So as the title suggests, today I’m going to talk about
Militant Atheism; what it means and why I identify with the term. Militant Atheism is a bit of a misleading
term. When someone hears the term “militant”
they often associate it with extreme/radical ideas. They might also liken it to violence. That is not the case at all. Sometimes called Neo-Atheism, Militant
Atheism is a movement within the Atheist community. Its premise is to speak out against religion
and invoke change within our society.
Before I
delve deeper into this topic, I’d like to give you a little more background
about me to help explain why I’m even talking about it. To start with, I consider myself to always
have been an Atheist. Even at a very
young age I started to question religion. I
can still remember my first instance of skepticism.
At around the age of 8, I was on the way to the grocery store with my dad. During the car ride I started to think about
the idea that god created the earth. That’s
all well and good I thought, but who created god? When talking about the beginning of the
universe Creationists often argue that the theories of scientists lead to the
conclusion that we got something out of nothing and since that is impossible
(from our current understanding anyways) than god must surely exist because
then you would have something from something.
I questioned this though and asked the wisest person I knew at the time,
my dad (poor guy), “If god created the universe….who created god?” I might as well have asked him where babies
came from judging by the look in his face at that moment. His response (the only one I imagine he could
conjure up at that moment) was, “Well son, I’ll tell you what my dad told me, ‘god
always was and god always will be.” Even
at such a young age I thought that answer was complete and utter nonsense. I ultimately came to my conclusion that there
was no god several years later when I learned about ancient Greek/Roman
theology. Certainly if they believed
they were right in knowing there were multiple gods and were wrong, then the
current monotheistic beliefs could, and most likely, are wrong as well. That was the end of that. I had concluded god did not exist. Still, being born into a religious culture I
felt I had to have some sort of structural belief system. I looked into the Wiccan beliefs, the
Buddhist beliefs, etc. and thought they had a lot to offer without worshipping
a “god”. However, I could never get past
the supernatural aspects of these belief systems and decided that they just
weren’t for me. It was about this time
that I developed a humanist approach to life without even realizing it. This came about because during random
discussions with my friends I would bring up the fact that I didn’t believe in “god”. “Well, what do you believe in then?” was the question I always got. Since I didn’t really “believe” in anything I
would just tell them that I believed in humanity while not even really knowing
what that meant. This was point in which
I reached early adulthood and joined the Army.
For fear of being judged because I was an Atheist, when asked what my
religious preference was I just put down “religious: non-denominational”. I mean, what did I care, right? The only time that would really matter was
if/when I died so they would know what kind of gravestone to put up at my
burial site. I’d be dead so what would I
care what symbol they used. It was for
my family more than anything since, while they’re not very religious people,
they still believed in god to some extent.
So that was that. Religion just
didn’t matter to me and as far as I could tell, didn’t affect me either. I felt no need to explain that I was an Atheist,
but I also felt that since a vast majority of soldiers identify with religion
in some way or another that I would be a minority and might not “fit in”. That is, until my second deployment to
Iraq. I was given a soldier who is
deeply religious and believes in evangelizing to “save souls” from eternal
damnation. The proselytization from this
soldier was annoying. At first, I just
explained to him that he was wasting his time because, as an Atheist, I favored
logic and reason over anything he was offering me through god. This only enticed him more and the more he
bugged me about it the more militant I became.
At that time I had a “live and let live” mentality in regards to
religious beliefs but obviously not everyone felt that way, especially this
soldier of mine. Nonetheless, I decided
that so long as nobody was flaunting religion in my face I could care less what
they believed. This leads me to the next
stage of this progression. I touched on
it briefly in my introduction post. An
incident involving an Equal Opportunity class we were given is what finally set
me off. Essentially, I was being told
that I had to respect other people’s faith and in order to do so it was wrong
of me to speak out against religion. So
what I’m being told is, it’s okay for someone to talk about god or pray to god,
but I can’t express my own belief that there is no god? What’s the difference? Then it truly hit me, how I was surrounded
everyday by religious ideals both in the military and outside of it. I mean, “In god we trust” is written on our
money! I just couldn’t take it
anymore. I was tired of being treated as
a minority and without equal rights. So
now, I speak out against religion. The same
way black people did when they had finally had enough of segregation.
A few people
have recently accused me of hypocritically doing the same thing I’m speaking
out against. I’ve been accused of proselytizing/evangelizing
the same as those with religious belief.
I’ve also heard it argued that I speak as if Atheism, too, is a
religion. Some of this may, indeed, be
true. I justify it like this though; I’m
not preaching so much as I’m simply providing evidence contrary to religious
belief. My goal isn’t so much to “convert”
anyone to Atheism, but merely plant a seed of doubt into their minds to open
their eyes to logic and reason. My main
goal is secularism within our government and while I would very much like to
see religion eradicated altogether, I want to accomplish this not by
legislation but from reason. I do not
wish to oppress anyone for their religious beliefs but I do want them to use critical
thinking to see that there are much more rational ways of looking at things
aside from religion. I believe this
quote from Dr. Jerry Coyne and a response to this quote by Hermant Mehta sums
it up nicely:
“The goal of New Atheism, as I see it, is not mainly to
insult religious individuals, but to question the tenets of belief, point out
the invidious consequences of unsupported belief, and question the unwarranted
privilege that religion has arrogated to itself.” – Dr. Jerry Coyne
“This isn’t about attacking believers. We understand why they
believe in God and we respect their right to believe it, but we want them to
understand that there are better explanations out there for most of what they
consider to be the handiwork of God. That involves pointing out when religion
goes wrong — and even when religion goes right, because doing the right thing
for the wrong reason isn’t ideal either.” - Hemant Mehta (Friendly Atheist Blog
on Patheos.com)
Another aspect I would like to touch on is the idea that
Atheism is itself, a religion. First
off, as I pointed out in my “Atheism Defined” post, the concept of Atheism is
simply the rejection of theistic beliefs. Different viewpoints, concerning
different topics, that Atheists derive is not Atheism. I’ve heard it argued to me that I believe in
what scientists are telling me the same way religious people believe their
preachers. That is wrong. Listening to scientists is not having faith
in the experts. To begin with, the
founding principle of science is the presentation of empirical evidence to
support a hypothesis. I don’t have to just
take a scientists word for it. I can’t see
the evidence presented for myself and form my own conclusions based on that
evidence. Something else to keep in mind
is that science never asserts anything to be absolute truth but rather good, working theories, based on evidence of what could be true. You and I could both agree that, without help
from some mechanical machine or the like, human beings can't fly. There’s tons of evidence that suggests such a
fact. However, to assert this as truth
would be incorrect because someday humans might evolve a way to, indeed, fly. It’s not the greatest example, I understand,
but it’s a simple way of understanding my point. So when I’m speaking for what I “believe” is
true, understand that this belief is grounded on the premise of science and the
data supporting it.
“Why do
Atheists feel the need to put down religion so much?” Well, not all of them do. Just like not all theists put down or speak
out against Atheists or speak out for their religious beliefs. Many Atheists disagree with the Militant
Atheism point of view. Live and let
live, right? I no longer choose to do
such thing until drastic changes within our society have occurred. Until the indoctrination of children is put
to an end, until religion is taken out of our government, until Theists quit
trying to push their views onto others, I will not quit speaking out against
religion. I will not be afraid of pointing
out the many flaws in a Theist’s belief system.
I will approach the taboo subject of religion with the same passion and
vigor tomorrow as I have today.
