An Atheistic Christmas Sermon

In Dostoevsky’s famous novel The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan Karamazov famously insisted that without God, everything is permitted.  This, of course, is simply untrue.  Morality is not dependent on the existence of God, and centuries of nontheistic ethical philosophy, from deontology to utilitarianism, has demonstrated this fact.  Indeed, contrary to Ivan Karamazov, it is instead true that with God, everything is permitted.  Because human beings do not have access to the thoughts of their deities, their religious moral systems frequently conflict with and contradict each other.  This has been demonstrated empirically over and over again, as people have at once justified slavery and the abolishment of slavery on religious grounds; they’ve justified indiscriminant killing and the turning of the other cheek on religious grounds; and they’ve justified terrorism and nonviolence for religious reasons.  Even worse, the nature of religious faith, or what amounts to beliefs held to be absolutely certain in the absence of any evidence, allows for the justification of any belief whatsoever.  With faith, everything is permitted.

If a belief is grounded in faith—that is, if the belief has no basis in evidence or reasoning—then there is no means for adequately and objectively determining whether a belief is true or false.  Removed from the irritating responsibility of being shackled to and corresponding to reality, truth becomes whatever one wants it to be.  This, in essence, is the meat of the New Atheist’s criticism of moderate religion.  Clearly, religious fundamentalism and extremism is directly more harmful than more liberal religious interpretations or a vague spirituality, but both the extremists and moderates nevertheless engage in a style of thinking that makes extremism possible.  With faith, everything is permitted, and the religious moderate’s faith-based thinking legitimizes the faith-based thinking that is more extreme, whether it be the religious justifications for terrorism to religious oppression of homosexuals and women.

As WK Clifford once argued in his famous essay The Ethics of Belief: “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”  I do not go as far as Clifford in that I do not think it is always wrong to believe something with insufficient evidence, but I do believe it is wrong to legitimize faith-based thinking and even worse to praise it as a virtue.  To believe without evidence can lead to a number of unintended and harmful consequences.  In that sense, the benign religious moderates of the world are not direct dangers, but they harbor a terrifying potential for danger, and they stoke the flames of unreason present in extremists and fundamentalists, unable to criticize their evil deeds adequately with their faith-based criticisms, unmoored from reality, and engaging in exactly the same type of thought that causes and encourages religious extremism.  And not only that, but the moderate’s religious beliefs are also false, which is no small charge.

Of course, I have been generous in assuming religious moderates are not themselves harmful, but this assumption is not correct, and denying it only further bolsters my case.  To use only one example, consider the role liberalized moderate religion and spirituality play in the complementary and alternative medicine movement.  Despite its good intentions, the alternative medicine movement is dangerous and harmful, fostering unwarranted skepticism toward medicine that actually works (as in the antivaccination movement) and promoting medical modalities that do not actually work.  Many of these alternative medical modalities are justified on the basis of appeals to vague spirituality and westernized bastardizations of Eastern religions, as well as on criticisms of scientific study and research in order to emphasize intuition and faith as “other ways of knowing”.  In this way, faith-based thinking can be dangerous, and even the most well-meaning and charitable beliefs can pave the way to destruction if they are not adequately based on evidence and legitimate reasoning.

There is also much to be said for criticizing religious believers, even the moderates, simply because they are wrong.  It is not necessary to demonstrate that a belief is harmful to nevertheless show that it is incorrect.  There is certainly less harm in beliefs concerning big foot and extraterrestial aliens than there is in fundamentalist religion, but I criticize these beliefs, too, on the basis of the lacking evidence and the silly credulity of those who jump to unwarranted to conclusions.  Like religion, though, these beliefs can also become something dangerous in many ways, like when a naive believer in psychics empties her bank account to pay a psychic to cleanse her negative aura, or when believers in extraterrestial life commit mass suicide to join the UFO trailing behind the Hale-Bopp comet.

Truth should ultimately matter more than appeals to negative consequences.  This is because truth itself can lead to negative consequences.  Some people cannot cope with the realization that there is no God, and may kill themselves.  Some people may be crippled by existential fears of death when realizing that there is no afterlife or no soul.  The truth need not always benefit people.  Similarly, false beliefs can cause amazing acts of goodness and kindness, as in the charitable contributions of churches.  Only by seeking the truth through evidence-based reasoning, however, can we adequately protect against the needless harms of faith-based thinking.  It is often said that there are more ways to be wrong than to be right.  For example, if the length of a ruler is twelve inches, then there is only one correct answer (12 inches), but an infinite number of incorrect answers (-13 inches, 2 inches, pi inches … and so on).  In that sense, one can also say that there are more ways to do wrong through falsehood than to do wrong with reality.  Thus, to guard against the almost-infinite possibilities for faith-based wrongdoings, I value truth.  Of course, it can also be said that there is an infinite possibility to do good with faith-based reasoning.  This is true, but faith-based reasoning does not guarantee this possibility, and in such a world where evidence does not matter, there is no way to guard against or prevent the innumerable potential evils that could crop up.  It is best, then, to simply accept the truth, the good with the bitter.  As such, we should criticize religious moderates and extremists, because both have the potential to do untold harm, and because both can do untold harm for imaginary and false reasons.

Beyond that, I also believe that truth  is an intrinsic value.  Like many atheists, I would prefer to live in a universe in which there is an eternal afterlife, and I often suffer a vague dread and angst at the thought of my inevitable demise.  But I also value this bitter truth, not because it is good or bad, but because it simply is—because it is true.  With that said, I shall close with a poem by Stephen Crane, “In the Desert”, the sentiments of which reflect my personal values concerning truth better than I could ever convey:

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said: “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;
“But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart.”

“Let It Rock,” A Humanist Pop-Rock Anthem

Having a degree in English is virtually worthless, though I must confess it has provided me with many skills that—though they are unprofitable—are rather amusing.  In particular, I am quite fond of the skills I learned in my literary theory courses.  After taking these courses, I learned that it is possible to interpret a text in any manner I pleased using absurd pseudo-philosophical ideas like deconstruction, psychoanalysis, or reader-response theory.  These skills allowed me to write papers interpreting virtually any short story or novel as an ode to humanistic or atheistic values, to read Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the slave narrative Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl as subversively pro-slavery, and to interpret songs like “A Boy Named Sue” as a rumination on the Oedipal complex and Nine Inch Nail’s “Closer” as an endorsement of Christian sexual mores and values.  With a little French philosophy under my belt, there was no end to my capacity to spew bullshit.

With this history in mind, I was naturally quite bemused and overjoyed to read this post about misheard lyrics over at the War on Error blog.  In the post, the author laments the dearth of humanistic music after realizing his humanistic/atheistic interpretation of of Kevin Rudolf’s “Let It Rock” was the result of a misunderstood lyric.

Owing to my aforementioned stunning ability to bullshit, of course, I found his lamentations premature.  Virtually all songs have humanistic or atheistic themes if you’re willing to get your hands dirty with a little creative interpretation based on faddish and pretentious French literary criticism!  “Let It Rock” is indeed a humanistic anthem!  Whether he meant it or not, Kevin Rudolf has in fact penned a quite sobering song espousing humanistic values that entail a rejection of the false comforts given by both spirituality and an uncritical, shallow materialism.

