121. depone

depone, verb: To testify under oath; depose.

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‘Atheism’ is a term that should not even exist. No one ever needs to identify himself as a ‘non-astrologer’ or a ‘non-alchemist.’ We do not have words for people who doubt that Elvis is still alive or that aliens have traversed the galaxy only to molest ranchers and their cattle. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs.
— Sam Harris

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A few days ago there was a story circulating in the news about a U.S. Army soldier who has been petitioning to be classified as “Humanist” instead of “Atheist” on his official records and dog tags. The Army’s rationale? It’s the same difference as putting “Catholic” instead of “Christian.” And I can kind of see their point from an administrative angle. If they start to recognize one group as being unique then they’ll have to start recognizing all as unique. Then it starts to become a free-for-all, with everyone focusing on their differences instead of working on building unity and cohesion.

However, Maj. Jay Bradley also has a valid point. It would be one thing if the term atheist had as concrete a definition as Christian. But it doesn’t. In a post-9/11 world (especially in the military, from the stories I’ve read), if you hold a belief other than Christian, you may as well be a terrorist—or a child molester, or a serial rapist. You run the risk of being seen as anti-American. If you don’t believe in god, you’re turning your back on tradition, on all moral values, and on everything that is good and decent.

“Smoked newborn baby, anyone?”

As Sam Harris said, it’s unfortunate that we still need labels to differentiate ourselves from theists, or that anybody still cares—just as it’s unfortunate that anyone still cares that some of us love someone of the same sex and want to share a life with that person. But that is not the world that we live in.

Atheism by itself is not a philosophy. It is simply a non-belief in god(s). It doesn’t tell you anything about what a person believes, and that leaves much open to being misconstrued or misinterpreted (per above). Atheism can be expressed in a number of different ways, of which humanism is one, though probably the most prevalent.

“Humanism is a philosophy that guides a person,” Bradley said in an AP article. “It’s more than just a stamp of what you’re not.”

So why should anybody care about this? Certainly, no one forced any of us to become atheists or agnostics. You could argue that we’re all actually born atheists; that belief in gods is forced on us as children before we have the ability to choose for ourselves. And some of us are fortunate enough to be born into secular homes. For most of us though, it became our choice to leave our churches and communities of faith. But is that reason enough to compel organizations like the Army to recognize Humanists? Do atheists and other nontheists deserve secular “chaplains” (or whatever the equivalent might be).

To the latter question, I think that yes, secular soldiers and other personnel need a point person to be able to go to regarding personal matters, without danger of being proselyted to or even judged. When you’re at your neediest and most vulnerable emotionally, it’s imperative to have a safe place to go for help and advice. When an atheist soldier has just lost a friend in combat, can a religious chaplain be relied and called upon to speak to that soldier’s beliefs—that that friend is truly gone?

It’s not that I think that a religious chaplain would unscrupulously take advantage of a moment like that to try and convert anyone. However, at his/her core, that chaplain truly believes that another life awaits us after death. They want to offer and share the peace and comfort that they find in that belief. An atheist “chaplain” will see it differently.

But lest we think this a military issue, many Christians are overall wondering what the big deal is, or wonder why atheists object to any forms of religion being expressed in society. (Well, many Whites didn’t understand what all those Negros were raising a fuss about, having to sit in the back of the bus.) Many even feel attacked (oh, the irony) by the presence of atheists, and can’t see that what we want is a society where everyone is free to practice their beliefs without imposing them on others. I wish soldiers didn’t have to declare their religious beliefs on their dog tags, or that they have to decline to participate in platoon prayers (and no doubt get some grief over doing so, or are eyed warily afterward).

A friend of mine works in an industry that draws and employs many conservative (=religious) people, and doesn’t feel secure being “out” as an atheist there. I wish she weren’t afraid of retaliation.

In some ways, this is similar to the debate that’s going on over same-sex marriage; over whether gays are made second-class citizens by denying them the legal right to marry while offering alternatives like domestic partnerships or civil unions. In some ways. In other ways that’s a whole other discussion.

