Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless

by Greta Christina

  I never once, in this entire book, say that I hate anyone. I say that I’m angry. There’s an enormous difference.

  “But the people who perpetrate religion’s harms are also being injured by it. How can you be angry at them? Where’s your compassion?”

  Yes. This is true. And it’s one of the things that makes anger about religion complicated. The people who perpetrate religion’s horrors are, for the most part, also its victims. And vice versa. The people who traumatize their young children with vivid and horrific images of Hell were, themselves, traumatized by those horrors. The religious leaders who fill their flocks with close-minded ignorance and hateful bigotry were, themselves, taught that ignorance and bigotry are divine virtues, treasured by God. The people who are warping the sexuality of their kids and teenagers, filling them with guilt and shame over normal healthy feelings, were, themselves, warped in this same way.

  This doesn’t make me less passionate about my atheist activism. It makes me more passionate.

  When I see religion as a continually self-perpetuating chain of victimization and perpetration, it makes me both angrier and more compassionate. It makes me feel more compassion for religious people — and more anger about religion. And it inspires me to work even harder to create a world without religion. It inspires me to make my arguments against religion stronger… so more people will be persuaded out of it. It inspires me to make the atheist community healthier… so more people will feel safe and welcome in it. It inspires me to make atheism more visible… so more people will see it as an option. It inspires me to make atheism persuasive, and inviting, and impossible to ignore… so more people will reconsider their religion, earlier in their lives, when there’s a better chance for the cycle to be broken.

  “People need religion. It’s not going anywhere. You’re wishing for something that’s never, ever going to happen.”

  I suppose that’s possible. I don’t think we have any way of knowing that yet. Godlessness has only fairly recently become an acceptable option in human society — and in much of the world, it still isn’t.

  But we do have one experimental Petri dish… and it shows this argument to be hogwash. I offer as a counter example: Europe.

  Many European nations are now more than half atheist /agnostic. In some cases, significantly more. And those nations are doing fine. Much better than countries with a high number of believers, in fact. According to Society without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment by Phil Zuckerman, countries with high rates of atheism tend to be the happiest and highest- functioning countries we have. Their residents score at the very top of the “happiness index,” and their societies boast some of the lowest rates of violent crime in the world, some of the lowest levels of corruption, excellent educational systems, strong economies, well-supported arts, free health care, egalitarian social policies, and more.

  And while I think the cause and effect works in the other direction — greater social health leads to more godlessness, not the other way around — the fact that there are flourishing countries with a godless majority puts the kibosh on the whole “religion is a basic human need” theory. These countries aren’t perfect, they have their problems; but no more than we do in the U.S., and in many ways a lot less. It’s pretty clear that, once basic human needs for food/ shelter/ health care/ education/ social justice are fairly well met, people lose their need for religion.

  “Why do you care what other people believe? Why can’t you just live and let live?”

  Did you read the last chapter?

  That entire chapter is an explanation of why I care. Heck, this entire book is an explanation of why I care. I care because far too many believers aren’t living and letting live. I care because people act on their beliefs. I care because people’s beliefs lead them to do terrible harm to other people, and to themselves. I care because the whole “faith trumps evidence” aspect of religion makes it uniquely resistant to self-correction… and uniquely resistant to dissent.

  Of course people are entitled to believe what they want. It’s a right guaranteed in the Constitution, and it’s a right that I treasure passionately. But nowhere in the Constitution does it say that the right to believe whatever you want means that nobody should ever argue with you or point out why they think you’re mistaken. Somehow, the very good concept of religious tolerance got turned into the very bad concept that nobody should say anything critical of any religion, ever.

  Yes, people have a right to not vote for atheists. They also have a right to not vote for blacks or women or Jews. Does that make what they’re doing okay? Does that mean we shouldn’t try to change their minds? Does that mean we shouldn’t be angry about it?

  “You’re trying to force your beliefs on me. You’re just as intolerant as the intolerant believers you’re criticizing.”

  I’m forcing my beliefs on you… how? By speaking about them? By blogging about them? By writing a book about them?

  Nowhere in this book, or anywhere in my writing, do I advocate preventing people from practicing their religious beliefs. I am a staunch, almost rabid supporter of the First Amendment… and that includes both the part about the government not establishing a religion, and the part about the government not prohibiting the free exercise thereof. In fact, many of my most gut-wrenching rages about religion are on behalf of religious believers, who face abuse and injustice and persecution at the hands of other believers with more clout.

  Yes, I oppose things like public school teachers preaching in the classroom. But that’s because I do support religious freedom — and I therefore don’t want government promoting one religion over another. That’s something religious believers often forget: Separation of church and state doesn’t just work for atheists. It works for believers. Imagine that in your town, people of a radically different faith from yours started flocking in from around the country, and within a few months they were in the majority. Would you want their god prayed to at your city council meetings? Would you want their religion taught to your kids in the public schools? Would you want their holy texts posted in your courthouse? If not — then please shut the hell up about how keeping religion out of government is a horrible form of religious repression.

