After much
delay, I guess it’s about time to actually throw my inconsiderable opinion into
the interesting stew pot of Atheism Plus. (The actual decision to go ahead and
throw this out there was a combination of Tanya over at Daisies and Shit kicking my ass just a
tiny bit for not writing… well, anything, lately, and a thought process that
looked about like this in my head: OH MY SHIT I AM SO BEHIND ON ALL OF MY READING
AND AM NOW GOING TO SAY FUCK IT TO ACTUALLY GETTING CAUGHT UP AND JUST HIT THE
GODDAMN RESET BUTTON IN 1… 2… 3… and done).[1]
Before I actually
start talking about it in any detail, I’ll just start by saying that I heart
the Atheism Plus idea. And I’m also going to attempt to focus on what I think
is so great about it, and not so much on the hullabaloo (read: shitstorm) that’s
been flying around the interwebs about it. Although that’s probably going to be
unavoidable to a certain extent. (Also, this is part of the reading and
research that I’m so woefully behind on. But I have semi-successfully gotten
semi-caught up on at least that one little slice of reading. I’m also just
about equally behind on podcasts. And, with the exception of a few of my very
favorites, probably HITTING THE GODDAMN RESET BUTTON on those, too.) Onward.
Secularity
has been dragging the world forward on all kinds of social justice issues for
just about as long as social issues have had any forward progress. And religion
has been retroactively taking the credit for it for just about as long[2].
And secularists, atheists, haven’t had any choice but to just shut the fuck up
about it, because our position, for all its merits, has simply not been
creditable. That’s up until relatively recently. Lately, atheists have been
more vocal. More present. More cohesive. More of a lot of things. More of a lot
of really great things. The atheist
movement, the atheist population, the atheist whatever-you-want-to-call-it has
been growing quickly, and with all of the growing pains that come with that in
any given collective movement.
Atheism Plus
is, I think, is the Atheist Visibility movement, next step. I may be jumbling
labels a bit here (and this is not altogether unintentional), but one of the
graphics that I’ve seen that I really liked that pithily described the difference between
atheists of the old order and New Atheists (not to be confused with Atheism
Plus… the new new atheist movement… :-P) as being that New Atheists, when told to
shut up, say, “No.” Which is awesome. We should be saying no. We should be as
visible as it is feasible for us to be, given individual circumstances. And we
should be visible and active AS ATHEISTS. That’s part of the point, right? To
get atheists and atheism out there in the public eye, to make us an every day,
ordinary, accepted part of American society. Except that so often we are not doing that.
We've segmented our atheist activism apart from all of our other forms of activism. We've said to ourselves, “Over here, I am a feminist and I will be active for
feminist causes. Over here, I believe in gay rights and I will fight for
marriage equality over here. But those things are not my atheist causes. My
atheist causes have only to do with my atheism. And I will partition the inside
of my head that way.” Which some people can do, I guess. Actually, I probably
do that a little too well. Which is part of my own all consuming personal
issues. I don’t actually want to be
that partitioned in my life. That’s one of the reasons that I actually started
this little clusterfuck of a blog; so that I could be all (or most) of the
things that I self-identify as in one place, in one piece, and integrate all of
the different parts of myself into one organic, healthy (or, at least, getting
healthier, which is part of the point, right?) whole.
I’ve written
before about how I am, in fact, a feminist specifically because of my atheism.
Regardless of what the dictionary definition of atheism is or is not, there is
a deep causal connection between my lack of belief, the kind of integrated
thinking that allowed me to overcome some equally deep cognitive dissonances,
and so many of the other aspects of my life and the way that I think about the
world. Becoming an atheist, and openly adopting that self-identification, was
not an isolated thing, nor could it be held in isolation. It was a
revolutionary overthrow of a complete worldview that forced me to reevaluate
every other little thing about the way that I looked at the world. And every
other big thing.[3]
So there’s
that part.