The first verse of the song is so openly critical of religion that I wonder how I never noticed it before.  Rudolf sings:

I see your dirty face
High behind your collar

These lines indicate that the person described by the song is a priest.  “High behind your collar” is certainly a reference to a priest’s white clerical collar and his high status within a community.  But this priest clearly has something to hide.  He shelters himself behind his collar, using his religious status to hide his inequities.  The singer, of course, can recognize his wrongdoings, emphasizing that the priest is impure and has a “dirty face,” and notes that the priest uses his religion as a barrier or shield against any recognition of his true nature.

What is done in vain
Truth is hard to swallow
So you pray to God
To justify the way you live a lie, live a lie, live a lie

Here the singer is emphasizing the wrongs of the priest on two levels.  On one level, the priest is living a lie for devoting his life to a falsehood.  His prayers to God are “done in vain,” most notably because God does not exist, and this is a truth that is “hard to swallow,” or difficult to accept.  Thus, the priest has devoted himself to a lie.  But on another level, the priest is only praying to God to justify his moral depravities.  That is, the priest is an immoral man, and he tries to use his religion and faith as a justification for his wrongdoings.  He lives a lie because he portrays himself as godly and moral when he is anything but.

And you take your time
And you do your crime
Well you made your bed
I’m in mine

These lyrics further show that the priest has done something wrong, this time blatantly.  The singer directly states that the priest has committed a crime.  He chastises the priest with the line, “you made your bed,” as in the common criticism “you made your bed; now lie in it,” thereby implying that the priest must accept the consequences of his wrongdoing.  In essence, then, the first verse describes religious hypocrisy, and the use of religion to veil wrongdoing.  The singer, as we’ll see, espouses humanistic values that are not seeped in hypocrisy or the factual inaccuracy of belief in a higher power, and he claims the moral high ground here, noting that he contentedly sleeps in the bed he has made for himself; he exclaims, “Well you made your bed / I’m in mine.”

The second verse expands on these themes, explaining that the origin of the priest’s faith stemmed from a rejection of the world, from a false dichotomy between meaningless materialism and false religion:

Now the son’s disgraced
He, who knew his father
When he cursed his name
Turned, and chased the dollar

Here we can see that the priest came to religion from a position of materialistic values and moral emptiness.  “The son,” an obvious reference to Jesus, is disgraced by the priest’s current abuse of his faith and his moral hypocrisy, but the priest has always been a disgrace.  In the past, the priest knew his father (that is, he believed in God, the father) and cursed His name by chasing material wealth, possessions, and money.  The next lines explain that he would later come to reject the pursual of material wealth:

But it broke his heart
So he stuck his middle finger
To the world
To the world
To the world

As can be seen, the priest’s past decisions to chase money and material wealth “broke his heart.”  He didn’t find any satisfaction in meaningless consumption and hedonism.  This, in turn, led to his denial of the world, to his becoming a priest.  He denied reality, sticking his middle finger to the physical world, and instead immersed himself in an unreal world of superstition and religion, abandoning an extreme of empty materialism for an extreme of religious hypocrisy.  The priest who came to God after rejecting a meaningless hedonism is still living a lie, for neither worldview is correct or ultimately satisfying.

And you take your time
And you stand in line
Well you’ll get what’s yours
I got mine

Here we see the result of the priest’s turn to religion.  His denial of the world, indeed, his contempt for it, allow him to “take his time” with life, to not seek to live each moment to its fullest, and to instead merely “wait in line” for a judgment from God that will never come.  The singer, naturally, recognizes that the priest will get nothing from a rejection of the world and a turn to religion, noting that his own humanistic perspective on the world allows him to get the most out of life.  In that sense, the priest will wait to get what’s his, and receive nothing, while the singer proclaims, using the past tense to emphasize its fulfillment, “I got mine,” as he has already seized his opportunities and lives life to the fullest and need not wait for a fictional savior.  There is also a double meaning at work when the singer tells the priest, “you’ll get what’s yours,” as the singer is implying that his own humanistic ethical principles are more than capable of cutting through his religious hypocrisy and judging him as morally depraved, as we will see from the chorus.

The chorus, then, is where the humanistic values truly shine.  The singer loudly yells:

Because when I arrive
I, I’ll bring the fire

Thus, the singer recognizes that there is no God, no hell, and no divine punishment.  Instead, judgment must be meted out on humanistic principles, by individuals.  There is no hellfire awaiting the priest for his sins, but humanistic values and ethical principles can judge the priest.  In that sense, then, the humanistic singer “brings the fire”; not literal fires as in hell, but figurative fire as in moral condemnation and judgment from a humanist who can see through the priest’s attempts to hide behind religion.  The singer himself will judge the priest for his moral wrongdoing, based upon his humanistic ethical principles.

Make you come alive
I can take you higher

With these lines, the singer emphasizes further his humanistic perspective.  Humanistic principles can give life and meaning and purpose; they can make you “come alive” and embrace life, living for truth instead of falsity.  And they can take one beyond an empty materialism.  Humanistic principles can “take you higher” than that.

What this is, forgot?
I must now remind you
Let It Rock (rock!)
Let It Rock (rock!)
Let It Rock

With this final rejoinder, the singer reminds us all that life should not be negated through religion or a shallow materialism.  Morality and judgment are possible through humanistic principles (they allow you to “bring the fire” of judgment) while embracing reality as it is rather than inventing an unknowable spiritual realm to hide within.  The singer encourages us in the end not to reject life but to enjoy it for what it is: in other words, to let it rock!  Life can have the joys of hedonistic materialism and the meaning of religion—all that is required are humanistic values.

So far in the song, we’ve seen a materialistic priest reject the world after being unable to find happiness in a shallow materialism and a meaningless search for wealth.  We’ve seen this person become a man of faith, a priest, and yet still succumb to his inner demons, to commit crimes and live a life of hypocrisy, his depravity hidden underneath his religious status.  In this way, the song is both a criticism of religious values and the sort of materialistic nihilism often posited as the only other alternative to religion.  In the end, though, the song is critical of both views, seeking a middle ground of secular humanism, a naturalistic philosophy that rejects the supernatural and unknowable and gives us purpose and meaning through rational principles.  The first verses clearly chastise religious hypocrisy and the inability to find answers in the spiritual, but the next verses are just as critical of rampant materialism, mostly by letting the inanity of the purely materialistic perspective speak for itself.

