BOULDER, Colo.-
Has atheism joined the mainstream?
The idea, which once would have been cultural—not to mention religious—heresy, no longer seems entirely far-fetched with the advent of popular books such as Sam Harris’ “The End of Belief” and “Letter to a Christian Nation” and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion.” In May, Christopher Hitchens weighs in with a book entitled: “God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.”
Those best-selling authors and others, including Victor Stenger, an adjunct professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado, argue that science has effectively proven that God does not exist.
More provocatively, some aver that atheists should not find accommodation with liberal believers who have traditionally tolerated their views. Harris, especially, says that such acceptance is intellectually inconsistent and can enable more militant religious types to further blur the line separating church and state.
In “Letter to a Christian Nation” he writes: “I have little doubt that liberals and moderates find the eerie certainties of the Christian Right to be as troubling as I do. It is my hope, however, that they will also begin to see that the respect they demand for their own religious beliefs gives shelter to extremists of all faiths.”
For many atheists, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were exhibit No. 1 of religion gone awry, a war between Muslims and Christians over principles atheists don’t ascribe to or understand.
So it was for Larry Bauman, a board member of Boulder Atheists, a local group with about 150 on its mailing list.
“It made me think critically about things,” says Bauman, 63, of Boulder. “When I heard that these were well-educated fundamentalist Muslims that did the deeds, it got me thinking about religion in general.”
Bauman, who had been raised in the Catholic Church but drifted away as a young man, had seen himself as an agnostic.
After 9/11, he says: “(I thought) it’s time to get serious here. The future of civilization is at stake here. We can’t let the fundamentalists decide what is national policy, whether it’s here or another so-called religious country … I realized that atheism was the only thing that made sense.”
Even before 9/11, atheists felt threatened by what they say is the Bush administration’s reliance on religion in setting policy. Marvin Straus co-founded Boulder Atheists in early 2001 in response to Bush’s proposed faith-based initiatives. The group has monthly meetings, generally with a speaker, as well as less formal weekly lunch gatherings. It also has adopted a stretch of highway and staffs a booth at the Boulder Creek Festival, where members pass out cards that say “No gods, no devils, no heaven, no hell, just the wonderful universe around us.”
Straus says the journey from belief to non-belief often begins with people asking questions about religion and receiving answers they find unsatisfactory. The next step is agnosticism, generally defined as the belief that humans cannot know whether there is a God. Many remain agnostic, but others go further and conclude that God doesn’t exist.
Once someone becomes an atheist, he or she must then make a crucial decision: whether to publicly declare a non-belief in God.
That “coming out” process can be a painful one, atheists say. Some members of Boulder Atheists keep their views mostly to themselves. They say talking about atheism in a culture where polls show roughly 90 percent believe in God in some form can be difficult.
“There is a price,” says Jill Maxwell, co-chair of the group. “Atheists can feel isolated.”
Even in laid-back Boulder, some people are overtly hostile at the Creek Fest, she says.
“There are people who are angry (who ask) ‘Why are you here?'” she says.
Even family members may not know.
“We have one member who has come out to his family as gay, but would never come out as an atheist,” Maxwell says.
That analogy to gay rights, as well as to the feminist and civil rights movements is one that many atheists find compelling. They say that they are in danger of job discrimination and harassment. Some did not feel comfortable having their names published in the newspaper.
“It seems to me that atheists are where gays were two decades ago,” says Boulder resident Holly Harris, 43, a regular participant in the atheists’ lunch gathering. “We need to come out so that society can see us as we really are and not ignorantly label us as degenerates without morals or Satan worshippers with an evil agenda.”
Harris’ parents were divorced when she was 7. Her father was a born-again Christian; she described her mother as a freethinker. She grew up shuttling between evangelical church services and Unitarian lectures.
“I could fit into both worlds,” she says. “But I never really believed in God. I looked at religion more as mythology, a way to explain the world. But I didn’t want to offend. I played along.”
Her mother is now an atheist, but her father and his family are believers.
While most of Harris’ friends and her mother know she is an atheist, her father does not.
“(Religion) is so much a part of him,” she says. “It would just upset him. I don’t want him to think ‘My daughter is going to hell.’ But it bothers me when (he and his family) say ‘We’ll pray for you,'” she says.
She joined Boulder Atheists last summer, because she wanted to find fellow atheists to talk to.
“I needed to start feeling less isolated,” she says.
Atheists say the spate of books on the subject and the trend toward a more muscular atheism is push-back against an ascendant religious right.
Yet there’s no agreed-upon way to approach non-belief.
“Part of atheists not liking religion is not liking organization,” Maxwell says. “(Atheism) is not unifying in the way that believing in a (central) myth would be.”
Straus puts it this way:
“I love when you go to church and the priest says, ‘All rise,’ (and the whole congregation stands up.) Try that in an atheist meeting. One-third would rise. One-third would tell you to go to hell. The other third would argue about whether or not to rise.”
Those differences in personality, experience and approach to life mean that taking a strong line against all religion is tricky in real life.
“Anytime anyone makes anything into absolutes, that makes me uncomfortable,” Harris says. “I wouldn’t think I had the right to say to liberal Christians, ‘You are causing this problem.’ Also I think you can’t just take something from people. They have been looking through these lenses their entire life.”
She knows and likes Christians and feels comfortable with them. Still, when dating, she seeks out a man who is a nonbeliever, as does Maxwell.
“It’s something I discuss early on,” Maxwell says.
Straus says the last step for an atheist is to become an activist. In his view, that means declaring that religious people, even those who have read and thought and studied, are wrong about the existence of God.
“There are some religious people who are extraordinarily nice people,” Straus says. “I don’t denigrate anyone who is a religious person. But I do think they’re delusional. They believe in things I don’t believe exist. “I think they’re delusional. They think I’m going to burn in hell.”
Believers may catch a whiff of contempt there, a view among atheists that the faithful have taken the easy way out by manufacturing the artificial comfort of an afterlife where loved ones are reunited and scores are settled.
Why not agnosticism? Why the rock-hard certainty of atheism?
Atheists say the probability that God exists is incredibly low. Maxwell describes agnosticism as “mushy.”
“The burden of proof isn’t on me,” she says. “To prove a negative makes no sense.”
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