Atheism For Dummies (For Dummies (Religion & Spirituality)) (96 page)

They’re on the national average for income — 52 percent of Nones have household incomes under $50,000. The national average is 53 percent.

Thirty-four percent of American Nones are Democrats; the same as the US average. The nonreligious were the single largest belief bloc supporting Barack Obama’s re-election in 2012.

Only 13 percent of Nones are Republicans compared to 24 percent overall in the United States. That’s a huge drop since 1990, when 24 percent of the nonreligious were Republicans.

Independents are the largest category of the nonreligious at 42 percent compared to 31 percent overall in the United States.

They Can Be Nice, Normal, and Funny

Picture an atheist. My bet is that you’re picturing someone grumpy, humorless, and above all,
weird.
You may be surprised to know that 73.2 percent of atheists are actually nice — 8 percent above the national average.

Okay fine, I don’t really have stats on niceness per capita. But ever since I’ve been writing books about atheism and humanism, I’ve met hundreds if not thousands of atheists and humanists. Some of them have admittedly been grumpy, humorless, and/or weird, but no more than the average. I’ve also met atheists and humanists who are decent, thoughtful, generous, and kind people, though again, no more than the average. Because atheists are most often in the news when they’re angry, people naturally think of them as angry. That’s a bit like thinking of most planes as crashing, or most children as missing.

The best way to discover just how nice and normal nonbelievers can be is to discover how many of the nice, normal people you currently know are non-believers. If your circle of friends and relations is on the national average, that’s about one in five of the people you know. (Check out
Chapter 12
for how funny atheists can be.)

They’re in Foxholes, Too

“There are no atheists in foxholes” is an expression that doesn’t have much to do with reality. It implies that no matter what his or her actual convictions, everyone will grab at belief in God when a serious-enough crisis looms.

The deathbed is one kind of foxhole, and myths about deathbed conversions of atheists and agnostics have long been created to prop up the concept. Most end up being fabrications by a few unscrupulous believers. (See one famous example in
Chapter 7
.)

As for literal foxholes, the (US) Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers — also known as the Foxhole Atheists — is living proof that this
aphorism
(concise proverb or saying) is false. More than 11,000 current US military personnel identify as atheists, including thousands of combat veterans, and more than 300,000 indicate “no religious preference.”

Many military atheists endure a very high level of anti-atheist discrimination, including harassment and even death threats from peers and commanding officers. (For a sobering example of the harassment, or to discover more about atheists in foxholes, search online for “Jeremy Hall atheist”
or visit
www.militaryatheists.org
.)

They Don’t Usually Raise Their Kids to Be Atheists

Most atheists don’t raise their kids as atheists. The vast majority create space around their kids so they can sort these things out for themselves.

Protecting my kids’ autonomy is important to me. We teach values in our home — good stuff like honesty, openness, tolerance, curiosity, and empathy — but my kids get to decide in the long run what social and political and religious labels those add up to, if any.

The best way to preserve that autonomy is to keep labels off of kids entirely as they grow up. Calling a child an “atheist child” or a “Christian child” is as silly as calling him or her a “Marxist child” or a “Republican child.” Even as strong an atheist as the biologist Richard Dawkins agrees with this. Complex worldview labels require a lot of thought and experience to mean anything. So I give my kids space and opportunities to talk to people of many beliefs, visit churches, and stay in control of their choices.

Most atheist parents seem to agree with me. In fact, two recent studies of parents in North America found that more than 90 percent of very religious parents said they raise their children specifically to believe as they believed, but less than 10 percent of the atheist parents said they raise their children as atheists. The rest said they wanted their children to decide for themselves.

They’re Not More Worried about Death than the Religious

Death is certainly the hardest reality of human life. Entire worldviews have been constructed to deny that it even happens. Although atheists don’t like the idea of dying, they don’t tend to be any more upset about it than religious folks. And despite their afterlife ideas, all the religious people I know are plenty unhappy about the idea of dying. So I meet them in the middle, in the honest place where mortals confront mortality.

Nonexistence is hard for an existing person to grasp. But if you didn’t exist before your conception, why should your nonexistence after death worry you? It’s just the same. Nonexistence means no heaven, but it also means no hell. It’s the total absence of troubles of worries, of pain. As Epicurus put it, “While I’m here, Death is not, and when Death is here, I will not be. Why be afraid of something I will never experience?”

Thinking about death in this and other ways can actually lead to a calm acceptance. That’s why atheists are no more worried about it than believers.

They Often Seek to Coexist and Cooperate with Religious People

You’ve probably seen the bumper sticker that combines symbols of several religions to create the word
COEXIST.
Many of the people driving those cars are believers, but many others are atheists.

Many different kinds of atheists exist, and they have many different attitudes toward religion and the religious. Some are antitheists who want to see an end to all religion. They write most of the books and get most of the press. But most atheists and humanists recognize both the positive and negative expressions of religion, just as they recognize positive and negative expressions of politics, patriotism, even science. These atheists and humanists feel that religion will always be here in some form, and the best approach is to encourage it toward its more positive and productive forms, even while strongly protesting the negative ones. That’s why many atheists participate in the interfaith movement and support nonproselytizing religious charities. That’s why Unitarian Universalists and many others provide a space for believers and nonbelievers alike to gather around values they share instead of being divided by what they don’t.