Thus, Lil’ Wayne embodies the spirit of empty, meaningless materialism with his lyrics in the song, in which he raps about accumulating wealth, “my jewelry is louder than an engine sound,” and sexual hedonism.  At one point, he lists off a string of girls names, implying that he’ll make them remove their tops and have their “panties drop.”  These rap lyrics, though, are likewise followed by singer Kevin Rudolf’s fiery rejoinder of a chorus, in which he reminds Lil’ Wayne that humanistic values reject his empty hedonism as much as they reject religion.  His own humanism allows him to “let it rock” and enjoy life while still maintaining meaning and value, allowing people to truly “come alive” and take things “higher.”  It is obvious that Kevin Rudolf is attacking both views, the false values of religion and the meaninglessness of hedonism, because only at this point—when the song has presented both the religious priest and the materialistic rapper—does Rudolf sing the chorus twice, once for each worldview his humanism rejects.

In a final rejoinder to both the empty materialism embodied by Lil’ Wayne and the religious hypocrisy of the priest who rejected the world, Kevin Rudolf sings a plaintive cry to end the song:

I wish I could be
As cool as you
And I wish I could say
The things you do
But I can’t and I won’t live a lie
No not this time

Essentially, the singer admits that he wishes he could enjoy the shallow materialism of a Lil’ Wayne when he says “I wish I could be / as cool as you”; likewise, he wishes he could make pretenses at moral certainty and purity, like the hypocritical priest, when he croons, “I wish I could say / the things you do.”  In the end, though, the singer recognizes that both the priest and the shallow materialist are living in bad faith, seeped in a world without meaning or a world with false meaning, and he rejects both the unyielding hedonism of Lil’ Wayne and the unfounded asceticism and hypocrisy of religion.  As a humanist, he can both enjoy the world for what it really is (let it rock) and live a life of purpose and meaning (bringing the fire and taking you higher).  He refuses to live either lie, and accepts reality for what it is.

Atheism and the Scope of Skepticism

Despite the obvious commonalities between the two groups, the atheist movement has always had a rather strained relationship with the more generalized skeptical movement.  In part this is the fault of organized atheism, as many atheists endorse mystical crap like acupuncture and other alternative medicines while pretending to be reasonable just because they reject religion.  However, the real schism between the two groups is a result of the unfounded idea that atheism, at least in some forms, is not sufficiently scientific.  Those skeptical movements that disassociate themselves from atheism tend to see atheism as a philosophical outlook rather than a scientific or empirically justified stance.  The arguments in support of this claim, though, tend to be rather unconvincing.

Most forms of atheism address conceptions of God that are explicitly amenable to scientific tests.  The bulk of religious believers, for instance, do not believe in obscure deistic entities that never interact in the physical world.  They believe in a God that can manifest itself as a human being, perform miracles, heal sickness, control the vocal cords of those filled with the holy spirit (though God seems to take some perverse joy out of using those vocal cords just to speak in jibberish), and so on.  Even those deities that are a bit more remote and do not perform miracles of this sort are nevertheless testable, as they are said to be creators of the universe and to have placed humanity on top of some sort of cosmic hierarchy of importance.  These are all characteristics that yield testable hypotheses, and when our observations do not support these hypotheses, we have scientific grounds for rejecting these religious claims.  When we see that humanity is the product of random forces whose existence is not probable, much less logically necessary, that throws serious doubt on any conceptions of God who created the universe with humanity as its pinnacle achievement.

In that sense, then, atheism is indeed scientific.  Most forms of God can be ruled out on a purely evidentiary basis, in much the same way a scientist would rule out similar scientific hypotheses in other fields.  This is generally accepted, even among those skeptics who feel atheism is a philosophical stance rather than a scientific one.  The problem, naturally, is that some forms of God cannot be ruled out in this manner.  These versions of God are so remote and deistic that they yield no testable predictions or observations of any sort, and thus, the skeptics would argue, they are not susceptible to scientific investigation.  Massimo Pigliucci recently made an argument of this sort in a blog post titled “On the Scope of Skeptical Inquiry“.

Pigliucci acknowledges that some religious claims about God are scientifically testable, but in the end maintains that atheism is primarily a philosophical position because it addresses claims that can’t be assessed scientifically through the process of observation.  One of the examples he gives is the claim by some creationists that God designed the world to look as if it were billions of years old when it is in fact only 6,000 years old.  No evidence could contradict this kind of statement, obviously, and as such Pigliucci claims that it can only be assessed on philosophical, not scientific, grounds.

The problem, of course, is that this could extend to any realm of inquiry traditionally seen as within the scope of skeptical inquiry.  If believers in cryptofauna like bigfoot and Nessie protected their claims from inquiry by saying, such as they do, that we would not expect to see evidence of their existence even if we looked, clearly we cannot scientifically address such a claim.  Nevertheless, no skeptical organization is thus busy rewriting its mission statement to exclude cryptozoological investigations from its scope of inquiry; atheism, on the other hand, is singled out for just this reason.  If the basis for rejecting atheism as a form of scientific skepticism rests on the unfalsifiability of religious claims, then any other field of skeptical inquiry is open to the same sort of criticism, as those who believe in alternative medicine, creationism, psychic powers, and ghosts frequently make claims that are unfalsifiable.

With that said, the other problematic aspect of rejecting religion as a field of skeptical inquiry concerns the overly narrow conception of “science” endorsed by such skeptics.  Science isn’t just a process of simple falsification of claims.  It is much more nuanced and much scientific activity is philosophical.  Pigliucci tries to differentiate science from philosophy in noting that scientific knowledge seems to progress whereas philosophical knowledge seems to stagnate on the same unanswered questions.  This is an uncharitable characterization of philosophy, though.  Science itself is one of the ultimate successes of the progress of philosophy!  The early Greek philosophers weren’t simply asking questions about souls and free will, but were addressing questions of the natural sciences.  The scientific method is merely an epistemological and philosophical framework.  The reason philosophy doesn’t seem to progress isn’t because it is not successful, but because when it is successful it becomes renamed as science!

So, in a sense, the demarcation between science and philosophy is not clear.  Nevertheless, even if we accept the demarcation, it is clear that scientists do entertain and reject untestable hypotheses all the time.  Science isn’t simply a matter of testing reality against observation, but it also puts into practice epistemological principles like Ockham’s razor.  For example, basic philosophy of science shows that theories are always underdetermined by the data.  That is, for any set of data, an unlimited number of potential explanations exist that would also fit the data.  Evolution explains the data we see for the origin of human beings, for instance, but so does a hypothesis stating that the universe and human beings popped into existence two seconds ago with only the appearance of age.  Scientists reject all the other potential explanations, even though they can cohere with scientific observations, because they are untestable or not parsimonious.  Notice that scientists do not reject these alternative explanations after observing evidence that the additional elements of these hypotheses do not exist!  They are rejected for epistemological, and hence philosophical, reasons.  In this case the principle of rejecting untestable claims serves as a check against the tendency of human beings to make mistakes and err.  The more you assume, the more likely you are to be wrong, and thus scientists assume the least that is justified by the evidence.  As can be seen, the principle of parsimony is essential to science, because it cuts through problems of underdetermination by requiring evidence for additional explanatory entities.  As such, scientists do not claim the origin of humanity is not within the scope of skeptical inquiry merely because untestable hypotheses can be generated to “explain” our origin.  Scientific inquiry is not so constrained or feeble and frail that it cannot overcome untestable hypotheses.  This includes untestable hypotheses of a religious nature.

