To tell you the truth, it’s getting harder to deal with the horrible things said about us, though.  This is especially true as the attacks against us have been growing steadily in the past few years.  It’s frankly infuriating, but I will do my best to continue to monitor religious bigotry, especially against the nonreligious, and present it to you.  There is a bright side: the bigots are more vocal against us because we are being more vocal.  That is bound to happen.  Many nonreligious are no longer scared to speak out, nor are we scared to simply acknowledge that we exist.  In that sense, we are continuing to gain ground.

To those of you who have written to me during this absence, I have not ignored you.  Expect responses soon.

Now on to the promised links:

Christian Bus Ads Fire Back (KCCI.com)

Christian ministry “Covenant of Love” is has their own pro-Christian ads on buses on Des Moines Area Regional Transit Authority buses this month.  It is reportedly in response to the recent atheist ads that have been on buses throughout the country.  From what I have seen, the article title seems misleading.  The ads don’t appear confrontational in any way; I would hardly say that they “fire back.”  They simply express their own positive view of Christianity, and that’s a great thing.  This is what we need, dialogue, which we have been essentially excluded from for too long.  We get our say and the religious get theirs.  Religious ads have existed since long before the atheist ads, though.  One could argue the religious already more than had their chance, and in fact dominated the discussion.  This is more confirmation that we are making headway.  We are a threat.  Despite the long history of unopposed religiosity, they feel that they need to respond to us.

Atheist group takes message to Lakeland via billboard (Tampa Bay Online – TBO.com)

Talking about ads, another atheist group has put up a billboard, this time by the Atheists of Florida.  As with the rest, there is nothing offensive unless one chooses to be offended.  It’s a message to other like-minded people that they are not alone, just as with other billboards that have gone up: “Don’t Believe in God?  You are not alone.”

Of course, the website’s comments display the same bigotry and irrational thought we have come to expect from bigots whenever atheists dare even display that we exist.  For example:

Posted by ( zgolf1 ) on 11/02/2009 at 01:53 pm.

I think that the people behind this billboard should stand on a street corner in Polk county and spread their word directly to the people. I am fairly certain that before the day was out that their beliefs would change once that were loaded onto bayflight.

Threatening members of the Atheists of Florida with physical violence because they state that atheists exist?  That’s not very Christian.

June 1, 2009

A Message from President Herb Silverman

[...]

Last Thursday, the nontheist movement achieved a new milestone when the Secular Coalition for America had its first individual meeting with White House officials. The Secular Coalition has met with White House officials before, but Thursday’s meeting was unique. It was not a coalition meeting with other organizations, but a special meeting between White House staff and representatives of the Secular Coalition. We had the opportunity to tell the White House who you are, what your policy interests are, and what concerns you.

We have made clear to White House officials that our coalition of nine national nontheistic organizations represents a full spectrum of nontheists. As the broadest, most diverse advocacy group for nontheists in Washington, D.C., we have the credibility to explain our political and cultural interests to our nation’s leaders and provide them with a window into what nontheists across America are thinking and doing in their communities. More importantly we are becoming an influential and increasingly organized constituency, and elected officials want to take our concerns into account.

The goal of the Secular Coalition has always been to increase the visibility of and respect for nontheists in America. Thursday’s meeting was one small step for the Secular Coalition, but an even more significant leap for nontheists everywhere.

My deepest thanks for all you do to support the work of the Secular Coalition for America,

Herb Silverman

President & Founder
Secular Coalition for America

From the article:

The poll found 32 per cent of respondents opposed the ads, 20 per cent supported them and 43 per cent didn’t care one way or the other.

Support for the ads was strongest among respondents in British Columbia and Ontario, with the highest opposition in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

Support also varied by age and income, with younger respondents and those making more than $60,000 a year more likely to favour running the ads.

Some nonreligious activists might see this as a failure.  This is understandable; the more controversy they create the more visible they are and the further their message spreads.  I don’t see it this way.  From the beginning, organizers of the various bus ads have asserted that they are not meant to be insulting to the religious (although many do see  anything contrary to their beliefs as an insult), nor are they specifically geared towards creating controversy, although they certainly do want attention drawn to them so that people know they exist.  They ads were created mostly to let the nonreligious know they are not alone in a world dominated by the religious, and to let others know that we exist and we will demand our place in the public discourse, no matter how forcefully the bigots try to quiet our voices.

