We White Atheists Need to Start Giving A Damn About Racial Justice

Jeremiah Traeger

White atheists, it’s past time we get real.

 

And with this first sentence I’m already foreseeing the push-back. For those who have already written me off for playing in “identity politics”, or who think I’m just a self-loathing man trying to spread white guilt, I suppose it may be a lost cause to try and reach you. For the rest of you still reading and who aren’t yet on board, allow me a chance to appeal to your morals and ideals in our mutual quest to make a better world.

 

Yes, atheism doesn’t lead to any moral conclusions; anything without deities is technically compatible with an atheist’s worldview.

 

Yes, merely being white also doesn’t require you to behave in a moral way, and being white doesn’t mean you have done anything wrong. Furthermore, your race or any privilege that comes along with it shouldn’t be sources of guilt.

 

I’m neither appealing to your atheism nor your whiteness, I’m appealing to your morals and sense of duty to your fellow humans. I am doing so within the context of secular and humanist activism, and where society places us based on these identities. I’m recognizing our differences and encouraging your use of privilege. I am appealing to your morality within the context of how atheist activism is currently structured. And right now, we have a lot to work on.

 

By now, you’ve already heard much of the news of the Charlottesville march filled with neo-nazi and KKK marchers. Were you aware that an expert in the alt-right describes this population as more secular than the general population? This includes Neo-Nazi and famous punch recipient Richard Spencer, who is a self-described atheist.

 

The more prominent and famous figures haven’t exactly done much to disavow or even separate their activity from this movement. Their behavior can appear ostensibly benign, such as Sam Harris’ platforming of “race realist” Charles Murray, which ultimately ends up endorsing prejudice under the guise of scientific inquiry. This promotion of white supremacy   blatant revisionism and whitewashing, like when Dave Rubin promotes a woman seeking a “final solution” for Muslims and elevates far-right xenophobic voices such as Tommy Robinson and Lauren Southern, throwing softball questions at them with only the smallest hint of pushback possible.

 

By contrast, what is happening in our own communities to combat alt-right behavior, or to push back against scare tactics? There are a good handful of secular organizations that have explicitly condemned the march (American Atheists, American Humanist Association, Freedom From Religion Foundation, and more), which is good. Are we doing more than trying to distance ourselves from the problem?

 

Black atheism certainly has a presence in the movement. Black Nonbelievers has been around for around six years, and has other affiliated groups specifically to build communities and address concerns specific to the experiences of black atheists. In 2016, the American Humanist Association developed alliances based on doing more social justice based activism, including the Black Humanist Alliance. However, the AHA received plenty of pushback for having the audacity to bring humanist efforts to these specific focuses. When racial justice activists spoke at the recent American Humanist Association conference, they received walkouts on their talks and pushback that other white presenters didn’t receive, as speaker Trav Mamone documents. Speakers like Alix Jules and Mandisa Thomas have both had a history of being treated differently than other speakers at atheist conventions, simply due to being atheists of color.

 

But somewhat equally importantly, whenever issues such as police brutality and racism are brought up within atheist circles we are met with knee-jerk pushback. We are met with cries of “identity politics” and pandering to the “regressive left”. We get Pepes in our Twitter mentions, coming from the same alt-right news sources and communities that fuel the aforementioned white supremacist marchers. Meanwhile, the ostensibly “non-racist” liberal atheists who profess to hold progressive values do little to combat blatant bigotry, and are likely to dismiss any problems simply because being an atheist has nothing to do with race (as if the entirety of our values and behavior must stem merely from our nonbelief).

 

We atheists often pride ourselves on being free of religious dogma that reinforces hatred and bigotry to our fellow humans. We often claim the moral high ground on issues such as gender and sexuality (often rightfully so), since we no longer have the chains of gender roles prescribed to us arbitrarily. But how can we as humanists claim moral superiority on race issues if we not only don’t take any action to combat racism, but we are actively tolerant of those who spread harmful race-based beliefs?

 

The day after the Charlottesville White Supremacist march, I went to Denver and attended a resistance-focused march in solidarity with Charlottesville, where thousands of other people showed up to send a strong message against White Supremacy. Speaking at the march were at least three religious leaders, all encouraging their fellow marchers to take action in their communities. I don’t share their supernatural belief and felt excluded to some extent by the prayer given that day, but at the same time I recognized their capacity for mobilizing their faith communities towards positive action.

 

My local Boulder and Denver areas have little excuse, as they both have secular organizations that meet regularly. It’s possible that some members of these organizations attended, but if so they weren’t as visible as the multiple churches that attended with large signs. Furthermore, neither group made any public show of support on social media.

 

If we white atheists supposedly care about combating racism and want to fight for justice, what’s the point if we aren’t showing up? I understand that our time and energy is limited and many of us want to focus on specific causes to make our efforts as individuals more effective. However, you would think that there would be some secular representation in issues of justice. This is barely the case, especially from white secularists, and as it currently stands humanists of color tend to be rebuffed whenever they want to create change from an evidence-based humanist perspective. What ends up happening is that many religious folks show up, and the atheists don’t.

 

To be clear, religious culture is largely responsible for racism and xenophobia in the world. We cannot pretend that Christianity has clean hands in the issue, and it’s certainly one of the largest factors in far-right terror. After all, religious symbolism and scripture ties deeply into Nazi and KKK ideology. But at the very least, we can say there are religious communities that are actively working to reverse that behavior (particularly in black churches).

 

We could sit in the theoretical abstract and recognize that being an atheist doesn’t directly tie to caring about racial justice, but why does this excuse not matter when there are atheist organizations helping the homeless, doing community service, helping disaster recovery, and performing international service? None of these tie to being an atheist either, yet all of these are active areas of humanism. Why is the race an issue that is so hard for us atheists to overcome? It should be obvious.

 

Finally, it’s worth saying that if we try to create a “big tent” inviting anyone in merely by being atheist, we are actively breeding the alt-right culture that is already fairly nonreligious. Karl Popper’s paradox of tolerance tells us that by being tolerant of any and all persons involved in our communities, then that gives license to accept anyone’s intolerant behavior within the community.

 

It is no longer good enough for white atheists to be “not racist” (to whatever degree we can be non-racist). By making space for racism and bigotry in atheist and humanist circles, we are actively breeding the culture that was alive in Charlottesville and threatens to spread across the world. We are complicit in incubating the same nihilistic anti-humanistic attitudes that we see on 4Chan and r/atheism, ones that lead to hatred and intolerance. If we white atheists truly care about diversity and humanism, we can no longer be content with simple non-bigotry, we have to take steps to combat it. It may be the case that we can’t prevent these attitudes from spreading in other areas, but we should feel morally obligated to do what we can in areas we do have control over.

 

In the words of Angela Davis, “In a racist society it is not enough to be non-racist – we must be antiracist.” Let’s apply that to our own communities, and take the log out of our own eye.

 

The fact that many of us speaking about this now only after Charlottesville speaks to our privilege and complacency with the world as it currently exists, and I include myself in that criticism. Racial justice activists and atheists of color have been speaking about this for years. If you read many of their works or listen to their talks, there is little surprise that Charlottesville was little more than a logical conclusion of our current societal structure at work. Let’s correct that mistake and actively listen. If we are truly critical thinkers and skeptics, we should undergo this collective endeavor towards truth and justice by hearing voices from all perspectives and life experiences. While the truth is independent of who says it, we will get the fuller picture from those who have those life experiences rather than those who can merely describe it.

 

For starters, I recommend this year’s “When Colorblindness Isn’t the Answer: Humanism and the Challenge of Race” by Anthony Pinn, which paints a thorough picture why humanists need to care about racial justice. Continue to listen to humanists of color. I recommend Sincere Kirabo and Ashton P. Woods, as well as Alix Jules. If you like podcasts, listen to Angry Black Rant, with my friend Ishmael Brown.

 

In addition to that, start taking action. Even if you take little steps, it’s an improvement towards positive change. Call out racism in your family and communities (including your atheist and freethought groups). If you have a platform, elevate voices of color. Look for black businesses to support. Call and write your congresspeople in your local community regarding laws and policies that target people of color. Follow racial justice organizations for events you can volunteer and contribute to. SURJ is a fantastic organization where we white folks can become educated and learn where to take steps towards progress.

 

Hopefully we white atheists can learn these lessons and turn them into positive change. Let’s get over the fact that atheism doesn’t dictate what actions we should take. Atheism in itself doesn’t dictate that we create nonreligious communities and fight for separation of church and state, yet we do it anyway. We already take action beyond just being “merely atheist”. Let’s take action to prevent the spread of white supremacy.

Is Atheism Activism Still Worth our Efforts?

Jeremiah Traeger

Unless you’re not an active participant in the Atheist Patheosphere, you may have noticed a large back and forth on the merits of anti-theism the past month. I have no interest in contributing to the conversation, as I have little more useful things to say beyond what other atheists have said about the issue, and I am late to the party at this point. However, one of the opinions I thought I’d reflect on is that of my dear friend Callie Wright, who discussed her opinions in her blog post and on the 100^th episode of her podcast.

I highlight her because she brings up concerns that I’ve wrestled with a long time. One of the biggest reasons she refrains from calling herself an anti-theist is that even though she hates religion with a passion enough to dedicate her podcast and blog to fighting it, losing one’s religion is often not enough to make the world a better place. I’m well aware of the more toxic atheist communities, and I loathe most of what YouTube atheism appears to offer. The white nationalist movement (commoly called If that’s not compelling enough to most readers, the modern nazi Richard Spencer, famous for getting punched on inauguration day and being turned into a meme and spurring many philosophical discussions on the ethics of nazi punching, has identified as an atheist. Apparently, the detachment from religion is not enough to prevent someone from ethnic cleansing.

Of course, you can find plenty of milder examples of terrible humans who also happen to not believe in gods, and we should not be surprised. As is often acknowledged among activists, being an atheist doesn’t make someone a skeptic, nor does it make them a humanist or a nice person. The only way to be a bad atheist is to start believing in a god again. I certainly know a lot of atheists who I loathe (and I could name a couple of atheists who feel similarly about me). Furthermore, I have some very good friends who are theists, including many of my own family who care about causes I would characterize as humanistic. This leads to me asking the question why we should care at all about atheist activism in the first place. After a lot of thought and some soul-searching (for lack of a better term), the reason I continue to be active in movement atheism comes down largely to a few things.

