I am hopeful

Atheists are coming out. This is the reason for my optimism.

Just a few months ago it was the buses in and around London carrying the message, “THERE’S PROBABLY NO GOD. NOW STOP WORRYING AND ENJOY YOUR LIFE.” that grabbed, if not headlines, at least a few column inches in the British press and surprisingly in an American paper with a Christian orientation, the Christian Science Monitor. The message did spread as far as Down Under, to Australia and New Zealand and I did my bit, three short blogs, 1, 2 and 3 in an India dominated portal. After that, it has been a lull.

My current burst of hope is underpinned by More Atheists Shout It From the Rooftops in the New York Times of April 27th. It is about the atheist movement. But, just do not call them atheists. The sub-groups of the Secular Coalition of America “identify themselves as atheists, humanists, freethinkers and others who go without God”. So, the anchor is non-belief, whereas under the tag “atheists” one would tend to congregate those who actively deny the existence of God.

One of the secular humanists, a church musician (the pew is indeed very accommodative) said, “I am not one of the humanists who feels that religion is a bad thing.” But what she left out was whether she believed religion is a good thing. She falls between the stools. I am sure one of these days, she will get up on to the right stool – there, right there, I spoke just like an evangelical, did I not? So, forgive me, God!

But, secular humanists, atheists included, are not beyond using the language of the believers to spread their message: “In Reason We Trust,” for example, a take on the motto carried by the greenback and currency coins in the US – “In God We Trust”. The self-defined secular humanists, wearing the colors of atheism, were barred from volunteer efforts to build houses for Habitat for Humanity because they wore T-shirts that said “Non Prophet Organization.” Such cheek!

The article is about people “coming out of the closet”, like how the gay-rights movement got its foothold. One student at the University of South Carolina said the course on evolutionary biology convinced him that “creationists lie.” Another student claimed that he “knew the Bible too well to be sure that Scripture is true.” Wow, what an argument, by a true seeker! Many of these “coming out” students at the university were “highly literate in the Bible and religious history.” I patted myself on the back. I, though not a Christian, was versed well enough in Christian Scripture to drive members of evangelical groups (Brother Jed Smock and Sister Cindy Smock, a husband and wife pair that visited the University of Kentucky where I studied in the 1980s) who came to the campus to preach on to their back foot.

Now, this “coming out” is not an easy thing to do. “Atheists are ranked lower than any other minority or religious group when Americans are asked whether they would vote for or approve of their child marrying a member of that group.” In Charleston, South Carolina, the secular humanists who had indeed come out were pariahs. An atheist remained in the closet because her husband was afraid that employers would refuse to hire him, discrimination once removed, so to say. A lady got the courage to go public with the heretic crowd only because her ancestors had fought in the American Revolution (some kinship with DAR?). To be a secular atheist, one has to be committed, more so than for being a religionist.

The goal of the “evangelical atheists” (if you ever spotted a more severe oxymoron, please leave a comment) is not confrontation, or even winning converts, but changing the public’s stereotype of atheists. Fornicators, immoral to the core etc., paraphrasing Brother Jed’s words. There one sees the parallel between the gay-rights movement and the atheist movement.

All of the above is about things happening in the US. What about India? We are, typically and in respect of almost everything, at least a generation behind Americans. So, the best hope I have is an unstoppable movement in about twenty five years. Yet, that hope crystallized just a wee bit more after I read the article.

We need to shout louder to hasten the process.

Raghuram Ekambaram