Atheist "Evangelism"

[xenologer]

Here's my explanation for why I talk about my atheism a lot.

It's the same reason I talk about the experiences of LGBT people. It's not that I'm evangelizing to make more LGBT people. Though these experiences of marginalization are obviously not equivalent, I do think that the atheist movement has a lot to learn from the LGBT movement on this subject. It doesn't all have to be about recruitment. Sometimes it's just about visibility. People will be better to atheists (and yes, this may sometimes extend to being more willing to consider what we're saying) if they know that they know atheists, that we're normal people, that we can be good people, that we aren't so different from them, and above all why we are atheists at all.

If all religious people were like Quakers running around pushing for the abolition of slavery, LGBT rights, and environmental protection, I don't think you'd even hear atheists griping about obnoxious theists or whatever. Those people aren't my main concern when I'm talking about atheism, though, because believe it or not? It doesn't always have to be about theists!

Atheists need to be able to talk about ourselves without theists making themselves the center of attention and discussion. Sometimes we need to be able to talk to and about each other, too. Sometimes atheists talk about being atheists because it makes it easier for other atheists to be atheists. It's just like how some people talk about being LGBT because it makes easier for other LGBT people to be LGBT.

So, in short, atheists need to talk about their atheism. We have the right to do it, we have the right to have our reasoning heard, and we have the right to reach out to each other. Yeah, I believe there are benefits to "deconverting" theists, but much of the time for me it isn't about that. Just because theists are the dominant group in my culture doesn't mean that every ounce of energy I spend and every minute of my thoughts needs to be dedicated to their wishful thinking. Sometimes it needs to be about us.

Comments

[eumelia]

This really resonated, because I'm gay and I'm a Jewish atheist and for me, there's a lot of intersection with those facets of my life and living in an country that is becoming more and more extreme when it comes to religion - there needs to be a place for people like us to talk about being sceptics, disbelieving and atheist without having to defend our choices to believers who feel attacked by our very existence.

[xenologer]

I'm glad that it works. I didn't want to be all appropriatey about it, since obviously they're really different experiences and they prompt different reactions from outsiders, but the visibility thing is such an amazing tactic to take from LGBT activism because it really is harder to dehumanize someone if you've already got 'em filed as being a creature kinda like you.

So yay! I was a little worried about drawing the parallel, so it's good to know I did an okay job.

[eumelia]

There is a parallel and other LGBT atheists talk about this tactic - specifically Greta Christina http://freethoughtblogs.com/greta/2008/12/15/being-an-atheist-in-the-queer-community/

http://freethoughtblogs.com/greta/2007/09/19/good-cop-bad-co/

[xenologer]

Yeah, Greta Christina is the cat's pajamas. I just have all this straight privilege all over me, so I feel like I need to be more careful even if I'm making some of the same points.

[megaptera]

I think I need to friend you for this. o.o

In my experience talking about atheism even without complaining about theism makes theists uncomfortable. I remember being a Christian kid and being uncomfortable around atheists for a few reasons -- mainly that (a) simply knowing that atheists existed made me question the things I believed and took comfort in, and (b) I believed that people who didn't believe in God (in some form or other -- I didn't have a problem with other people who believed in some kind of god) wouldn't go to heaven. Aren't those two positions delightfully contradictory? :P

But this is about taking the focus off the theists, so I'll stop there. :P We absolutely need to talk about it to each other, and if theists are bothered by it it's not our responsibility to go and hide and talk someplace where they can't hear it. Unless they do that themselves in order to make us comfortable. Then I'd give them that consideration.

[xenologer]

Yay! Nice to meet you!

And yeah. I had a very different experience because I was never actually Christian, but it definitely seems like Point A is a huuuuuge problem for some theists, because if their kids find out that atheists can be well-adjusted and even HAPPY, well... then... they won't be as afraid of being one! THIS IS THE WORST. So even seemingly uncontroversial statements about how atheists are still people reaaaaally cramp the style of theists who need to keep people scared of asking certain questions because of what it might turn them into.

[charlycrash.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. When I've had a decent (read: non-Internet) conversation with evangelistic theists, they're usually pleasantly surprised by my views and how moderate they are. I don't think I'm unrepresentative of atheists either.