As far as getting our message wide attention, that has succeeded.  The fact that a survey was conducted and reported on in the news shows this.  The print news is driven by what the people are interested in reading about, so clearly even without major controversy people are interested.  With every article about the ads, the message spreads wider.

As to the message itself, if even one atheist has been reassured that there are others out there like him or her, the ads have been a success.  If it has caused at least one person of faith to just think about their own beliefs a little deeper, or see that we do exist and will not let the anti-atheist bigots keep us out of the public discourse anymore, the ads have certainly succeeded.

Canadians, religious and nonreligious alike, should be proud of this survey’s findings!  It suggests that maybe, in opposition to America and Britain, Canada is more respectful of the rights of people to hold different religious beliefs and opinions, or none at all.  That is how it should be everywhere.  Atheists publicly promoting their viewpoint should be no more controversial than the religious views openly promoted throughout western society.

We don’t ask for tolerance of beliefs and ideas.  Any beliefs put out into the open should be questioned, and that is exactly what many active or “militant” atheists do.  No one should be attacked personally for simply having or expressing these views, though.  Many religious people claim it is us militant atheists who attack them for simply believing, but as a whole this is untrue.  These people see any criticism of their beliefs as personal attacks; they cannot tell the difference between valid criticism of a claim and attacks on the people making the claims.  Meanwhile, it is the nonreligious who receive the brunt of the bigotry.  We are told that we don’t even have the right to express our views at all, or that we are immoral for simply being honest about what we do or do not believe.

I hope this means that Canada is on the right track, because America certainly isn’t.

Do people respectfully respond to racists?  Generally, they don’t.  They are attacked and called what they are – racists.  Religious bigots of any sort deserve no different treatment. It’s clear who has the ethical authority here.  We attack religion and the concept of faith, while they attack us directly.  They call us immoral, bad people, tell us we will burn in eternal hellfire, not due to our actions, but because have happen to not believe in something they do.  They express such bigotry through mean-spirited, disingenuous personal attacks on us – attacking us not for our characters and actions but for what we don’t believe.  They do not deserve civil discourse.  We are simply judging them by their actions which they rationalize with their religion.

Of course, we should be careful to not overdo it and see bigotry or discrimination where it doesn’t exist, such as a group in the opposition, the Catholic League.  Unlike them, though, we actually experience major bigotry and discrimination in the United States.  Not all religious folks are bigots, and they deserve as much respect as anyone else making an argument.  If they are meritless the arguments should be attacked, but not the people.  Bigots will not get such courtesy here, and should not anywhere.  They come into the discourse with nothing but personal attacks, and should be treated in kind.  If they want to be treated with respect, they should be focusing on how they treat others first.

No group fighting for their civil rights has ever preserved them by being nice to and pacifying their most vocal opponents.  This simply gives them more power.  We need to take a hint from all the great rights movements, such as the black civil rights movement, gay rights movement, and women’s suffrage movement, just to name a few.  Are bigots the type of people we should concern ourselves with showing niceness towards?  We need to concentrate our efforts towards those who are important: the progressively religious and the nonreligious who are passive and hide their views.

Are you worried about such rudeness being used against us (”See?  Look at the angry militant atheists!”)?  Don’t respond at all, then.  Religious bigots make themselves look bad all on their own.

Such persecution may not be as bad as what other groups have gone through physically, as I have discussed in the differences between our movement and the black civil rights movement, but it is horrible culturally.  For social beings, is such social ostracizing not one of the worst forms of persecution possible?  Just being truthful about one’s lack of belief will commonly make others immediately think worse about you, and therefore treat you differently.  Speaking out or “complaining” about such ingrained bigotry is not expressing a persecution complex, but is necessary if this will ever change.  As clearly shown by other movements, such as the gay rights movement, the only path to social change is forcing the issue into the public consciousness.  This is impossible without calling out bigotry, discrimination, ostracizing, and persecutions against atheists wherever we see it.