  And yes, I’ll be honest: I’d like to see humanity let go of religion. I think it’s a mistaken idea about the world; I think it’s an idea that, on the whole, does more harm than good; and I’d like to see people abandon it. But I absolutely do not want that to happen by force. I would vehemently oppose any attempts to make it happen by force. And I don’t know any other atheists who want it to happen by force. I want to see it happen by persuasion.

  But please see “Why do you care what other people believe?” above. Religious tolerance is not the same as never criticizing religion, or asking hard questions about it.

  Religion has gotten a free ride in the marketplace of ideas for far too long. Religion is a hypothesis about the world: a theory of how the world works and how we should behave in it. So it’s reasonable to question it, to debate it, to point out when it doesn’t fit the evidence or doesn’t make sense. That’s not intolerance. And it’s not forcing ideas on anybody. We criticize every other kind of idea: we criticize ideas about science, politics, philosophy, medicine, art, public policy, pop culture, and who had the best Red Carpet look at the Golden Globes. Why, alone among all other ideas that humanity has come up with, does religion get to be free from criticism and questioning and mockery? Why, alone among all other ideas, does religion get a free ride in the marketplace of ideas? In an armored car? Why does it get to sell its wares behind a curtain? And why is it so terrible to hand out flyers in the market saying that the teakettles we bought from religion don’t hold water? What makes religion so different, so special, that it deserves this kid-gloves treatment?

  I have asked this question more times than I can remember, of more religious believers than I can count. And I have never once gotten a satisfactory answer. In fact, most of the time I
never get any answer at all. I’ve only gotten an answer once, from a believer who replied that historically, religious debates and differences have repeatedly turned into hatred and violent conflict, so they ought to be avoided entirely. Which actually proves my point and not his: religion is a bad idea, and humanity should abandon it.

  “What about all the good things religion has done?”

  What about them?

  Yes, Martin Luther King, Jr. Yes, Gandhi. Yes, the Catholic Workers. I’m not arguing that religion is universally and uniformly harmful and never useful for anyone, and always has been throughout history. I’m arguing that religion, on the whole, more often than not, for more people than not, does more harm than good. I’m arguing that most, if not all, of the good it gives can be gained in other ways, from other sources of community and philosophy and social support and so on. I’m arguing that, on balance, the limited good that religion provides is not worth it.

  Yes, religion has occasionally done some good. But it’s also done terrible, appalling, nightmarishly evil harm. And atheists are bloody well going to speak out about it.

  “You wouldn’t be so angry if you just accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior.”

  Now you’re definitely trying to piss me off.

  Okay. First of all, see above, about how I’m not angry every second of every day. And also about occasional anger being a healthy part of life.

  Second: Do you honestly think I’ve never heard this before? Do you think that, in over fifty years of being on this planet, and over seven years of being an atheist blogger, nobody before has ever said to me, “Everything in your life would improve if you just accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior”? Yes, I’ve read the Bible (much of it, anyway). I was a religion major in college. I’ve considered the possibility that Jesus might be my personal savior. And I’ve rejected it. The evidence supporting the “Jesus is my personal savior” hypothesis is pathetically weak at best, flat-out laughable at worst. If you don’t have any good evidence supporting this hypothesis, don’t waste my time with it. Please. Come up with something new.

  And third… do you think there are no angry Christians in the world? I see angry Christians everywhere. America is full of Christians who are full of anger — hatred, even — for homosexuals, feminists, liberals, sex educators, and so on. (In other words… for me.)

  When I wrote the blog post that this book was based on, I got comments from believers who said I shouldn’t be allowed to vote or serve on juries; that I was angry because I was a lesbo bulldyke; that they wished my mother had had an abortion and I should burn in Hell. I got a comment from a believer who told me to drink bleach. Christianity is no cure for anger. Christianity often serves to fan anger’s flame.

  “I’m an atheist — and I’m not angry about any of this. You don’t speak for me.”

  Okay.

  I don’t claim to speak every godless person on the planet. I’m mostly speaking for myself. If I’m not speaking for you, fine. I’m not pretending to.

  But I know — from the overwhelming response I got when I first blogged about this, from the overwhelming response I get when I speak on this topic — that I speak for a lot of people. The number of people who email me, or comment on my blog, or come up to me after my talks, to say, “You said exactly what I think but can’t say,” or, “I’m bookmarking this so I can link to it every time someone asks me what I’m angry about”… well, I haven’t counted them, but it’s freaking huge.

  “I’m a believer — and I’m angry about this stuff, too.”

  Good. You should be.

