1) To be moral

I think this sells people short. Theists may claim they get their morals from their religion, but if you ask them the why behind their beliefs, you tend to get utilitarian explanations, which isn’t very far from what atheists do.

And it’s not like the theistic morality works very well – the vast majority of criminals are theists, and supposedly moral people seem to have a very hard time staying within their morals. I think that’s because rules that you get from somewhere else (what theists generally mean when they say “morals”) are far less binding than those that you have personally developed. Why are so many religious people cheating on their spouses and their taxes?

And that is totally discounting the fact that some religious morals are immoral. Slavery. Valuing people of another religion less than your religion. etc.

2) To be happy

Happiness is overrated, especially if it comes at the price of realism. Sure, I’d like the world to be all unicorns and ice cream, but that’s not the way life is. People who think that are at best misguided and at worst dangerous.

I don’t know about the “bad life” person. I’m lucky enough to not be in that situation myself, but I have run into a bunch of people who were in a bad place (job issues, health issues, close people dying issues), and my experience is that the most religious ones were wondering why God was putting them through something like that (“everything has a purpose, though it may not be apparent”).

My father lost his mind and ultimately his life to Alzheimer’s disease. I’m a lot happier in the knowledge that a combination of his genetics (a roll of the dice) and his lifestyle led to the development of the disease than wondering why god would choose to do that.

I think everybody has the right to make up their own mind about religion. Given that the vast majority of people are indoctrinated by their parents (in countries that are mostly theistic), militant atheism is about giving them that right.

Posted: August 12th 2010

See all questions answered by Eric_PK

You don’t say what you mean by “militant”. What you do say is that trying to convince believers to embrace atheism has potentially negative consequences. While such a conversion could never be risk-free, the risks do not outweigh the rewards. I won’t bother enumerating these rewards except to say that decisions based on wrong information lead to uncertain outcomes. I will address the specific risks you raise.

Some people can’t conceive of morality without a divine authority. Your insinuation that this incapacity is somehow related to lack of smarts is indeed condescending and wrong besides. You don’t need a sophisticated argument to demonstrate that crime doesn’t pay. If you’re interested in the finer points, that’s your business, but any implication that some people need a priest to tell them not to rob their neighbors is ridiculous. It may be that some people can’t see a reason why thievery should be called wrong unless there’s a god, but practically speaking it doesn’t matter either way. You’re free to ponder at the ultimate nature of good and evil all you want. While you wait for the answer, you protect your property and enjoin your neighbors to do likewise because you can see with your own eyes that this makes you safer.

As for your second point, think about the pitiable souls you describe, whose only hope is the delusion of life after death. If there really are people whose only comfort is to anticipate their own demise, theirs is a very mordant respite. Is it ethical to teach the downtrodden to long for death? If their desire to die is so strong, is it ethical to teach them that suicide will deliver them to eternal damnation? It only furthers their indignity to suggest that we mustn’t offer them a choice between reality and fantasy.

Posted: August 9th 2010

See all questions answered by George Locke

The problem with what you are suggesting is that it misunderstands the very nature of religion. It is based on the assumption that religion is a purely personal thing, that has no effect beyond the believers themselves. This is simply not true. IF it were true, what you term 'militant atheism’ would never have been born.

The reality is that religion intrudes in public life in almost every conceivable way (the following is written from a UK perspective):

1. The religious have hijacked the very concept of morality, managing to hoodwink even the non-religious into believing that religion has some kind of special insight into the subject. Consequently, every single time a proposed new law has an ethical dimension, the clergy are wheeled in as though no one else could be fitter for the task of assessing it. The same happens on the news. It all reinforces a completely preposterous notion – a notion which actively demeans everyone who rejects religion.

2. Because of this, religious lobbyists find it easier to find an ear in the corridors of power. MPs feel the need to 'respect’ them.

3. The religious are frequently exempted from laws that apply to everyone else. An example that has been in the news recently is that it is illegal to cause unnecessary animal suffering in the UK – unless it is for religious reasons, in which that’s perfectly ok. Why should that be? If it is unacceptable for an atheist to slit a lamb’s throat whilst it is still fully conscious, why should it be acceptable for a Jew or a Muslim to do it? Why do their religious beliefs trump compassion and decency?

4. The religious themselves don’t treat their beliefs as personal, but demand that more and more concessions be made to them. It is becoming more and more common for the religious to take their employers to tribunal, simply because they have been expected to follow the same rules as everyone else regarding the work they do and the uniform they wear. They even want to suppress scientific education, doing everything they can to smuggle creationism into the science curriculum.