As I've griped about I've run into more than a few obnoxious atheists, but atheism and what it stands for (if it can in general be said to stand for anything) is really not that controversial, yet it's all massively misunderstood by a lot of people. Secularism turns into antitheism in the popular mind, natural selection into things popping into existence by pure chance.

I would actually compare it with feminism, in that feminism is so often misconstrued to be all about women wanting to ruin all men's fun and turning society into a matriarchy. Once you actually, y'know listen to what feminists are actually saying, it becomes clear that that's not what they're looking for at all. And with atheism (and feminism, for that matter), the Bill O'Reillys of the world really aren't listening to how reasonable atheist arguments for things are - hell, secularism is written into the US Constitution in the form of SoCaS. I don't expect them to agree, just to try and take on board what is actually being said rather than having paranoid misapprehensions.

[virginia-fell.livejournal.com]

It has a lot in common with how I handle and express my feminism, yeah, but comparing it to LGBT activism has a great ability to throw back to the old accusation that because gays can't reproduce, they have to recruit.

Most people seem to have gotten over the fear that LGBT people are trying to "recruit" them (even though scraps and tatters of it remain in a lot of cases) and instead think of it in terms of letting other people do what they do and still thinking of them as people no matter what that is.

[mothwentbad.livejournal.com]

If t3h gay tries to recruit you, can't you take it as a compliment?

[admnaismith.livejournal.com]

Very true.

When I was a dumb teenager, I had a lot of wrong, hurtful beliefs about gays, because I'd never been taught any better and there were no out gays in my home town. I didn't change my beliefs until I was in college and several people came out after I had already been friends with them and known that they were as normal as anybody else.

I had different wrong beliefs well into adulthood about transgender, based mostly on culture shock and having known two people who had had the operation and who also happened to be psychologically messed up. It wasn't until someone I knew, respected and admired had the operation and became someone I continued to respect and admire that I began to think differently about the whole "T" part of LGBT.

Similarly, theists "learn" falsehoods about atheists from theistic clergy, theistic family, and others with an agenda. They come to resist attempts to teach them otherwise by education alone as "political correctness" or "indoctrination by ThoseBadSeculars". The only thing that will really teach them different is the day-to-day example of good people known to be atheists, who are as normal as anyone else.

Be who you are. Be awesome.

[virginia-fell.livejournal.com]

*flexes* I will do it!

[mothwentbad.livejournal.com]

To some extent, it is about deconversion for me anyway, at least in a very large number of cases. Religious beliefs like "non-Christians are firewood", "non-Muslims are firewood", "blastocysts are people", "everything is God and if you don't have God you're nothing and nobody", and "God hates fags" are all religious beliefs. It's not like you can just explain in five minutes that you love your spouse and don't molest kids and then all they have to do is acknowledge that and move on, because this bullshit about how atheists can't ever fully be people is actually bundled in with the all-or-nothing package they think makes them a worthwhile people in the eyes of the Author of Love Himself. It's not just an incidental thing that they happen to lean toward with no particular backing.

[virginia-fell.livejournal.com]

It can be about deconversion for some people, and like I said, I can see the worth in doing so. It's just that not all atheist activism is an attempt at deconversion. Sometimes all we're saying is, "We're here, and this is what we're really like. Not so scary, is it?"

If you want to frame it in terms of how useful it is for your ultimate goal of deconverting people, you'll have a lot more success with the people you talk to about atheism if they don't think that losing their faith will turn them into some joyless horror, because they know plenty of atheists who are just fine.

[mothwentbad.livejournal.com]

I guess claiming to be as complete a human being as anyone else is implicitly an attempt at deconversion whether you wanted to go into that territory or not. To diminish atheiophobia is to diminish Christianity in a way that diminishing homophobia doesn't diminish straightness at all.

If atheists being worthwhile human beings who don't deserve to be put to the stake implies that people don't have immortal souls waiting to fly to Heaven and therefore Life Has No Purpose, then That's Scary for a lot of people, and I wouldn't rhetorically ask them otherwise.