Help is on the way
There’s another thing about the suggestion that Americans claim to be more religious than they really are for reasons to do with identity rather than belief, and how gnu atheism can Help.
It’s this. One thing gnu atheism is doing is relentlessly pointing out that religious belief is not altogether intellectually respectable. That means that religion no longer offers such a desirable kind of identity. It means the identity aspect is more mixed.
When you ask Americans about their religious beliefs, it’s like asking them whether they are good people, or asking whether they are patriots.
Yes, but now it’s also getting to be like asking them whether they believe in Santa Claus. It’s getting to be like asking them if they’re somewhat too credulous for a grown-up.
The “identity” is under pressure from that direction in a way that it hasn’t been in a long time, and the pressure will only increase. The internet has given argumentative atheism an ideal tool of persuasion, so it won’t just fade back into the woodwork in a few years. Gnu atheism will just go on chipping away at theistic epistemology, and the longer it does so, the less obviously desirable the religious “identity” will be. People will no more think it vaguely socially desirable to profess churchgoing than they will think it vaguely socially desirable to profess genuine belief in Santa Claus.
Phil Plait probably won’t agree with me, but a bit of explicit mockery here and there may help to hurry the process along. After a few experiences where pious proclamations are greeted by a derisive snort and a laughing “Do you believe in Santa Claus, too?”, many people might be inclined to start hiding their light under a bushel. Of course some will just dig in deeper, but more than a few may be prompted to think carefully about whether their worldview really is just a bunch of silly nonsense.
It may take some years before the typical American encounters such derision at a significant level, but eventually a tipping point will be reached.
Yes, I agree with your point. I’d say that what gnu atheism is mainly doing, is encouraging closeted atheists to come out.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Skeptic South Africa, Ophelia Benson. Ophelia Benson said: Help is on the way http://dlvr.it/C3pqv […]
Americans’ identification with religion probably has as much to do with community as belief. Not just during initial immigration to the continent, but also as families have uprooted themselves from state to state following the frontier or industrialization, we’ve had to establish ourselves in new communities again and again. Religious congregations have been a central part of that.
Which is also why people will defend traditions they might otherwise, with some thought, be willing to abandon: because they feel like their community is being threatened.
Also why people generally won’t convert from one religion to another, or to some less dogmatic and more rational belief system, until they’re good and ready. Until their religious community turns toxic and unsupportive, shunning their daughter for having an abortion, their son because he’s gay, their neighbors because they’re Muslim, or their very selves for waking up and thinking.
In America (and especially here in the Midwest), my experience confirms that religious belief is almost exclusively about identity and community (belonging), about being viewed as a trustworthy cooperator by the rest of the group. I like to say that on average, religious belief and practice in the U.S.A. is 3,000 miles wide and half an inch deep. On average, the average (self-described) religious American can accurately recite or intelligently discuss only a tiny, tiny quantum of religious doctrine (even if he or she is a regular churchgoer).
On the 24th (yesterday), I spent some time with my parents and one kid sister visiting from Los Angeles. She works in the broadcast television industry, wears a crucifix around her neck, and regularly attends a tony, mainstream Protestant church whose members include many rich and prominent “movers” in the entertainment industry . . . actors, actresses, producers. They sit on church committees that produce elaborate, professional-quality videos whose purpose is to cajole and wheedle the rest of the congregation into maintaining or increasing their tithes. I’ve heard a recorded sermon by the pastor of this church, and I was underwhelmed. My sister seems to treat her membership in this church (like her little crucifix neckace) as a fashion statement, as a means to maintain her professional standing in the L.A.-area broadcast TV community.
I cited to her the December 23 article in the New York Times in which the reporter described the Vatican’s official “validation” of visions of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the tiny rural community of Champion, Wisconsin dating back to 1859.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/24/us/24mary.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=homepage
The article was a terrible piece of reporting (no skeptics or non-believers were interviewed), and repeated a claim that one of the intercessions by Mary was her protection of the little town from the huge Peshtigo Fire of 1871, while “surrounding homes and farms” were destroyed. The slightest amount of independent research would have disclosed that Champion was outside the southern fringe of the fire-damage area.
