Why Are Atheists Organizing?
I think its important to focus on why atheists are out here organizing and why there is an attraction to atheist organizations in the first place and to explore why there are secular groups. It isn’t that someone reads the Bible, disagrees with a piece because of some kind of internal conflict and then becomes an atheist agitator. It isn’t even the case that a lot of folks find social messages within the Bible to be things they disagree with and then try to find a way around them. Another big misconception by many Christians is they believe that folks just hear Christianity and immediately roll their eyes because they think Christians are dumb or that all organized religion is inherently bad.
It is isn’t necessarily those, but because at the most basic level, the claims in religious texts are simply not true.
While those can be true for SOME people that consider themselves atheists, it isn’t necessarily true of many or even most of them. Even if it were, that wouldn’t be a motivating factor to be outspoken about such things. I think a lot of motivation is that non-religious people care to a higher degree on which things are true.
The key driver is that regardless of how good or how bad one may consider the words in the Bible to be its problematic to adopt them as an ethical or scientific basis because the claims and words aren’t supported. If the many claims in the Bible were true or had evidence or could even be considered verifiable, we would approach them differently. Atheists look at the body of evidence and come away with the general idea that “this stuff simply isn’t true or real”. It isn’t some pre-determined goal to “sin” or nay-say religious folks, its because we’ve looked under the hood and found little worth adopting.
Lets start with what isn’t true by digging down to the very basic level on the Biblical claims: the death and resurrection of Jesus and why its important. Remember, a basic foundational claim for Christianity is that Jesus died for your sins and then was resurrected after 3 days and ascended to heaven. The key part is the original sin part; there are a lot of folks dying for religious causes across many different faiths, but they aren’t dying with the authority to forgive the entire world for their past grievances. If there is no original sin, then Jesus’ death is nothing more than another one of many martyrs dying for their faith. Sad perhaps, but not a foundation upon which to give Christianity any kind of authority.
There is the rub though: If you don’t think original sin is real, then Jesus’ death means nothing for you theologically. It undermines all the authority of the Bible as any kind of ethical, sociological, logical, or philosophical text. Not accepting the initial claims in the Bible about original sin leaves a critical reader without any other reason to really take it seriously. Jesus may say some nice things, he may not. There may be nice passages and some not so nice passages, sure. But if you don’t think it has the weight of the universe, and that it isn’t something that some unproven god says, then you just don’t think its inherently true. You put it up with any other historical text and weigh it on the merits and find it severely lacking.
The tough thing for Christians to hear is that there are good reasons not to think original sin is real. Evolution and genetic study disprove original sin as it came from Adam and Eve, a population of two; a population far too small to explain the vast genetic differences across humanity. Then we also run into many logical and philosophical problems with original sin: how can someone be guilty of something before they are born? Is this a justified thing to do? How do we tell who is and is not forgiven? What evidence do we have for all of these claims in the Bible from the garden of Eden to Noah’s Ark to even anyone else who talked about Jesus outside of the Bible? Why are some folks split into different denominations with different understandings of what sin even is?
The evidence simply isn’t there.
In short, if you don’t think its true, it isn’t anti-Christian bias; its simply treating the book like you would any other.
So, if it isn’t true on a factual level then we run into the problem with justification of the actions religious folks use, especially when they hurt people. If the Christian god were in fact real and the edicts laid out in the Bible were verifiable, then there is almost nothing that can’t be justified on Biblical grounds. If the creator of the entire universe said to have pancakes on every 3rd day, then having a law that said to have pancakes on every 3rd day would make a lot of sense. However, if we run that up against the truth claims of the Bible we run into a problem, especially since the claims being made by modern Christians aren’t as benign as breakfast choices. These are big deals like who gets legal protection, who counts as a person, and even the existence of democracy as a concept.
If the justification to hurt or diminish people because the Creator of the Universe said so, you’re going to need a lot heftier piece of evidence than the scant things provided in the Bible. This is what primarily pushes people to organize against these ideas, not because they necessarily inherently want to oppose the Bible, but because the justifications provided do not rest on solid foundations. Who amongst us would take pleasure or pride in doing things that have no justification? When is “because I want to” ever a good excuse when you cause harm to others?
