longer really interested in getting rid of religion wholesale, and I’m not sure getting rid of God is a healthy goal. And this position has been developing for some time. I’ve been struggling with this for awhile — one of the earliest moments was in February of 2015, the month I began my blog on Patgeos, when I said:
I thought that, perhaps, Frank Turek (a Christian evangelist I had met) had at times found encouragement in his writing, and insulation from realizing his perceived fears, in his own moments. That may sound patronizing, but one thing meeting and seeing Frank Turek taught me is that he came across as a man — an apologist who has what I think are unhealthy views, but someone who, like all of us, is trying to make it through this life. He has found something that keeps him going through dark times, and he wanted to pass that on to me — perhaps so that, if I experience dark times in the future and turn in desperation to his book, this militant atheist will find it encouraging.
Or at least, that’s what makes the most sense to me now.
I had expected to leave that auditorium fuming, but, although several things about the presentation deeply bothered me, I found myself fighting a smile as I walked the third of a mile back to my car, signed book in hand — trying to ignore, again, the glances from passing college students.
At the same time, this experience made things harder. Maybe I’m getting a little too sermonic here…but it felt like existence reminding me that most things are not just bad or just good; life is multifaceted, so that even those you most despise may, when looked at from a certain angle, give you a glance of beauty that brings tears to your eyes.
And while that makes things indeterminate, and complex, and sometimes bewildering — in some contradictory, paradoxical way it also makes the experience of life encouraging.
As I started up my car, I found that I was grateful for the long drive back home. It would give me some much-needed time to think.
I was still fundamentally an anti-theist though, and defended that in a flurry of posts soon after. But later, in an account of conversations with religious people that took place in June of 2015, I said:
Now, it’s been shown that the most religious people are in places that tend to be poorest. It’s because of that that I think religion is a survival function. People are religious, I think, because they are passionate about trying to survive in a very difficult world without a friend. What’s offensive, to me, is when wealthy evangelists, preachers, political leaders, and campaign bankrollers control who people think this God is and, thus, control the people in disturbing ways. But the basic sense of peace and satisfaction some people get from believing in God that is behind all the bullshit that usually comes with belief in God (including blind allegiance to a puppet authority), I have a soft spot for, and I see how people could connect to it.
I again said something similar to this back in May of 2016 (again, before the Amazing Atheist fiasco), as I continued to process my experience with atheism:
One [type of Christianity I can stand] is the Christianity that clearly, unequivocally, does not believe in a personal God. Those who follow this Christianity think that God is wholly and completely a human construction that symbolizes things like “order” or “love” or something similar. But it’s not those things itself, it’s not bound to any book, it’s not someone it would ever really make sense to talk to except as a ritual that brings you personal comfort but that you know does absolute jack-squat in the “real world.”
The “God” of these Christians is nothing more than the sense of community they get when they hang out, and the moral code that they craft from a ground that is STRICTLY man-made, as there is no personal God to dictate this moral code to them. Nothing is “just so” — their morality is completely and wholly and thoroughly a product of the thought of human beings.
And later, in June, when a church very graciously helped me — sincerely — after I got a flat tire, and I saw the way they interacted, I had a similar sentiment:
I saw hugs [in the church], I saw friendship, I saw beauty, I saw people of many different races and backgrounds coming together, and as much as I’m an anti-theist, I had to admit…it was beautiful in its way.
I slowly realized, as the minutes ticked on, that underneath it all we’re just human beings. We’re not perfect, and sometimes we’re wrong. But we’re part of the same life, so to speak.
To be honest, I had also been feeling a bit down about atheism in general, as well. There are a lot of disputes and names and accusations of scandal being thrown around these days among atheists that have really impacted me, and to be honest it’s hard for me to make heads or tails of it now. The whole thing has been really demoralizing for me, personally.
I go on to talk about positive aspects of atheism, which are still there, but this was still bothering me then (by the way, if you want to understand where I’m coming from, it would help to read that post — that sentiment is one I’ve struggled with several times).
Soon after this came the Amazing Atheist drama (which I don’t want to rehash at the moment — Google it if you’re interested). But the post I made right before that started was about how I wished there was a heaven. After my second response to The Amazing Atheist, I posted again about how I wished there was a heaven (admittedly hoping more might read it and it’d get more feedback — which didn’t quite happen), and included this:
Yes, there’s a tendency to see us all as separated. And in a way there are separations. Some people are Christians, some people are Atheists, some people are Buddhists, some are rich, some are poor, some are liberal, some are conservative, etc. And we get angry with each other — sometimes for good reason.
But I find joy in those places where — even fighting through strong disagreements — you can do the hard work of getting to a place where you can look at things from the other person’s point of view. Sometimes it’s harder, it seems, than climbing Kilimanjaro. But if you ever finally get there and look around at the way they see the world, you may find, even in the most disturbing features of what you see, that your own perspective has grown larger. The beauty you selfishly live for day in, day out now includes another person, and that other person’s perspective now includes you.
At the time, I was primarily writing about how I wanted to understand The Amazing Atheist (that didn’t work out), but this was part of a larger sentiment and struggle with anti-theism that happened before The Amazing Atheist. Indeed, it was my dream of a place where people understood and empathized with each other that made me so upset with The Amazing Atheist and his popularity in the first place. It was the culmination, in many ways, of things I had struggled with for a long time.