So the next time you hear an atheist protesting against a religious idea or practice, ask yourself what’s really being said. Is he or she really trying to destroy religion, or asking that religious people not unfairly push others out of the culture? If you disagree, engage the conversation with all of your passion and intelligence, and know that the odds are pretty good that the atheist on the other side of the table is willing to coexist and cooperate with religion, so long as you can both talk about how best to do that.

Chapter 20

Ten (Plus One) Famous People You May Not Know are Nonbelievers

In This Chapter

Finding out who doesn’t believe

Nailing down the evidence of their positions

F
amous people aren’t always free to be honest about their religious opinions, especially if those opinions have wandered off the apple-pie average. But as Cicero said in
Chapter 4
, admitting to religious doubt out loud can be hard, although it’s easy to do so in a private conversation.

An important step in putting negative stereotypes of religious disbelief to rest is making it known that people who are already known and loved — whether famous, or friend, or family — is a nonbeliever. This chapter lists ten (plus one bonus) famous atheists or agnostics who have revealed their opinions, one way or another, and tells how they’ve revealed them. Most haven’t been mentioned in earlier chapters in this book.

If you want to see a longer list of confirmed celebrity atheists and agnostics, check out
www.celebatheists.com
.

The Guy Who Wrote Slaughterhouse-Five

The great American novelist Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922–2007), author of
Slaughterhouse-Five,
13 other novels, and more than 120 short stories,
once said in an interview that “for at least four generations my family has been proudly skeptical of organized religion.”

He wore his disbelief lightly — not an unusual thing for those individuals who were raised without religion — but it was an important part of his identity. Vonnegut served as honorary president of the American Humanist Association and was named Humanist of the Year in 1992.

He defined his humanism in a letter to AHA members: “I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without expectations of rewards or punishments after I am dead.”

Vonnegut liked to invoke religion once in a while, especially if it was good for a laugh. At the funeral of science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, another famous atheist, Vonnegut said, “Isaac’s in heaven now” — which he said brought down the humanist house — and he once referred to himself as a “Christ-worshipping agnostic.”

His statement that “The only proof I need of the existence of God is music” was meant as an ironic tribute to music, not as a statement of belief in God — but when he died, multiple commentators leapt on that quote as proof that he had become a believer.

He hadn’t, and in his later works he made that plenty clear. “I am an atheist (or at best a Unitarian who winds up in churches quite a lot),” he wrote in 1991’s
Fates Worse than Death,
and said that religious doctrines were “so much arbitrary, clearly invented balderdash.”

When asked how his study of anthropology had affected him, Vonnegut said, “It confirmed my atheism, which was the religion of my fathers anyway.”

The First Female Prime Minister of Australia

When she first met Barack Obama, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard joked, “You think it’s tough being the first African-American President? Try being the first atheist, childless, single woman prime minister.”

Gillard came out as an atheist in 2010 during an interview in her first week in office. She said she didn’t intend to go through religious rituals for the sake of appearances. “I am, of course, a great respecter of religious beliefs,” she said, “but they are not my beliefs. For people of faith, I think the greatest compliment I could pay them is to respect their genuinely held beliefs and not to engage in some pretense about mine.” The United States should be so lucky.

When several religious groups said they would not support her in the next election, opposition leader Tony Abbott, a Catholic, said personal religious convictions shouldn’t be part of the decision to support a candidate. And once again, the United States should be so lucky.

The First Atheist Over the Rainbow

Yip Harburg, the man who wrote the screenplay for
The Wizard of Oz
and the lyrics for its songs including “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” was a complete nonbeliever.

“The House of God never had much appeal for me,” he said. “Anyhow, I found a substitute temple — the theater.”

Harburg’s contributions go well beyond the yellow brick road. He became known as “Broadway’s social conscience” for his Broadway lyrics, which delivered messages about inequality and suffering under cover of song. “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” became an anthem of the Great Depression, while
Hooray for What!
(1937) was a musical protest against war and
Bloomer Girl
(1944) explored anti-racist and pro-feminist themes that were way ahead of the times.

In the 1950s, the House Un-American Activities Committee blacklisted Harburg for his political views — a badge of honor if ever there was one.

Harburg wasn’t the only religious skeptic tied to
The Wizard of Oz.
Novelist Frank Baum, who wrote the book on which the movie was based, was of the same opinions. And (as I mention in
Chapter 21
) the story itself can be seen as a tale about turning away from dependence on a God (the Wizard) to realize that humanity can and does provide all the brains, courage, heart, and home it needs.

The First Woman on US Currency

Like most freethinkers, the religious opinions of women’s rights pioneer Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) changed over the course of her lifetime. Born into an orthodox Quaker family, she eventually joined a Unitarian church.

As her involvement in women’s rights issues increased, she came to see all organized religion as an impediment to those rights. By the 1880s, she identified as an agnostic.

