Hiding Rust With Philosophy
Eileene called my attention to a web page listing someone’s 50 favorite atheist bumper sticker/t-shirt aphorisms. Being a know-it-all atheist myself, I enjoyed the list. Some were at least passably clever, others passably funny, and a healthy, visible expression of atheism is good for a society with an ugly streak of religious zealotry.
Nonetheless, I wouldn’t put any of them on my car.
My scruples here insist that almost none were healthy expressions of atheism. Oh, a couple might be all right, taken in isolation, but some of the bumper stickers were downright mean-spirited, taking their pot-shots at theists instead of at theism itself, and their callousness taints my perception of the whole list.
“WWJD—We Won. Jesus Died.”
“No God. No mullets.”
“Too stupid to understand science? Try religion.”
“Jesus saves…you from thinking for yourself.”
“Honk if your religious beliefs make you an asshole.”
“God doesn’t exist. So, I guess nobody loves you.”
Slapping that kind of stuff on the back of your car, and into the public forum, won’t do atheists or the cause of atheistic recognition in society any good. The slogans are angry and nasty, and make atheists themselves look angry and nasty, too, easy for devoted theists, or even secular church-goers to dismiss as worthy of neither attention nor respect. Yes, yes, no single atheist speaks for the lot, certainly not through a one-liner, but the general population demonstrates dubious forensic discipline, and theists perhaps still less. Why encourage the widespread sentiment that atheists are unpleasant, or feed into the belief that atheism, lacking God as a moral compass, makes people unpleasant?
More disappointing, the meaner slogans on the list are guilty of precisely the same tribalistic impulse that makes theistic politics so ugly, and fuels atheists’ indignation: they conflate theism, luddites, stupidity, child molestation, torture, poor fashion sense, and other shortcomings together in one ugly, ad hominem package. Certainly, religion has been used as justification for some very ugly behavior; it might even be said to have caused some ugly behavior, though just which unseemly acts religion caused and which ones merely used religion as a convenient excuse is a matter open to question. That doesn’t justifying attacking theism on the grounds that some believers are creeps.
“They’re all the same,” is the obvious sentiment. “Because some theists are child molesters, child molestation is a product of theism, and anyone who approves of one approves of the other.” This makes no more sense than my friend’s sentiment, about which I complained so bitterly last week, that only Jews can be humanists, nor any more sense than the bible-thumper’s equation of evolutionary theory, homosexuality, witchcraft, terrorism, and the feminist movement. Taken as a whole, the 50-slogan list aims less to embrace atheism than to draw battle lines, us against them, no middle ground, and no conduct off limits, as long as you support the guys in your camp and rubbish the others.
Theism stands on ridiculously flimsy evidence, or even no evidence at all for those who really get into the notion of faith. Insofar as one can disprove a hypothetical negative, atheism enjoys the authority of theoretical and empirical proof. Surely the silliness of a belief in an omnipotent invisible creator, true and righteous judge of all humanity, can be exposed without resorting to insulting the theists themselves. Even better targets, of course, are the bigotry and repressive impulses theists all too often embrace. These, too, are better attacked directly, without confusing the issue by bringing God into the mess. One of my favorite bumper stickers directly attacks the religious right’s hypocrisy while remaining true, polite, and spot on target: “Hatred is not a family value.”
It’s not an atheistic value, either, for that matter. If anything, atheists should be nicer than anyone else; we know there’s no father figure to save us from ourselves, so it’s all up to us.