5. The religious have consistently fought every law, every possibility of a new law, that would conflict with their beliefs. They have every right to do this, of course, but let us please be under no illusion that their beliefs don’t come at a heavy cost to everyone else. Powerful religious lobbyists would like to reverse our abortion laws, restrict the availability of divorce, ban sex education from our schools, reverse laws protecting equal rights for gays, and prevent stem cell research and assisted suicide for the terminally ill. Let us be clear: no one is trying to force the religious to terminate their own unwanted pregnancies, end their own unhappy marriages, enter into gay relationships, or to die with dignity – but they are desperate to remove or keep those choices from the rest of us. Until recently the religious mafia in the Outer Hebrides made it impossible for ferries to run between the islands and the mainland on Sundays. It wasn’t enough for them that they themselves chose not to travel on the 'Sabbath’ – no, they couldn’t be satisfied until they had imposed the same restriction on everyone else too.

6. Do you know how hard it is to get charitable status in the UK? The answer is 'Very hard indeed’ – unless your proposed charity has a religious dimension, in which case it goes through automatically.

7. All religious activity is therefore tax-exempt – i.e. paid for by us, the taxpayers, whether we like it or not. By default.

8. The state imposes religious belief on all the children in its schools: it is a legal requirement that ALL pupils up to the age of 16 attend an act of 'broadly Christian worship’. Schools can only be let off this requirement if they can show that most of its pupils are from a different religious background. The state is greatly adding to the number of faith schools in this country – from memory, something like 30% of all secondary and 40% of all primary schools are specifically religious in nature.

9. There are now religious hatred laws, which bring us perilously close to not being able to overtly criticise religion at all. No other set of ideas is protected in this way. Even without the laws, the religious have managed to create a situation in which challenging their beliefs has become a huge taboo. Why? Why should their ideas be uniquely off-limits? There are many other things that people value and with which they identify and which are hugely important to them – but we are allowed to challenge those. So why not religion? Why do we regularly see questions like yours, but never 'You know, we might not agree with those neo-fascists, but their beliefs give them a sense of purpose, and make them happy – so shouldn’t we just leave them in peace, really, and not keep criticising them?’

No religious person is obliged to read The God Delusion or websites like this one; they are not obliged to watch Richard Dawkins documentaries on TV; they are not obliged to work on Sundays or have abortions or anything else that goes against their beliefs; and I’ll bet you a pound to a penny that you have never heard of atheists knocking on people’s doors to try to convert them. The private lives of the religious are not affected one little bit by atheism, no matter how militant. The day the same can be said in reverse is the day there ceases to be anything for atheists to be militant about.

Posted: August 8th 2010

See all questions answered by Paula Kirby

I think much of the perceived positive effect that religion has on morality is actually down to community. Perhaps for evolutionary reasons, people behave better when they feel themselves to be a member of a community, especially when that community has strong values for behaviour. There’s no reason that this effect needs to be achieved through religion.

2) Surely it is better to work to improve the quality of people’s lives so that they will have less desire for religion?

In any case, despite the comfort it can sometimes offer individuals, religion is not generally correlated with happiness. The Map of world happiness shows that many of the world’s happiness nations are also the least religious (eg: Denmark, Sweden, Finland).

To answer your over-arching question about “militant atheism”, like other answerers, I also dislike the term. I’d prefer “activist atheism” or even (paradoxically?) “evangelical atheism”. I advocate the secular ideals of allowing the freedom of belief and the free practice of whatever religion, as long as it doesn’t impinge on other people’s rights. I also think religious ideas should be freely debated and where possible, we atheists should verbally challenge religious ideas, promoting our beliefs to the same extent that religious evangelists do. However, we should probably try to be less annoying than evangelicals! Personally, I only “preach” atheism in response to someone preaching religion. In that case, it’s hardly reasonable for them to complain as they started the conversation.

I’d also make a point to never challenge someone’s beliefs when they are under stress or in an otherwise emotional state. To do so would be manipulative and immoral and this behaviour always disgusts me in the religious. Priests trying to convert people at funerals, for example, is deeply offensive to me.

But it is important that we do challenge people’s beliefs when appropriate.

Posted: August 8th 2010

See all questions answered by Eshu

You are correct in thinking that not everybody is able to think clearly and be emotionally able to handle a godless perspective. However, they will be allowed to embrace and practice god belief as usual, so no change in that regard at all.

