Lutheran author David Lose has written an article in the Huffington Post positing that atheism is “becoming a religion”. This certainly isn’t the first time this criticism (although coming from a religious individual, is it really critical?) has been raised against non-belief: Australian banana-friendly evangelist Ray Comfort, as well as countless others, has done the same.
So what is it to be a “religion” anyway? I would say there typically exist elements of dogmatism and belief in the supernatural, as well as the secularly desirable elements of community, tradition, and aesthetic themes. I’ve had discussions with people who took issue with the fact that traditional Chinese philosophies, like Confucianism and Daoism, were collectively referred to as “religions of China” in the title of a spring semester Tufts course. Lose seems to want to use the word “religion” as a pejorative term- to accuse atheists of subscribing to an institution that they, purportedly, despise. Yet, going by his reasons for making this claim, I’m not sure that prominent atheists are engaging in anything that your typical secularist would classify as undesirable.
Lose never accuses atheists of dogmatism or irrationality, which are the real objections that the nonreligious typically make against religious institutions. Rather, he notes that the tone used by atheists (specifically on comments on other Huffington Post articles) is “assertive” and “us-against-them”, something he classifies as “characteristic of new religions”. While I’d argue that such rhetoric is pretty characteristic of most religions, new and old, the way in which someone or some group of people choose to have discussions has absolutely no bearing on their ideas themselves. I can politely and calmly say that gravity doesn’t exist; that doesn’t mean someone yelling angrily the opposite has a false or misguided view. If atheists are a part of a “religion”, then their actual ideas have to match up to some definition of the word, not the way in which they say them.
Lose characterizes the recent push for more military chaplains (as accounted in the New York Times) as a “desire for spiritual sustenance”. The push for a nonreligious “chaplain”, as it is here at Tufts, is a Humanistic effort not for “spiritual sustenance” (depending on the very malleable definition) but rather for all the non-spiritual sustenance that chaplains provide: like-minded counseling, philanthropy opportunities, community building- the list goes on. Lose further notes that non-theists are more frequently identifying as “atheistic” rather than “nonreligious” in religious preference surveys. Outstanding! This is illustrative not of a tendency for atheists to subscribe to dogmatism, as the accusation of “being a religion” seems to entail; this just goes to show that the taboo placed on the word itself, “atheist”, by McCarthy-era anti-Communist sentiment is beginning to be lifted.
Lose then cites three reasons why atheism might better be described as a “religion” than as a “worldview”: the first two of which, that atheism requires faith in the existence of only the natural world. Setting aside the fact that atheism and naturalism are not necessarily synonymous (Mahayana Buddhists believe in a transcendent, non-material plane of existence), the assertion that something beyond the natural world exists, like Lose’s “dimension of existence that supersedes our physical senses”, carries with it an extraordinary burden of proof which has yet to be met by those who would profess such belief. Merely saying, as Lose does, that God lives in an extra-material dimension, and is thus incomparable to Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy and demands ardent faith in order to reject, is based upon an assumption that rejecting the supernatural is an act of ignoring observable evidence. What observable evidence has been provided to even hint that the existence of such a realm should be considered?
Lose concludes by calling for more “mutual regard and even respect” in the discourse between the atheistic and the religious. I certainly don’t disagree with this point- discussion is most effective, both in dispelling ignorance of other philosophies and in ultimately turning minds, if it is complemented by compassion and profoundness. But there is an important distinction to be made here: you can have respect for another individual without having respect for their beliefs or choices. I have many religious friends and family members who I love and respect dearly; yet where we don’t share mutual respect is in our diverging philosophies, wherein either of us would hold that the other’s are mistaken. So let’s, atheists, have respect for the religious individual, and be able to argue passionately with her yet still befriend her in the end. I’d ask the same from the other side, though: don’t incite disrespect by accusing atheism of becoming something it is not, especially if your purpose for doing so is to encourage more reasonable and considerate discussion.