1. Secularism is demonstrably a good societal foundation

I shouldn’t have to defend this point on this blog, but I’ll spend a paragraph for the sake of it anyway. You cannot expect much good to come of a society that bases its laws on things that aren’t demonstrable. Furthermore, even if you assume that a god exists, stating that we should enact a law based on the god’s holy book is basically stating that we should create a law “because my friend said so”. No matter how you slice it, creating a society or a moral system based on a religious authority is inherently flawed. We should build our values and systems based on evidence. Even if our evidence and methodologies were able to evaluate that a god exists and that this god holds a reliable and moral ethical framework, wouldn’t we be better off using our evidence and methodologies to evaluate further moral questions rather than relying on an authority?

Keeping this in mind, even if there are atheists of terrible moral character, we would be far better off with institutionalized secularism. I can’t pretend that bullying and harassment would go away tomorrow if there were no religious people. However, we would lose out on institutionalized privileging of theistic positions. Think of all the arguments against LGBTQ equality that politicians regularly make, and notice that they only make sense within a theistic framework. Even when there aren’t blatant mentions of a god or a holy book, dogwhistle phrases about the “family” or “values” specifically bring up these appeals to those within a religious mindset. I applaud groups like the Freedom of Religion Foundation and the American Humanist Association for fighting religion’s influence on an institutional level. While many will value religious beliefs over other attitudes, we are better off fighting tooth and claw such that our laws will not privilege Christian belief over other worldviews.

Not only are many laws founded on poor epistemology and irrational beliefs, but many of our internal attitudes have the same foundation. There is no rational reason for gender essentialism, as male and female brains are largely the same. However, Christian culture overvalues the male of the household and demands that women become submissive. This behavior spills over into other toxic attitudes on gender and sexuality, leading to the bullying and harassment of gay and transgender individuals.

Other toxic attitudes include ideas such as the prosperity gospel, which is the idea that individual success and prosperity is directly linked to one’s devotion to the Christian god. On an individual level this is a horrifying idea, as it implies that everyone who is in financial hard times deserves the problems they are currently facing. If we extrapolate this, then we as a society internalize the idea that anyone who is suffering necessarily deserves it. Under this mindset, statistically destitute populations and demographics are poor because they deserve to be poor, which may demotivate us from taking action to giving them a hand up. This mindset is also mildly linked to the attitude that hardships are specifically a punishment from the divine. Keep this in mind when the Steven Andersons or the Westboro Baptist Churches of the world state that the latest natural disaster is a sign from the Lord against abortion or the acceptance of LGBTQ rights. While I’m not going to ignore the fact that there are atheists who have all sorts of terrible sexist, homophobic, transphobic, or classist attitudes, eliminating religion would be one more barrier to escaping these ideas.

2.Believing in true things is better than believing in false things

This ties into my earlier point, but focuses much more on an individual level of behavior and belief. We can see what happens when beliefs founded on superstition and religion enter the public sphere. We can’t ignore, though, that this can have an effect on our everyday decisions.

I’m genuinely happy to come across Christians and other theists in my everyday life who value progressive causes. When I was a Christian I was one of them. I was supportive of gay rights before it was cool (as I put on some hipster shades) and established my romantic relationships such that the women that I dated in high school were my equals. The problem was that none of that was founded in the bible. One of the reasons that I questioned my religious beliefs was the crowd of other Christians who cited the same holy book that I used. When I unburied my head from the sand and actually looked into what I found in the book, I did not find peace and love wished upon my gay friends and I did not find egalitarian attitudes between the husband and wife. What I found was clearly the opposite.

Ultimately, when I held strong humanistic beliefs as a Christian, they were built on shaky foundations. When your epistemology is based on unfounded assumptions and starting points, it leads to poor conclusions. I’m happy to come across people of a religious or spiritual nature who are supportive of humanistic causes, but I have to recognize that those results aren’t a function of good reasoning, and that poor reasoning can lead to poor outcomes in other areas.

In Boulder, where I currently reside, it is difficult to find someone who holds outwardly bigoted attitudes against any given identity. However, new age and “spiritual” attitudes are common, and with that come thoroughly unskeptical positions on modern medicine and science. It’s not uncommon for me to come across a crystal healing booth at a festival in town, or a holistic medicine outlet while strolling downtown. There are plenty of young adults who are anti-vaccine, or think that GMOs give people cancer. Discussions on homeopathy and vaccines seem like boilerplate skeptic discussions, but attitudes on science drastically affect our lives and others. People get scammed and lose money because they think sugar pills heal their cancer. Gullible parents allow their babies to die because they think the vaccines will give their child autism. I can’t pretend that religious or spiritual people of any political bent are exempt from reaching harmful positions based on their preconceived notions.

Embracing reality after losing religion can have a drastically positive effect on our lives. In my case, I was able to recognize many sex-negative attitudes that have been pounded into me since my adolescence, and as a result of purging these attitudes I have been able to celebrate my body and enhance the lives of those who I have been romantically engaged with. I have recognized that my life is the only one that I know that I have, and the same is true for anyone else. As a result, I am infinitely more motivated to be the positive change in the world that I wish to see, and more motivated to make the most of the time I have on earth. I am more willing to think for myself instead of second-guessing what I think based on what is written down in a holy book. These are not sentiments unique to me, they are common attitudes among atheists after leaving their faith, and it’s not difficult to find other reasons why leaving religion can be a positive and enriching experience.

Ultimately, though, believing things that are correct are things that we should all strive for. The truth makes us better people and make better decisions. At times as skeptics we seem to fetishize disagreement between individuals as if it’s necessarily a good thing, but we also have to recognize there can be an uncountable number of narratives and only one will be the truth. Healthy disagreement is a good sign that we are avoiding dogmatic behavior, but we have to recognize that the truth matters. All things being equal, if I were given the choice, I would much rather that my religious friends abandon their beliefs than not.

3. Atheist communities are still needed

This one requires the least amount of explanation, I think. While secularism is growing in America, and the “nones” population is rapidly climbing, anti-atheist stigma is still alive and well, especially in the American south. Whenever I have to make the case for the importance of atheist community, I recall one skype call through No Religion Required where I met a listener who literally had no friends outside of the atheist and secular community, and all her friends she knew in these communities were online.

It’s easy for me everyday being known as the atheist guy, especially since a majority of my time is spent among science researchers in the super-progressive college town of Boulder, Colorado. But all I have to do to disillusion myself from my bubble is drive an hour and a half south and end up in Colorado Springs, home to Focus on the Family and a few other large Christian organizations. I learn a lot from their residents of Colorado Springs when I go to the Denver Secular Hub (where residents from cities near Denver gather for atheism-related activities). It’s shocking how different our experiences can be, and it sheds a new light on things like the atheist billboard that was erected in Colorado Springs by American Atheists that had such controversy surrounding it. I’m reminded that a large amount of our activism is simply making sure that the most vulnerable atheists have a community available to help them feel welcomed and to give them a social support system to address their needs.

Knowing what I know now about inter-atheist conflict and the toxic nature of some of the people behind this drama, I wouldn’t be surprised at an outsider being disgusted at movement atheists as a whole. In fact, I wouldn’t blame someone for avoiding secular activism altogether simply to avoid the conflict altogether. But for me, it’s still vitally important to encourage the ending of religion. Religion is at the root of far too many problems for me to ignore it, and it intersects with far too many issues for it to be completely avoided with almost anything. For me, I’m far from giving up where I’m going to push my efforts.

That isn’t to say that any given person is obligated to be a secular activist. As far as my philosophy goes, we should be the positive change wherever we see fit, however small. It doesn’t matter if certain issues seem “too small” or appear to be a waste of time, if it’s a problem then it needs to be solved and somebody needs to do it. I’m happy to spread the message of humanism and the importance of a secular society, and I feel that it’s important to put pressure on people to get involved in movement atheism, but I’m happy when someone is involved in positive change in any way. I’m happy when Christians do good, when Jews do good, and when Muslims do good, and I’m happy to encourage them and work alongside them.

Ultimately, explicitly atheist activism is still needed. It could be cut-and-dry separation of church and state issues, or it could be intersectional where the focus is on something outside of mere “atheism”, such as race or gender issues. Both are important. To me, it’s not good enough to merely focus on simply separation of church and state issues or to make fun of what Ken Ham said this week or discuss logical fallacies for the bajillionth time. But if I’m going to be honest, those things are still vitally important. Separation of Church and State is important, critical thinking is important, and creating a space not only free of religion but actively defiant of religious culture is important. I am happy when I see all these things, and I’m happy that people still take up these tasks. It takes all types of work to resist.

Matt Walsh Gets it Completely Backwards on Birth Control

Jeremiah Traeger

Anyone in my atheist circles who knows me knows that I keep tabs on conservative Catholic blogger Matt Walsh. His work can be found on The Blaze, where he frequently spouts off Catholic dogma and incoherent conservative talking points. I would love the chance to talk to the guy, half so I could record an interview with him so people could point and laugh at his words on a podcast, and half so I could help him give in to any repressed homosexual urges he might have and teach him how to truly love. But I digress.

I follow him on Twitter so I can watch what he’s saying and give a reply if needed. One time he told me the reason that I deconverted from Christianity, since apparently he knows me better than I do (and threw in an “I’ll pray for you” for good measure). He’s no stranger to being a heartless, condescending asshole to anyone wanting to contradict him.

While I think he’s astoundingly bad at reasoning most of the time, he got it profoundly wrong last week when talking about birth control. It started with a tweet saying that the poor were immature or irresponsible, and therefore did not deserve to be having sex.

If you actually cannot afford birth control then you are not nearly mature or responsible enough to be having sex in the first place

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) January 13, 2017

Of course, Matt Walsh is Catholic, and is therefore of the opinion that sex is inherently tied to marriage and reproduction. I’m not strawmanning him here, he literally thinks that marriage is a cure for unplanned pregnancy, since according to him marriage necessarily entails reproduction. So he would like to see birth control done away with altogether, since married couples should be trying to have babies ever after and unmarried couples shouldn’t be banging. As usual when I see this nonsense from accounts with large followings, I sent a reply. You won’t believe what happened next!

