Mailbag: Pushing Beliefs Onto Others

The most important part of atheism, for me atleast, is not pushing your beliefs (or nonbeliefs) onto others. I see a lot of athe...well..non-christians doing this.

As you can probably tell, this email wasn't actually from a theist complaining about the site! I'm including it, however, because this atheist raised a very important point that I wanted to comment on (and yes, it is quite a coincidence that the person has the same name as I, isn't it).

Atheism isn't fundamentally about anything except the lack of belief in a god. Suggesting that people who don't believe in gods but who disagree with you about other things, or who simply aren't as polite as you, aren't "really" atheists is a serious error. Indeed, it is the same error as that made by Christians when they claim that other Christians who don't believe the "right" way aren't "really" Christians. Not only is it a fallacy (No True Scotsman Fallacy), but it is also an error of attitude - it is the sort of attitude which keeps people divided into "us" and "them." The "us" are the ones who are "good"and do things the "right way" because we possess the "truth" about nature, whereas the "them" are those who are "bad" and do things the "wrong way," either out of ignorance or just plain old mean-spiritedness.

Those who don't do things the way you like it (and I agree that pushing ideas onto others isn't good because it is normally done in a rude way, but promoting ideas is of course different) don't stop being atheists. Yes, if they are being rude they should stop. Unfortunately, many atheists suffer from what can be called an "angry atheist" condition. Often it is because they have recently moved away from religion and they are angry about all the misinformation they had been fed and had believed for so long.

Some, I'm sorry to say, never move out of this stage of anger - either because the hurt is too bad or they get so upset over the actions of some religionists (like fundamentalists) in society. It is helpful to consider the process of de-conversion as similar to that of grief and mourning. It has stages, with one of the strongest being anger. People who grieve but never get over being angry end up miserable. Such people need our help and support, not our condemnation. Should those getting over religion deserve any less?

More selections from the Agnosticism / Atheism Mailbag...