Some of you may fall into this category. Some of you probably don’t. I know that I do, to some respect – that is, the category of atheists who harbor seemingly pathological anger at organized religion.
I will be the first to admit that this anger is sometimes pathological. It skews our views just as much as blind devotion to a religion would: humans, atheist and religious alike, are quick to imperfect instinctive calculations (read: prejudice) such as using a person’s professed religious beliefs to decide if they are trustworthy, or basing our opinions more on “what do other people like me believe?” than on evidence.
The divide between members of different religions sometimes seems insurmountable. Even having belonged to several myself, it can be difficult to recall what it was like to be a member of the group I’m not currently in. “What made me think that X was reasonable?” “What could have caused me to behave like that?”
The gulf between the experiences of people who have never shared the same religious beliefs is unimaginable.
This has become quite evident recently in a couple of conversations that have crossed my Facebook news feed. Some of these conversations have made it clear that the majority of atheist pundits do not understand religion; that they have no memory, no concept of the experience of God. Others have made it clear that people who think that they know God have no concept of how others could fail to think or feel like them; that they think that anyone who would oppose them in any respect must, necessarily, be evil.
The second lack of understanding is what I am going to address today.
A few weeks ago, I noticed that a family member of mine had commented on an article about an atheist activist attempting to remove “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. The results were predictable: many religious folks, almost all of them Christian, criticizing the atheist for attempting to “change the foundation of America.”
The fact that the original version of the Pledge did not contain the words “under God,” which were added at the behest of several religious organizations in 1954, did not seem to matter. The Christians did not perceive any “important” sleight against any “important” group of people in the Pledge’s history; all they knew was that removing “under God” felt like an assault against them, felt like a statement that “your religion is not valid,” and what was wrong with the atheists who felt the need to expunge all references to God from American history?
Following my own comment that I could see how atheists would feel under attack by a Pledge that suggests you must believe in God to be a proper American, a relative confronted me about “angry atheists” and how atheists need to take a long, hard look at themselves and ask why they harbor such anger against Christianity.
My own profession that I could name a dozen different legitimate reasons for this anger fell on deaf ears. Just like me when I was a Christian, she was unable to perceive offense against anyone but her own in-group. The constant parade of American politicians who proclaim the need to “return to our Christian roots” was not, in her mind, a meaningful sleight against non-Christian Americans. From her perspective, these statements were “overblown” and “not really a big deal” to those who are not Christian in America.
Yet she herself felt that her very right to exist as a Christian in America threatened by the suggestion of removing “under God” to return to the Pledge of Allegiance’s original form.
Imagine, then, how threatening it must feel for non-Christians to be told that your nation is adding “under God” to its Pledge of Allegiance – effectively stating by legislative decree that you can’t be a proper American unless you believe in God (preferably the Christian one). Imagine how threatening it was for the minority of Christians when this was instituted, who refused to say the Pledge because they felt that pledging allegiance to a country constituted idolatry – and who subsequently faced mob violence in many parts of America.
This conversation is not about the Pledge of Allegiance. It is about legitimacy. Why do so many of us feel that ours is threatened by the mere existence of people who don’t think like us? It’s as though if someone does not agree with us, they must be stamped out of existence – or else their existence must be vehemently denied, because such a corrupt species cannot be allowed to exist.
Atheists feel it every day, when preachers and politicians blame “godlessness” for all our ills, when they call for a return to America’s Christian past (whether that past of unified American Christian harmony ever existed is a topic for another day). Atheists feel it every day when their family members invite them to church or prayer meetings out of “concern for their souls,” knowing full well that their loved ones stopped going to those things intentionally. Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, and pagans feel it too, when they hear constant exhortations of the Christian God, and in those implicit denials of their own.
Christians feel it when we talk about legalizing gay marriage, or saying “happy holidays,” or removing “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. They feel threatened, a removal of a previously existing of “you are right,” which becomes in their mind an active statement that “you are wrong.” If the government does not share their values, if mainstream society does not share their values, then surely, they think, they will be stamped out of existence. There is a sizable proportion of Christians in the U.S. who believe that these moves away from “yes, you are right” will ultimately end in the practice of Christianity being made illegal in the United States.
It is as though they have some idea that existing as a minority in the United States means to be under constant attack.
So let’s use a little empathy. If you are a Christian, the next time an atheist or a pagan or a Jew complains of feeling attacked by the American system – consider how you would feel under the same circumstances.
What if, instead of Merry Christmas, the most common greeting utilized by the majority of Americans around Christmastime was “Happy Ramadan?”
What if, instead of “under God,” the Pledge of Allegiance said “under Odin?”
What if, instead of Biblical figures, courts were decorated with figures of Friedrich Nietzsche and Karl Marx?
What if these Muslims or pagans or atheists reacted as though your very existence was a threat to their own – as though legalizing Christian marriage or removing references to Odin from our currency were clear signs of grave moral failings.
Would you feel marginalized? Would you feel under attack?
Next time you encounter an “angry atheist,” try to remember that feeling. Would you feel angry in their shoes? Would you need to be ridiculed for your anger, or would you need empathy and understanding?
Try to remember that feeling the next time you feel angry about a proposed change to our society. Does it truly threaten your existence? Is it really a proclamation that “you are wrong” – or just a removal of a statement “you are right” that non-Christians in this country never got to begin with?
Is the thing that seems to validate your existence really necessary for you?
Does it invalidate somebody else’s existence?
What would Jesus do?
The Queen of Cups 