However.

This is fundamentally a matter of affirming personhood, and of a rancorous and frightened majority desperate to hold onto the status quo attempting to silence a growingly vocal minority. It is about people standing up and declaring who they truly are and what they believe, without having to put up with the prejudice and proselyting of the “faithful,” or with radical Christians attempting to shove their fundamentalist religion down the throats of vulnerable children.

I wish we didn’t have to identify as atheists; but as long as we have powerful Christians like Pat Robertson, Rick Santorum, “Porno” Peter LaBarbera, Tony Perkins, the American Family Association, James Dobson, Rick Warren and David Barton, we have to.

And loudly.

112. codification

One of the great things about living in a city is the inordinate proximity and access to basically everything. There are a gadzillion restaurants to choose from and sample; opportunities to attend arts events; and stores of every size and niche to find whatever you happen to be looking for.

One of the downsides of living in the city is being surrounded by a gadzillion people, but still feeling completely alone. Even for those of us who have a ton of friends, we still run the risk of feeling rather isolated. I was talking with a friend about this yesterday; that we have friends who we rarely get a chance to see because we all have so much going on. We have jobs that take up most of our day; errands to run and things to do; then some of us have families and significant others to attend to; and seeing everyone becomes a scheduling nightmare, so we may go months (or years) between seeing certain people.

This is one of the good things about the church that I miss probably more than anything: the built-in, readily available social network. You can get together on Sunday morning for a couple of hours every week and see all of your friends in one place. You can even see them several times a week, at bible studies, choir/band practice, potluck dinners, etc. That sort of thing simply doesn’t exist in the atheist/skeptic community, and it does make me sad.

I’ve been feeling dissatisfied lately with that lack of community in my life. As much as I enjoy the company of my Christian friends (some of whom I’ve known for over ten years, and with whom I have had many wonderful experiences and memories), being with them now isn’t the same as it is being with nontheists. This is something they don’t tell you when you’re first deconverting from Christianity, that your world is about to go topsy-turvy; or if they do tell you, you can’t imagine how extensively everything gets re-written. It’s a bit like going to summer camp or Europe, having an incredibly life-changing experience, and then going home and not feeling like you belong anymore; or that you returned home only to find that your childhood home had been magicked away by a wicked fairy (sorry, I’m nearly done with Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and am rather concerned about fairies). It’s what Frodo experiences coming back to the Shire after going to Mordor, when you long to be amongst those who have been on the same journey. As nice as some of my Christian friends are, they simply can’t understand how differently the world looks once you no longer believe in god.

A while ago a friend asked me why it mattered that I needed atheist friends. After all, I have friends who love and care about me. To me, this rather sounds like conservatives asking gays why they want gay marriage instead of civil unions. To those who already have a place of belonging, surrounded by people who (mostly) believe the same things that they do (i.e., believe in god, that this personal god is the “author of human life,” etc), it may sound like atheists are just whining. After all, we chose to leave the church—right? We chose to stop believing in god—right?

We are primates—pretty advanced primates, but primates nevertheless. Like our close cousins, we have a complex social structure based on our belonging to and our place within the tribe. With our larger brain size and capacity for higher intelligence comes self-awareness, and all of the perennial problems associated with it. Instead of sniffing each other’s butts, belonging is more like complex mathematical algorithms now, with a long matching checklist of beliefs, social class, media preferences and so on.

Being a nontheist is a unique experience in humankind today. A thousand years from now our descendants may look back with quaint curiosity at their primitive ancestors embroiled in stupid squabbles over religion and belief. Perhaps in a thousand years belief in gods will have died out, just as the Neanderthals died out 30,000 years ago or so. What must it have been like for the first tribe of homo sapiens to be living amongst their Neanderthal kin, alike but different? For the first time in recent geological human history, there are those amongst us who do not hold belief in gods or the supernatural. We are a small tribe living amongst those who still believe very strongly and very fervently.

But we are growing.