In short, the attempt to form ghettos of critical inquiry that exclude atheism from skepticism are misguided.  It would be as misguided as randomly excluding cryptozoology or alternative medicine merely because their supporters also make untestable claims.  Scientific analysis is always dealing with untestable claims.  Any theory accepted by scientists entails the rejection of countless untestable claims compatible with the underdetermined data set.  As such, rejecting untestable claims, whether they be religious in nature or not, is thoroughly scientific.  For the skeptical community to attempt singling out atheism for this reason thus seems silly and disheartening, especially knowing that it is likely motivated by the unfounded respect (which entails a lack of criticism) traditionally accorded to the religious.  I suspect that had we evolved in a parallel universe where cryptozoology was the reigning belief system, and we were all socialized to respect claims about Bigfoot and never criticize them, then we’d be seeing skeptical movements decrying the inclusion of cryptozoology within its scope.  Luckily, we do not live in that universe.  And hopefully we can change our current universe from one in which the skeptical community attempts to exclude atheism to one in which skepticism of religion is just as acceptable as any other area of inquiry..

Faith Insurance

GuideOneInsurance is a special kind of niche-market insurance company.  While some insurance companies cover acts of God; GuideOneInsurance covers godly acts.  It offers “churchgoers” a special FaithGuard insurance plan that covers the following features:

1. Anyone involved in an automobile accident while driving to or from church services doesn’t have to pay their deductible.  [This concession makes no sense to me.  If God strikes down the cars of those driving to a church service, then clearly they have chosen the wrong religion.  I'd only waive the deductible for those who experience accidents while leaving church, as they've obviously chosen the correct religion if God is actively trying to prevent them from leaving.]
2. Up to $750 of tithing or church donations are covered in the event that the churchgoer loses his income as a result of an automobile accident.  Unlike the others, you can qualify for this one even if you weren’t injured while driving to church.  [I mean, Jesus Christ, people.  God wouldn't strike you down if you weren't so stingy and donated more money.]
3. The medical limits are doubled if injured while driving to or from a worship activity.  [As an atheist, even I support the spirit of this benefit, which encourages theists to be injured twice as much as atheists.]
4. Automobile loan payments of up to $3000 will be paid if the insured loses his income, but only if you happen to be driving to or from a church activity. [If you were driving to donate blood or volunteer at a soup kitchen, fuck you.  Your car isn't worth their money!]
5. Memorial service donations of $1000 will be given as a gift in the event that the insured dies in an automobile accident. And you don’t even have to be driving to church to get this one!  [Atheists, of course, will have to pay for their cremation themselves.  In hell.]

It is clear that conservative voters have never heard of this plan.  They’d no doubt have a riot over this insurance coverage, owing to their incessant fears of insurance policies that promote “death panels.”  Here we have a plan that offers incentives for churchgoers to get into automobile accidents and die!  They will literally pay you $1000 if you just drive off a cliff!  These are the death panelists we’ve been hearing about all this time!

The insurance company also offered a similar FaithGuard plan for homeowner’s and renter’s insurance, probably giving monetary incentives to those who accidentally burned their house down while lighting their religious shrines or who flooded their basements after trying to do in-home baptisms.  None of this should be surprising coming from an insurance company that focuses on niche markets, like churches, and whose tagline is “Place Your Faith in the Expert.”  Although I think, “FaithGuard: So easy a primitive, Sun-god worshipping cave man can do it!” is a much better motto.  But only if the mascot is a talking gecko of some sort, or possibly a snake.

Naturally, the FaithGuard policy is highly illegal and discriminatory.  Thankfully, the company has recently settled a court case after being sued by nontheists, and the in-depth, legal details of the FaithGuard insurance plan are no longer accessible from their website, indicating its pending removal.  Now people of faith everywhere will no longer feel so free to drive so recklessly, knowing God and illegal insurance policies are no longer protecting them.

Of course, the company claimed to welcome all applications, no matter the religious affiliation, sex, race, handicap, or familial status.  Although I’m sure those who attend mosques or temples felt quite welcome by the website’s frequent use of “church” and “churchgoer” in discussing the FaithGuard policy.  And I have to wonder whether they’d really donate $750 to a tithing Satanist’s place of worship, or if they’d instead send the claim to an adjustor to try to find any legal loophole with which to deny it.

Needless to say, I’m happy with my AtheistGuard insurance policy: Anyone in an accident while driving to or from a science- or education-related event gets a free lollipop!

Thanks to the affable Friendly Atheist for the story.

Liberal, Missouri—City of Atheists

Most atheists daydream about living in a democratic atheistic society.  What a joy it would be to not be blessed when we sneeze, or to not be jolted from sleep at 7 AM on Sunday morning by Jehova’s Witnesses!  However, if I were attempting to create a city for atheists, I would follow some very important rules:

1. Do not use force to prevent theists from living in or entering the society.  (Theists love to be martyrs—you’d just be giving them what they want!)
2. Do not put your atheistic utopia in Southwestern Missouri.  (In Southwestern Missouri, the churches are the size of Super Walmarts, and they even have a better selection of produce than most Super Walmarts.  In fact, some of the Megachurches probably have Super Walmarts inside them, in just the same way that Walmarts often have fast food restaurants inside their doors.)
3. Do not, for any reason, surround your atheist city with barbed wire!  (Making your city look like a concentration camp sort of kills the mood, you know.)

And though these rather obvious rules for founding an atheist city are quite well-known, the atheist town of Liberal, Missouri, still violated each and every one of them, dooming it to failure.

I first learned of Liberal, Missouri, from my friend Ziztur, who detailed the history of the city in her blog.  Needless to say, as St. Louis natives we were amazed that an atheist city once existed right under our very noses.  Or at least 300 miles to the southwest of our noses!

Unfortunately, the city did not last very long, at least not as an atheist utopia.  As soon as the Christians heard about it, they immediately besieged it, surrounding the city with churches and attempting to infiltrate the town.  In the end, the freethinkers were outnumbered.

Of course, I am glad the city failed.  It is not ethical, much less reasonable, to foist a certain worldview on a town and then prevent anyone who disagrees from living there; that sort of xenophobia and totalitarianism should not be associated with atheism.

So even though the founder of Liberal had good intentions, his attempts to homogenize the population artificially were highly unrealistic and silly.  The road to hell is paved with good intentions, after all.  You’d think that as soon as he had to string barbed wire around the town to keep out the theists, he’d realize that maybe he’s going a bit too far:

G. H. Walser has bought the Waggoner’s addition to the town of Liberal. The readers of the Liberal two years ago will remember that this addition was the great bone of contention between the Liberals and the Christians. The addition was laid out by Mr. Waggoner for the purpose of inducing immigration of Christians who would be strong enough to out number the Liberals and defeat the enterprise. That was prevented by a high post and barbed-wire fence which was immediately put on a strip of land adjoining the town…

Clearly, the enterprise was quite silly.  Today, it would also be illegal, not unlike trying to create an atheist apartment building by preventing theists from moving in.  Thankfully, such practices are not allowed under various equal opportunity laws.  It should not be a surprise that totalitarianism, authoritatianism, dogmatic ideology, and xenophobia can be extremely dangerous.  The former USSR has certainly taught us that.  Atheists can be every bit as cruel and silly as theists if you give them a crazy political ideology and a little bit of unchecked power.

