As tempting as it is to dismiss these atheist advertising campaigns as silly exercises in provocation, and as easy as it is to take issue with specifics of the messages (the British campaign’s use of the modifier “probably,” for example, and its mildly hedonistic undertones), on the whole they seem to have served an important purpose, and it is refreshing to see active engagement with the religious fundamentalists at ground level.

It is likely that these campaigns have been successful in reaching out to atheists and agnostics unaware that their views were shared by a large segment of the population. Certainly they have done much to sustain discussion about the role of atheism in our society. A more enduring benefit of these advertisements (and the corresponding counter-attacks launched by God’s apologists), though, may be in converting this theological dispute over the existence of God into a popular culture debate.

Atheism is clearly on firm ground intellectually, and there has been no shortage of treatises on the subject by such luminaries of freethought as Dawkins and Dennett. While those and other books, volumes written in criticism of religious belief over the past few hundred years, and rapid advances in our scientific understanding of the universe and its inhabitants have buttressed the intellectual case for atheism, the vast majority have not been persuaded to abandon their faith in the mythological underpinnings of their chosen religion.

In changing the issue of God’s existence from a scholarly dispute to a matter of cultural preference, we may see more progress than has been made in countless arguments and debates. If these advertising campaigns can foster a perception of moral equivalence, the issue is relegated to the level of choosing between Coke and Pepsi, or Country Music and Rap. Who knows… we may even be able to coopt the mantra of the creationist crowd and insist that schools “teach the controversy” over God’s existence.

The important thing, it seems, is to refrain from attacking religion in these campaigns. Instead,  the message should be that there is an equally valuable choice, which is embraced by others who share your important ethical values and live rich and fulfilling lives without belief in any gods.

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Let’s get right to it. Elizabeth Dole should absolutely be ashamed of herself. I don’t know what things were like when she grew up in North Carolina, but the North Carolina I was raised in would NEVER condone this kind of personal slander. I can’t begin to tell you how upset I am that she has attacked my Christian faith…

At their core, Americans aren’t Democrat or Republican, red or blue – they’re Americans, plain and simple. We ALL love our country, and we all value the role of faith in American life.

Heman Mehta at Friendly Atheist thinks Hagan’s choice of words was unfortunate.

Let’s be clear about this: It’s not slanderous or pathetic to be an atheist. Hagan’s just saying it’s slanderous and pathetic to lie about your opponent in order to win an election.

I’m not happy with her choice of words. She could have used the opportunity to say that, while atheists make up a vital segment of this country, she is a woman of faith. In the heat of the moment and the political stress she must be under, though, I can understand why she said what she did.

Alonzo Fyfe at Atheist Ethicist has a more critical view of Hagan’s response.

Hagan isn’t making the claim that atheists are Americans too and have a right to present their views to perspective political candidates. She is not saying that the fault of Dole’s advertisement is that Dole is lying and promoting bigotry and hatred. She, in effect, endorsed the hate and answered, “How dare you accuse me of not being just as bigoted against atheists as you are! You take that back!”

Kay Hagan had an opportunity to confront the bigotry her opponent has tried to wield for political gain, but chose, instead, to validate it. She should be ashamed of herself. Those in the secular community who have lent their support to Hagan as a result of Dole’s tactics must not become apologists for this more subtle form of bigotry, and must address it as forcefully as possible. Who knows – attacks on Hagan’s campaign by atheist groups might actually help her in the polls, too.

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One problem with turning out the atheist vote is finding it. Atheists do not reside visibly in certain neighborhoods like blacks or Hispanics or gay men and lesbians. They do not turn up on the databases of professional associations like doctors or lawyers. And as nonbelievers, they axiomatically do not come together for worship.

As Friendly Atheist Hemant Mehta noted:

Reading atheist blogs is fine. Reading atheist books is fine. But unless we can transform our thoughts into action, it’s all pretty useless.

I’m not sure it’s useless, but coalescing into a force for change will take more than talking among ourselves. The problem, though, is to define a central organizing theme around which the diverse nontheistic community can organize. A good starting point is to address the overt and subtle bigotry against atheists in all spheres of American society. And no better contemporary example of that is to be found than the frank anti-atheist bigotry wielded for political gain by Elizabeth Dole in her campaign for re-election to the U.S. Senate in North Carolina – and, now, with the backing of the Republican National Committee (see, for example, The Friendly Atheist and Pharyngula).

Alonzo Fyfe, writing at Atheist Ethicist, notes that such bigotry must be confronted, without condition and without apology.

The proper response to the video from the Republican National Committee is not to condemn the advertisement for attempting to link Hagan to bad atheists – because, in fact, none of the people represented in the video are bad atheists. They are atheists – and, in the mind of the bigot, all atheists are bad atheists. We should not be assuming that this association between ‘atheist’ and ‘bad’ is necessarily or even often true.

In fact, this is the association that we should be challenging.

While this view is substantially correct, we should not be oblivious to the damage done to the cause of increasing the respect and political clout of atheists by those who focus intently and incessantly on ridiculing religious belief. They are surely not “bad atheists,” but they contribute to the poor public perception of atheists, generally.

Analogies are frequently made between the atheist movement today and the state of the gay and lesbian rights movement a decade or two ago, but these comparsons fail in one very important respect; it is not simply that atheists remain closeted for fear of reprobation, or that we seek to eliminate the demonization of and discrimination against those without a belief in supernatural deities. It is that some atheists (whether called fundamentalist or militant or dogmatic) exhibit an arrogance and certitude that seems to give license to denigrate those who find value in religious practice.