If you're so poor that you can't afford 9 bucks to buy birth control then maintaining your sex life should be the last of your concerns https://t.co/CBNqzarVZu

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) January 13, 2017

Any woman (or assigned female at birth person) looking at this tweet likely has to pick up their jaw from the floor. For the non-vagina-owning readers here, you may be confused about why this tweet is such a big deal. Let me see if I can put it in words.

BIRTH CONTROL IS NOT NINE FUCKING DOLLARS.

What followed was an amazing cavalcade of women educating his ass. It’s been almost a day since I sent Walsh a response, and I’m still getting Twitter notifications from women chewing him out. And it’s a beautiful to watch.

https://twitter.com/justkelly_ok/status/820026225452204032

@nrrprophet in what universe is bc only $9?? I was paying $70/month out of pocket in best case scenario before it was covered

— katherine (@kay_fil) January 13, 2017

https://twitter.com/BeautyCreep/status/820032297873395712

@nrrprophet it 9 bucks with insurance, it's 5x that without it. Holy shit, do some research

— Lisa (@lisasiehl) January 13, 2017

I started the pill at 14 because a freak irregular period almost killed me. I wasn't having sex, I had a medical condition.

— not productive (@not_productive) January 13, 2017

https://twitter.com/purpleyodalove/status/820047486949658626

If you're so poor you can't afford birth control PREGNANCY should be a significant concern. Birth control must be affordable.

— Christine (@dorknabbit) January 14, 2017

https://twitter.com/monkeypox0104/status/820026435054292992

MAN WITH DICK TELLS WOMAN ABOUT BIRTH CONTROL. AGAIN.

— mamatxmama (@cassiedooalot) January 13, 2017

https://twitter.com/jaygeesmiff/status/820018334112579584

 

For the record, regardless of how much birth control costs, Walsh is still an asshole. It’s just that this Tweet shows that he’s an exceptionally wrong asshole. I know of no reason why people should be robbed of a basic human pleasure (no Matt, sex is not a “luxury” as you’ve put it). People are going to fuck whether we like it or not, and being able to do it safely and responsibly is in our best interest. I see no reason why helping someone prevent raising a child in poverty because they can’t afford birth control is a bad thing.

In fact, birth control is very much a public health issue. For the past half a decade, the state of Colorado started an initiative to provide free birth control to teenagers, including IUDs and implants, which are long-lasting birth control methods. The results? Teen pregnancy in Colorado has plummeted. This allows most teens to get a better start leaving education and entering the workforce. This reduces poverty. It allows people to make responsible decisions for themselves (at a better time, when their brains have had time to fully develop). According to Governor Hickenlooper, this is a savings on state spending since Medicaid and government assistance are far more expensive than the up front costs of birth control. All these sound like great reasons to support publicly funded birth control (and they’re economically sound, which conservatives should value). I see no way that this could not be interpreted as a smoking gun for how to reduce poverty among teens and increase autonomy.

Due to my (partially) Catholic upbringing, I’ve been infused with the same sex-negative attitudes that Matt Walsh is espousing. Though I’ve been an atheist for four years, I’m still putting the work in to separate the truth from the lies when it comes to sex. I realize that everything I was taught about in a sex-negative culture has tainted my feelings. I still recoil a bit at the thought of people sleeping around with multiple partners. I have an overstated fear of STDs, and when I think about birth control I’m more likely to instinctively think of them as ineffective at preventing pregnancy or infections. I’ve come to see this as a result of being indoctrinated, and part of some hang-ups I still need to work through.

The difference between me and Walsh, though, is that I’m going to stay in my goddamn lane. As a penis-owner, I am woefully uneducated about the costs of birth control. As someone who isn’t currently in a sexually active relationship, I’m not going to tell people that they’re irresponsible for having sex. In this case, I’m not even going to argue with Walsh about birth control costs. I’m going to let the women above (and the many, many others) speak and tell him why he’s wrong. I don’t have an obligation to give my opinion on any damn thing I think is worth talking about, and I’m especially not going to argue about something I’m completely uninformed about. Perhaps Walsh could learn from that.

Libertarian Free Will Is Not Just Bad Philosophy, The Concept Hurts People

Jeremiah Traeger

Along with the belief that a cosmic being created the entire universe, was responsible for the entirety of the diversity of life on Earth, and that it’s really bad if you keep fapping, there often comes the idea of the soul. Somehow this soul may or may not be your mind, and is responsible for your moral decisions. The soul represents the “ghost in the machine”, the concept that somehow you are a type of spirit inhabiting a corporeal form, making decisions until your body dies and you get sent to your eternal destination.

The idea that somehow we are making free decisions using our soul independent of our bodily function is one of the guiding assumptions behind libertarian free will. This has nothing to do with the political affiliation, and when most people think of free will this is the concept they are most likely envisioning. It is a basic foundational assumption of Christian apologetics, as it is a common response to arguments like the problem of evil or why the Christian god doesn’t save people in mass shootings. An excerpt from Theopedia illustrates this concept.

Libertarian free will means that our choices are free from the determination or constraints of human nature and free from any predetermination by God. All “free will theists” hold that libertarian freedom is essential for moral responsibility, for if our choice is determined or caused by anything, including our own desires, they reason, it cannot properly be called a free choice. Libertarian freedom is, therefore, the freedom to act contrary to one’s nature, predisposition and greatest desires. Responsibility, in this view, always means that one could have done otherwise.

While as an atheist I certainly don’t think my choices have anything to do with any deity, based on the scientific evidence I cannot decouple my choices from my physical being. As far as I can tell, I am my brain, and my brain is subject to the same physical laws everything else is subject to. Since my mind is mostly a result of patterns of electrochemical signals, which are physical processes, the choices that I make are mostly the end result of matter and forces moving through the universe.

Keep in mind, just because we are simply the result of the laws of nature doesn’t mean that I can treat myself and others the same as the inanimate objects that surround me. I can still recognize agency in humans and other animals. Perhaps I am just matter in motion, but I still value happiness and joy and loathe pain and suffering. I can see the consequences that my actions have on others’ personhood. While the underlying mechanisms behind how people function are nothing more than the natural mechanisms found everywhere else, the fact that we function in an emotional, intelligent way is profound in itself. We have great reason to value the fluorishing of all those around us simply based on the knowledge that we are thinking and feeling beings.

Even absent physical explanations for how our minds work, this type of free will is nonsensical. I came to this conclusion after listening to Sam Harris talk about this. In his speech below (and likely in his book, which I haven’t read), he describes how our minds come to conclusions almost absent our own input. When we try and come up with something like our favorite city, names of cities pop up in our heads absent any effort from ourselves. When we try and come to a conclusion on something, there is a time when we are unsure of our position, and then a time when we have our opinion. The idea that our “self” ever actually gets to decide on anything before we arrive at our conclusions is like coming up with the concept that we decide something before we decide it. This is a nonsensical concept whether or not we have a soul. Libertarian free will can’t exist. Sam Harris illustrates it much better than I can, so I recommend listening to him when you have the time.

Free will is often portrayed as some lofty, ivory tower based concept that old white men debate in philosophy departments. Perhaps that even is the case, but maybe it shouldn’t be. Whether or not free will exists in our universe is a fact, and as a result has an effect on our everyday lives. It’s possible that being wrong about free will doesn’t just mean that we’re wrong about some abstract idea. In fact, I’d submit that thinking that we are free agents holds humanity back in demonstrable ways.

This is actually quite apparent to any atheist who has engaged in debates and arguments with apologists for any amount of time. The apologist is no stranger to telling the atheist that “you choose to believe in god or not”, or that “you choose for yourself to go to Heaven or Hell.” They are still operating on the nonsensical idea that somehow we as free agents are choosing to believe something or not. That simply isn’t the case, though, and we will often come to our beliefs before we even know that we hold a certain belief. Our beliefs aren’t some decision that our soul picks out based on weighing different evidences we have filed away in our brain wrinkles. Our mind has evaluated the evidence we’ve been able to absorb and experience, and tries to create a coherent model for ourselves such that we can function in the real world.

Of course, this means that we ultimately have no choice whether or not we believe in a god, but this is not immediately apparent to the person who still thinks we can choose our beliefs. To the theist, we appear to have maliciously chosen to reject their loving creator and all that is good (especially if they hold the belief that their god has revealed himself in everyone’s heart). It doesn’t matter that many of us have taken a look at the evidence for a divine creator, found it lacking, and our brains shifted to a worldview absent of a god. From the outside, it appeared that some agent flipped a switch on our belief, however inaccurate that is. This means that every instance of discrimination based on belief system is based on something completely out of our control. Every time a parent tells a college student they can’t return home because they’re not Christian, every time someone leaves their spouse for abandoning the faith, every time a school bullies an atheist, it’s for doing something that they essentially had no say over.

We go about our lives acting as if everyone around us is some independent free spirit, choosing whether or not to take a certain action or say a certain thing. To an extent that’s true, but we fail to recognize the sheer amount of cognitive activity going on in our minds subconsciously. We fail to recognize that when someone is irrational, it’s not always due to some independent agent deciding to think poorly. We are all products of our brain functions, and we have plenty of unconscious biases and poor cognitive functions. We all have our mental blocks and irrational beliefs, and sometimes we have faulty memories or unreliable experiences to back up what we think. It makes sense that as a society that we should hold each other accountable when we are wrong or behaving poorly, but it would be best to do this while keeping in mind how our own will works.

Consider how our justice system is constructed. For many of our crimes, we enforce prison sentences, where society locks us away from those who are free. The idea is often that we punish criminals such that they “learn their lesson” and decide for their own selves not to do something poorly. We’ve also convinced ourselves that if we set up a punishment stick by having strict laws that people will be afraid to commit crimes in the first place. As we all know, that really doesn’t bear out. The presence of punishment does not serve to make us “behave”, it simply makes us work to avoid the punishment. Our prisons may be “punishment”, but the mere isolation from society in a harsh environment doesn’t really teach us anything. Prisons are fairly lacking in resources to help us learn better ways to avoid misbehaving in the future, such as psychological services or education and jobs programs. We feel somehow that the people in prison deserve what they get based on their free will choices, instead of considering the environments and conditions that caused them to behave the way they did. It’s much easier to chalk everything up to a lawbreaker’s choices and blame them rather than help them make better choices in the future.