Why the founder thought a barbed wire fence could stop the spread of ideas is beyond me.  Why he put his atheist utopia smack dab on the buckle of the Bible belt also confuses me.  It’s almost as if he were thinking a bit too freely.

Nevertheless, even if the town had been successful, it probably would have been a tremendous bore, for the founder wanted to create a town that had no churches and no saloons.  As one who comes from the Christopher Hitchens school of inebriated thought on atheism, I find the town’s disrespect toward saloons contemptible and despicable, and I have half a mind to stab you in the eye with this broken beer bottle I’m now wielding in my hand!

Of course, the Christian description of the town was naturally exagerrated, characterizing atheists as an immoral lot according to an editorial by the preacher Clark Braden in the 2 May 1885 edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.  Of course, his description of Liberal, Missouri, makes the town seem like New York—as if that’s a bad thing!

The boast about the sobriety of the town is false. But few of the infidels are total abstainers. Liquor can be obtained at three different places in this town of 300 inhabitants. More drunken infidels can be seen in a year in Liberal than drunken Christians among one hundred times as many church members during the same time.

You had me at “drunken infidels”.  Can you imagine a town full of inebriated atheists?  It’d be amazing!  It’d be an amazing meeting!  In fact, it would be almost exactly like what I experienced at The Amazing Meeting 7in Las Vegas!  It’s time to move!

Swearing is the common form of speech in Liberal, and nearly every inhabitant, old and young, swears habitually. Girls and boys swear on the streets, playground, and at home. Fully half of the females will swear, and a large number swear habitually….

What the fuck do you have against swearing, you slack-jawed motherfucker?  I bet he’s one of these people who think using curse words shows a lack of creativity.  Bullshit.  Some of the highest forms of creativity have involved curse words.  Do I really need to provide a link to George Carlin’s “The Seven Words You Can Never Say” bit?  In fact, saying that those who curse lack creativity is so stale and cliched that it itself is an uncreative and dim-witted thing to say,  you bloody shit-eating trout fuckers!

A good portion of the few books that are read are of the class that decency keeps under lock and key….

I can only imagine the filth the good citizens of Liberal were reading!  I personally have plenty of indecent books that I hide within a locked chest wrapped in chains and buried under a six-foot pile of padlocks and sharpened knives.  The book contains such highly violent and sexualized books as The Old Testament and the Koran.  It also contains some books I’m simply embarrassed to have owned and read, like Atlas Shrugged and anything by Michael Crichton or John Grisham.

These infidels…can spend for dances and shows ten times as much as they spend on their liberalism. These dances are corrupting the youth of the surrounding country with infidelity and immorality. There is no lack of loose women at these dances.

The town has drunken infidels and loose women?  Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, why am I still living in St. Louis?!  More and more, the town of Liberal, Missouri, is making the night life of New York City look as attractive as a night out in Branson, Missouri.

Since Liberal was started there has not been an average of one birth per year of infidel parents. Feticide is universal. The physicians of the place say that a large portion of their practice has been trying to save females from consequences of feticide. In no town is slander more prevalent, or the charges more vile. If one were to accept what the inhabitants say of each other, he would conclude that there is a hell, including all Liberal, and that its inhabitants are the devils.

If abortion, inebriated atheism, and sexual debauchery are wrong, then I don’t want to be right!  Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven!  Milton’s Satan has never been more correct!

Of course, in all likelihood the truth is somewhere in the middle.  Some in the town probably drank some whiskey on the sly, angry at having to choose between living among Christians or living in a town with no bar.  Some women in the town probably slept around with everyone, while others didn’t—just as we find in pretty much any town.  Realizing that these exagerrations probably trend toward some sort of normal medium, though, is hardly exciting.  For my own tastes, I prefer to remember Liberal, Missouri, as a town led by a foolish but well-meaning founder, filled to the brim with loose, drunken infidels, but soon corrupted and overrun by foolish, well-meaning, loose, and drunken Christians.

The Death, and Subsequent Resurrection, of the Atheists

Atheists, like captive pandas, are reknowned for having little interest in breeding.  (Also like pandas, atheists are universally rotund and enjoy sitting in one place for sixteen hours eating bamboo shoots.)  Now, this is not to say that atheists have no interest in having sex.  We are interested in sex in spades, possibly even in clubs, hearts, and diamonds, too—such is the great extent of our love for sex and our willingness to participate in it.  Atheists do not, however, want children.  They require too much time and effort to raise—time and effort that detracts from the time that could be spent having sex or eating bamboo shoots for sixteen hours.

As a result of our prolific indifference toward breeding, Ed West has proclaimed that “atheists are a dying breed.”

Essentially, his article argues that the number of atheists will dwindle because of atheists’ fondness for not having children.  Meanwhile, the religious crazies are breeding like, well, crazy.  The atheists thus stand no chance, and will soon be overrun by theists as their numbers continually decline.

It is telling, of course, that the author did not actually refer to data specifically detailing the increasing number of people identifying as nonreligious, atheist, or agnostic.  For whatever reason, he seems to think indirect data about the birth rates of various religious persuasions is more relevant, perhaps because the direct data actually detailing the growth of atheism directly contradicts him.  It is indeed useful to ignore better data when it conflicts with your thesis!  This is, after all, how I am still, after all these years, able to maintain that my genitalia is larger than a medium-sized dog. I just never look down, you see.

Of course, I can understand why Mr. West would think atheism is spread genetically, from parent to offspring.  After all, no atheist has ever come from a religious family.  Nor has a formerly religious person ever become an atheist.  In fact, the gene for atheism is right on the X chromosome, right next to the genes for becoming a professional wrestler, finding Jay Leno funny (a very rare allele), and enjoying sweater vests.

Actually, no.  It turns out atheism isn’t a gene.  It’s more of a meme, or an idea that can be spread through a population.  The author mentions Dawkins, so you’d think he’d have heard of this concept, as Dawkins invented the term. And the really great thing about memes is that they aren’t necessarily passed on by sticking your dick in a wet, damp hole and then producing insufferable offspring that continually make noises and expect to be fed.  They can be passed on through a more efficient, though certainly less pleasurable, manner than sex: by writing books, giving talks, and saturating a culture with your viewpoint.  Naturally, birth rates are not the only means of passing on memes. 

Now, according to the direct data I mentioned earlier—the data concerning changing trends in religious belief (and not the irrelevant and indirect data trends about birth rates)—the number of atheists is in fact increasing, at least in America.  Here are quotes from the 2008 Aris study, right from the second page:

The U. S. population continues to show signs of becoming less religious, with one out of every five Americans failing to indicate a religious identity in 2008. The “Nones” (no stated religious preference, atheist, or agnostic) continue to grow, though at a much slower pace than in the 1990s, from 8.2% in 1990, to 14.1% in 2001, to 15.0% in 2008.

