by Dan Riley
I have found all that I have done with secular activism to be absolutely rewarding. It has given me so much purpose in my life. It motivates me and gives me meaning. Before my activism I didn’t have a passion. I was trying to figure out what I believed in, what I stood for. I now have something to stand up for. I feel like I’ve found my niche.
V.
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Ed Beck: Greeks, God and the Marine Corps
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?”
— Epicurus
Irish Catholics tend to be both gregarious and feisty, like Ed Beck. Ed’s journey to atheism and secular activism was a gradual one. An Iraq war veteran, he was never particularly religious — Ed identifies himself as a former cultural Catholic. His life experience changed him from viewing religion first as harmless, then as an intellectual and cultural barrier to progress, and finally as downright dangerous and destructive.
After returning from Iraq and enrolling in college, Ed became impressed by the accomplishments of the historical Greeks. Their flourishing society, he found, had progressed philosophically and scientifically, only to be undermined and destroyed by dogma and superstition. The transformation that began to take place within him was, above all, invigorating: he found freedom of thought and commitment to objectivity both more fun and more honest. Everything in his life became a bit brighter.
Now that I’m telling my story, I’ll never be able to get elected. Sweet! I remember when I was a kid, the only time I would ever pray was when I was fighting with my parents. I would ask God to smite them.
Growing up, when my family went to church, my father never went. I never knew why. I found out recently that he was never a believer; I plainly never knew that. We probably went to church once a month, maybe every other month, and my mom always felt guilty about not taking me more frequently.
Catholicism was a cultural identifier for us. I was taught that if you’re Irish, you’re Catholic. You were never just Catholic. You were never just Irish. You were Irish Catholic. My grandparents were both second generation Americans; their parents were from Ireland, and they didn’t like Protestants, “those damn Orangemen.” Even though I went to church, I was never taught morality using the Bible; I never had religion held over my head. It was an identity thing, an orientation, that was all.
As I grew older, in high school, I didn’t pay much attention to religion. I thought, “It’s just a human thing, it’s probably not true wholesale, but there’s some value in it.” After high school, I joined the Marine Corps. I was stationed in Iraq and saw what religion and faith, to its fullest extent, can do to a society. In Iraq, there’s a lack of concern for the here and now, along with rife conspiratorial and supernatural thinking. That part of the world is so held behind, so hindered, because religion has such enormous influence over their culture. Secularism hasn’t really taken hold. Iraq is religiously expressive in an active way, and I frequently saw women in burkas. I couldn’t help but wonder what that country might be like if such a large portion of their citizens weren’t so concerned with the supernatural; perhaps there might be more passion to improve their country.
While I was in Iraq, I met a good friend, Jimmy, who was the first openly agnostic person I ever met. The discussions we would have were fantastic; his doubt was so enlightening to me, as apathetic as I was at the time. The conversations we would have sitting on top of our headquarters building burning down cigarettes were undoubtedly what began to open up my mind, so irreverently and so intuitively. The seeds that were planted during those chats undoubtedly led to my later ability to accept that religion was worth questioning, that it was fallible, that it wasn’t beyond reproach, and that, in total, it’s a harmful way of approaching the world and one another. From those rooftop discussions it was a cascade, one that only accelerated.
When I left the Marine Corps, in my first semester at community college, I began studying Western Civilization. My fantastic professor went to great lengths examining Greek humanism and the way in which the Greeks turned the tide of human thought. He explained how a cultural belief emerged that human beings could do good on their own, that there was inherent value and worth in being human. This was before Christ, and the Greeks progressed dramatically in philosophy and science, something that hadn’t been fully taught in my public school education. To that point, it seemed to me and to most people I knew that everything happened after the year zero, with Christianity being central to everything. The Greeks were religious to an extent, of course, but it was soap opera religion of very human deities. Greek humanism was paramount, with Greek rationality having an incredible cultural impact.
I began to realize that people simply don’t need religion or faith-addled thinking; 2,500 years ago people had created a fantastic, amazing society by relying on humanity and our abilities alone, before the onset of the dominance of religious and supernatural thinking during much of the Middle Ages, before the Dark Ages, when monotheism ran rampant. I began to believe that that idea — that humanity is capable of living prosperous, peaceful lives — is worth fighting for on its own. That concept is what turned me. I felt as though I had a clear modern distinction at that time as well, a distinction between objective rationality and the rampant faith and dogmatism of the Bush administration.
At that time I began reading two blogs, Throw Away Your TV and One Good Move. They saved me as I was falling out of any vague religious notions that I still had. They gave me ideas to cling to as I was finding my feet. I began feeling impassioned by both seeing how awful religion can be, how it does poison everything, and how much better the alternatives are. It was like an ignition — I can’t repeat that word enough. The dogmatic, supernatural, and faith-based thinking that religion encourages is bad, a combination of the worst of human cognition and psychology, both personal and social. With the information I had access to on the internet, the threat and the solutions became much clearer. I almost couldn’t help but have an activist’s view. I examined both sides of the religious argument and simply had to do something.