Criticize us for What we Do Believe, not what we Don’t

Atheists don’t ask for the religious to accept or even like our atheism, just as many of us don’t like or accept their religiousness.  Unfortunately many religious people are unable to make that distinction.  In their eyes, if our viewpoint is contrary to theirs we must be bad people or at the least untrustworthy.  It is understandable theists wouldn’t like atheism, as it is in direct opposition to their own religious beliefs.  That doesn’t make it okay to lack respect for the people who are atheists, simply due to their lack of belief.  If you are going to hate a person, at least do it for some actual trait the person has, not simply their view on religion.  Atheism tells you nothing of what kind of person someone is.  It asserts no dogma, and is in fact the lack of dogma.  To then think you can judge someone’s overall character solely due to the lack of religious belief is ridiculous.

Atheists know that, although sharing similar belief, not all religious people share the exact same political views or values.  Religious groups exist to the right, the left, and everything in between.  Religious people need to understand that it is no different for us, and if anything we share ever less.  Atheists are simply, and only, bound by one single aspect: our lack in belief in a god.  We don’t necessarily share anything else, so to classify us all as bad or immoral could not be more wrong.  Just as anyone of any belief system, atheist’s values vary.  Some who are so critical of atheists would be surprised to learn that many of us probably have practically the exact same values and morality and they do, we just get our morality from sources other than religion.  What those sources are, though, is a post for another time.

Just as we don’t accept religious beliefs, we don’t expect the religious to accept atheism itself.  But, despite the caricature bigots have of us, atheists as a whole don’t see all religious people as bad simply due to the fact that they believe something we don’t.  Yes, many of us see religious belief as a flaw, but that doesn’t mean we distrust others simply due to their religiosity.  Any rational atheist understands that we all have flaws, and criticism of one flaw is not a direct attack on the people who have it, but an attack on the flaw itself.  Sure, we criticize actions and people who take such actions that we see as wrong that are influenced by religion, but this is not an attack on religious people as a whole.  We simply ask, no demand, that the religious give us the same basic courtesy and understanding.

The Veil of Ingrained Cultural Anti-Atheist Bias

This is not to say that there aren’t anti-religious bigots that hate all religious people simply due to their belief, but those are nowhere near the majority, or even a plurality of atheists.  How then, could we live in a world and have civil discourse with others in a world of the religious, and in the Unites States, a country of which a majority are Christian.  We are a minority.  Many of our friends therefore tend to be religious.  Do we look down upon them simply because we think their beliefs are ridiculous?  Of course not!  We all have flaws.  Part of friendship and simply dealing with others in society is accepting flaws.  This is something religious bigots are unable to understand when it comes to the supposed “flaw” of atheism.

Unfortunately, many can’t see through the anti-atheist bias their culture, churches, mosques, synagogues, etc. have instilled into them since day one.  This lens of bigotry makes some unable to see that a criticism of religion is not the same as a personal attack on them, and that atheists can have the same or similar good values as them even without religion, and – to get back to the point – that atheists do face strong cultural persecution in this country.  Those who see us through their bias will see any claim of prejudice, discrimination, or persecutions as playing the victim card, but that doesn’t make our complaints any less valid.

The fact is, even if some other atheists who have been blinded by the veil of society’s religious bias such that they can not see the societal discrimination against their own brothers and sisters as bad as it is, we are the last acceptable prejudice.  We may not be the “most discriminated group,” as one Uncle Tom atheist says in his criticism of the movement.  This is true to the extent that it is not as visible as against blacks in the 1950s.  If anything this just makes the prejudices against us more insidious.  Such prejudice is constantly in the background of all American societal life.  The unquestioned ingrained notion of many that we are lesser people, less good than those with religion certainly makes us the most quietly (and many times not so quietly) despised people in the U.S.

