Religion & Spirituality

Twisty Tells it Like it Is: Atheism Is Not a Belief, Religion, Agenda

By Austin Cline, About.com GuideApril 19, 2008

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There's no end to the misconceptions and misunderstandings people have about atheism, so the need for correction and explanation will never end either. The problem is, most of those corrections and explanations tend to be found on blogs by and for atheists. This leads to people "preaching to the choir" while most of those who have misconceptions about atheism never learn any better. Is there any way around this?

Twisty Faster writes at I Blame the Patriarchy:

“Not believing in a deity” is not the philosophic opposite of “believing in a deity.” On the one side, there is nothing whatsoever. Zip. Bupkis. Nothing quantifiable or measurable in the faith department. In fact, there’s no faith department at all.

Whereas on the other side is an elaborate and convolute belief system of considerable avoirdupois. So, to recap: atheism, because it consists of nothing and, let’s face it, is only conceptualized in the first place because of hegemonic pressures, can neither act nor believe nor not act nor not believe. It’s not a religion. It’s not a belief. It’s not an agenda.* It’s nothing.

Imagine if it were the other way around. What if the citizenry were presumed a priori to entertain no goddish delusions? What if it were the norm to calmly accept the indifference of the cosmos toward individual humans? What if, were one moved to acquire an intimate understanding of the physical universe, the commonly accepted procedure were merely to observe it, rather than to make shit up using obfuscatory, 2000-year-old anthrocentric, dude-centric, earth-centric folklore?

In a world where deity-worship was a quaint curiosity, rather than a megatheocorporatocratic imperative, mystics who employed an Invisible Concierge of the Sky might be referred to as “atruthists.” ...

* Which is not to say that atheists cannot have agendas. The atheist activist, however, is mostly just saying, due to the in-your-face nature of the various dead lords and saviors, “Get your invisible dead lord and savior out of my face.” The threat “Or else I will tear your children’s throats out with my teeth” is merely implied.

There are three important aspects to the above which I want to draw your attention to. First, I kind of like the idea of referring to those who worship an imaginary being in the sky as "atruthists." I know, they might not like it, but if it's the truth that there are no gods, then those who worship gods anyway are a-truthists. Second, maybe the implication that we will "tear your children's throats out" with our teeth should be made a bit more explicit occasionally. It's unfortunate, but it may be the only way to get proselytizers to keep their religion to themselves.

The final and most important thing is also probably the least obvious. Simply put, the above explanation is much like what we'd find at any atheism blog, but I Blame the Patriarchy is not about atheism or religion. Granted, traditional religion is a significant source of support and ideology behind patriarchy, so any resource on patriarchy will have to address religion from time to time, but religion is not the focus of this blog and atheism rarely, if ever, comes up.

Why is that important? Because atheism shouldn't only come up in the context of atheism blogs. Atheists are more than just atheists — as Twisty points out, atheism essentially consists of nothing at all. It's just the absence of theism. Atheism isn't an agenda, but atheists themselves have various political, social, and philosophical agendas. Atheists are writing about all sorts of issues right now, but they are most visible writing about atheism. This is understandable because of the way atheism is regarded in society, but we should also make an effort to address more.

Atheists should be out their writing blogs on feminism, gay rights, economic issues, health care, philosophy, terrorism, law enforcement, and everything else that people write blogs about. The fact that they are an atheist should not be hidden. They should be open and unapologetic not only about being atheists, but also how their perspective is informed by a naturalistic, humanistic philosophy rather than any supernatural religion. It should be made unambiguously clear that secular atheists have something important to contribute to debates on these matters — that being an atheist doesn't mean one is devoid of morality, standards, meaning, love, etc.

Occasionally, atheism itself should be the topic of a post like the above in order to educate readers what atheism is and is not — readers who might not otherwise ever read a blog that is about atheism specifically. Even though Twisty isn't saying much that is radically new above, a post like hers has the potential to reach and inform more people than ten such posts on atheism-specific blogs. If you're an atheist who has considered starting a blog, consider starting one that is focused on a topic other than atheism itself. If you have more to say on atheism than would be appropriate on such a blog, offer such posts to an established atheism blog — in the long run, you may read more people and do more good.

Twisty Tells it Like it Is: Atheism Is Not a Belief, Religion, Agenda

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