Free will also matters we engage in discourse. The old mantra of “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me” rests on the assumption that if we hear something, we can just walk away. We can do this to a large extent, but there are a lot of underlying processes in our head that guide our behavior and our performance. One of the first things I was taught as a graduate TA was that reminding minorities and women of their stereotypes in society caused them to perform differently on exams. This doesn’t happen with white people or men. Most people have the attitude that if something is distressing they should just look away and go somewhere else, but this literally makes people perform worse in schools (in a sexist and racist way, no less).

This also ties into the “trigger warning” debate. A lot of the discourse has been lost on this topic because many think that being triggered literally just means getting offended. But for those who suffer from panic attacks or have PTSD, it’s a lot more than that. If we were just souls controlling some human meat suit, perhaps we could just walk away from something “we don’t like”. But alas, we are performing as a function of our brain activity. A triggering event can easily cause a panic attack, which for completely irrational reasons can cause someone to shut down and stop functioning for a minute or two. They could dissociate from their surrounding environment, often for a period of several days. Conservatives often blame people who suffer from these conditions and say they’re getting whiny and offended. They want those who suffer from mental conditions to “buck up”, and blame them for not trying hard enough. This makes sense under a libertarian free will model, where we actually choose our emotions, our behaviors, and our basic neural responses. The problem is, science doesn’t corroborate this at all. Libertarian free will completely ignores the very real mental barriers that can prevent us from behaving in an ideal manner. We can’t just “choose” how to feel, and what soul would possibly freely choose a panic attack? In that sense, libertarian free will is ableist.

Libertarian free will is thoroughly anti-skeptical. Within skepticism circles, we talk all the time about avoiding biases and correcting for them. I suspect that we don’t do a good enough job correcting for our biases, as a holdover from when we viewed ourselves as pure, independent agents capable of making our own rational decisions. While most skeptics champion the use of eliminating bias, the dominant behavior right now appears to be chalked up to saying “don’t be biased” and stopping right there. What we don’t realize is that regardless of how we want to believe, we are all biased. For example, as a result of our human nature, we are all subject to implicit bias, and there’s very little we can do about it. Without thinking about it, we really do treat people of races other than our own differently, and most Americans at least unconsciously think of white people superior to those who are black. The same is the case with women, as we think of them as worse leaders. This is almost unavaoidable. We are not some free spirit making purely logical evaluations based on our environment, we have internalized many attitudes from our culture as we developed and that has partially made us into who we are. It doesn’t work to just tell ourselves to “not be racist” or “not be sexist”. We have to actively counter our bias, and second guess where our criticisms are coming from.

Hopefully I’ve illustrated some very good examples of why libertarian free will is harmful. We are more susceptible to harm when our model of the universe is inaccurate, and this is just one instance. We aren’t free souls making entirely free decisions independently of our bodily functions. Mind-body dualism is garbage. We need to recognize our own agencies for what they are: physical brains inhabiting a physical universe due to natural laws. We need to recognize all the biases, instincts, and hurdles that come with that. The more we treat people as they truly are, the better off we will be.

Maybe Labels Aren’t a Problem, But the Way We Use Them Are

Jeremiah Traeger

An unusual amount of time within the culture wars appears to be over what labels are appropriate. There are certain labels that have a history of marginalizing certain members of society, and therefore probably should not be used (which is not the same thing as saying we need to be politically correct). A significant amount of Dave Silverman’s activism and book is focused on why we should choose the label “atheist” over other labels like freethinker, nonreligious, or humanist. And it’s been a common narrative among right-leaning atheists that a revolving door of “new” labels like genderqueer and intersectional alienated  centrist voters and caused Donald Trump to be elected. Now, I don’t believe for a section that made up words (as if there are any other kind of word) caused us to elect a tyrant, but it’s no question that we seem to be pretty hung up on labels.

After so many squabbles about labels, it’s common for us to throw up our arms and say we’re just not going to care about labels anymore. Perhaps this is because plenty of people use this as an excuse to dismiss someone, to otherize them, or to put them in a convenient box where they can make a ton of lazy, unjustified assumptions about someone’s character.

[Image: A variety of small cabinets labeled with numerical index cards]

I don’t blame anyone for coming to this conclusion, as it seems pretty attractive, but I can’t help but believe that it’s the wrong conclusion. In these situations I mentioned where someone gets to take the lazy way out, the person will often use labels as the tool, but the problem is the person. When someone (like my roommate) tries to use a metal fork on a teflon-coated pan and scratches the shit out of the surface, I don’t try and throw out all our metal forks. I ask the person to change their behavior. All in all, I find labels to be pretty useful tools. In reality, all words are labels to convey a concept, and it’d be silly to stop using words because people use words improperly. But there are good uses for tools and bad uses for tools.

Many of us atheists have been on the receiving end of a misuse of these tools. It’s plenty common for us to be dismissed as “not really an atheist, you’re really an agnostic”. Arguably worse is when it’s assumed that we’re sexist assholes like TJ Kirk or Reddit trolls. This sucks, but this is not the label’s fault. This is how some people use the label, and that’s wrong. But in many cases, it’s useful to me. If someone asks me where I go to church, if I tell them I’m an atheist it not only gives them an answer but a reason for that answer. In a discussion with friends, bringing up my atheism means they can be safe in assuming I don’t have religious motivations for my ethical, political, and mundane day-to-day decisions. My atheist label isn’t a restriction on my life, nor is it comprehensive, but it gives a healthy splash of first-glance context to my character.

While there are misunderstandings about what we mean when we call ourselves an atheist, that label is far more accurate and unambiguous compared to “Christian”. When this label comes up, it is often us who take the lazy way out and make a ton of assumptions about the other person. Correcting this error would do us a lot of good in improving our conversations, and by extension how atheists are perceived. A lot of ex-fundamentalist atheists assume that when someone calls their self a Christian, that means that they hold every single letter of the Bible literally, but that’s simply not the case. Anywhere from 40-80% of self-identified Christians believe that the Bible is the literal word of their god. This means that if you make the assumption that they think the Earth was literally created in six days, then you have a pretty good chance of being wrong. Christians disagree about a lot of things among each other: dunking vs. sprinkling baptisms, transubstantiation, predestination, works vs. faith, the list goes on. Catholics, Mormons, and Jehovah’s Witnesses all consider themselves Christian, while evangelicals are likely to call them heretical or blasphemous cults. It turns out that when someone calls their self a Christian, there’s not too many assumptions you can make without asking them beforehand.

What do I do when someone tells me that they are a Christian? I do make some assumptions out of practicality, but like all things in science, they are tentative and subject to change with new information. They are likely to believe that Jesus Christ was the son of their god, and that he died for their sins. They likely hold that the Bible is a useful book with good, holy advice (whether or not they have read it). They likely believe in a Heaven or Hell. But when they tell me otherwise, I don’t immediately remove their “Christian” label from the way I view them, I make that adjustment to how I perceive their individual character.

We would to best to recognize labels as starting points when getting to know an individual. I have multiple labels. I am an atheist because I don’t believe in gods, not because I am like Richard Dawkins. I am a feminist because I want women to have equal rights and access to society, not because I am similar to Maryam Namazie. I am a socialist because I think our country would be better if we were more like Norway or Sweden, not because I am like Che Guevera. There are a spectrum of different personalities, opinions, and underlying ideologies behind each individual who take up any one of these labels. I could give you a lot of labels that more or less describe me well: progressive, anti-racist, anti-authoritarian, academic, skeptical, humanist, snarky, sarcastic, and environmentally conscious. Even if I were to somehow tell all my labels to someone, they still wouldn’t get the whole picture of who I am, they would still have to get to know me.

This is not a flaw, it’s merely the limitation of the tool. A label is a good shortcut to giving someone a picture of what is important to me or my identity, but it’s still a shortcut. I’m happy to tell someone that I’m left-leaning, because it’s a good shorthand way of not having to say “I support minorities, LGBTQ rights, a social safety net, etc.” among a million things. But after I tell someone I’m left-leaning, it shouldn’t be a drastic surprise to that person that I have a lot of problems with the Democratic party, I think GMOs are useful, and that we on the left tend to underplay the harms of Islam. Left-leaning still describes me fairly well, but it is not the entirety of my being, and we would be best to recognize that. That would be simply getting to know the limitations of the tool, instead of throwing away the tool altogether.

This would be useful for recognizing the spectrum of other identities, helping us recognize, for example, the spectrum of gender and sexual identities. Someone might identify as bisexual, but prefer women to men 90% of the time, and that’s still valid. A trans person may identify as nonbinary, but feel significantly feminine or masculine, and that’s valid to. Even those of us who are not a gender or sexual minority benefit from recognizing the diversity of our own labels. I am a man and am very comfortable under that identity, but how I perceive myself as a man could very much differ from how some other person sees his self as a man. Hell, plenty of conservatives would probably characterize me as “not really a man” since I’ve never hunted, I don’t own a car, and I wore a dress on social media once. Fuck ’em. I’m a man and they don’t have any say in that.

It’s also worth noting that even if we get to the heart of what an individual means when they talk about the importance a certain label gives to them, that’s only a small facet of that person. Every person lives a life with many intersecting aspects of their identities, and while certain labels often imply other labels, we need our perceptions of each other to be flexible and open to new evidence. We know all too well that not everyone that is an atheist is also a skeptic, so we shouldn’t be surprised when two labels seem to contradict each other. There are gay Christians, feminist Muslims, and conservative minorities. The solution to any confusion we have is not to take issues with the labels, but to try and understand the actual person behind them.

So let’s ignore who is and isn’t a true Scotsman and focus on what that label is truly good for. We get to know something about that person, and get a decent first impression about why that identity is important. But like all first impressions, there’s a lot more to the story.

Three Ways to Change Someone’s Mind

Jeremiah Traeger

With the fallout of the election, a lot of us skeptics have been doing a bit of soul searching (for lack of a better term). Skeptics have been fighting the good fight before I was even in diapers, yet many humans seem impervious to pure, demonstrable facts, to the point where our president elect is a denier of clear unambiguous science. Donald Trump denies the existence of anthropogenic climate change as well as the efficacy of vaccines, and his followers are not far behind. Perhaps this is unsurprising, coming from a man who led a movement that literally thinks Obama is a Kenyan (the movement still isn’t dead, soon to be ex-sheriff Joe Arpaio tried to restore legitimacy to birther claims with an amateur investigator in mid-December). As a result of an apparent surge in terrible reasoning, the election has apparently lit a fire under our asses to bring critical thinking, skepticism, and reason to the forefront and redouble our efforts.