  I’m not trying to argue that this litany of anger is limited to the godless. Many religious believers get just as angry as atheists about religious intolerance and oppression. Some of them even more so, since the intolerant oppressive stuff makes them look bad. And that’s exactly as it should be.

  I still think you’re mistaken about this god stuff. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be allies.

  “If you’re so angry, what are you doing about it?”

  Mostly, I’m writing. I’m a writer. That’s what I do. I change people’s minds. I persuade people that religion is mistaken. I inspire people to get off the fence about their lack of belief. I give people ideas and language they can carry into their own debates with believers. I give people ideas on how to live a happy godless life. I discuss strategy for the atheist movement. I inspire atheists to come out of the closet.

  I do other things as well. I travel around the country doing public speaking about atheism. I promote other atheist writers. I strategize with other atheist activists. I donate money. I do fundraising for atheist organizations and causes. I write to my Congresspeople. I pay attention to these issues when I vote.

  But mostly, I’m writing. I’m a writer. That’s what I do.

  “I’m angry, too. What can I do about it?”

  Take a look at the resource guide at the end of this book. It lists organizations, online forums, books, blogs, activist groups, etc., where you can go to get information and join communities and take action.

  But most importantly: You can come out. You can tell your friends, your families, your co-workers, your bowling league, everyone. I said it earlier, but it’s important, and I’m going to say it again: Coming out is the single most effective political action a godless person can take. Coming out is how we counter the myths and misinformation people have about us. It’s how we become a political force to be reckoned with. It’s how we become a vocal movement that people are afraid to antagonize. It’s how we become a voting bloc. And it’s how we deny the social consent that religion relies on to perpetuate itself. The more of us who say out loud, “The Emperor has no clothes,” the easier it becomes for other atheists to speak out… and the harder it gets for believers to keep convincing themselves that they’re seeing something that isn’t there.

  If there is any way that you can take this step without screwing up your life — please, please do it. Come out, come out, wherever you are.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Why This Really Is Religion’s Fault

  “Okay,” you might be saying now. “Yes. All of that is terrible. No sane person could read that litany of rage, and think any of it was anything other than appalling. But these evils aren’t religion’s fault! People do terrible things to each other for all sorts of reasons. Greed, fear, selfishness, the hunger for power, the desire for control… all these things lead people to do evil. And people come up with all sorts of rationalizations for the terrible things they do. You can’t blame religion for all the terrible things done in its name.”

  If you’re saying that… you might be surprised to hear me say this, but I think you have a point. I ultimately don’t agree with you — but you have a serious point, and it needs to be addressed.

  I’m not saying that religion is the root of all evil. I’m not arguing that a world without religion would be a blissful Utopia where everyone holds hands and chocolate flows in the streets. (And then we all die, because the chocolate is drowning us and we can’t swim because we’re holding hands.) I don’t know of any atheist who’d argue that. I know that the impulses driving evil are deeply rooted in human nature. Religion is far from the only motivation for human evil, and it’s far from the only excuse for it.

  But I would argue that religion is unique. And I would argue that the things that make religion unique also make it uniquely capable of causing terrible harm.

  So what is it about religion — exactly — that’s so harmful? Sure, I can make a list of harms religion has done, from here to Texas. I’ve done just that, right up front in Chapter One. But that’s not enough to make my case. I could make long lists of harms done by plenty of human institutions: medicine, education, democracy. That doesn’t make them inherently malevolent.

  Why is religion special — and specially troubling? What makes religion different from any other ideology, community, system of morality, hypothesis about how the world works? And why does
that difference make it uniquely prone to causing damage?

  I don’t have ten arguments for why religion is harmful. I don’t even have 99 arguments.

  I have one.

  Everything I’ve ever written about religion’s harm boils down to one thing. It’s this:

  Religion is a belief in invisible beings, inaudible voices, intangible entities, undetectable forces, and events and judgments that happen after we die.

  It therefore has no reality check.

  And it is therefore uniquely armored against criticism, questioning, and self-correction. It is uniquely armored against anything that might stop it from spinning into extreme absurdity, extreme denial of reality… and extreme, grotesque immorality.

  I can hear the chorus already. “But not all religion is like that! Not all believers are crazy extremists! Some religions adapt to new evidence and changing social mores! It’s not fair to criticize all religion just because some believers do bad things!” I hear you. I’ll get to that, here, and in the chapters that follow. First , hear me out.

  The Proof Is Not in the Pudding

  The thing that uniquely defines religion, the thing that sets it apart from every other hypothesis or ideology or social network, is the belief in unverifiable supernatural entities. Of course it has other elements — community, charity, philosophy, inspiration for art, etc. But these exist in the secular world, too. They’re not specific to religion. The thing that uniquely defines religion is belief in supernatural entities. Without that belief, it’s not religion.