As Richard Dawkins writes in the preface to The God Delusion,

Indeed, organizing atheists has been compared to herding cats, because they tend to think independently and will not conform to authority. But a good first step would be to build up a critical mass of those willing to ‘come out’, thereby encouraging others to do so. Even if they can’t be herded, cats in sufficient numbers can make a lot of noise and they cannot be ignored.

It’s one of the reasons why this year I’m planning to get more “activist” about my atheism, and engage in more volunteering in order to start finding and building community.

But how to re-create the community that I enjoyed in the church as a Christian? Is it even possible? And what might it look like? Atheists don’t really believe anything. We have no codified tenets. Some of us had abusive church backgrounds, while some of us (like myself) knew wonderful people; and some of us grew up in secular homes where god was rarely (if ever) mentioned. All that unites us is our non-belief in gods and the supernatural, and our shared humanity.

A few years ago I lived with several friends in an apartment complex. Myself and two guy friends lived in one unit, while three of our girl friends lived next door. Ours became a central “gathering spot” for everyone. I wish our community as atheists and nontheists could look like that.

105. chime

This is a response to an opinion piece by Tom Arcano in the Greensboro News & Record that I just fired off to the editor of the paper.

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To the editor and to Mr. Arcano,

As a fan of all things Hitchens, I recently came across the op-ed tribute piece written about him in the News & Record, and as an atheist myself would like to respond. First, I too was devastated by the unexpected news of his death (though we were bracing ourselves for its inevitability, hopeful though that that day would be a long way off). He was a beacon and a role model for me and others in the rigorous pursuit of truth and the defeat of ignorance, fear and superstition in the world. Few champions of reason have walked the earth, and we were privileged to have had him.

Second, I do feel the need to address the statement posed in the headline of the article: “Hitchens as a role model for atheists today.” I will confess that in the hours after learning of his death, I found myself pondering the legacy that he left behind. Like many others, in the weeks that have followed I’ve watched countless YouTube videos and marveled in his ability to turn a phrase on the spot, or come back with a devastating coup de grâce to an opponent. I am also a huge fan of the works of Richard Dawkins (who helped crack open the door in my own journey of coming out as an atheist) and Sam Harris; but not as familiar with Daniel Dennett or Victor Stenger, the other two prominent “horsemen” of the New Atheism.

However, as I ponder these examples and the attitudes toward people of faith, I’m left wondering if the aggressive anti-religious stance of neo-atheism is a sustainable one. Nor is neo-atheism (or anti-theism) the only variant. There is agnosticism, skepticism, deism, agnostic atheism, agnostic Christianity, secular humanism, and even simply ambivalence to gods and religion. Personally I consider myself a post-theist, not so much rejecting god as considering him obsolete. Like the neo-atheists, I abhor religious fundamentalism and extremism wherever I encounter it. I’m concerned for children raised in such homes, who, like myself, are often inculcated before having a chance to choose what (or if) they believe. We should war against that, and against the exploitation of the poor and the undereducated, who are often unwitting targets of religious proselytization.

But the reality is that religion is not likely to disappear any time soon, and in its proper form I don’t think that it needs to. As Douglas Adams pointed out once in a speech, religion and the belief in god can serve its purpose. And it’s extremism and fundamentalism that has led to the problems in our world. So the question I am pondering is: Are we setting the right tone for discussion? We are just entering a global phase of civilization, with hundreds (even thousands) of beliefs and worldviews literally living next door to each other, sharing a garden wall. Some of these belief systems—such as the one I hail from—claim to be the One True Religion, with the corner market on Absolute Truth and the sole key to Life Everlasting. It was these that Hitchens reveled in going up against, picking holes in logic and pointing out inconsistencies and outright crimes.

However, is this the legacy that we ought to pick up? Yes, relentlessly pursue truth and evidence; and doggedly go after charlatans and oppressors. But just as non-theists tire of evangelicals relentlessly trying to save their souls, theists are just as put off by the caustic and often contemptuous tone of atheists. Take, for what you will, Dane Cook’s story about the man who huffily barks back, “I’m an atheist!” when Cook says, “god bless you” after the man sneezes. Or a more recent anecdote related to me by a friend who took a group caroling at an airport this year and had barely got through the first song when a store employee came over and asked them to “please stop with the religious music.”