Unfortunately, even the cold hard facts are not enough to change the minds of humans, and, in fact, sharing facts can even make things worse. Science has shown us that the backfire effect contributes to our strongly-held beliefs, such that when we are presented information that contradicts what we already think, it can cause us to become even more certain in our poorly-held beliefs.

What?

This means that if we share the cold hard facts and nothing else, this causes people to reject the facts even more? So we shouldn’t use facts to try and convince people?

That’s not necessarily the case. We should of course make sure that all of our arguments and positions are supported by the evidence and the facts. But the point is if we actually care about convincing people to a more evidence-based worldview, merely presenting the evidence alone won’t get the job done. Humans aren’t perfect logic machines; we can’t simply give everyone certain inputs and expect them to arrive at the same reasonable output. Our approach counts for a lot.

Along with other skeptics, I’ve been working on trying to reach out to “the other side” to find people who are reachable. While I’m hardly an expert in interpersonal conflict, psychology, or debate (mostly the opposite, I’m baffled every day at how humans function), there appear to be some approaches that have better efficacy than others. Nothing is a silver bullet, and we should never go into a disagreement expecting to change the minds of others, as that will lead to unnecessary disappointment more often than not. But if we want to set out to plant a few seeds and give the other side some food for thought, and perhaps reach the people on the fence, then it would behoove us to adjust our approach.

Image: Two people conversing

1. Humanize yourself to the opposition

This approach admittedly has a limited scope, and is mostly applicable to issues of bigotry and prejudice. But when it works, it works incredibly well. Often this is the case when people are biased against certain demographics, such as gender, sexuality, and race.

What does the evidence say? Even a very brief conversation with someone opposed to your nature can drastically change the way you are perceived. A study found in Science set out to find how voters react to meeting gay and transgender individuals. The abstract for their paper is as follows:

Existing research depicts intergroup prejudices as deeply ingrained, requiring intense intervention to lastingly reduce. Here, we show that a single approximately 10-minute conversation encouraging actively taking the perspective of others can markedly reduce prejudice for at least 3 months. We illustrate this potential with a door-to-door canvassing intervention in South Florida targeting antitransgender prejudice. Despite declines in homophobia, transphobia remains pervasive. For the intervention, 56 canvassers went door to door encouraging active perspective-taking with 501 voters at voters’ doorsteps. A randomized trial found that these conversations substantially reduced transphobia, with decreases greater than Americans’ average decrease in homophobia from 1998 to 2012. These effects persisted for 3 months, and both transgender and nontransgender canvassers were effective. The intervention also increased support for a nondiscrimination law, even after exposing voters to counterarguments.

When someone is convinced that we need to ban gay marriage because gay men are depraved perverts who walk around in leather and feathers all day to recruit children, introducing them to a gay person melts away these stereotypes. When someone thinks that trans women are really men in dresses trying to sneak into restrooms, introducing them to an actual trans woman will make them drastically rethink them. It turns out when you live within the bubble of how your go-to media outlet describes an issue, you thoroughly lack the full picture and the human aspect of why something is important.

It’s not hard to see real-world examples of this happening. It’s often most visible in politicians whose positions on certain issues are very public, and will occasionally change drastically. We’re familiar with cases like former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney, who supported the standard Republican position against gay marriage until his daughter came out as a lesbian, and since then has even lobbied for gay marriage. Tim Ryan, a previously “pro-life Democrat”, changed his mind on why people should have access to abortion after discussing with female constituents on why those issues affected them. It turns out that gay people aren’t trying to recruit all Americans into orgies, they just want the same access to society that everyone else has. It turns out that women aren’t just trying to get rid of a fetus because it’s inconvenient for their next vacation, they simply want bodily autonomy. As a straight male, no matter how good my arguments could possibly get against someone, I could never humanize their cause in the same way that a gay person or a woman could.

What does this mean for people who care about issues on prejudice? It means visibility is incredibly important. It means coming out en masse has worked wonders for the LGBTQ rights movement, and why the National Coming Out Day is more than a mere celebration of being one’s self. It’s the reason why the atheist movement has been pushing visibility, in efforts like the Out of the Closet Campaign  or Openly Secular which are based of the successes of the LGBTQ rights movement. It looks like a black man joining the KKK to ease racial tensions. It looks like putting a trans person on the stage of the Democratic National Convention, or making sure there is more racial representation in our films and television shows. It could also mean someone showing that they need access to healthcare despite their pre-existing conditions, and that plans like the ACA are actually necessary for their well-being. This is more than simply making an appeal to giving everyone their fair share, this actively shifts the way we think.

To be clear, the only people who have the ability to use this technique are people affected by prejudice, bigotry, and misinformation. It’s not for me to tell any individual that they should put their self in a position that compromises their safety for the sake of changing minds. But it’d be a mistake to not show that this is a powerful tool. I’m happy to help put a friendly face on atheists, though.

2. Social pressure

Humans are social creatures, and if we’re going to try to influence the behavior of other humans we have to understand the mechanisms behind what causes people to change their mind. This is somewhat related to the first point, but more broad and large scale. This is not something we can accomplish overnight, and it’s not something that we can control directly, but this is something we can do in the spaces we have influence over.

We’ve known for over half a century that the opinions of those surrounding us influence us greatly. This has been known since the 50s when we started doing experiments on this. A good example is the Asch conformity experiments, which found that subjects were likely to give a clearly wrong answer when everyone around them gave a largely wrong answer. Subjects were given two cards, one with a single line, and one with three lines of varying lengths. While only one of the lines clearly matched the length of the other card, when a subject was surrounded by people who give the same wrong answer, the subject was far more likely to pick the same wrong answer. There are many of other examples and experiments that since then corroborate these findings (such as the humorous elevator example).

Cards used in the Asch experiment. On the left, a card has one line, and on the right a card has three lines of varying lengths, with the medium-length line matching the length of the line on the left. [Wikimedia Commons]

It’s important to note that this is simply an aspect of human behavior. I am not advocating groupthink or tribalism, but simply describing how humans act. As skeptics, we should be aware of the way this can harm people. It’s a contribution to the fact that many Trump voters on Twitter seemed to operate in a completely separate universe from everybody else, likely along with conspiracy beliefs like Pizzagate and anti-vaccine theorists. As critical thinkers, we should be well aware of the effect this can have on our own beliefs, and we should try and ward off any effect this can have.

But we should also recognize the power this phenomenon comes with. Creating environments that allow certain ideas to flourish, while at the same time making it hostile for other ideas, is actually a good thing. This is why even though atheists don’t necessarily have to agree on almost anything, I make it a priority to make sure that the environments that I curate are welcoming to the marginalized and hostile to anti-racism (cue accusations that I’m forming a bubble here). The idea that people of different skin colors are substantially different or that women are weak are evidentially dead ideas, and they should be shunned in every way possible. As I mentioned before, merely showing someone the evidence that “no, their brains are not smaller than ours” may cause them to double down on their beliefs. Instead, once we have evidence that some ideas are bad, outdated, and harmful, we should make it clear that we have no need to revisit them.

We can see the effect this has on people around the globe and over time. We know, for example, that the religious belief you have as an adult is not so much a function of which religious belief makes the most sense to the person, but more of a product of the environment and culture you grow up in. We know that children born in the past couple of decades are far more accepting of LGBTQ people than people born eighty years ago, and that is a good thing. What if we were to create a culture where skepticism and critical thinking were the largest ideological motivators, instead of religion or conspiracy theories?

This also provides pushback against a few ideas that have been floating around since the election. It’s commonplace to make fun of “social media activists”, since speaking out on Facebook and Twitter appears to do nothing. But every time you speak out on a controversial position, or challenge a piece of bullshit on someone’s wall, you provide a small bit of more social pressure towards a certain position. Not only that, but you encourage others to do the same, helping push towards reason. It’s not a silver bullet and it’s not the majority of the work getting done, but it’s a step.

Furthermore, we’ve also been told that we shouldn’t be shaming people or “calling out” others for having bigoted or racist positions. To be clear, simply calling someone a bigot isn’t going to change their minds, but calling someone a racist or a xenophobe to their face directly isn’t what I’m advocating. When we shame someone’s positions, we also induce social pressure against them. When we shame someone for something that’s terrible, we are signaling to others that a certain position is unacceptable. While many positions are worth debating, some things are simply not worth discussing anymore. We’ve settled the fact that gay people aren’t pederasts, we know that homeopathy is a scam, and atheists aren’t evil. Anyone holding those positions should feel shamed. Perhaps we can reach certain people with cautious and respectful discussion, but for those we can’t, we should signal to others that this is an unreasonable position that deserves to be completely disregarded.

3. Appealing to their values, not yours

In keeping with the fact that we humans are not logic machines, we build our opinions and conclusions on a lot more than the mere facts. When we construct a moral and ethical framework, we must have a moral foundation upon which we build our most cherished and important tenets. As members of a social species we would assume that most of these foundations are mostly the same, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.

According to research by Feinberg and Willer, people who tend to identify as either “liberal” or “conservative” tend to value the foundations of their moral systems differently. Those who identify towards the political left tend to value care and equality, while those on the right value things such as tradition and loyalty. Both groups value these things to a certain extent, but in different amounts. You can find a more in-depth discussion on this topic and even discover more about your moral foundations here.

The relevant research, though finds that we tend to make arguments in terms of our own values. For me, gay marriage absolutely makes sense based on the fact that all people should be treated equally, but apparently to someone with a more conservative mindset this argument doesn’t quite cut it. For someone who values tradition more than I do (which is not hard to do), gay marriage seems unprecedented and therefore is something to be wary of. However, according to this study, a good way of convincing a conservative that gay marriage is a good thing is to appeal to in-group identity as Americans.

They then conducted four studies testing the idea that moral arguments reframed to fit a target audience’s moral values could be persuasive on even deeply entrenched political issues. In one study, conservative participants recruited via the Internet were presented with passages that supported legalizing same-sex marriage.

Conservative participants were ultimately persuaded by a patriotism-based argument that “same-sex couples are proud and patriotic Americans … [who] contribute to the American economy and society.”

On the other hand, they were significantly less persuaded by a passage that argued for legalized same-sex marriage in terms of fairness and equality.