Losing my religion was never all that difficult personally though, I’m sure in part because my family was never really religious. In fact, it was invigorating to realize that secularism, rationality, and the scientific method and honest, doubtful philosophy are amazing ways to examine the world. It’s much more fun to appreciate science, appreciate philosophy, appreciate humanism, as haphazard as they sometimes are. Everything looked brighter to me after I began to adopt this mentality. It felt good to be intellectually honest. I love the spirit of inquisitiveness, philosophical argumentativeness, examining big questions without appeals to God, without retreating to the easy answer.
I’ve become an activist for secularism, and from my perspective, I think the movement at large needs to reconsider its tactics. I’ve learned a lot recently about the research that’s been done by Dan Kahan of Yale about the tactics of persuasion. I think it’s naïve to think that only rationality and the presentation of evidence wins people over. Simply making good arguments doesn’t change minds, our debt to the Greeks and their rationality be damned. If you want to change someone’s mind, you have to lead with emotion. Most people don’t really care whether what they believe is true or false. They care if it works for them, if it makes them feel good, if it is makes their worldview cohesive. People only care about the truthfulness of their beliefs if they’re suddenly hurt by the falsity of their convictions. If something is true but it hurts, people will deny that it’s true. If, for example, you’re talking about the problems of faith, in order to persuade people of your thinking, you should lead with examples of when faith-based thinking has led to suffering, human stories that trigger people�
��s empathy. Propagandists lead with emotion but never bother to back up their arguments with facts. They can’t. They lie. Secular activists can have both emotion and honesty, emotion and fact. We need to make sure to have our evidence and facts, but we also need to remember the importance of emotion when making our point. I don’t think that’s manipulation, I think it’s just being tactful, being honest in itself. On their own, Enlightenment principles often don’t work because people are rarely truly rational — instead people are always rationalizing. There’s no sin in recognizing that, no shame in admitting it. We’re apes!
This approach takes more effort. It takes more thinking. It takes being more respectful. It’s more like playing a symphony than it is like swinging a baseball bat. Often, secularists are lazy in arguments, especially during conversations with those on the other side who are so often blissfully wrong and lazy themselves. However, our side has to humbly understand a simple fact: to be religious and to rely on faith and dogma is just as human as being rational, being free thinking, and demanding evidence. Only one methodology, though, has proven itself to lead to correct, more productive, more predictive answers. Only one has proven itself as a good way, a successful way, of navigating the world truthfully.
Many in the secular movement don’t want to accept that we rationalists and doubters are a severe minority and that if we want to gain traction in our society, we must act with that understanding. We’re not going to get anything done unless we are wise and can build coalitions with the majority. We like to say that we’re 15-20% of the population. The hell we are. 2% to 3% of people in America will say that they’re an atheist, an agnostic, a skeptic, that they don’t believe in God. The rest of that 16%-17% nonreligious slice are deistic and New Age-y, they’re just not traditionally religious. That’s a good start, but not entirely “our side” as we like to believe.
While we have our problems, I do think that the secular movement is effective in bringing out the nonreligious, making a community, making people feel welcomed. People who are trapped in a religious family, especially high schoolers who feel trapped, are feeling better about coming out. They’re speaking up at their schools. Yet still, I think, in terms of affecting culture writ-large, the secular movement is not nearly as effective as we should be, could be, or think we are. Not even close.
Part of our collective problem is our strategy. Not long ago, I remember “Christian historian” David Barton was on The Daily Show, railing against the separation of church and state as he’s so wont to do. He began talking about how atheists are colluding to ensure that there is no faith in American public life — a claim beyond false, of course. Yet Stewart, without being taken aback or missing a beat, suggested that some people are just going to be jerks. This was such a great example of where Stewart, completely on our side regarding the separation of church and state, could not use effective language to argue against David Barton on this one issue — an issue about which Barton is both frankly wrong and clearly manipulative. The only word that Stewart needed to use was “neutrality.” Enforcing the separation of church and state by getting rid of the National Day of Prayer, by getting rid of school-sponsored prayer, is about neutrality. Simple. This is one word that works for damn near all of our issues and, if understood, it should — it will — appeal to everyone. Because we can’t get our message out effectively, we movement secularist-types are too often viewed as being as extreme as the religious right. The majority of Americans who are liberal and religious are going to make that false equivalency because we can’t control our message and our language. We’re marginalizing ourselves more than anyone else can, Fox News included.
