Atheism For Dummies (For Dummies (Religion & Spirituality)) (46 page)

Humane Atheists (animal lovers)

Amateur Radio Atheists

Godless Bowlers

Ex-Amish Atheists

Black Atheists

Undercover Atheists (for those still in the closet)

Atheist Nexus currently has more than 28,000 members.

But the 800-pound gorilla of online atheism at the moment is reddit — specifically the atheism subreddit of reddit. A
reddit
is a social news website that calls itself “The front page of the Internet.” Users post short text content or links, which other users vote up or down. The more a submission is upvoted, the more people will see it, because it rises to the top of the news feed. Reddit is divided into communities (“subreddits”) by topic, including atheism (
reddit.com/r/atheism
).

As of late 2012, more than 1.3 million people were subscribed as atheist redditors, making it one of the 20 largest subreddits on the site. Interestingly, not a single religious subreddit has yet made it into the top 50.

Maturing as a Movement

In recent years, many atheists and humanists have come to feel that the freethought movement has passed a watershed, one that separates our toddlerhood from . . . say our adolescence. Thanks to the higher profile and easier accessibility of atheism, especially online, the process of going from doubter to atheist and connecting with others is much, much faster. As a result, atheists can move on to the next questions much earlier in their lives, including:

What does it mean to be an ethical atheist in the world?

What are my responsibilities to other people and to myself?

How should I act toward people who don’t share my worldview?

How can I find a sense of community and act on my values?

Consensus on these questions isn’t always possible, which is fine. The fact that people in the movement are even asking them, and asking them much earlier, is a sign that the movement is maturing. The following sections explore some of the symptoms of this change.

Making accommodations —is “interfaith” a bad word?

Some of the biggest questions in atheism right now revolve around “interfaith” issues. Should atheist organizations have anything to do with religious organizations? Should they find common ground to cooperate and work together when values and goals overlap, or is that a way of indirectly “promoting religion” and therefore bad?

A terminology problem complicates these questions from the start. If groups from two different faiths work together, it’s called “interfaith” work. But what do you call it when atheism works together with religion? Is it still
interfaith?

The very word “interfaith” makes some atheists see red. Atheism isn’t a faith by any traditional definition, of course. And a lot of atheist organizations want nothing to do with any such efforts anyway, no matter what they are called. They sometimes call atheists who do cooperate with religious people or organizations “accommodationists,” which is meant to sound like “appeasers” before the Second World War. They’re often seen as sellouts, milquetoasts, and traitors to the revolution.

But a large and growing number of atheist and humanist organizations and people don’t think accommodating others is such a bad idea. They think reaching across belief lines and finding common ground despite differences is one of the healthiest and most productive things we can be doing right now.
(Full disclosure: I’m one of those people.)
They tend to shrug at the word “interfaith,” saying the language just hasn’t caught up with the reality yet, and the important thing is the cooperation, not the label.