When the tragedy in Nice happened back in July, I had the following reaction:
I choose, instead, to seek love for people across the divide. I’m an atheist. I don’t have any allegiance to anyone’s God, so my shoulder is a free space for anyone, regardless of your religious creed, to cry on. And I can seek comfort in the hugs and sharing of tears from people across the religious landscape. I can connect to all people to try to find ways to stop the killing.
It’s a beautiful thing about being an atheist for me, even in the midst of such crippling sorrow. It’s what I left God for. It lets me embrace our humanity and my fellow travellers in this life span without regard for religion or creed.
So that’s why I don’t pray. I gave up love for God so I’d have more room in my heart for people.
There will be time to come up with solutions that will show our love for each other without respect to religious lines and ideological prejudices that cause such violence in the first place. But for now, I’m working on being an ear to listen, a voice to comfort, and a shoulder to cry on. Regardless of who you are, this atheist has left religious lines to stand with you.
And then, later, infamously (according to several bloggers who think it’s weird that I seemed to make up a God to pray to), I did actually find a need to pray. It wasn’t just about the deadline I was meeting — prayer, in that moment, helped me connect to a larger, global sense of community, in my thinking. It was mind-opening instead of mind-closing. You don’t have to believe me; however, I’m just telling you the truth as I experienced it.
But…I mean, think about it. Don’t you think that the prayers of the Native Americans at the DAP Pipeline sustained them? That deep feeling of fervent solidarity? It’s hard for me to deny that they would have stood strong as long without it, or that it should have been abolished.
I know I’m saying something very controversial right now. I know religion has flaws. Hell, I know most atheist groups have flaws. But still, there may be something good in it, too, and I’m freeing myself to explore that.
In August, I repeated a similar sentiment:
I don’t want to sit around all day talking about how much I don’t believe in God. Really. I mean, if atheism is just about a lack of belief in God or gods, and that’s it, what is the point? Any way you answer that would be adding something onto atheism that wouldn’t be part of atheism.
These days, people are more interesting to me than God, and caring about them is much more interesting than caring about a lack of belief in God or gods.
Really. I mean, most of what really bothers me about Christianity has to do with the idea of people burning in hell forever, anyway. That’s a very cruel thing to believe about some good people. God’s not the problem for me there; the way people are treated and thought of is.
Here’s something I think:
If refusing to believe in God makes us treat people worse instead of better, it’s a waste of time. Refusing to believe in God is only interesting if that love and fascination once reserved for God gets dedicated to people.
I just don’t see the point of shaming Christians for not caring about people if we don’t care about people ourselves….
Nothing can change the beauty in the moments that we decide to enrich each other’s lives. When the entire universe is completely cold, unimaginably vast, and silently empty trillions of years from now, nothing will change that in one part of it, however small, people felt the beauty of caring about each other. People mattered to each other because they decided to matter to each other. No God had anything to do with it.
That’s worth getting up in the morning. Refusing to believe in God…isn’t.
That’s not to say that we shouldn’t be against religion. I just think the reasons why we’re against religion are more important than just being against religion.
It just seems boring to focus so much on the fact that there’s no God when there are so many fascinating people to get to know, love, and support. I don’t want to just sit here in the one life I have and get tunnel vision on being against God.
To each their own, though.
I could give you further sentiments from several blog posts. But the fact is that anti-theism started to look less and less like a natural, rational belief for me, and more like something I had to upkeep and keep my thoughts manicured around. Like…my doubt began awhile back. And I can’t write as roundly against theism in all its contexts now, because I have a deep empathy — partially, yes, from experiencing it myself — for those who lean on God, even though I am angry with many of the things this supposed God commands. So now I’m looking at theism more on a case-by-case basis. I used to talk to some extremely liberal Christians, for example, and honestly not really find any noteworthy points of disagreement with them, and then I’d feel as if I were doing something “wrong” because I could not find those strong points of disagreement — I was an anti-theist; I had the label, so I felt obligated to. It got to feel like I had to have faith that anti-theism was going to fix things or was the best position, in spite of evidence that created, for me in my situation, a strong skepticism that this was the case.
What drew me away from fundamentalist Christianity and towards atheism in the first place was a strong personal hunger for the truth and a sense of empathy. This also led me towards anti-theism, and in many ways it is what is forcing me out.
Now, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe we can create empathy through convincing everyone God does not exist.
But where I am personally right now, in my attempt to follow the evidence where it leads, I feel that the label of an anti-theist does not correctly describe my efforts, as fighting theism, in general, isn’t really my goal or even a secondary focus at the moment. My goal is to enrich the lives of human beings, and sometimes doing so requires fighting against beliefs people root in theism, and sometimes it requires fighting conclusions people draw from their atheism. But the real common denominator is the attempt to try to discourage harm.
I know this isn’t going to satisfy everybody, but this is already over 5600 words. If the conversation continues, I may discuss this more then. Until then, thanks for reading.
P.S. I have a Patreon, in case you want to help me keep doing what I’m doing.