What is changed is that they will not be able to do so without being challenged, if not directly, then indirectly via an cultural atmosphere that no longer defers to religious faith and grants it special privileges. Such challenges will cause them some grief I would suppose, but the ones that need to believe will continue to do so for there has always been challenges to their faith. The ending of this deference is paramount, as it has played a major role in countless negative influences which religious belief exert on societal progress.

Some religious believers have told me that they are glad for activist atheists (a more palatable adjective than militant), as they think that their faith has become stale and uninspired—they wish to get back to basics in terms of their religious beliefs, that is, a private and personalized metaphorical handle which helps them to live better, without religious organizations. Vocal atheists have made them think and clean up their act, with their faith intact. Faith itself does not have to be eradicated, but our propensity for non-evidential beliefs need to be severed from tax-exempt organizations.

Though I often jest that vacant churches should be used as therapy centers for former faith heads, we need to understand much more than we do at present the psychological dynamics of god belief so we can make the best adjustment from this once predominant focus in our lives, that is, of faith and the mind-numbing deference to it. And then there are those that are employed in the business of religion—what to do with those folks?

Our societies have always adapted to change, from being basically rural to essentially urban, from a male-dominated focus to a more gender-free one, from a class bias to a more egalitarian basis. None of those processes came easy, but they came.

You are just witnessing another one.

Personally for me, it is a choice of mental and emotional courage to be an activist atheist. No matter how difficult it is to challenge god belief/religion, for whatever reason, including unintentionally hurting the feelings of others, I know I would lose my self respect if I did not do so.

Posted: August 7th 2010

See all questions answered by logicel

What sort of morality does religion really offer – a set of rules given from on high? This doesn’t help people develop a sense of morality; it just helps them learn to obey.

Both the argument for morality and the argument for happiness are lies that religions tell us. The fact that billions of nonbelievers around the world live happy, meaningful, moral lives is proof positive that religion is not needed.

It’s odd that for theists to be militant, they have to commit acts of violence, but for atheists to be militant, all they have to do is verbally attack someone’s beliefs.

I’m of the opinion that people are certainly entitled to believe whatever they want, but the simple fact of it being their belief doesn’t grant it any special respect. People can believe all sorts of crazy things, and we don’t need to accede to them just because they’re religious beliefs.

Posted: August 7th 2010

See all questions answered by Mike the Infidel

Yes, it is a good thing. It is necessary.

One of the reasons is political. Public religion is always political. It insists people believe things about the world in order to influence their behaviour: women can’t be priests. Homosexuals can’t marry. Abortion is wrong. Stem cell research must be forbidden. This has to be fought against, and it has to be fought against by people who overtly reject religion so that it isn’t assumed that religion is in the background of every argument, that it is the default.

Another reason is about rights. Rights should not be based on your political view, but they certainly are. Try and get elected as an atheist in the USA. Try and get onto an ethics advisory group expressing a view of morality as an atheist. Atheists are considered to be political outcasts, not deserving of the same default rights as the religious. That has to be fought against.

Another reason is to do with reason itself. It’s significant that whenever religion is challenged, religious people tend to club together to defend the principle of supernatural belief, even when those beliefs contradict each other. The vast majority of people believe that gut feeling or tradition (which are the only sources of religious 'knowledge’) should carry weight in arguments, no matter what the source of those feelings and traditions. Only atheists are in a position to insist that those just aren’t good enough, and decisions need to be made on the basis of reason and evidence. In a time when the decisions politicians make can change the world, we need to be militant about the use of reason.

People can take all the personal comfort they like from religion. But as soon as they choose to express religious views in public they need to be challenged with vigour.

Posted: August 7th 2010

See all questions answered by Steve Zara

Personally, I’m not too happy with the word “militant”. Richard Dawkins used it in a speech he gave at TED back in 2002, and it seems to have stuck.

But what is “militant” atheism? Exactly what type of behaviour does it appear to be prescribing? I’ve seen the word used to bash atheists who say anything at all, who do more than just sit down and shut up. In environments where religion is “normal”, just being open about your atheism can be “militant”, so I have to see this as highly context-sensitive.

So this is one reason why I don’t like the word: it conjures up images associated with unrest, of Bolshevism, of mobs going around breaking things and hurting people. What I actually see is: atheists accused of being “militant” just for being atheists and saying so. It’s a useful word to theists who will say or do anything to advance their agenda, since the ends justify the means in their worldview. Prof. Dawkins unwittingly handed theists a stick with which to slap us, justified or not.

Posted: August 7th 2010

See all questions answered by brian thomson