But wait, don’t stop there!

Based on their stated beliefs rather than their religious identification in 2008, 70% of Americans believe in a personal God, roughly 12% of Americans are atheist (no God) or agnostic (unknowable or unsure), and another 12% are deistic (a higher power but no personal God).

What this means is that those who identify as nonreligious are increasing in numbers, and that the number of atheists is actually underreported, as more people are liable to answer that they disbelieve in God rather than identify as an atheist. The number of people identifying as atheist grew from about 500,000 in 1990 to about 1.6 million in 2008. Surprisingly, atheism is spreading even in spite of the fact that sterile, neutered pandas outbreed us. It’s almost as if atheism spreads in a manner that doesn’t involve sexual reproduction. Who would have thought that?!

So keep breeding, theists. And we’ll keep teaching your kids science and showing them the righteous light of atheism.

As an aside, Ed West also writes, “Personally I find the New Atheists’ anti-Christian aggression tedious: criticising people for their privately-held religious beliefs shows a lack of class and maturity…” and he is entirely correct. We must never criticize or argue against a privately held belief, or else we lack class and maturity. This is why I will expect Mr. West, who is so clearly a classy and mature kind of guy, to respect and refrain from arguing against my privately-held belief that he is a fucking tool.

Atheism in the Workplace

A few weeks ago, one of my coworkers randomly asked me whether I prayed as I passed by her desk.

Now, I’m a raging atheist, but I had to consider her feelings in my response.  After all, you only ask people to pray if someone is dying or sick.  How could I tell her that prayer is what lazy fools do in place of action in a polite way?

I paused for a moment, and then I said, “Erm, no.”

“Oh?  Why not?” she said, her curiosity piqued.

Normally this is where I would say, “Oh, because I don’t waste my time on foolish things,” but I had to restrain myself.  Afterall, I can’t alienate my coworkers with my seething rage at religious claptrap.  I already alienate them enough with my unruly facial hair and exotic body odors.

“Well, I don’t really believe in God,” I said.  As soon as I said this, I almost felt psychic, because I could suddenly predict exactly how she would respond.  This is, after all, how every religious person responds to someone who has just admitted he does not believe in God.

“What? Why not?!”

Why this is the universal response to expressed disbelief in God confuses me.  I mean, when I meet random people who tell me they believe in God, I don’t stare at them, jaw agape, saying, “WHAT?! WHY?!”

At this point, I really wanted out of the conversation.  Having a theological debate in the workplace is almost never a good idea.  So I did what anyone else would do in my position.  I lied.

“Oh, I don’t know why.  I just don’t think about it that much.”

I then promptly walked away really fast to the furthest point in the building from her desk, huddled into a corner in the fetal position, and cried.  I write a fucking skeptical blog where I routinely mock religion and proclaim my atheism loudly, and I told her that I “don’t think about it that much”.  Wow.  If I had been hooked up to a lie detector (and if accurate lie detectors actually existed), it would have exploded from the strain after I said that.

The good news is, however, that I avoided any conflict!  But maybe I should have just went on one of my atheistic rants.  I can’t imagine that endearing me to anyone in my workplace, though.  No, I’ll just have to settle for expressing myself with skeptical bumper stickers on my cubicle wall and occasionally expressing disdain for herbal medicine.  Still, though, I feel guilty, almost like I’m going to some sort of atheist hell, where I’d be tormented by Richard Dawkins poking me with a pitchfork, for so baldly lying about the extent of my atheism.

Of course, if this had happened outside of work, I would have felt much more free to rant at length about it.  I can’t wait until the day it is no longer considered inappropriate to criticize religion!  In this future utopia of rainbows and puppies, you can express disbelief and no one bats an eye, much less feel offended that you have a mind of your own and have different ideas and beliefs!  But alas, this is pure fantasy!

Atheism Will Get You Laid!

Owing to personal experience, the following data seemed highly counterintuitive, but apparently being an atheist will get you laid.  And not just by goats, but by women!  Women who are not goats!

Okay, I’m actually giving this data the headline writer treatment.  Without my overblown exagerrations, the blog entry actually says something slightly less exciting.  Basically, when someone on the dating website OKCupid uses the term atheist in a message, the other person is more likely to respond.  Much more likely.  The baseline response rate is about 30%, and using the word atheist increases the response rate to over 40%.  Hello, vagina-town!  Surprisingly, OKCupid did not note any effectiveness for the phrase “Saint Gasoline is amazingly endowed,” which is how I begin all my messages, as I speak in the third person and I’m a habitual liar.

The graphic below is telling.  It shows that atheists get to bang a lot more headboards than any other religious group.  Plus, unlike the religious, we also get the added bonus of being able to actually enjoy the sex without any attendant guilt!  And we also don’t have to time our sexual encounters with the rhythm method and continually measure our wife’s mucous levels to determine the proper time for coitus, although that certainly sounds quite, erm, arousing.  But behold, the chart:

The atheists are coming! The atheists are coming!

The data are so compelling that OKCupid themselves advocate conversion to atheism, or at least belief in lesser-known deities like Thor and Zeus, in the name of love:

Though very few people actually do it, invoking the sky-breaking thunderbolts of zeus does help a person get noticed (reply rate 56%), but maybe that shouldn’t be a surprise on a site that is itself named for a member of the Greek pantheon. So if you can’t bring yourself to deny the deity, consider opening yourself up to a whole wacky bunch of them. But ideally you should just disbelieve the whole thing. It can help your love life, and, besides, if there really was a god, wouldn’t first messages always get a reply?

Ah yes, it’s the problem of dating-evil argument for the nonexistence of God.  Let us define God as omnipotent and morally perfect. Now, it is morally preferable for God to let me get laid after mentioning him in random messages to Internet chicks.  However, I do not get laid by random Internet chicks when I mention God. If God cannot get me laid, he is either not omnipotent or not good.  Therefore, God does not exist. (It is amazing the sorts of things you can prove when you are lonely and desperate for human contact.  Please may I touch your vagina?)

Now, even though mentioning Zeus garners a 56% reply rate over the 42% reply rate for mentioning atheism, I foolishly refuse to believe in any of these lesser gods, preferring to disbelieve.  The only god I would ever consider believing in is the one that is an elephant with a bunch of extra arms and shit.

It is important to note, of course, that OKCupid probably does not adequately represent the general population.  I’ve found, after extensive study, that sending messages mentioning atheism on other dating web sites (Match, Chemistry, EHarmony, AdultFriendFinder, IWantToHaveSexWithGoats, etc.) does not lead to similar results.  After sending millions of desperate emails to women with nothing in common with me, I’ve found that mentioning atheism on these other sites causes the women to throw holy water on you, expecting you to melt.  And lest my highly scientific data be questioned, rest assured that I kept the usage of the word atheist constant throughout my messages, surrounding it with a variety of variable textual contexts, and I was rejected in all scenarios in which atheism was mentioned, whether I also mentioned that I never wear pants and make out with fainting goats or that I am an impeccably well-mannered human being who wants 2.5 kids, the .5 of a kid being used to feed the other two.  Atheism is, without a doubt, the cause of all the rejection letters and screams of horror.  Even mentioning the goat fetish in the absence of talk about atheism garners more responses.  At least among the goats.