Not that we have to hold hands and sing (insert your own feel-good campfire song here), but is it possible to discuss religion without having to poke holes in each other’s beliefs? The conversation seems to have devolved into ideological trench warfare, with an arms race of new and ever devastating ammunition to annihilate the opposition. Certainly there will be those who are converted by such tactics, but the majority will dig themselves deeper into what they already believe and only become more resentful of the other side. A worldview ought to be defined by what you stand for, rather than defining yourself by what you’re not.

I fear that what we are losing sight of is the distinctly human element in faith and belief. Why do people believe what they do? What benefit do they derive from it? Obliterate a person’s faith if you can—but what will you replace it with? Instead of thought warriors like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, what we need are diplomats like Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord or Jimmy Carter to initiate negotiations and address the needs and fears on the part of both theists and non-theists in order to find ways that we can live together while retaining our ideological integrity, and collectively declaring extremism unacceptable.

For non-theists, atheism is about the freedom of a mind unfettered by belief in god or gods. But where Hitchens and the neo-atheists have been (and can be) belligerent, I should like to see us strive for a more generous approach where we are able to get to the root of and address serious questions while always affirming the humanity of those who believe differently than us. After all, we’ve only one planet and we have to live on it together.

102. wolcum

“It’s Christmas Eve! It’s the one night of the year when we all act a little nicer, we smile a little easier, we cheer a little more. For a couple of hours out of the whole year, we are the people that we always hoped we would be!”
— Bill Murray as Frank Cross in Scrooged.

I don’t have many holiday traditions.

In my family we didn’t have very many, aside from putting up a fake tree, dragging out decorations (most of which were religious in nature), opening tiny doors on the Advent calendar, going to church on Christmas Eve, and making a birthday cake for Jesus, after which we sang “Happy birthday” to him, candles and all. They are, in fact, probably doing that right now.

Christmas for my family was about remembering the “reason for the season,” which was Jesus, and now that I don’t believe in him anymore I’m at a bit of a loss for what to even do. So today I’m engaged in probably the only holiday tradition I’ll ever follow: Streaming the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from Kings College on the BBC 4 radio online. I encountered it quite by accident one year while driving to the airport to do some holiday caroling and have never missed a broadcast since. I still remember sitting in the car in the car park, mesmerized, listening to the intoning of the Christmas story, and then an audience carol led by organ. It’s more for effect than anything else; and anything read or sung by a Brit just sounds fantastic, but they really know how to do Christmas.

Right now everyone is gathered downstairs for Christmas festivities: Opening presents, having dinner, and generally enjoying themselves—or at least pretending to. I really don’t know what goes on in peoples’ heads this time of year; whether or not they actually buy into the “goodwill” message of the season, or if it’s just another social obligation. I went to bed last night feeling rather depressed, and the feeling only deepened in the hours since. It’s a special feeling, spending Christmas hiding in your room, curled up in bed in the fetal position and wishing that you could just hibernate until spring.

We had Christmas Eve at the house last night. Since I won’t have anything to do with my own family, this group has functionally become my clan, and I’m grateful to have friends who care and who are including me in their own holiday traditions. My roommate’s sister came over, and their dad and his lady friend came up from Rochester for the weekend. (The lady friend was drunk for most of the evening and managed to insult and offend me several times over the course of the night, so I’m really not in the mood to deal with her today—not when I’m feeling like this.) I was pretty drunk too as I’d started doing shots of whisky around noon, and then mixing whisky with just about any drinkable liquid. Everyone seemed to have a good time, wrapping presents, enjoying hors d’oeuvres, and watching Christmas films.

Everyone except me, that is.

As an introvert, it takes a lot of energy to be around people, and usually I have no clue what’s going on but I’m adept at faking emotions when the need arises. Most of the time I feel next to nothing, and it’s only around people whose emotions I can mirror that I can typically feel anything. But once they’re gone, it’s back to feeling “blank.” Or sad.

