Atheism For Dummies (For Dummies (Religion & Spirituality)) (67 page)
Read Atheism For Dummies (For Dummies (Religion & Spirituality)) Online
Authors: Dale McGowan
At this writing, more than 100 nontheistic members of the British Parliament are members of the All-Party Parliamentary Humanist Group.
In some ways, the differences may not be quite as great as they appear. Though Pete Stark lost his Congressional re-election bid in 2012, a silent poll released by the Secular Coalition for America in the same year found that 28 of the 535 members of Congress didn’t believe in a higher power.
Talkin’ about My (Kids’) Generation
Some things tend to increase as a person gets older — political conservatism, for example, and the willingness to wear socks with sandals. Belief in God and religious identity also tend to increase slightly with age. So when ARIS 2008 showed the “nonreligious” percentage in the United States shrinking as people get older, it wasn’t a big surprise. Among respondents who are
Age 18 to 29, 22 percent are nonreligious.
Age 30 to 49, 17 percent are nonreligious.
Age 50 to 69, 13 percent are nonreligious.
Age 70 and older, just 7 percent are nonreligious.
An interesting twist: The Millennials — including that 18 to 29 group — have the lowest level of religious identity and belief
even when compared to the other generations when they were that age.
So they’re likely to keep a pretty high percent of nonbelievers as they get older.
The more you break down the question, the less traditionally religious these young people are. A 2012 Georgetown study found that only 54 percent believe in a “personal God” — the kind that loves, smites, hears prayers, and forgives (or declines to do so).
A Pew study also shows that the glue of family faith is losing its stick in the younger generation. While just 7 percent of people 65 and older have ever left the faith in which they were raised to become nonreligious, that number rises to 13 percent for people in their 30s and 40s and 18 percent of those currently under 30. That’s 18 percent who have already left religion at a pretty young age. These kids are much more willing to choose a worldview for themselves rather than stick with the one they were born into.
The Millennials’ disenchantment with religion is less about beliefs than social attitudes. When asked to choose descriptions that reflect what they think of Christianity today,
Fifty-eight percent said “hypocritical.”
Sixty-two percent said “judgmental.”
Sixty-four percent said “anti-gay.”
Those answers include the responses of Millennials who are Christians. The nonreligious were even higher in these negative responses.
These results don’t mean the young Nones are all flocking to organized freethought. Some are, but many in the Millennial Generation are either turned off by the atmosphere of culture war or haven’t been motivated by their own experiences to connect with a worldview in any formal way. A lot of them see their nontheism as a more incidental part of who they are than older atheists do.
This more passive atheism drives a lot of older atheists crazy. But the passivity isn’t all bad, because it partly results from progress the older generation has made in normalizing the worldview.
Those atheists working for even further progress sometimes forget how much better things are now for nontheists than just a generation ago. In addition to greater numbers and higher visibility, bestselling books and high-profile blogs are now available articulating the atheist worldview, as well as a thriving, connected, international community. Yes, nontheists still have plenty of reason for concern (see the next section), but the situation is improving.
Symbolizing atheism and humanism
Having a symbol is useful for a worldview. Muslims have the star and crescent, Jews have the Star of David, and Christians have the cross. So what symbol do atheists and humanists have?
For a long time nothing represented atheism or humanism as global movements. That’s partly because consensus on
anything,
especially something like a shared symbol, is hard to come by among freethinkers, for reasons contained in that very word. Before nontheists even get close to arguing over various designs, we’ll generally spend a year or two arguing whether we should even
have
a symbol — which is why no one has to worry too much about atheists taking over the world.
In 1965, with the international Humanist movement taking off in a big way, the British Humanist Association hosted a competition to create a symbol. (They like the capital H on Humanism, so I’ll do that here.) The winning entry (see the following figure), submitted by London artist Dennis Barrington, was a letter “H” with a large black dot above the crossbar, like the head of a person with arms raised. Clever and concise, it’s been the go-to symbol of humanism, and Humanism, ever since.
Atheism also gained a couple of symbols in recent years. A contest in 2008 resulted in a protracted debate over whether there should even
be
a symbol; then some good jokes (my favorite suggested we just adopt the @ sign, so every e-mail would identify the sender as an atheist); and finally some nice, thoughtful entries.
The winner, designed by Michigan graphic artist and retired schoolteacher Diane Reed, has a bit of a Star Trek vibe — not a negative with this crowd — with a sharp letter “A” wrapped in a circle representing the natural universe. Attractive, positive, and jewelry-friendly.
Perhaps my favorite for sheer cleverness is the symbol for the “Out Campaign,” an effort by the Richard Dawkins Foundation to encourage atheists to help improve the public image of atheism by coming out of the closet. Displaying the symbol itself on clothing or jewelry or in social media and explaining what it means when asked has become one low-key way to come out. The symbol is an italic capital “A” in scarlet red (offered here in black to save you a few bucks — you’re welcome). It’s a clever reference to the letter “A” worn by Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s
The Scarlet Letter
to mark her as an adulteress, but now worn by atheists as an unashamed symbol of an unfairly maligned worldview.