As a people, as a species, we find this to be the worst response when questioned on an action, but for atheists this often is the response we perceive from Christian when they say “the Bible says” or “Jesus says so”. This may seem strange to a Christian reading this but imagine it the other way around: imagine your local government did an event that caused a substantial part of your community to feel they are excluded and couldn’t participate, like say a mandatory prayer to Allah or a local ordinance banning certain fabrics for underwear. The official response from the council response to you was “Well the Qur’an says to” or “we are simply honoring the memory of Joseph Smith” when they excoriate Christians at city council meeting. That seems like they are first wanting to do the bad event or their own hobbies, then are using a religious justification for it.
This is how Christians sound every day to non-religious folks. Whether its holding a prayer before a session, banning people from using certain bathrooms, or taking money from public coffers to push them into private religious ones; all responses sound a lot like “because I want to” instead of any kind of justification with a strong basis. If the justification is the Bible, that isn’t a justification at all- as pointed out earlier, it isn’t true and thus it isn’t justified. The next question to ask, then, is if it isn’t justified and it isn’t true, then wouldn’t that mean we’re doing unjustified things based on untrue claims?
Isn’t that an inherently bad thing to do?
Atheists, and particularly organized atheists would say YES! It is an inherently bad thing to do things that are both unjustified and based on untrue things. This is no way to learn more things about our world nor a good way to ensure the well-being of our fellow human beings. If we allow untrue and unjustified ideas to drive our behaviors, then we are always going to run into conflicts with things like science, logic, ethics, and even agreed upon epistemology.
Think about building a house or structure and we have to collaborate together to get it done. We can’t find common ground if one person uses a tape measure to measure the length of wood, and the other consults a book their uncle gave them on building practices in the 1800s and refuses to hand over the saw until we all studied the book. That would be a disaster for building and while you might eventually get something built, it’ll be ramshackle, unstable, and untrustworthy for years to come. Later, when the 1800s person wasn’t involved, the tape measure engineers likely want to tear down and rebuild it WITHOUT their particular “assistance” if it was bad enough.
You may think this is a silly analogy but apply that same logic to many of the laws we see being pushed by Christians. Instead of measuring the well-being and outcome of laws, we have a group of leaders consulting a book - a book that makes unjustified and untrue claims – and demands everyone else carve out exceptions to them. Based on this bad epistemology we have folks welcoming back preventable diseases like Measles (https://www.legis.iowa.gov/legislation/BillBook?ba=HF2171), encouraging public dollars to be spent on sectarian religious projects (https://www.legis.iowa.gov/legislation/BillBook?ga=91&ba=HF2366&emci=88999451-1309-f111-832e-0022482a9733&emdi=bd28a002-1609-f111-832e-0022482a9733&ceid=34643822), demanding medical professionals lie to their patients(https://www.legis.iowa.gov/legislation/BillBook?ba=SSB3115), pushing for the official state sanctioned subjugation of women(https://www.legis.iowa.gov/legislation/BillBook?ba=SF2172), and even put untrained religious advocates into schools using public tax dollars (https://www.legis.iowa.gov/legislation/BillBook?ga=91&ba=HF%20884).
Is it no wonder that atheists find these reasons to organize against these religious ideals – they have bad outcomes and diminish groups of people! One need not be anti-religious or anti-Christian to be opposed to religiously based laws and ideas that have bad results for the population at large. It is one thing to have a small religious community engage in their own private affairs, its another when it bleeds out into the rest of the population that doesn’t hold to the same beliefs nor agree to the same unjustified religious texts.
This is why we are here and this is why secular groups will likely always exist: to find out what is true about the world and to discard bad and old ideas that don’t work anymore. Secular and atheist groups aren’t about persecution of Christians, they are just more interested in a better world using our reason and science instead of reliance on old contradictory and unjustifiable texts. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once famously quipped:
"Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted".
I think that quote should be taken directly to heart when Christians are approached by secular groups and individuals. We just want to know why they think the way they do and why religious folks believe in unjustified and untrue textual interpretations. Why do they think their interpretation of ancient texts justifies harming the rest of us by undermining science, undermining democracy, and eroding the trust in our public institutions.
They aren’t justified in their actions or beliefs and they are actively harmful to society in many ways.
We just want to know what their good reasons are for it and if they can simply point to the Bible or talk about their faith, that is just “because I want to” with extra steps and that is absolutely something worth organizing against.
