95. And on that topic: I get angry when religious believers insist that their interpretation of their religion and religious text is the right one, and that fellow believers with an opposite interpretation clearly have it wrong. I get angry when believers insist that the parts about Jesus’ prompt return and all prayers being answered are obviously not meant literally… but the parts about Hell and damnation and gay sex being an abomination, that’s real. And I get angry when believers insist that the parts about Hell and damnation and gay sex being an abomination obviously aren’t meant literally, but the parts about caring for the poor are actually what God meant. How the hell do they know which parts of the Bible/ Torah/ Koran/ Bhagavad-Gita/ whatever are the ones God really meant, and which parts aren’t? And if they don’t know, if they’re just basing it on their own moral instincts and their own perceptions of the world, then on what basis do they think that God and their sacred texts have anything to do with it at all? What reason do they have for acting as if their opinion is the same as God’s, and he’s totally backing them up on it?
96. And I get angry when believers act as if these offenses aren’t important, because “Not all believers act like that. I’m a believer, and I don’t act like that.” As if that matters. This stuff is a major way that religion plays out in our world, and it makes me furious to hear religious believers minimize it because it’s not how it happens to play out for them.
97. I’m angry that, when I wrote the piece on my blog about atheist anger, I got comments telling me, quote, “It’s a pity your mother didn’t have an abortion.” “I hope some guys bomb your house bitch.” “Just kill yourself, k?” “What you need is to get laid. Not with lesbian toys either. You need a strong man with some big junk and a strong will to set you straight.” “I fucking hate every single person who posted here, and if there were some magical button that I could press which could annihilate your collective existence in an instant, I would push it 1728 times.” “You’re a fat, ugly whore. Your anger doesn’t impress me. Go drink bleach.” I’m angry that writing my atheist opinions — angry opinions, yes, but opinions where I was careful to distinguish between criticizing behaviors and insulting people, on a blog that people are free to read or not as they like — resulted in me fearing for my safety and my life.
98. And of course, I get angry — sputteringly, inarticulately, pulse-racingly angry — when believers chide atheists for being so angry. “Why do you have to be so angry all the time?” “All that anger is so off-putting.” “If atheism is so great, then why are so many of you so angry?”
I look at all the horrors I wrote about in this book. I look at mutilated children. I look at demolished art. I look at people suffering and dying because of faith healing. I look at organized Christianity — not just the religious right, but supposedly “moderate” churches as well — interfering with AIDS prevention, getting their theology in the public schools, trying to stop me and Ingrid from getting married, protecting priests who rape children. I look at fatwas, and burqas, and 9/11, and Salman Rushdie having to go into hiding for years. I look at the caste system in India, and the religious justifications that get used to defend it. I look at girl children in Jerusalem being spat on by a mob for baring their arms.
And I look at atheists occasionally being mean-spirited and snarky in blogs and books and magazines.
And I think: Can we please have some perspective?
Do you seriously look at all of this crap I’m talking about, thousands of years of abuse and injustice, deceit and willful ignorance, brutality and exploitation — and then look at a few years of atheists being snarky on the Internet — and see them as somehow equivalent?
Or worse: Do you somehow see the snarky atheists as the bigger problem?
99. But perhaps most of all: I’m angry because this book touches on — maybe — a hundredth of everything that angers me about religion.
This book barely scratches the surface. I know, almost without a doubt, that within five minutes of it going to press, I’ll think of twenty different things I wished I’d put in. This book could easily have been titled, “200 Things That Piss Off the Godless.” “500 Things That Piss Off the Godless.” “100,000 Things That Piss Off the Godless.” I could write an entire encyclopedia on everything about religion that makes me angry… and I still wouldn’t be done.
And that seriously pisses me off.
CHAPTER TWO
Some Answers to the Questions I Know I’ll Get Asked
“But what about…”
Now that you’ve read my litany of rage, I want to answer some of the questions I know it’s going to raise. I know from experience that atheist anger makes emotions run high… and I know what most of the responses to this litany are going to be. So I want to head them off at the pass.
“Your anger is just hurting yourself.”
I must respectfully beg to differ. Anger, when it’s directed at a real cause of mistreatment or injustice, is healthy, and it can be a useful, constructive motivator to change things. Ask any therapist.
What hurts is repressing anger.
Besides, it’s not like I’m angry every second of every day. I wrote this book about some of the things I’m angry about, and that other godless people are angry about. But most of the time, I’m a pretty happy person. I’m good-tempered, cheerful, optimistic, easy to please, and inclined to give people the benefit of the doubt. My life is full of joy and pleasure and weird hobbies: I’m conscious of how fortunate I am; and I make sure to savor my life… especially since I think it’s the only one I’ve got.
Anger is just one part of my emotional makeup. And it’s not a bad part. It’s possible, even healthy, to be a happy and upbeat person, and still sometimes get angry about things.