I pointed this out to my sister and opined that the more interesting question was why Mary did not intervene to protect more of the 1,200 to 2,000 people who were killed by the Peshtigo fire. She snapped back, “It doesn’t work like that! One of the members of my church is a leading scholar on the Dead Sea Scrolls.” That was all she said, or wanted to say, and someone changed the subject. In my sister’s response and non sequitur I detected what I have seen and heard before: a hint of embarrassment about the actual, specific content of some of the beliefs that believers feel obliged to profess.
I think once atheism becomes ‘socially respectable’ it will spell the end of the religious ‘majority rule’ in America. I think social status may indeed be the underlying cause of religious stubbornness, and it is far more emotionally driven than rational. The only problem is, we don’t want a majority of non-religious robots, we want people to think rationally, and hold their governments to account.
I live (partly) in an outer suburb in central Virginia. Of the sixteen or so families on my street only one are regular church goers. The rest go shopping, play golf or do yardwork on sundays. But the reality of life here in VA is that overt religiosity is socially rewarded with respectability by a noisy, obtrusive minority of true believers who happen to run the state and localities. So religious matters receive attention and are honoured far above what they should be while atheism or even just “lack of faith” is attacked and scorned. It seems to me most people are just going with the flow superficially while doing their own thing in practice. This is going to take a long time to change in Virginia, which is typically from 30 to 100 years behind the progressive states of the union.
Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian NationWhen the same social stigma is attached to a publicly professed belief in a personal invisible friend that talks to you as a belief that Elvis still walks amongst us then the stranglehold that religion has on society will be broken.You can tell by the virulent response to atheist ad campaigns that the religious know in their hearts how ridiculous their beliefs actually are. That the best arguments they can muster are about tone and hurt feelings shows that the epistemological arguments have been won and now it is a matter of atheists claiming a rightful place in the marketplace of ideas.I see the role that Gnu atheism plays in this as similar to lancing a boil, initially painful but once the pus drains away the wound has a chance to heal.
Steve hits it on head. I agree that most believers, deep down, realize their beliefs are unfounded. They accuse us of being superior because on some level they believe we are superior. That they are too weak to break the spell. But they can’t admit that, even to them selves, so they lash out at their “superiors.”
Let me be clear: I’m not asserting that we ARE superior; rather, that they BELIEVE we are superior and that eats at them.
Maybe it is a similar psychological dynamic to the conservative politician who publicly lambasts gays, because he is secretly denying his own homosexuality. I don’t know what this is called in clinical terms – maybe reaction formation – but it seems to be a common behavior.
I agree with Steve and Locutus, the bus ads provoked a kind of social status cognitive dissonance. The reaction is to view atheists as pariahs of society, as immoral, not because it’s true, but because it maintains the illusion of their own social hierarchy and self-worth. But the more aware people become of atheism with its links with science, the more we will be viewed with respect and esteem. When non-religion becomes a majority, then it will become the new status quo, and religion will then be perceived as the pariahs.
If this is true, then it may help us better understand how to spread atheism/science.
@Hamilton#1: I don’t see any reason to drag the BA into this or to suggest that he may not agree. He heaps his own quota of ridicule on the anti-vax people after all. I still can’t quite figure out his speech; maybe he just meant to say that in most cases you should make your case without belittling the people you are talking to, but he chose poor examples and the message, I imagine, is nothing new to most people nor do most people behave that way anyway.
As for me, I still ask people how they know that their priest has a connection with god as claimed.
It has been suggested that historically (perhaps even evolutionarily) it’s the irrational nature of religion that gives it its social power. Difficult and costly ritual separates the in group from the out group, and maintaining the ritual over extended times tends to suggest the person is a true in grouper rather than an impostor.
By contrast organizing around something obviously true and useful (methods of agriculture, crafts etc) are attractive to anyone both in and out groups would be indistinguishable.
[…] and Comment Blog « Help is on the way […]
MadScientist: Point taken; I should have said Josh Rosenau instead.
I also don’t use mockery as part of my personal arsenal; it’s just not in my nature. I tend to ask probing questions that reveal inconsistencies and hypocrisies, although those who reveal them often don’t seem to notice that anything was revealed. But I still think that mockery can be effective; when a 12-year-old child who believes in God is laughed at in the same was as one who believes in Santa, we will have made real progress.