The secular movement has to broaden itself. We have to reach back to the legacy of Greek humanism and especially the humanities, emphasizing a great respect for the liberal arts. This movement has to be about more than just science, logic, and the separation of church and state because, as wonderful as those things are, they’re not enough. We need to talk about the human tradition of literature and poetry. Nonreligious people, we need to explain, have pulled our noses from singular “holy” books and have become free to explore all books and all of life. We need to emphasize the emotion that goes hand-in-hand with such an approach to life, the terrifying and beautiful lushness of existence. We have the better way of kindling that feeling of transcendence, of discovering it, nurturing it, and expressing it. We have to emphasize the beauty and importance of doing so. We need to encourage people to keep looking as deeply as they can into their own existence, expressing wonder and amazement the whole time.
VI.
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Joe Bochinski: Consistency vs. Christianity
“Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.
Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.”
— Ephesians, 5:21-24
Peer pressure is a powerful force. In the ninth grade, in Warren, Michigan, it was Joe Bochinski’s turn to give himself to Jesus. A self-identified band geek, he, like many young teens, was searching for community. He was taken out of the crowd at a Baptist retreat and gave himself to the Lord.
His doubts grew as he began to learn about the differences between religions. Experiencing a fundamentalist megachurch for the first time — and watching his girlfriend’s father use Scripture to justify subjugating female family members — led to a crisis of faith. His education, particularly in science, led to what he describes as a liberating separation from religion. Knowledge fostered a growing self-confidence and a decreasing sense of fear. He began to consider that perhaps there is no judgmental, disapproving God watching over him.
I’ll start with my childhood. My parents weren’t particularly religious. They called themselves Catholic, but my dad’s pretty secular, and my mom doesn’t practice any religion. I was pretty much in the same boat. I called myself Catholic, but in reality, that identity was very superficial. As a child, my grandma had the biggest religious influence over my brother and me. She’s very devout. She didn’t ever push it on us, but she made an effort to take us to church as often as possible. In time, religion would come to the forefront of my life.
During high school I dated a couple of girls. One of them was devoutly religious. She was Baptist. We started dating my freshmen year of high school, and I went to her church’s youth group every Wednesday and sometimes on Sunday as well. At one point, after I’d been going to church with her for a couple of months, the church had a getaway for its teenage members. I went, and it was fun. There was a gymnasium set up with sumo suits, obstacle courses, and cool things for high school kids to do. After hours of running around and having fun, the adults brought the hundreds of students together. The tone changed dramatically. While sitting together in the bleachers, all of us listened to a sermon, and at one point, we were asked to close our eyes. The adult leaders asked everybody who hadn’t yet been saved to put up their hand. With my hand raised, I was plucked out of the crowd and taken into a one-on-one session with a pastor. The pastor started talking to me about beliefs and asked if I had any questions, and then we prayed together. I gave my life to Jesus. The pastors made me feel very excited, and it was a very positive emotional experience. Looking back, I didn’t truly realize what was going on. This getaway was a means to get converts.
I think I can understand why I was attracted to church and to religion generally. My desire to join that community was for social reasons, though I wouldn’t have said so at the time. It didn’t take much to convince me to embrace the community because I was rather naïve at the time. The church made me feel like I was a part of a group. The people were very friendly and welcoming. In high school, I was kind of a band nerd, and I didn’t fit in with most of the school. The church helped give me something that I was missing in my life.
After my first high school girlfriend an
d I broke up, I left her church, and after I started dating another girl about nine months later, I started going to services with her. She went to a big right-wing, non-denominational megachurch. They talked about politics from the pulpit, which I suspect put me on guard. I began to think critically about the messages of the church leaders. What they were preaching didn’t align with my understanding of what scientists now understand about the nature of reality.
Aside from my intellectual skepticism, I eventually found that my new girlfriend’s dad was emotionally abusive. There was a lot of yelling and fighting in their home. He used the Bible and religion to justify what he was doing to his family. In his mind, there was a breakdown in the world along gender lines. His son was the preferred child. The three women in the family, the girl I was dating and her sister, along with his wife, were secondary. He was able to sustain an abusive hierarchy because he was the sole breadwinner. That pissed me off. I had begun to see the dark side of religion and how people can use it to justify abhorrent behavior. Much later, long after we broke up, my now-former girlfriend contacted me to thank me for helping her resist her dad’s misogyny. She eventually escaped from that environment.
I continued to drift from church to church. I started talking with some of my high school friends about the religious beliefs I had learned at church. One of my friends was Protestant. I remember once we were talking about the sacrament. He mentioned that Protestants don’t actually believe that the cracker and the wine of a Catholic service literally turn into the body and blood of Jesus. I laughed it off at first and said, “Come on, nobody actually believes that. It’s symbolic.” Later, I talked with one of my other close Catholic friends and he insisted that they do, saying, “That’s actually what we believe.”