To me, appealing to in-group identity seems dishonest and fallacious. However, the American identity is something that conservatives hold dear. And reframing my arguments to focus more on “tradition” and “purity” seem just as bad. In fact, we have named informal logical fallacies after appealing to those values. In that sense, if I reframe my arguments in terms of those values I feel like I am cheating. However, the facts are the facts and it appears to work. I have to consider the desired outcome of my discussion. If someone is not going to be compelled by facts and reason (at least within a reasonable timeframe) would I rather them believe bad things for bad reasons, or would I rather they believe good things for bad reasons? I’m leaning towards the latter. Perhaps, after they start to develop reasons for believing the “right” things, they also reframe their own morals and cognitive processes such that they eventually believe things for the right reasons anyway.

Hell, we know that we occasionally have trouble selling skepticism and critical thinking as a valid epistemology when talking to religious folk. Perhaps after we reframe why critical thinking and skepticism are important using their value system, they could eventually come to better conclusions based on those methodologies as a result.

It’s worth noting, again, that this is hardly a silver bullet. We should not expect to ever change someone’s mind during a single discussion, and even the results of the paper do not indicate that someone who responds favorably to this “reframing” is even likely to completely shift their position. Reframing arguments in terms of these moral foundations only has a small effect, albeit a significant one.

As a skeptic, I really enjoy arguing with other people (perhaps too much). With us going into a terrifying presidency, it will be important for us to establish a better way of helping people come to better positions. What people believe matters, as we all act on our beliefs. I look forward to finding better and better ways to convince people. These are the best I’ve found for now, and they all have their strengths and limitations. It’d be nice if skepticism and critical thinking could always win by default as a result of being stronger, but that’s simply not the case. We need to put in the work, and apparently the approach matters. So let’s care about that in the future.

Science is Intersectional. Our Activism Should Be, Too.

Jeremiah Traeger

The week after the world ended, but before I wrote five posts in a row about how the world is ending but how you can stop it, I attended a professional conference for my engineering field. Regular listeners of the podcast will know that I am a chemical engineering graduate student, and part of being a student is actually attending conferences. If your department can cover your expenses, it’s almost like a paid vacation. It’s like a paid vacation where you still have to watch forty PowerPoint presentations, but graduate students aren’t usually allowed to have fun anyway.

I was interested in seeing a lot of the things at this conference that some of the less social-justice minded atheists would have cringed at. There was a harassment policy that was far more comprehensive than Reason Rally 2016, yet the conference somehow

Image: A sign with details for an LGBT+ reception at my conference. There are also details for a disabled engineer convocation at the bottom.

lasted over a week without some kind of meltdown or without people getting unnecessarily upset about a woman not wanting to be approached alone in an elevator. There was a safe zone workshop for queer and trans engineers (see picture), yet there was no whining about having to respect trans people by having to undergo the odious task of using the correct goddamn pronouns. There were also social events celebrating LGBT+ and disabled engineers. I also thoroughly enjoyed the diversity at the event. Of the thirty-five talks I attended, over half were by people of color, and I’m pretty sure only a minority spoke English as a first language. At the same time, my peers and I were still able to learn lots of new things, present new ideas, go back and forth and rigorously discuss novel research techniques, and critically examine each others’ work. The days we weren’t presenting were filled with practicing our slides and worrying about what questions people would ask. Yes, this conference somehow managed to accommodate minorities and enforce policies that made everyone behave in a safe manner, but somehow we were able to engage in critical thinking at the same time for the progress of science. Somehow those two concepts aren’t in conflict!

There’s a couple of simple explanations for the difference between this and the atheist movement, of course. I have to be honest and can’t compare apples to oranges, and the disseminations of research findings within academia serve a vastly different purpose than rallying cries for a social movement. The speakers and attendees at this conference are often looking to network or learn new techniques, and these research results are borne of many late hours of tedious and difficult work or long nights tweaking sentences so that a paper will be accepted into a good journal. Speeches at an atheist conference, on the other hand, are filled with pathos, and are presented at a far more basic level, because we don’t have to have an academic specialization to campaign for Separation of Church And State. Even the most sophisticated of secular conventions are set up for friendly, personal connections, while a science meeting is almost entirely for professional purposes (even if grad students like myself take the opportunity to hit the bars around the city after getting out of our suits later). Besides this point, my professional organization has been around for over a century, and has had a longer time to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

I could make a long post about things that social justice detractors in atheist communities complain about, and why they aren’t really problems if you look outside the lens of secular activism. I don’t see a need for that for now, but I would like to focus on one aspect of scientific dissemination that highlights the importance of social justice focused activism within the secular movement. And that is the aspect of intersectionality.

As a refresher of the term, intersectionality in a social justice context is a term that focuses on how certain forms of oppression and ways the combat those forms of oppression are interrelated and often related to each other. For example, there are certain ways that black people are oppressed in America, and black Americans disproportionately feel the effects of this oppression. Due to cultural and religious differences between black and white Americans, however, black women or female-presenting people often experience oppression at an elevated level due to sexism. This sexism also ties into traditional gender roles, which oppress queer and trans people of all stripes. Many of the aforementioned problems tie into harm done with the hands of religion. In many ways, unraveling the problems with one form of oppression undoes the harms of other forms of oppression.

This has affected me on a practical level, and in fact, directly led to me becoming a secular activist. My best friend in high school was gay, and even though I was a Christian I always supported gay rights. It should come as a surprise to nobody that when I critically examined what prevented gay people from achieving equality in my country I found that religion was at the root of the problem. This led to a thorough re-examination of my beliefs, a deconversion, and a subsequent rebuilding of my values. Now I fight for the separation of church and state, as well as trying to eliminate religious ideology on a social level.

What does this have to do with my conference, though? To my knowledge, nobody tends to refer to anything outside the context of social studies as intersectional, and that’s fine. But there are a lot of aspects that parallel intersectional activism with how we go about communicating research findings.

For one thing, people outside of academia may not realize how incredibly specialized any given scientific field is. At my university, chemical engineering is only one of sixty-five programs in which someone can earn a degree. If I’m going to focus on something for my career, I have to pick a program that represents roughly 1.5% of available knowledge at my campus (and of course, not everything can be learned at a university, obviously). When I attended my conference and submitted and abstract for my presentation, I had to choose from one of thirty-five topics to present in. After choosing which topic to present in (Nanoscale Science and Engineering), there were thirty-five sessions at the conference that I could present in, ranging from topics like “self-assembly”, “nanomaterials manufacturing”, and “carbon nanomaterials”. Yes, there was a 2-hour session dedicated entirely to research about carbon nanotechnology. Hopefully this gives an idea of just how specialized this research can become. For a period of time at my conference, there was a specialized room of people within a particular topic within a particular focus within a broad research area within an academic field that focused intensely on a very specific topic.

It’s a useful strategy to focus on something very specific when trying to solve certain problems. A typical scientist will often pick an incredibly narrow research topic and focus on that for the rest of their lives. While it’s true that a given scientist may be a biologist or a physicist, they often become an expert in a very specific system. I’ve known professors who have labs that study one specific biochemical. Similarly, I’ve attended a one-day conference that focused entirely on the environmental breakdown of a single molecule. If you want to know a specific technique or process, it’s not uncommon to find maybe two or three groups that have a bunch of papers on it. If you want to have groundbreaking research, you’re not going to become one by being a jack-of-all-trades. You have to find a good niche that nobody else has explored, and explore what you can little-by-little. Your specialization will keep you at the boundary between what we know and what we don’t know, and it’s simply impractical to try and hold a specialty within more than a few specific areas.

It is for this reason that “identity politics” (or at least some non-strawman version of it) exists. We need people focusing on a very specific cause. While it’s a noble thing to be concerned about many things, we are limited beings with finite time, energy, and resources to carry out specific tasks. It’s also very difficult to mobilize large groups of people when interests become broader and broader. If you don’t believe me, try and hold a discussion on what specific actions humanists should focus on, and you will immediately start a shitstorm. This is the reason that advocacy groups exist for a certain purpose. There are humanist groups that specifically work to help the homeless, there are humanist groups that fight legal battles, and there are humanist groups that simply exist for community. The fruits of their labor are clear, tangible, and effective.

It’s for this reason that making the argument that “everyone should have equal treatment” doesn’t get us very far. It’s a valid sentiment, but not everyone has equal problems, and certain problems have not made as many progress as others. If you want LGBTQ people to have equal rights, then telling your conservative representative that doesn’t get you anywhere. To him, gay people always had equal marriage rights (since everyone has the equal freedom to marry someone of the opposite sex anyway). When advocating for LGBTQ rights, you need to engage on the specific needs of queer and trans people, lay out why they are marginalized, and why they should care. If those specific needs or grievances are not laid out specifically, than nobody outside of that group is even going to be aware that there is a problem in the first place. So yes, we need to engage with the needs of specific identities based on how they are perceived and treated.

What does that have to do with intersectionality? Haven’t I just made the case that we need to do our own thing and focus on our own very specific projects?

There’s a bit more nuance to the story. It’s true that on an individual level we may want to focus our attention on maybe one or two things at a time. In my lab, it’d be very difficult for any student to get anything done if they had more than a couple of projects they were working on. At the same time, while each researcher does their own thing, it’d be a mistake for someone to only interact within their own focus. A technique that helps one researcher may easily help another one, especially if they have similar work. One investigator may have a question about their focus that can be solved by another investigator’s technique.

Not to mention, there’s really no solid line that divides one discipline from another. I mentioned earlier that my program is one of sixty-five programs I could choose from. This is true, but what makes an area of study in my program (chemical engineering) different from another isn’t always clear. Lots of chemical engineers work with catalysis, which crosses over with chemistry and materials science. The same could be said of people in my program who study nanoelectronics, which are also studied by mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, and physicists. I also have peers who work with cells, which cross over into work like genetics, molecular and cellular biology, and medicine. What helps me in one field could easily help someone else in another.

When I went to my conference, I saw a lot of talks that superficially didn’t have much to do with what I specifically study. I focus on the chemical kinetics and physical forces that cause DNA to hybridize and dissociate at a solid-liquid interface (or in layman terms,  how DNA sticks together on a surface). It’s a fairly unique project, and I didn’t see a lot of talks that did many similar things. But I saw a talk on nanoparticle coatings which may inform the way I design my experiments in the future. I saw a talk on data organization that could inform the way I perform analysis in the future. Their scientific techniques were different from mine and we studied different things, but we are both operating on the same fundamental physical laws and on the same scientific principles to figuring them out. Temperature still means the same thing if you’re trying to measure it on a star or a cell. A chemical reaction is still the rearrangement of molecular structure, and it doesn’t matter the reaction is being studied by a chemist or a biologist.