Really, I’m fine. This book isn’t the only thing I’ve ever written; it isn’t the only thing I’m ever going to write; and it’s a little silly to think that it represents my entire philosophy of life. To assume that I, or Richard Dawkins, or PZ Myers, or any other famously “angry atheist,” is angry all the time because our angry atheist writing is the only thing people have seen from us… it makes about as much sense as assuming that the only thing Roger Ebert ever does in his entire life is go to the movies. Thank you for your concern, but it’s not necessary.
“Your anger is just hurting your cause.”
No. You’re wrong. Anger is helping our cause. Atheist anger isn’t just valid — it’s valuable, and it’s necessary.
Why?
Because anger is always necessary.
Anger has driven almost every major movement for social change. The labor movement, the civil rights movement, the women’s suffrage movement, the modern feminist movement, the gay rights movement, the anti-war movement in the Sixties, the anti-war movement today, the American Revolution itself… all of these have had, as a major driving force, a tremendous amount of anger. And that’s just in the United States. Anger has driven social change movements around the world: from the resistance in Nazi Germany to the French Revolution; from the fight against apartheid in South Africa to the fight against fascism in Spain; from the movement against Pinochet in Chile to the Arab Spring uprisings and the anti-theocracy movement in Iran today. Anger over injustice, anger over mistreatment and brutality, anger over helplessness — all of these are powerful inspirations for social change.
I mean, why else would people bother to mobilize social movements? Social movements are hard. They demand time, they demand energy, they sometimes demand serious risk of life and limb, community and career. Nobody would bother if they weren’t furious about something.
So when you tell an atheist not to be so angry, you are, in essence, telling us to disempower ourselves. You’re telling us to lay down one of the single most powerful tools we have at our disposal. You’re telling us to lay down a tool that no social change movement has ever been able to do without. You’re telling us to be polite and diplomatic, when history shows that polite diplomacy in a social change moveme
nt works far, far better when it’s coupled with passionate anger. In a battle between David and Goliath, you’re telling David to put down his slingshot and just… I don’t know. Gnaw Goliath on the ankles or something.
The belief that “anger doesn’t help your cause, anger only alienates people” is a common one. But it’s not borne out by history. Anger in a social change movement mobilizes people. It inspires people to action. It gets people off the fence. And it creates visibility for your movement, and awareness of your issues. (I’m always entertained by reporters who ask in bewildered tones, “Why are these people so angry? What do they hope to gain by it?”… when they’re featuring them on the nightly news.)
And even the social movement leaders who get tagged as non-angry, peaceful, “good cops” were often very angry indeed. Look at the quotations from Martin Luther King and Gandhi that open this book. These leaders were angry. They championed anger. They simply channeled their anger in constructive ways. Which I think is a grand idea. But acknowledging your anger, and expressing it, is a huge part of that process.
I’ll acknowledge that anger is a difficult tool in a social change movement. A dangerous one even. It can make people act rashly; it can make it harder to think clearly; it can make people treat potential allies as enemies. In the worst-case scenario, it can even lead to violence. Anger is valid, it’s valuable and necessary, pretending it doesn’t exist does way more harm than expressing it… but it can also misfire, and badly. And contrary to popular opinion, research shows that expressing anger doesn’t make people calmer and less angry. Expressing anger actually makes us angrier. So I don’t want to be cavalier about anger. I think it’s a difficult tool, and one we need to be careful with.
But unless we’re endangering or harming somebody, it is not up to believers to tell atheists when we should and should not use this tool. It is not up to believers to tell atheists that we’re going too far with the anger and need to calm down. Any more than it’s up to white people to say it to black people, or men to say it to women, or straights to say it to queers. When it comes from believers, it’s not helpful. It’s patronizing. It comes across as another attempt to defang us and shut us up. And it’s just going to make us angrier.
“Atheism is just another religion. And you’re just as close-minded / faith-based as the believers you criticize.”
No, it isn’t. And no, I’m not.
It simply isn’t the case that atheists are 100% convinced beyond any shadow of a doubt that there is no God. I’ve met hundreds of atheists — thousands, if you count the ones I’ve met on the Internet — and I’ve encountered maybe half a dozen who thought that. (And most of them back down when you press them on it.)
Contrary to popular belief, atheism isn’t an unshakeable faith in the non-existence of God. Atheism is… well, it’s different for different people. But for most atheists I know, it’s more or less the position that the God hypothesis is an extremely unlikely one, not supported by evidence or reason, and that in the absence of any convincing evidence, it’s reasonable to discard it. It’s the position that the Christian /Judaic /Muslim god is about as probable as Zeus or Thor… and that if you don’t believe in those gods, it makes sense to disbelieve in Jehovah /Yahweh /Allah as well. (And the same is true for the Hindu gods, and the Wicca Goddess, and every other god or goddess or supernatural being anyone has ever conceived of. Just while we’re at it.)
And it’s simply not true that I don’t give any reasons for my disbelief, and that I take my disbelief on faith. I’ve written extensive arguments about why I don’t believe in God, or a soul, or an afterlife. As have countless other writers, from Richard Dawkins to Julia Sweeney, Daniel Dennett to Sam Harris. Take a look at The Top Ten Reasons I Don’t Believe In God in Chapter Eight, and at the Resource Guide in Chapter Fifteen, if you want to see for yourself.