What can we conclude?  Well, if you are an atheist, and you want to get laid hard—so hard—then be sure to join OKCupid.  The site is crawling with atheist men and women just waiting for your emails about atheism and zombie Jesus. (Both zombie and jesus also seem to increase reply rates, so why not combine them?)

From the OKCupid blog again:

Atheist actually showed up surprisingly often (342 times per 10,000 messages, second only to 552 mentions of christian and ahead of 278 for jewish and 142 for muslim).

As can be seen, the ladies on OKCupid are talking about atheists!  Of course, seeing as how I am a member, it is likely that at least 93.4% of these uses of the word atheist are attributable to me, as I routinely receive hundreds of messages per every 10,000 that talk about atheism, zombies, and the messenger’s burning desire to feel my meat inside her hoo-ha.  Why these ladies are so obsessed with my delicatessan meats, I’ll never understand, though my penis is surely jealous.

Promoting Atheism Promotes Science

By now, Sheril Kirshenbaum’s and Chris Mooney’s book Unscientific America has received a lot of attention on the Internet, most notably for its attacks on atheistic popularizers of science like PZ Myers. Basically, the book argues that atheists should refrain from criticizing religion, as this sort of behavior alienates religious people from science and promotes a cynical, unpalatable view of science among the religious.

As Myers points out in his review of the book, it is rather strange that the book chastises vocal atheists for the sorry state of science education in our country, especially when the more vocal atheists tend to be the most vociferous supporters of science!  PZ Myers is reknowned for his attacks on creationism and his legendary blog Pharyngula, which exposes millions to science and the perils of pseudoscience.  The prolific atheist Richard Dawkins is also well-known for his popularization of science in such works as The Ancestor’s Tale, The Selfish Gene, and the upcoming The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution.  Atheists are also overwhelmingly represented in skeptical organizations whose missions are to spread scientific literacy and combat pseudoscience, whether it be through combatting the misinformation about vaccines and educating the public about alternative medicine and health or else through criticizing those who would misrepresent evolution, quantum physics, or even history (as is the case with holocaust deniers and 9/11 “Truthers”).

Not only that, but the real enemies of science, and indeed the direct enemies of science whose overt purposes are often to corrupt science education, tend to be religious.  That creationism and Intelligent Design are being spread and supported by theists for religious purposes is so obvious that it almost need not be said, let alone overwhelmingly demonstrated in a court decision in Dover, Pennsylvania.  Religious political conservatives are also notorious for impeding scientific progress through legislative power—by denying federal funding of stem cell research, by funding abstinence-only programs that preach ignorance of sexual functions and that have been empirically demonstrated to have no effect on the sexual activity of teenagers, by denying the evidence in favor of anthropogenic global warming, and so on.  And on the liberal divide of the political spectrum, religious influences prove almost as destructive of science education as those of the conservatives.  New age spirituality has given rise to the proliferation of nonsensical medical therapies to such a degree that “energy” therapies like therapeutic touch are taught in nursing textbooks whereas other mystical modalities like acupuncture have infiltrated legitimate medical institutions in spite of showing no therapeutic value beyond that of a placebo.  To ignore and respect the religions that influence and promote these harmful anti-science movements is folly.

Contrary to the thesis of Unscientific America, I believe that atheists need to become louder and more active in political and social movements in support of science.  Atheists already contribute greatly, through donations or active involvement, to science-promoting organizations like the James Randi Educational Forum and the National Center for Science Education.  Rather than silence atheists, we should encourage more people to accept atheism, thus showing that atheism is a viable and legitimate stance to take.  The more we legitimize atheism, the more support for science would be gained, both through the conversion of more people to atheism and the acceptance of atheism by the general public, to the detriment of fundamentalist, anti-science religious movements.  Even a mere glance at the demographic data overwhelmingly supports this position.

Scientists tend to be disproportionately nonreligious.  A study by Elaine Howard Ecklund showed that 52% of surveyed scientists professed no religious affiliation.  For comparison, only 14% of the general population expressed no religious affiliation.  Clearly, the differences are staggering.  For whatever reason, science education and interest in science correlate strongly with being nonreligious.  Even better, only 2% of scientists described themselves as evangelical or fundamentalist, whereas 14% of the general population identify themselves in this way.

More detailed analyses produce interesting results, as well.  The most prestigious and elite scientists tend to be even more nonreligious than their less prestigious scientific counterparts.  Indeed, one survey from 1998 by Larson and Witham seemed to indicate that among prestigious scientists disbelief in God was nearly universal.  The authors reported the following:

Our survey found near universal rejection of the transcendent by NAS natural scientists. Disbelief in God and immortality among NAS biological scientists was 65.2% and 69.0%, respectively, and among NAS physical scientists it was 79.0% and 76.3%. Most of the rest were agnostics on both issues, with few believers.

Another survey by Gross and Simmons found similar results.  They surveyed professors to determine their religiosity, finding that the nonreligious, and atheists specifically, were disproportionately represented in the population of college professors, though atheists were not a majority.  Interestingly, the proportions of atheist and agnostic professors rose continually in correlation with the prestige of the university that employed them.  Community colleges had about 15% who identified as atheist/agnostic, whereas four-year Bachelor-of-Arts-granting universities and nonelite doctoral-granting universities had a little more than 20%.  Most importantly, in elite doctoral-granting universities the proportion of atheists and agnostics was so high that they outnumbered those professors who with certainty believed in God, with a little less than 40% professing to be atheists or agnostics.  Of course, this survey included professors from all fields, including those who teach in subjects that are not in the natural sciences, including art and business.  Not surprisingly, those in the natural sciences, particularly biology and psychology, had much higher proportions (61%) of atheists and agnostics.

Of course, none of these studies show that being involved in science causes atheism.  In fact, this is most likely not true at all.  The data in Ecklund’s study, for instance, indicated that the most reliable predictor of a scientist’s religiosity was his or her upbringing; those raised in religious homes tended to be more religious, and those raised in nonreligious homes tended to be nonreligious.  In explanation of this data, Ecklund said:

It appears that those from non-religious backgrounds disproportionately self-select into scientific professions. This may reflect the fact that there is tension between the religious tenets of some groups and the theories and methods of particular sciences and it contributes to the large number of non-religious scientists.

Thus, science doesn’t convert the religious to atheism, but instead it seems that atheists tend to be predisposed to having an interest in or skill in science and its methods.  The studies showing that more prestigious scientists at elite universities tend to identify more as atheists and agnostics seem to support this interpretation, revealing that the nonreligious may select science as a profession because the methodology of science leaves little room for faith or belief without evidence and accords with an atheistic worldview.  Once again, religion seems to be harmful to the cause of science, as it not only offers contradictory explanations but also espouses a faith-based epistemology that is totally incompatible with proper scientific methodology.  It is no surprise, then, that those who are best at science and more reknowned tend to be atheistic or agnostic.