While I am far and away not an expert on intersectionality, this makes sense as a parallel in how I look at it. Many social justice causes are focused on fighting privilege and bigotry, and both are linked towards pushing people to recognize their implicit biases. Certain problems in one “area” of social justice affect another. I could make a causal web tying different forms of inequality to each other in a web detailing systems of oppression (though, as a non-expert, I’d rather someone else with more knowledge and better aesthetic taste do it, lest it turn out like a kindergarten macaroni project).

It’s okay to make a focus of activism, as long as you recognize that what you do will affect other peoples’ focuses. When atheists campaign merely for separation of church and state, they don’t just affect prayer in public schools or religious imagery in courtrooms. The justifications for “traditional marriage” stop holding up in legislation, and we stop treating queer and trans people as second-class citizens. We also stop allowing people to cite “sincerely held religious beliefs” for denying healthcare for women and people assigned female at birth. We allow more death with dignity without unjustified supernatural belief get in the way. And when we shift the laws, this puts a little more pressure on the culture to become more accepting. When people complain about the secular movement engaging in too many things that aren’t related to atheism I am baffled, because the actions of movement atheists have never exclusively affected atheists.

As another quirky parallel to my conference, I also think of the utility of people having certain focuses. I attended a variety of sessions that week, and some of them had almost nothing to do with my research. My roommate had a presentation on hydrogen fuel cells, which is not very similar to my work which is focused on biophysics. I understood some of the various thermodynamic and chemical kinetic principles of the talk since they are fundamentals of my college major, but I missed a lot of the details. I didn’t understand enough to understand the context or the significance of the work during that session. Had I asked something about the catalytic property of platinum during the session, for example, I would have likely wasted everyone else’s time who already had learned that years ago. Afterwards, I was able to ask my roommate about the material properties of his fuel cells and how they worked. Everyone should be encouraged to ask questions, but keeping context in mind and waiting for the opportune time to ask it does nothing to curtail critical inquiry. In fact, it just makes it more efficient. Such is often the case when asking people of privilege to keep silent. When addressing the needs of the marginalized, we should pay attention and listen to the people of that group who need help. Given that many secularists routinely misunderstand or misconstrue basic concepts like privilege, trigger warnings, microaggressions, etc., it’s difficult to imaging they would get the larger point when discussing higher-level concepts. The difference between me in that situation and some punk being asked to remain silent is that I was thoroughly aware of my ignorance on the subject, and acted appropriately.

For me, I’m happy to recognize that secularism doesn’t just affect me and other atheists. It affects everyone. A lot of my detractors fail to recognize this, and often paint social justice minded atheists as immature or uncritical. In fact, a lot

Fighting Against the Trump Presidency: Religious Freedom

While I tend to focus on general topics on this blog, I’m trying to post resources this week on how to focus your dollars, activism, and efforts on reducing the harm from this year’s election. This will be a multi-part series of short entries, focusing on a variety of causes that you can get involved in to mitigate some harm.

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Jeremiah Traeger

In his own terminology, Donald Trump would be an absolute disaster for Religious Freedom. His words seem to imply otherwise as he claims to champion religious freedom, but only superficially. He courted evangelicals by stating that he values religious freedom, and that he wants to do that by repealing the Johnson Amendment, which earned him 81% of evangelicals who voted.

However, this actually is a distortion of religious freedom. The Johnson Amendment actually maintains the First Amendment by holding all tax-exempt organizations to the same standard. We give tax breaks to nonprofits, while stating that they can’t utilize their special status for political purposes. If religious organizations are allowed to make political pronouncements, then this gives their speech special status.

In reality, Donald Trump only appears to selectively support certain religious beliefs, while completely opposing others. He has built a campaign on anti-Muslim bigotry and fear, and threatens to eradicate freedom of religion by marginalizing religious minorities.

He has proposed a ban from all Muslims entering the United States.

He has called for surveillance targeted at Mosques in America.

Trump has called for a database on refugees, and “did not rule out” a database or registry of Muslims. His position is unclear on whether or not he actually wants to target citizens based on belief.

He spread misinformation on the Orlando Shooter, as well as Syrian Refugees as an excuse for extreme vetting.

While he has specifically built his campaign platform on xenophobia targeted against Muslims, his proposals are threatening the religious freedoms of anyone who is not a Christian. He is transparently ignorant about Christianity, but he continues to pander to evangelicals. As with all candidates, his religious beliefs don’t matter, but his honesty absolutely does.

Secular Coalition For America gives him an F on secular values, threatening our secular constitution.

His pandering to evangelicals occurred at the Values Voter Summit, a conference of religious anti-LGBTQ and anti-women hate groups. Trump met with many of these leaders.

Trump has picked Betsy Devos as the Secretary of Education, who is a voucher advocate, which tends to lead to funding of religious schools.

Jerry Fallwell Jr., president of Liberty University, has also been considered by Trump to have a hand in the Department of Education.

Trump has stated that he will (somehow) make everyone say Merry Christmas again, which certainly is against the First Amendment.

Not to mention, Mike Pence would be bad at this as well. He opposes stem cell research, doesn’t accept evolution, and as I’ve covered is terrible on LGBTQ issues, all as a function of his theocratic tendencies.

All these threaten our secular constitutional republic, which is founded on religious freedom, such that us and our freedoms aren’t subject to the religious beliefs of others.

What can I do to help?

Again, I would suggest that you can support the ACLU, who will fight for your rights if you are discriminated based on religious identity.

You can also support and take action with the Anti-Defamation league, which will legally fight against religious bigotry, and also has actions you can participate in to combat this bigotry.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation will combat any overreach of religious action into government, including public schools. The American Humanist Association will also fight these legal battles, but also major human rights projects you can be involved with.

Also, take the time to meet people whose religious beliefs are not your own. If you feel like it, inform yourself on the religious practices and beliefs who are not your own, and not just the bad stuff. Be willing to challenge bigotry of this type if you see it.

Please feel free to share this piece with others who are concerned with relevant issues.

Nationalism is Mankind’s Worst Religion

Jeremiah Traeger

No Religion Required, as you well know, prides itself on speaking out against religious bigotry and privilege of all stripes. Religious harm clearly poisons our everyday life, and it doesn’t take much effort to understand why. I don’t speak at all for No Religion Required, and I don’t pretend to, but in my mind there is clearly a strain of religion that is worse than any other, and its name is Nationalism.

Make no mistake, while it’s an ideology that masquerades as a secular one, it takes no work at all to see that adherents follow it on a supernatural level. In America, we have our own deities and they are known as the founding fathers, and we appeal to them in times of vehement disagreement as if they are on our side at all times. Like the gods of old, they had massive moral failures. They owned slaves. They raped slaves. They kept women in their place. But like the gods of old, we overlook them with the excuse of “historical context” and treat their word as gospel. And if you don’t bow to their infinite wisdom or even acknowledge their ideas as anything other than sacrosanct, then you are easily dismissed.

[Image: The American Flag with the sun shining from behind, forming the image of a cross]

Nationalism has its ministers, but here we call them politicians. They are able to spout off whatever they want and their adherents accept it as the gospel truth. No need for fact checking.

Nationalism has its martyrs. When a Christian is killed, Christians claim the victim as someone who died for their Christ. When a soldier in the military is killed, any redneck can claim them as their own and say they died for any right that’s convenient at the time, including the right to harm another.

Nationalism has its own hellfire. Instead of “think of your eternal soul”, though, it’s “think of the women and the children!” This can be used to justify anything. Should we go on a reactionary war that lasts decades? Should we lock up people possessing small amounts of substances and call them criminals? Should we withhold civil rights from anyone who isn’t a straight cis white male? Under the “American way of life”, these are all justified under the flimsy excuse of protection. We shouldn’t treat this country like an experiment, we should keep it as it has always been so we don’t have to risk our children’s lives.

Religions have xenophobia, but Nationalism exacerbates it. Christianity has its chosen people against the Amalekites, and Islam has its chosen people against the Jews. But in Nationalism, the chosen people are the citizens, who have divine importance over anyone else. Who is the problem? The Japanese! The Chinese! The Russians! The Syrians! The Mexicans! Theistic religions have the advantage that their racism is more subtle and a thing that can be swept under the rug, while Nationalism is blatant. This may make you think that the problems of Nationalism should become more apparent, but this is not the case. No, under Nationalism, this bigotry is embraced. And any time you question it, you are a heretic to the country.

Like other religions, Nationalism changes to suit who it fits. This allows people to decide what a “true American” is, not unlike a “true Christian”. Politicians are allowed to mold this concept over so they can address the true Americans. These dogwhistles allow the congregation to try and make the nation as close as it can to it’s true self, which occurs at the expense of anyone who falls outside that ideal. Anyone who addresses true America is “speaking their mind”, and anyone outside that follows a hidden agenda. They are agents of the deceiver, and they are working against this ultimate crusade for heaven.

This is so pernicious, that even those who find themselves on the opposite side still have to capitulate to it. Unless pacifists and revolutionaries say “god bless America” at the end of every speech, or talk about how great of a country it already is, then they might as well be destroying everything good about this nation.

And don’t even think about speaking out against it. If your country bombs someone else and you have the audacity to question it, then you hate its martyrs that we call soldiers. The same will happen if you criticize the president in times of struggle. You can’t say anything about its flag. Did you sit down in class while the rest of your class swears a loyalty oath to that symbol? Prepare to be publicly shamed and re-educated. Did you take a knee when someone sang a hymn to bombing our enemies? It doesn’t matter if you are doing it because you think the country is treating its citizens inhumanely, you are criticizing the nation and shaming the martyrs! This will not be tolerated.

Nationalism is worse than religion, because it can co-opt any religion it wants as part of its cause. Think of all the Conservative Catholics, the Conservative Baptists, the Conservative Mormons, who consider each other to be heretics, yet each is engaged in divine struggle for the Lord on high. They co-opt their faith into their politics to steer the country on their own holy mission. Think of the Islamist states in the Middle East who tie their country to the words of their holy books and the words of their Imams. Think of the crusades and every holy mission that a country has used to justify bloodshed.