“Just because religion has done some harm doesn’t mean it’s mistaken.”
You’re absolutely right. The good or harm done by religion is irrelevant to whether or not it’s true.
It drives me up a tree when religious believers argue for religion by saying how useful it is. The argument from utility — the argument that people should believe in religion because it gives them comfort, because it makes people behave better, because it makes people happy — is absurd on the face of it. The idea of deciding what’s true based on what we want to be true is laughable. Or it would be, if it weren’t so appalling. I’ve seen this argument advanced many, many times… and it still shocks me to see otherwise intelligent, thoughtful adults making it. It’s preposterous.
But if it’s not fair for believers to argue that religion is true because it’s useful… then it’s equally unfair for atheists to argue that religion is false because it’s harmful.
I’m not doing that. These arguments — the argument about whether religion is harmful, and the one about whether religion is true — are two different arguments. They do overlap to some degree: for one thing, many religions offer, as evidence for their particular faith, the notion that people who believe it are doing better in their lives than people who don’t. And the fact that religion is mistaken makes it inherently more likely to do harm: decisions based on false assumptions are more likely to get screwed up. But basically, you’re right. Religion could be harmful, and still be true.
And I care passionately about what is and is not true.
That’s not the focus of this particular book. The main focus of this book is why religion sucks and why so many atheists are pissed off about it. But this pesky question of whether or not God exists? It’s relevant, and it’s important. So I do spend some time here making a summary of my case for atheism. My Top Ten Reasons I Don’t Believe In God can be found in Chapter Eight. (You can find a list of more exhaustive arguments against religion, by myself and other atheist writers, in the Resource Guide at the end of this book.)
“All religion isn’t like that. You’re not being fair. It’s just a few bad apples. You’re painting us all with the same brush.”
I’m not.
I’m careful in this book to say, “I’m angry at people who do (X),” or, “I get angry when (Y) happens,” or, “I’m angry about (Z).” I say that I’m angry about specific aspects of religion, specific ways it plays out in the world, specific things people do because of their religion.
But the stuff I’m angry about is not a few bad apples. I’m sorry, but that’s just flat-out wrong. Do you seriously think that 53% of Americans refusing to vote for an atheist under any circumstances is a few bad apples? A national public health and sex education policy based on unproven and unprovable religious doctrine instead of actual evidence? The Catholic Church’s policy of opposing condom distribution? The fact that until the year I was born, the law in many states said that atheists couldn’t vote or hold office or testify in court?
Those are not bad apples. That is widespread, systematic religious oppression. The stuff I’m angry about may not be universal, but it is not unusual. It’s depressingly common. The stuff in this book may not be true for you and your church, synagogue, mosque, coven, etc. If so, good for you. But it’s still important, still widespread, and still worth being angry about. And it’s totally screwed-up to dismiss it as a trivial aspect of religion, simply because it isn’t universal.
And in fact, I would argue that, even if your particular religion hasn’t done these particular things, it still causes harm. I think religion, by its very nature, is a bad idea that does significantly more harm than good. I’ll explain why, in Chapter Three: Why This Really Is Religion’s Fault.
“All believers aren’t like that. That’s not the true faith.”
You’re trying to piss me off now, aren’t you?
Okay. Deep breaths. (Calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean…)
Go back and read #94 and #95 in the Litany. The part about the “true faith” thing and how messed-up it is. The part about how nobody has a pipeline to God. The part about how you have no more reason than
anyone else to think you know what God wants. (I also get into this more in Chapter Four: “Yes, This Means You: Moderate and Progressive Religion.”)
And when it comes to Christianity specifically: I’m sorry, but the whole “Jesus was a cool guy who gets misinterpreted by those organized religion fascists” thing? It ignores the actual content of the Gospels. If you believe that the Gospels are a more or less accurate representation of what Jesus said, you have to acknowledge that this Jesus guy said some pretty screwed-up stuff. Including a whole lot of stuff about how people who didn’t believe in him and follow him were going to burn in Hell for eternity.
The thing you need to remember is this: You don’t have any more reason to think you have the true faith than any other believer does. Sure, you can quote chapter and verse — and so can people with a different interpretation of the faith. That’s the nature of chapter and verse; it can be used to support just about any interpretation you can come up with. Even if God exists, you don’t have a pipeline to him, and you don’t know what he wants any more than anyone else.
Besides, see above about the “few bad apples.” Even if the way you practice religion is reasonably cool, there are still widespread, systematic practices of religion that aren’t so cool. And even if you don’t agree with them, they still count as religion.
“How can you be so hateful? You’re speaking out against hatred… and yet you’re so full of hate yourself.”
I’m not.
In the entirety of this book, I used the word “hate” exactly three times… and it’s all in one paragraph. It’s in the paragraph that reads, “I’m angry that children get taught by religion to hate and fear their bodies and their sexuality. And I’m especially angry that female children get taught by religion to hate and fear their femaleness, and that queer children get taught by religion to hate and fear their queerness.” In this entire book, the only time I use the word “hate” (other than quotations or citations of other people) is to speak out against it.
Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless Page 4