Association with Atheism is Political Death

The only way to break our society of such ingrained prejudice is to speak out every time prejudice reveals itself in practice, such as a politician being attacked by the opposition, simply because she had contact with a lobbyist concerned with the rights of atheists.  It would be absolutely unacceptable and considered religious bigotry to criticize a politicians for meeting with lobbyists representing the interests of Christian religious groups, but it is seen as perfectly fine to criticize her for meeting with those representing the interest of atheists, and as such insulting all atheists who are a member of their constituency.  This is the kind of bigotry our movement is concerned with, that simply having any contact with an atheist can ruin a political career, or even make other suspect you may be an atheist too, as if that is a bad thing.  It’s not a persecution complex when we are persecuted.  Until there is a major change in the public consciousness, as eventually happened for other discriminated groups that wouldn’t shut up when told to, we won’t shut up.  Not when bigotry such as this is accepted, and encouraged in this country.

The Real Persecution Complex: Christian Special Interests

If you want to criticize a group for their persecution complex, a much better example than atheists is The Catholic League and other Christian groups.  These groups want us to believe that anti-Christian persecution is somehow endemic in theist

U.S.  The cognitive dissonance it takes to believe such is astounding.  To believe this, you need to ignore that the large majority of Americans are Christian, that belief in God (especially the Christian god) is basically a prerequisite for election to political office, and a laundry list of other special cultural and political privileges Christian groups get in a country with a supposed “separation of church and state.”

They are the ones with the persecution complexes, and should be laughed out of a discussion if they ever dare the claim they are discrimination against in this country.  Despite their claims, they are not for religious rights; they are for special rights for Christians (which they unconstitutionally already have).  While atheists simply want to be allowed to live their lives openly and truthfully as anyone else does, the Catholic League wants their ever whim catered to.  If not, they are “discriminated” against in their eyes.

Yet atheists are the ones with the persecution complex?  It would be laughable if I wasn’t so disgusted.

According to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (see graph below), as of 2005 44% of private schools were Roman Catholic and 37% had other “religious orientation or purpose,” for a total of 81% of private schools being religious.  Although the amount of schools with certain religious affiliations such as Roman Catholic has dropped since 1989, the vast majority of private schools are still religious.  The 1999-2000 Schools and Staffing Survey asked private and public school principals about their school goals.  While the top two goals of public school principals were basic literacy (80%) and academic excellence (70%), the top two goals of private school principals were academic excellence (66%) and religious/spiritual life (64%).

With such a large majority of private schools being religious, it follows that the majority of school vouchers would lead to taxpayers funding religious schools as opposed to private secular institutions.  Since a top goal of the majority of religious private schools is religious education, it follows that such taxpayer funding would inevitably fund religious education, which is blatantly unconstitutional.  Atheists certainly don’t want their money paying for education in a religion they don’t follow, and neither do members of differing religions or denominations of the school receiving the voucher funding.

In such a school, there is simply no way to assure that taxpayer money will not be paying for religious education without the government requiring that religion not be taught at all.  Even as an atheist, I recognize that such a requirement would be just as unconstitutional, and I would never propose such.  The Establishment Clause protects both the government from religious interference, as well as religion from government interference.  The only way I can see that would have vouchers fall within constitutional bounds would be to require vouchers only be used for the small minority of secular private schools, something those who demand “choice” would never allow.

There just doesn’t seem to be any good way to keep vouchers yet also protect our First Amendment rights, so I agreed with the Secular Coalition for America when they say to get rid of them altogether.

March 3, 2009

Dear Supporter,

The Senate will soon vote on an amendment to continue funding of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program for an additional year. This voucher program in the District of Columbia is supposed to give parents a “choice” of schools for their kids as an alternative to public schools, but in practice, the only choice the program provides parents is to send their children to private religious schools. Since Congress appropriates money directly to the D.C. government for this program, this means that your tax dollars are helping to fund the religious education of children in D.C.

TAKE ACTION NOW.

This program, a favorite of the Religious Right, was enacted as a “test” program in 2003 and set to expire after 2008.  The program has already been extended once without sufficient scrutiny.  Those Senators eager to continue spending federal dollars on religious education and religious proselytizing are trying to do it again.  They are attempting to circumvent the public scrutiny of Congressional hearings and reports on the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program that is required by current legislation.