Gays and lesbians did not assert the superiority of their sexual orientation, nor did they try to claim equal rights and equal protection while simultaneously seeking to prove heterosexuals wrong. When atheists do both with equal vigor, we open ourselves to suspicion and attack. It is difficult to ask for respect while refusing to show it.

This is not to say that there is no place for religious criticism, or that we can be less than vigilant in supporting the wall separating religion and government. But while Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens eloquently and forcefully make the intellectual case for atheism, we must also find effective ways to make the case for equality in our ostensibly secular society. Until the perception of the atheist movement is changed from one that appears to be anti-religion to one that seeks to end religious discrimination, members of the community of reason may remain politically impotent, despite their considerable numbers.

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Yet this is the approach taken by many atheists, unable to understand why repeatedly pointing out the errors and contradictions in sacred texts has failed to eradicate adherence to archaic and irrational religious belief and win “converts” to nontheism.

A well-worn aphorism by Karl Marx suggests that religion is “the opium of the masses.” But looking at that quote in context, we see a more nuanced view of religion.

The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion. Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

Writing at the New America Foundation in an article entitled “Asking the Right God Question,” Gregory Rodriguez notes of that excerpt that:

Marx wasn’t just another hater of religion as a childish fantasy or a retreat from rationality. He saw faith as a symptom and not the disease, and he was interested in faith not in terms of right and wrong but because of what it told him about the human condition.

Rodriguez points to a recent study from Northwestern University published in the Journal of Research in Personality. That study of American Christians showed that the common denominator underlying religious belief across the political spectrum was fear. Rodriguez notes:

It appears that we do believe out of need, but it’s not, as Marx suggested, primarily because of material deprivation. Instead, it looks as if faith answers fear, and many different kinds of fear, which we can begin to delineate in some detail.

Humanists and others holding a nontheistic worldview aren’t gripped by uncontrollable fear that our lives are devoid of meaning or that the world will be overcome by chaos and conflict absent belief in imaginary deities. The problem is that the continued criticism (and ridicule) of religious belief does nothing to convey this important fact to those who might appreciate atheism on an intellectual level but who continue to cling, seemingly inexplicably, to religious practice. Humanism must be put forth as a positive alternative if we are to foster an evolution toward a more enlightened and rational populace, and we must address those issues which cause people to live in fear. It is not enough to kick the theological crutches out from under the arms of those who use them – we must show that they can walk without them.

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Apparently, such logical errors are not the result of a general cognitive deficit. If that were the case, these same individuals would scarcely be able to dress themselves, and the streets of America would be awash in men and women, only partially clad in their Sunday best, lost en route to the local mega-church. No, if there is a pathology afoot, it is one that selectively diminishes capacity for critical thought in very specific areas – a not very likely prospect.

It could, as has been argued, be a simple matter of willful stupidity – a striving to maintain the bliss of enduring ignorance through acts of self-deception. In fact, Larry Moran, at Sandwalk, has posted a piece with the provocative title “Do Fundamentalist Christians Actively Resist Learning?” This post reiterates the point that there is an inverse correlation between educational attainment and religious fundamentalism, and goes on to puzzle over the “remarkable” phenomenon that a “significant percentage of fundamentalist Protestants can go to college and still reject the basic scientific fact that humans evolved.”

As we’ve seen time and time again on the blogs (and elsewhere), the Christian fundamentalists have erected very strong barriers against learning. It really doesn’t matter how much they are exposed to rational thinking and basic scientific evidence. They still refuse to listen.

But, is it really that fundamentalist Christians are averse to scholarship or somehow unable to comprehend scientific concepts? While that may feed into our idealized view of nontheists as the exclusive members of the community of reason, I don’t think this premise holds up under scrutiny. Too many fundamentalist Christians exhibit other signs of intelligence for this to be the case. And it would be naive to view all Christian theology as simplistic and childish; in fact, Christian apologists have jumped through astoundingly complex theological hoops to support their core beliefs in the face of what others might consider daunting and compelling contrary evidence.

Instead, I suspect that education is not always able to overcome preposterous and unsubstantiated beliefs as a consequence of faith. That is, faith, elevated to the status of virtue. Sola fide, the road to God’s grace. The sort of faith, the defense of which becomes a matter of preserving one’s very soul. Once faith is framed as more virtuous than materialistic scientific evidence, it is no longer amenable to argument, and the glossolalic apples are unable to communicate with the jargon-speaking oranges.

But, of course, faith is not a virtue. To a scientist, faith – holding to views that are unsupported by evidence – is a cardinal sin. And it is this, rather than the content of specific factual disagreements, that warrants our consideration. Faith is anathema to critical thinking, and has fallen into well-deserved disrepute in most spheres of our existence. But when the magisteria of science encroaches into a believer’s essential biblical worldview, faith is touted as the salvation of mankind and presidential candidates.

Rather than framing religious believers – even those holding fundamentalist, literalist views – as incapable of rational thought and as being willfully resistant to enlightenment, we should seek to understand the roots of this faith, and what attributes might make some more susceptible to its grip than others. At the very least, perhaps we can encourage this faith to be relegated to its rightful place, at the alter of the primum movens.

As Richard Dawkins has said:

The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.

Amen.

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