I have always been an atheist. My parents made it pretty clear: From a
young age I knew we were Jewish, and we did not worship or believe in
God. (Apparently, I was less clear on the distinction between the two,
which led to me being enrolled in Hebrew School until I could
differentiate them.) I have no “atheist conversion story,” although I
could tell the story of how I became a skeptic some time.
That is a different article, however. The point I am trying to make is
that I am happy as an atheist. I have never felt any particular need
to be anything other than an atheist, never felt that I wanted to be
anything other than an atheist, and never felt that I was missing out
on anything by being an atheist.
Being an atheist is a huge part of who I am. I could not stop being an
atheist without completely revising my outlook on the world. Becoming
a believer would not be as simple as switching the “God” switch from
“Yes” to “No.” In order to believe that God (or gods, or an impersonal
supernatural force that comprised a privileged reference frame from
which to view questions of morality and value) exists, I would have to
redefine my understanding of the word “exists” to be able to include
things not made of matter. I would have to redefine my definition of
“true,” my definition of “evidence,” my definition of “reality.” I
would have to completely revise the way I view the universe, and to
get there, I would have to completely
destroy the way I view
the universe.
And beyond the existential distress of utterly transforming my
worldview, there’s the social distress, too. Would such a drastic
change influence the way my friends see me? Would it change my
relationship with my fiancee? Depending on which religion I turned to,
would it hurt my relationship with any of my family members?
No matter how it happened, becoming a believer would be an extremely
stressful and painful experience. I’ve been told, by people who have
done it, that the other way around is just as traumatic.
***
Greta Christina posted last month that, “For many atheists, our
main goal is persuading the world out of religion.” She goes on in the
same post to establish herself in favor of that position:
We don’t want to see this happen by law or violence or any
kind of force, of course. But we think religion isn’t just mistaken.
We think it’s harmful. Some of think it’s appallingly harmful. Some of
us think it’s inherently harmful: that the very qualities that make
religion unique are exactly what make it capable of doing terrible
harm. What’s more, we see religion as not just hurting atheists. We
see it as hurting billions of believers. So we’re working towards a
world where it no longer exists.
So, according to Greta Christina, her primary goal as an atheist is to
make most of the world’s population suffer the trauma of losing their
faith, so that they can then be better (read: more Greta
Christina-like) people with truer (read: more similar to Greta
Christina’s) beliefs. And I should be okay with this, because she
promises not to use legal coercion or violence to bring it about.
I am not okay with this.
For starters, I am a skeptic. I demand truth claims be backed with
empirical evidence. So: Where is the empirical evidence that religious
belief is harmful, either to believers or non-believers? I want a
serious study here: A comparison of abuse of power in religious
institutions to similarly structured secular institutions, say, or of
domestic abuse rates between religious and non-religious households,
corrected for factors known or suspected to influence abuse rates not
directly attributable to religion (such as authoritarianism, substance
abuse, and abuse rates in past generations). Give me hard, empirical
data that religion is harmful--that bad religious people would be less
bad if they were atheists, that good religious people would be better
if they were atheists, that suffering religious people would suffer
less if they were atheists.
Then prove that it is
always better to be atheist than
religious. Show that there is
never a person better off as a
religious person, never a person whose religious faith makes the world
around them better. Because if there is even
one such person,
then a world with universal atheism is worse than a world of
pluralistic belief.
I find it absurd I have to make this argument. Somehow, large numbers
of otherwise clearly very intelligent atheists are able to avoid
seeing the blatant irony and hypocrisy of insisting, with
no
evidence whatsoever, that belief without evidence is harmful.
Second of all, I like diversity. Diversity is powerful and useful. In
most fields of endeavor, empirical data and truth are not of primary
importance; you can do data entry equally well regardless of whether
you understand electronics or think your computer is powered by tiny
gnomes. Without religious perspectives in particular, art, literature,
music, and architecture would be sadly diminished. Imagine a world
with no Sagrada Familia, no Angkor Wat, no Eddas, no
Lord
of the Rings, no Bach… the list is unfathomably long.
It is clear that, misapplied, religious faith is a hindrance to
scientific and technical endeavors--creationism proves that. However,
the existence of non-religious anti-science movements such as global
warming denialism and the anti-vax movement call into question whether
it is actually religion that is the problem, or clinging to
demonstrably false, harmful beliefs in the face of overwhelming
evidence, which hardly seems an exclusive problem of the religious.
Meanwhile, the existence of religious scientists in large numbers (one
2007 study found that more than a third of biologists and
psychologists believe in God or gods) suggests that religious faith
is not an insurmountable obstacle to scientific endeavor, if it is
even necessarily an obstacle at all (which I regard as, at the very
least, not proven).
Third, and most importantly: You do not have a right to make others
suffer for your beliefs.
No one has that right. Ever.
If Greta Christina’s assessment of religion were correct--if all
religious belief is both false and inherently harmful--then religion
would be not only a mental illness, but the most widespread mental
illness in history. But even if that were true (and I do not believe
it is), you do not have a right to cure people by force unless they
are
demonstrably an
immediate danger to themselves or
others.
I cannot reiterate this enough: Proselytizing is yet another word for
making people suffer in order to transform them into what you think
they should be, for no other reason than because they are not what you
think they should be.
What Greta Christina advocates--what any atheist advocates when they
suggest “increasing the numbers of atheists” as a laudable goal, what
any adherent of any religion advocates when they suggest “increasing
the number of members of my religion”--is evil in one of its purest
forms.
--Froborr


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