Worse yet, this amendment is a deliberate effort to circumvent the public scrutiny of Congressional hearings and reports on the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program to which this program would otherwise be required to be subject to this year.

The Secular Coalition for America opposes the use of government funds for religious purposes, including vouchers for religious schools. We agree with the founders of the United States that no individual taxpayer should be required to pay for someone else’s religion.

Help us end funding for this program by writing to your Senators now.

TAKE ACTION NOW.

Best wishes,
Secular Coalition for America

“Blog Against Theocracy” is an event happening on blogs of those who understand the importance of defending our constitutionally required separation of church and state.  From April 10-12, look out for posts all over the blogosphere, including here on SDR, concerning varied issues relating to the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.  This is not an atheist blogswarm, per se, but is open all who support Thomas Jefferson’s “wall of separation.”

For the record, when I say atheist in this post I am for simplicity’s sake referring to the nonreligious as a whole, not necessarily only those who would self identify as atheists.  I know this isn’t very specific, but the community is not united in the way specific religious groups are because we don’t necessarily share any specific philosophy.  We simply (passive) lack belief in any supernatural deity, or (active) deny the existence of a supernatural deity.  With that said:

Clearly, the atheist civil rights movement is very much different from what is seen as the model of a civil rights movement in our country: the black civil rights movement.  Atheists are not segregated from the religious in public schools; we are not forced to sit at the back of buses; we are not barred from eating in the same restaurants as theists, using the same water fountains, etc.  This issue is used constantly to argue not so much that there is no atheist civil rights movement, but that we have no right to call it such.  This is patently ridiculous considering the plain definition of the words.  With the assumption the movement exists, is it concerned with “civil rights?”  Clearly, it is concerned with the legal and human rights of atheists.  I’m not a lawyer, or even a law student, but by what other reasonable way can we define civil rights?  Now, is it a movement?

This is a movement, but not in the same form as the black civil rights movement.  Although our goals are in essence the same, the situations, as I have discussed, are clearly not the same.  As a result, the forms the movement takes are not the same.  The same types of physical actions (civil disobedience for instance) are generally not possible.  Sitting in the front of a bus would have no meaning, nor would drinking at a water fountain a theist just drank at, and so on.  Atheists don’t march in the streets regularly, arguably because there isn’t enough bare-faced institutionalized discrimination of the same form that would push atheists to.  If we do, we certainly are not shot with fire hoses.

An argument can be made that this is simply due to the fact that, unless we all go around wearing shirts with the text “I AM AN ATHEIST” on them, it is virtually impossible to identify an atheist in this country unless you were to ask a person’s religious preference or get in a discussion on religion.  I can say that although I don’t know of any data or even an unscientific poll even designed to test this specifically, there are those who would be likely to attempt such discriminatory measures in American society if there was some way to identify all atheists quickly and easily.  This is simply anecdotal, and is not meant to suggest that all of the religious or a majority do think this way.  That would be the exact sort of bigotry I fight against.

Institutionalized discrimination against atheists does exist in this country, though, for example in state constitutions.  As I have wrote about in part 1, my most recent research shows that six states still include provisions barring atheists (and presumably some other non-Christians) from all public offices or specific public offices: Arkansas, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Texas.  But what is more insidious is the ingrained notion that is unfortunately instilled in many.  This is that atheists cannot be trusted, that we are not moral, and that we can therefore not be good people.  This is the big problem.  This is what makes open atheists feel like second-class citizens.  It is to the extent that the most passive expression of our views is considered an attack or arrogant.  While any religious person can generally expect not to be attacked for simply stating their beliefs, an atheist is expected to shut up – to not simply express that he lacks a belief.  Otherwise, we are arrogant “militant atheists.”

What form does our movement take?  We see this best through the many rights and special interest groups that exist.  Since discrimination and bigotry is not extremely obvious in every aspect of society and especially government as it was with the black civil rights movement, atheists are not generally stirred to march in protest, for instance.  Large marches also generally don’t happen because we don’t have any specific beliefs that would bind us together.  It has been said that attempting to gather atheists together is like herding cats.  Atheists fall along a large spectrum of different political and philosophical ideals.  We are simply grouped by something we lack, belief in a god.