Now, if atheists tend to be more interested in and better represented in the sciences, so much so that the more elite scientists are almost universally nonreligious, then this implies that the best solution to America’s scientific illiteracy is to simply convert more Americans to atheism, or to promote atheism in such a way that it becomes a more palatable and viable alternative to future generations.  In this sense, the “New Atheists” so reviled by Mooney and Kirshenbaum as indirect enemies of science are in reality doing the most good for science by bringing atheism into the open and attempting to topple the hegemonic insistence that religion cannot be criticized.  Given that Ecklund’s study (mentioned previously) showed that the religiosity of scientists correlated with the religiosity of their upbringing, it makes sense that making atheism public and visible would produce more atheists.  The more people are exposed to a nonreligious worldview, the more likely they are to see it as a viable alternative.  This, in essence, is the strategy of the New Atheists.  Refusing to criticize religion and remaining eternally silent on the matter, as Mooney and Kirshenbaum suggest, would not be helpful at all for science education, as it would limit the growth of the population most in-tune with and accepting of science!

What’s more, the New Atheist strategy for growth appears to be working.  Demographic data consistently show rising numbers of the general population who identify as atheist or agnostic, and even greater numbers ambiguously identify as nonreligious.  From 1990 to 2001 the number of atheists and agnostics increased from about 1 million to 2 million.  From 2001 to 2008 these numbers increased even more, with the population of self-identifying atheists and agnostics rising to 3.6 million.  The surge in numbers from the 90s made feasible the production of a large, social atheist movement, and the New Atheists likely arose from this growth.  From 2001 to 2008 it is likely the increasing numbers of self-identified atheists are at least in part attributable to the New Atheist movment, whether it be through the popularization of various books on the subject, atheistic ads running on buses and billboards, or the lively and vibrant atheist and skeptic community on the Internet.  In 1990, for instance, the Aris report combined atheism and agnosticism and found that 1,186,000 people identified as one or the other.  However, in general the distrubtion of atheists and agnostics is about half and half (with a slight edge to agnosticism), so it’s safe to assume that in 1990 about 540,000 people self-identified as atheists.  With that noted, the population of atheists increased by 360,000 people between 1990 and 2001, when the new total of atheists became 902,000 in 2001.  During the period that saw the rise of the New Atheism, from 2001 to 2008, the number of self-identified atheists increased even more dramatically, with the number of atheists added to the total nearly doubling:  about 700,000 people newly identified as atheists during this seven-year period, compared with only 360,000 in the previous eleven-year period.  Whether this dramatic increase in the numbers of atheists (agnostics rose quite significantly, too) is attributable to the New Atheism movement is, of course, debatable, but it seems likely that the movement had a significant impact on these numbers, and the mechanism by which the movement would produce new converts is certainly plausible.  What is more interesting is that atheists are almost certainly underrepresented in this study, as many people claimed to disbelieve in God according to a separate Aris survey question, and yet for some reason the same proportion of people did not self-identify as atheists.  With that taken into account, the survey shows that as much as 2.3% of the population is atheist in belief (if not in name), with 10% of the population being agnostic.

As a result of this data, it seems that the best way to promote science is to promote atheism.  Atheists and agnostics tend to have a worldview that predisposes them to interest in and excellence in science; atheists are not only widely represented in scientific fields but are even more widely represented among the elite and prestigious.  Demographic data also seem to suggest that increasing the visibility of atheists as a minority through vocal promotion of atheism—like the work being done by the New Atheists and other secular and skeptical groups—increases the support for atheism and its acceptance in society.  As such, if the correlations between science and skepticism of religion continue to hold, then increasing the number of atheists would much more effectively increase scientific literacy in America.  And even if the correlation between atheism and scientific literacy would not hold in the future, at the very least increasing the number of atheists would help eliminate those anti-science forces motivated primarily by religion.

Can We Be Optimistic in a World Without an Afterlife?

Many religious people insist, in what can only be described as one of the worst cases of pyschological projection, that nonreligious people like myself only disbelieve out of fear of God. In reality, though, I find my own skeptical position much more fearful. I wish more than anything that there were an afterlife, that my existince would continue indefinitely in some form, but I know this is not plausible. Considering my own inevitable mortality fills me with fear, not because I expect to feel any pain or suffering, but because I will not feel anything at all. Unlike many, I don’t think of death as something mysterious or unknown. I suspect being dead will merely mimic unconsciousness—with no dreams, thoughts, or feelings—only extended indefinitely. Unfortunately, I don’t want to be unconscious. There are so many different things that I want to do with my life for which I simply don’t have the time. Hell, I even hate having to sleep every night for precisely this reason—I could be awake, doing something!

Of course, this is not to say that skepticism can’t be optimistic about death and dying. Were it not for death, for instance, would we treat our lives with such value? If life were not always perched precariously upon the cliff of nonexistence, perhaps we wouldn’t think life is anything special, and we’d go through eternity as bored slobs. I personally don’t buy this argument because there would still be aspects of life that we could value. We could still strive to better ourselves, to learn more, to do more. Death is not needed to strive for such things.

Perhaps the most inane form of skeptical optimism concerning death, though, is the rather misguided reassurance that though we may die, we live on in the fact that energy is not created nor destroyed. Our energy has not vanished, but has merely changed form, and in that respect we supposedly persist indefinitely. This consolation, of course, is cold comfort; it is so cold of a comfort that it is like sitting on a loveseat made of ice. Even while we are alive, for instance, our conciousness and thoughts are turned into different forms of energy. This is why our heads give off so much heat, because of our always vigilant cognitive centers in our brain, working endlessly. Notice, of course, that the heat energy we emit from our brains is not conscious itself. When our brain states create heat, we do not live on through this heat in any existentially meaningful way. Our personalities and thoughts, for better or worse, are kept stored within our brains, within a particular arrangement of neurons, and these are not passed on to other forms of energy. When we die, the molecules that make us up will be absorbed into the soil and the air, and we may be broken up into various forms of energy like the chemical energy in a bacteria or heat energy from cremation, but our selves will be gone forever.

Does all this make me a cynical skeptic? I don’t think so. The only reason I abhor these attempted justifications is because I love experiencing life so much. To say that we’d be bored by eternity or not appreciate an ever-lasting life is ridiculous in my eyes, because I’d enjoy what life has to offer regardless of its length. And to say that we can look forward to persisting as molecules, atoms, and energy likewise attempts to devalue the beauty of living consciousness and the capacity to experience and learn about the world. I am optimistic about what little life I have, but I won’t pretend to be optimistic about the reality that awaits me, though I will accept it as inevitable. Life is a wonderful thing, and it doesn’t need to be endless to remain wonderful—though I’d prefer it if life were.