This is my first year as a nontheist. This is also my first year not celebrating with my own family—my own family who, for nearly two decades, I had to pretend around in order to maintain a modicum of tranquility; for whom I had to pretend I was heterosexual for (like the rest of them) to avoid any unwelcome questions or insinuations. I watched as my sister brought home her boyfriend and then, after they were married, her husband and look on as he more or less effortlessly took the place that I hadn’t been able to fill as the favorite Christian son. Now they’re bringing their son—my nephew—to Christmas, with everyone fawning over him like families do, celebrating the miracle of life and the love of god (or some such rot). Once I was out, there was something of a tacit agreement or an unspoken shift in thinking that we weren’t to bring up my being gay (homosexuality being the one sin their so-called god can’t stand), and my parents explicitly stated that they’d never accept anyone I ever dated. After all, we wouldn’t be dating. We’d be “living in sin.”

I’ve always been depressed around this time of year. That’s probably not really anything remarkable. A lot of people get depressed around the holidays for sundry reasons. For me, it comes down to the fact that I just feel like an outsider. I don’t understand family. I don’t get how it operates, how people relate, how they function, how they do it. If you were to press most people they’d probably admit that they don’t really know what they’re doing either. But even around this new family, I feel like a non-English speaker stuck with Americans, able to communicate in broken phrases and get the gist across but not truly understanding; or like Margaret Mead, studying the cultural practices and traditions of a native population to which I am an outsider.

A large part of it probably is that for so long I was so focused on keeping my family (my parents in particular, who are master interrogators) out that I never really learned how to let anyone in. I was so afraid of my parents finding out that I was gay and trying to ship me off to some ex-gay camp that I never learned how properly to interact with a family. And now here I am, nearly 29 and pathetically single, deeply desiring to share my life with someone but unable to speak the language. I’m like a Helen Keller, possessed of all my senses but emotionally deaf and dumb. I can communicate in a rudimentary manner, but it takes a lot of work. Writing is one medium in which I’ve been able to speak, but it still leaves me removed from normal society.

So what’s the point?

It’s painful seeing everyone else celebrating, going home for the holidays and looking forward to it; taking part in the festivities when I feel none of the joy or sense of merriment that they seem to. It feels as though I missed something; that I’m not trying hard enough, or doing something the wrong way. I’m looking in the window at everyone gathered around the table, sharing in each other’s company, and I can’t find the door to get in, which augments the feeling of emptiness that I have, and the loneliness.

And it didn’t always used to be this way. They say that memories aren’t enduring, but I can look back into my early childhood and recall the sense of magic that I used to feel around Christmas: The lights all around the living room, our tiny tree decked to the nines (which seemed a lot bigger then), the special candles lit, opening presents, and looking forward to receiving a new tree ornament from my parents. I remember going to church on Christmas Eve and feeling the sense of community and love all around, and that sense of being a part of something ancient and real as we lit candles and sang carols together.

But then I grew up.

We never did Santa Claus or anything like that. We knew that presents came from our parents and other family members, so there was never that belief balloon to pop. The excitement of getting presents was fun for a while, but then it gradually wore off, as most pleasures of childhood do. And then I began to notice that I was different from the rest of my family. They smiled a little easier. They joined in the fun more wholeheartedly. They loved Jesus, while I—ever like Margaret Mead—looked on in puzzlement, but all the time feeling left out, like there was something I’d missed that the others had latched onto, but I hadn’t figured out in time.

This is going to be a very different year, full of adjustments and opportunities to learn and figuring things out. I have to figure out how to handle myself around religion without turning into an iconoclastic berserker, as well as be around my religious friends. I have to find community with nontheists, and hopefully a boyfriend to boot. That’s what I really wanted for Christmas and, as usual, I was disappointed.

The ancients believed that during the solstice the sun died and was reborn. In some ways this Christmas was like that. I’m finally, truly on my own and having to find a new way to be.

It sucks being an adult.