This is not to say that we have never marched for our rights and the constitutionally mandated separation of state and church.  On November 2, 2002, the national group American Atheists rallied thousands of nonreligious on the D.C. mall, known as the “Godless Americans March on Washington“.  From this rally a new atheist rights group was formed, the “Godless Americans Political Action Committee (GAMPAC),” whose mission is stated as “Mobilizing America’s Nonbelievers for Political Activism.”

Other groups promote equal rights for atheists and the atheist viewpoint in all aspects of American life, from grass roots on the street activism to promoting the rights of the nonreligious in the military.  Many of these groups are not strictly made up of atheists, but include also theists who are concerned with the rights of both the religious and the nonreligious, such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and the People For the American Way.

Groups that consist of mainly atheists and are concerned with mainly nonreligious rights include: Atheists For Human Rights, the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, the Secular Coalition for America, and The Richard Dawkins Foundation.  This is not a complete list, but gives you an idea of some of the groups out there.  You can learn more about how they support and protect the rights of atheists on their websites.

Religious bigots just don’t get it.  They don’t understand that others have the right to express their opinions publicly.  If one were to criticize them for promoting their religion in public they would cry “Religious intolerance!”  When atheists express themselves, though, we are suddenly “militant atheists” hell bent on eroding the religious foundations (that don’t really exist in the way they mean) of our country.  While atheists are persecuted, or at the least subject to constant bigotry for simply expressing ourselves, I continue to hear Christians in the United States claim that they face persecution.  Really, in a country with a vast majority of Christian citizens they are somehow persecuted?  Give me a break.  Even other Christians, such as Indianapolis Star religion blogger Robert King, understand [indystar.com] how ridiculous it is for Christians in the U.S. to claim persecution.

New Bus Ads … Now From the Christians

British Christians, in an attempt to counter the recent atheist bus ads, have raised money [washingtonpost.com] for their own ads in an attempt to counteract the atheist bus ads.  This is their right, but they miss the point.  The ads were not meant to de-convert anyone, although the religious are constantly attempting to convert nonbelievers, or those that believe the “wrong” thing.  Although many atheists do see religion as a dangerous thing and would love to have more people rely on evidence-based reasoning, the ads were not meant to do this.  They were simply to let the nonreligious who feel alone in a religious world know that there are other out there who share their disbelief – that they are not alone.  Christians are already well aware that they are not alone, so what good does this really do them?  It’s a mean-spirited attempt to drown out the atheist voice by those who can’t stand the fact that atheists will no longer be in the closet, we will no longer sit quietly and internalize the opposing view that they shouldn’t express themselves like the religious, lest they be labeled “arrogant.”

British Christian community, you can feel free to buy as many bus ads as you want.  It just shows how frightened you really are that you are losing ground.  Unlike some intolerant religious folk, we are not afraid of open dialogue, we have nothing to fear.  As the Washington Post article says:

More than three of four people in the world consider themselves religious, and those who say they belong to no faith are in the distinct minority.

As a minority, even in a more secular country such as Britain, we have nothing to lose.  Our ranks are growing faster than ever and religious leaders know it.  They are scared, so we can only expect the attacks to get stronger, in both the United States and Britain.  It means we’re doing something right.

Hanne Stinson, chief executive of the British Humanist Association, said the new religious ads proclaiming God are “really quite a compliment” and mean “our ads had an impact.”

EVENT NOTICE

WHO:   Mary Bellamy, Assistant Director for Programs, and Woody Kaplan, Advisory Board Chair, Secular Coalition for America
WHAT:  Ethical Culture Society of Rockland County
WHEN:   Sun., Feb. 8, 10:45 a.m.
WHERE:  Peace Through Play Nursery School, 8 Amber Ridge Road, Chestnut Ridge, New York

Mary and Woody hope to meet you in Chestnut Ridge where they will be speaking to the Ethical Culture Society of Rockland County at 10:45 am on Sunday, February 8, concerning “More Than A Presidential Shout-out:  How the nation’s first lobbying organization for nontheists is working to remove the theocratic yoke from our federal government.”