Her friend and collaborator Elizabeth Cady Stanton confirmed this in 1896, writing, “To-day, Miss Anthony is an agnostic.”

Though several of the feminist leaders around her were more open about their atheist or agnostic views, Anthony had reason to keep her own cards close to the vest. Ernestine Rose (refer to
Chapter 7
) was open about her atheism and was constantly attacked for it, including having halls refuse to allow her to speak. Anthony’s main goal was securing the vote for women, and she didn’t want her religious doubt to distract from that, so she learned from the experience of others and mostly kept mum.

But she did speak up in their defense as needed. When an angry crowd at a women’s rights convention called Stanton an atheist and claimed that God wanted her removed from leadership, Anthony took the floor. “I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do to their fellows,” she said, “because it always coincides with their own desires.” Boy, that’s a good line.

The American public was momentarily made aware of Susan B. Anthony in 1979 when her face ended up on an odd little dollar coin that went out of circulation 20 years later. It’s just as well — seeing Susan with “In God We Trust” etched beneath her nose was a bit hard to take.

Ten Points for Gryffindor!

Actor Daniel Radcliffe, who played Harry Potter in the films of the same name, was raised by a Jewish mother and a Protestant Christian father. But he says his upbringing wasn’t very religious, and by age 12, he identified as an atheist, having decided that his only motivation for belief was fear — and that that wasn’t a good reason to believe.

It was in a 2009 interview with
Esquire
magazine that Radcliffe confirmed his beliefs clearly. “I’m an atheist,” he said, “but I’m very relaxed about it. I don’t preach my atheism, but I have a huge amount of respect for people like Richard Dawkins who do.”

“My dad believes in God, I think,” he said in another interview. “I’m not sure if my mom does. I don’t. I have a problem with religion or anything that says, ‘We have all the answers,’ because there’s no such thing as ‘the answers.’ We’re complex. We change our minds on issues all the time. Religion leaves no room for human complexity.”

This of course played right into the accusations of the Religious Right in the United States, which had long pegged the
Harry Potter
films as anti-Christian. As a result of the backlash, the
Potter
films had to settle for being the most successful film franchise in movie history.

An A-List Actor and Philanthropist

Brad Pitt, who has made his name both as an A-list actor and as a compassionate philanthropist, is also an agnostic atheist.

When asked in an interview with the German magazine
Bild
if he believes in God, Pitt smiled and said, “No, no, no!”

“But is your soul spiritual?” the interviewer persisted.

“No, no, no!” said Pitt. “I’m probably 20 percent atheist and 80 percent agnostic. I don’t think anyone really knows. You’ll either find out or not when you get there, until then there’s no point thinking about it.”

He elaborated in a
Parade
magazine interview: “I don’t mind a world with religion in it. There are some beautiful tenets within all religions. I grew up Baptist, and then the family switched over to more of an evangelical movement, probably right around the time I was in late high school. There’s a point where you’re untethered from the beliefs of your childhood. That point came for me when it was finally clear my religion didn’t work for me. I had questions about Christianity that I could not get answered to my satisfaction, questions that I’d been asking since I was in kindergarten. I realized it didn’t feel right to me, that one question just led to another. It was like going down a rabbit hole, each answer provoking another question. There were things I didn’t agree with.”

Pitt has made an enormous impact in the world of philanthropy. He founded the Make It Right Foundation in 2006 to finance the construction of 150 affordable houses in New Orleans’s Ninth Ward after Hurricane Katrina and donated $5 million to support the project.

The same year, he and Angelina Jolie established the Jolie-Pitt Foundation to support humanitarian work globally, donating more than $8 million through the foundation in its first year.

The Founder of Ms. Magazine

Feminist political activist Gloria Steinem (b. 1934) rose to prominence as the face of feminism in the late 1960s and 1970s, founding
Ms.
magazine and articulating a clear and powerful message of gender equality. And like so many feminist pioneers before her, Steinem is nontheistic.

Like Susan B. Anthony, Steinem has always been careful not to let her personal religious view distract from women’s issues. But when asked directly, she’s always been clear.

“By the year 2000 we will, I hope, raise our children to believe in human potential, not God,” she said in one interview. Though humanity didn’t quite make the deadline, there’s always hope for the future.

She expressed particular scorn for the whole idea of pleasing God to secure a seat in the afterlife. “It’s an incredible con job when you think about it, to believe something now in exchange for something after death,” she said. “Even corporations with their reward systems don’t try to make it posthumous.”

An Actual No-Kidding Bishop

One of the most puzzling characters in the nontheistic parade is John Shelby Spong (b.1930), a liberal theologian and retired Episcopal Bishop of Newark, New Jersey. Because he’s a man of the cloth who doesn’t believe in the existence of a supernatural God, he’s a modern-day version of Jean Meslier, the atheist priest I discuss in
Chapter 10
.

There is one big difference between Meslier and Spong: Bishop Spong made his beliefs known while he was still in the active clergy, then continued to preach and teach despite the fact that he found most of the major Christian beliefs unbelievable.

For example:

He doesn’t believe in miracles.