Atheism+ vs Secular Humanism: Well,
okay, but what about Secular Humanists? Aren't they doing all of that great
activism stuff already? Yes. But they're not doing it AS ATHEISTS. They're not
raising the awareness that atheists are an integral part of the broader
activist community; they're not raising the awareness that atheists care. That as atheists, caring is an integral part
of our self identification as atheists. Using the label of Secular Humanism
allows those (both ourselves and others) that are uncomfortable with the label
of atheists to dodge that particular issue, rather than branding the scarlet A
on our chests and walking around naked with it until the discomfort for
ourselves and everyone around us finally wears off, and nobody minds that we’re
naked sluts . That’s how we get accepted. (Note: I am absolutely not saying
that everyone should walk around naked at work. That probably won’t fly. Maybe
that can be something for down the road a bit.)
Why so angry? Some of the anger in the negative reactions to this whole thing strikes me as very similar to anger surrounding
the geek label and fringe culture in general that I wrote about before
(inspired by Ashley Miller’s much better [and more polished] piece on the
subject [but fuck being polished… right?]). It’s the, ”Hey, we were here first! We were doing this before doing this was cool! Quit trying to reinvent the wheel!” sort of thing. That argument is fucking
stupid and pretty juvenile. Let it go, grow up, blah blah blah. Instead, get
excited! Join the movement.
And that’s
part of it, too, really. Galvanization. This kind of thing gets people excited, gets them
moving, gets them to want to be involved. Which is a GOOD THING. Because
atheists, as atheists and openly in the name of atheists, need to be in ALL THE
THINGS. Then, rather than being blocked off into a corner or fringe of society
that can be easily ignored, ridiculed, reviled, feared, shunted off as some
academic, irrelevant concern to society, rather than that, we will come to be
considered a necessary part of forward progress in the world. In order to be an
accepted segment of modern society, we really need to be completely pervasive
in all levels and quadrants of society. (And, really, we already are, we’re
just not open and vocal about that bit. Which, again, is part of the point.) You
want to be relevant? This is how. Be
an atheist feminist, not an atheist and a feminist. Be an atheist egalitarian,
not an atheist and an egalitarian. That kind of thing. All of these social
justice causes get people’s blood moving, because it’s real to them, often on a
very visceral level. It affects them and the people that they care about every
day (and this is true no matter which way you roll on any given one of these
issues). This shit is relevant. This is
shit that people care about. This is shit that we can work together on, that we
can have a legitimate and hefty voice on. That we can make a difference in. And
we can!
Liberal church analogue. The closest
analogue that I can think of for what we ought to be doing here is that of the
liberal religionists reaching out the GLBTQA communities, and what a difference
it’s making. Not just that subculture, of course, but so many. That’s just the
most recent one. Does it frustrate you that churches are appealing to the very
same people, populations, cultures and subcultures that they were doing their damndest to suppress just a few fucking minutes ago? Yeah? Well, how did they
do that? By getting out there in the name of their churches, their faith, and reaching
out to those people. Making a place for them. And I know that the idea of
taking a lesson from them may sting a little, but we need to do the same thing.
We need to reach out to them, take their side, acting as atheists. Taking the
secularity that has for so long dragged the religious world forward while they
dug in their heals; take that secularity
and say, “Hey, you know what that is that helped you win your place in the
world? That’s atheism. I’m an atheist, too. Let’s go be atheists, and make a
fucking difference in this world, shall we?” It is, in fact, secularism that
has made the world a better place. About time we shed a little light onto that
secularism, instead of it hiding in the shadows while the world’s religions vie
for the credit, for the spotlight; because when you shed the light on it…
secularity? It’s atheism. It really is.
[1]
Also, if you don’t like asides and footnotes and things like that with no
particular rhyme or reason other than where they feel like they should go at
any given moment, you should probably go ahead and stop reading now. I’m taking
a page from Robin McKinley’s blogs and will probably be doing more of this sort
of thing. I think it is a pretty fair representation of what the inside of my
head looks like. And, far from being polished and pretty writing, that’s what
this blog is supposed to be. If you want my polished and pretty writing, it
does exist… just not here so much.
[2] Despite
the fact that religion was more often than not the motivating force behind many
of the injustices, and in the aggregate, fought the progress every bloody inch
of the way.
[3]
There is a forest/trees subtext going on here that I am not going to try to
tease out at the moment. But it’s there, just so that you and I know that.
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