Unlike religions, in America at least, nationalism has the force of law behind it. The Steven Andersons of the world can praise the death of 49 queers and allies being slaughtered, but he doesn’t get the resources and the laws to help him do that more. Meanwhile, your senator can turn your tax dollars into bombs and use it to destroy innocents. If a church tries to tell you where you’re allowed to pee, you have the freedom to avoid the building. When the church twists the governor’s arm, however, then you aren’t safe behind closed doors. When something has the word of law on its side, no matter how immoral or unethical, it can be treated as the gospel truth. Especially if it’s because “we are a Christian nation.”

Last week Nationalism won.

[Image: A bronze, nazi belt buckle with the words “Gott Mit Uns” over an eagle resting on a swastika. The words in German translate to “God With Us”. Source: Wikimedia Commons]

I vow to criticize bullshit in all its forms until my dying breath. Bullshit comes in many forms, and it’s vile and pernicious in the form of religion. Religion gives a pass to evil under the false guise of morality, it gives a pass to nonsense under the mantle of faith, and it gives authority to people fucking us over for personal gain. And we’ve let it do it again.

I’m a millennial. Fascism, nationalism, and racism were a part of the history books when I was growing up. I was taught that there would still be evil people doing evil things and that I would have to deal with that, but prejudice was supposed to be a thing behind us. I suppose I was deeply mistaken. We’ve been passed the buck to try and see if it works for this generation. Think it will work this time around?

I’m not going to stop fighting. I’m never giving up hope. I just hope that global warming doesn’t solve the problem of man’s inhumanity to man first.

What Obama’s Conversation With Bill Maher Says About Privilege

Jeremiah Traeger

Recently, our current president Barack Obama held an interview with Bill Maher to discuss a range of topics, from smoking to the nuke-happy carrot with corn hair that is running for president. Among the things brought up by Maher, an outspoken and famous atheist, were the rights of atheists and agnostics in America. He mentioned some of the current statistics on atheists in congress, and how we deserve more representation. As a supporter of Obama, the president’s response somewhat disappointed me.

“You know, I guess — my question would be whether there is active persecution of atheists. I think that there is certain… well, I think for a candidate… I think you’re right, that there are certain occupations — probably, most prominently, politics — where there would be a bias against somebody who’s Agnostic or atheist in running for office. I think that’s still true. Outside of that arena, though? You seem to have done alright with your TV show… I mean, I don’t get a sense… to the extent that they’re boycotting you, it’s because of your other wacky views rather than your particular views on religion…

…I think the average American, if they go to the workplace, somebody’s next to ’em, they’re not poking around trying to figure out what their religious beliefs are.”

This is an excerpt. You can read and watch the entire exchange on the topic here, it’s well worth your time. Obama definitely advocates some good ideas regarding religious culture and how we should curtail it. It’s just that… I’m disappointed with this particular statement.

[Image: Barack Obama and Bill Maher have a conversation seated next to each other]

Obama certainly had good reason to acknowledge that at the very least there is some discrimination against atheists in the political arena. Maher’s statistics aside, discrimination against atheist politicians hit the mainstream this year when it was revealed that a member the Democratic National Convention had conspired to out Bernie Sanders as an atheist. It’s clear that merely being a member of the “atheist” category in politics is perceived as smear-worthy. In fact, according to Gallup, atheists are a religious category (within the categories polled in the survey) that the least amount of people would vote for in America. 40% of respondents stated that they would not vote for an atheist, which was a higher rate of disapproval than Muslims, gays/lesbians, and women (38%, 24%, and 8%, respectively). The only group that had it worse than atheists was the socialist category, which 50% of respondents said they would not vote for.

Political statistics aside, the rest of Barack Obama’s statement leaves a sour taste in my mouth. He comes across as dismissive to the concerns of nonbelievers, and the best evidence he has to support what he says is merely Maher’s success. I find this to be a remarkably empty response. This is almost to say, “Well, atheists can’t have it so bad, since you did so well!” This is incredibly ironic, coming from a president of African descent. I live in his country where people on the right will often state that there is no more racism in America since, after all, we have a black president. This is a terrible argument for anyone who thinks about it for more than a second, and it’s disheartening to hear it not only used against me, but it’s also disheartening to hear it from the first person I voted for president.

Obama’s words here lack substance in the same way that there is faux-skepticism regarding how other marginalized groups are treated. Like the laypeople who insist that racism no longer exists, there are those who will flat-out assert that there’s no discrimination against women anymore. In August, the Pew Research Center released a poll asking people whether they thought women still had obstacles for achieving equal access to society. 63% of women polled stated that they felt that there were still obstacles, while only 34% of men agreed. Such is often the case when members outside of a marginalized group are blind to the everyday sub-par treatment of those who are in that group.

In fact, it’s not hard to find evidence of discrimination against atheists in society, even outside of the political sphere. The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) regularly protests violations of  the first Amendment’s separation of religion and government, and a large proportion of these violations are within public schools. Looking just at the examples FFRF provides, this includes prayer by school boards, disallowing freethought clubs while allowing religious clubs, the teaching of creationism, Bible distributions, Church meetings at public schools, prayers at graduation, forcing children to state the pledge of allegiance, mandatory prayer, overtly religious music in schools, religious fliers being sent home, “See You at the Pole” gatherings, and promotion of religious baccalaureate services. In every one of these cases, teachers in public schools across America overwhelmingly tend to side with those who are religious over those who are not. And for those nonbelievers who do challenge these violations, they face severe social consequences. Such was the case when in 2012 high school student Jessica Ahquist challenged a poster hanging in her public school making explicit references to a “heavenly father”. She was subsequently bullied by her school and her hometown, to the point of receiving death threats.

Atheists are judged as untrustworthy and immoral in general. It has been demonstrated through multiple studies that atheists are frequently viewed as people who would engage in immoral acts. Another Pew Study finds that in the United States a majority of people believe that someone has to believe in a god to be moral, which  is not true of any of the other developed nations within the study. A study by psychologists at the University of British Columbia and University of Oregon found that atheists are one of America’s most mistrusted groups, and in certain situations are roughly as trustworthy as rapists. Is it any wonder that there are atheists that are afraid to be out, particularly within the Bible Belt?

These are a couple of examples, but I could go on. I could talk about young atheists getting kicked out of their parents’ homes for expressing nonbelief, which Dogma Debate has set up a fund for. I could talk about atheists losing custody of their children. I could talk about how atheists aren’t trusted to do charity, such as when a soup kitchen turned down atheist volunteers or when a Children’s Home refused to accept over $28,000 from an atheist. I could talk about atheist advertisements getting turned down from billboard companies. I could talk about the atheist leaders I’ve watched who have had difficulty getting the right job because they were public figures associated with atheism. These and more forms of discrimination happen regularly in the United States. As someone who keeps up on religion based news regularly, I see this a lot. But as a Christian who is keeping his mind busy by running a country, Barack Obama is likely completely unaware.

In that case, could we attribute Obama’s ignorance on this issue to his privilege as a religious person? To be clear, while he certainly lacks white privilege (unlike me), he has the distinction of being a Christian just like 75% of the country he leads. No matter where he goes in America, people will value his faith*. He will never be discriminated against for having the “wrong” religion. While people will say terrible, awful things about him and threaten to have him assassinated, it will never ever be because he is a Christian. Were he a middle-class worker in America, he would never be treated poorly in the office because he’s a Christian, and in a job interview his faith would likely be seen as a bonus if he were to bring it up. He would never feel the fear that I and many other atheists have felt in disclosing their nonbelief in the office environment.

Privilege is sometimes hard to recognize if you have it, and it’s not a problem that only Obama has. It’s difficult to recognize that you may have unearned advantages in society, especially if despite these advantages you have everyday difficulties. If you aren’t part of a group that is marginalized, you don’t see the effects your privilege has on everyday life. Even if you are someone who is willing to recognize that you have privilege, it’s hard to know where that privilege lies unless someone brings it to your attention. I suspect this is the case with Barack Obama. It’s hard for me to blame him when he has the entire country on his mind, but his ignorance still exists, and that’s still a problem.

Barack Obama is not going to read this blog post, and that’s fine. The people who will read this blog post, however, are atheists, and they are likely aware of these many forms of discrimination they could potentially face. I would like them to consider how dismissed they felt when Obama said these things. If his words bother you, then maybe this is a chance to look at yourself in relation to other marginalized groups and how you view them. If you’re white, consider what it means to a black person when someone says “Black people have equality now, we have a black president.” If you’re male, consider how meaningless it is when someone says “there’s more women in college than men.” If you’re an atheist who is aware of the discrimination and bias we face everyday, then you should be more sensitive to the disadvantages of others, not less.**

Part of being a humanist and a skeptic is recognizing our human biases, and correcting them. If you can recognize Obama’s ignorance in his statement, then you should recognize that you likely have similar ignorance for other issues as well. I’m frequently appalled at how terrible many atheists are about speaking up for other marginalized groups, considering that atheists as a group also lack certain privileges. Perhaps Obama’s mistakes here can help inform us. From there we can move forward.

While I have been very critical of this one mistake that my president made talking to Maher, this was one problem in an overall positive message. In the rest of the segment, Obama did emphasize that we should not value people because of their religious beliefs or the lack thereof.  Not only does our president speak well of the separation of the church from the state, he makes it clear that in America that people of no religion at all should be treated as equals in social situations, not just legal ones. I appreciate that he mentions that here, and I’m happy that he has mentioned us in past speeches to the nation when he wasn’t talking directly to a left-leaning figurehead. I thank him for that. And because of that, I will end this piece on what I think he did get right.

“We should foster a culture in which people’s private religious beliefs, including atheists and Agnostics, are respected. And that’s the kind of culture that I think allows all of us, then, to believe what we want. That’s freedom of conscience. That’s what our Constitution guarantees. And where we get into problems, typically, is when our personal religious faith, or the community of faith that we participate in, tips into a sort of fundamentalist extremism, in which it’s not enough for us to believe what we believe, but we start feeling obligated to, you know, hit you over the head because you don’t believe the same thing. Or to treat you as somebody who’s less than I am.”

 

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*Granted, not the conspiracy theorists who still think he’s a Muslim from Kenya.

**Keep in mind, the struggles of atheists are not the same as those of women or people of color. There are certain aspects that we can compare and contrast, and we can learn from each others’ struggles, but to draw equivalence between them would be a mistake.