Myth: Atheists Want to Eradicate Public Religion, Driving it Underground

Myth:
Atheists are using the separation of church and state to remove all public religious symbols and expressions. If godless liberals have their way, religion will be totally squeezed down into private life, underground, which is a violation of free speech and religious liberty.

Response:
This is an extremely popular myth about the nature of church/state separation as well as atheists' goals: separation is designed to push religion out of the public view and into the private realm, thus serving the atheist agenda of pushing religion underground and eventually destroying it. Many seem to find this claim to be persuasive, never realizing that it rests upon a logical fallacy known as equivocation: the meanings of "public" and "private" are conveniently changed mid-way through.

When people contrast the "public" and "private" expressions of religious beliefs, they typically equivocate upon two different meanings that each could have. The first pair of meanings is a contrast of how visible or widely known something is: "public" is often used to mean "out in public," the opposite of that which is kept private and hidden from the view of others. Your medical records are not supposed to be "public" in this sense while your address generally is.

The second pair of meanings is a contrast between how something is supported: some things are supported and funded by the "public" (normally through the government) as opposed to "privately" (meaning individual citizens). Thus we have "public television" which is supported in part by the government, but there is also "private television" which is very public in the first sense (i.e., it's not hidden from view), but is private in that it's owned and financed through private means (advertising). We also have "public colleges" which are funded by the government, as opposed to "private colleges" which are managed and financed privately.

Which pair is this myth referring to? Both: it moves from one to the other without making that clear. By shifting which pair of meanings is being used even as the same words are employed, this myth commits the Equivocation Fallacy. It starts out with a reference to "public religious symbols and expressions" which are opposed by atheists (and other supporters of church/state separation). The only sort of "public" religion that is prohibited by church/state separation and opposed by atheists is the "government supported" sense of public.

There should be no public religion or public church in the same sense that there are public universities or public television. We don't have the government financing missionaries. We don't have the government building churches. We don't have the government telling citizens that they should read the Bible and convert to Christianity. We don't have "public religion" like that which exists in Europe where certain churches are in partnership with central governments.

This myth then goes on to mention having religion "squeezed down into private life, underground." This is obviously a reference to the other sense of the public/private distinction where something is hidden from view rather than out where everyone can see it. This is not what atheists or other supporters of church/state separation advocate. No one is telling churches to take down signs or symbols which identify them as religious. No one is telling people that they can't explain, discuss, or even promote their religion in public.

It would be logical and true if this myth claimed that "atheists want religion removed from government auspices (auspices = protection, support, patronage) and kept under private auspices." It would be logical but incorrect if this myth claimed that "atheists want religion removed from public view and driven underground where it was only exercised privately, where no one outside knew about it."

Unfortunately, this myth does neither; instead, it is both illogical and untrue. The myth illogical because it employs a logical fallacy — there is no connection between the prevention of government support of religious beliefs and the hiding of religious belief from public view; the myth is false because atheists aren't trying to drive religion underground.

This ambiguity between the two meanings of "public" is easy to exploit — many people will agree that religion should be "public" in the sense of being open to view of everyone, but far fewer will agree that religion should be "public" in the sense that the government should pick a religion or religious group for the sake of special privileges and financing. This is because most Americans still believe in fairness and they still believe in religious freedom, two principles which are undermined by the theocrats who want to give government the power to promote, endorse, and finance particular religious beliefs.

Why do people perpetuate this myth? I don't know, but I suspect that some do it deliberately and in full knowledge that it's little more than a bait-and-switch con because they know that most Americans wouldn't approve of the government patronizing certain churches and supporting certain religious dogmas, so they can't make an argument there. However, if atheists and secularists can be smeared with the accusation that when they are trying to make religion private in the sense of "hidden, underground" rather than simply "supported by individuals, not the government," they can more easily elicit a negative response from readers or listeners, fooling them into support of the anti-secularist agenda.