Atheist awakening: the appeal of unbelief

Posted on May 7th, 2007

Archived in Atheists/Agnostics, Faith traditions

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In a nation in which upward of nine in 10 people regularly tell pollsters they believe in God or a divine power, unbelief is making an unexpectedly strong showing. While there are varying indications about whether or by how much the number of Americans who claim no belief is growing, the cultural profile of atheists – or secularists, humanists, rationalists, freethinkers or any of the labels that come under the heading of “nontheism” – is looming larger than ever.

In bestselling books, headline-making court cases, and even in an Off Broadway play, atheists are becoming more vocal and visible, experts say, moreso than any time since 1963, when the late atheist leader Madalyn Murray O’Hair won a landmark Supreme Court ruling barring prayer from the public schools.

Some atheists have adopted a new branding strategy by joining the “Brights,” a group that promotes a naturalistic worldview, in an effort to lighten their image. And atheist groups in 2001 founded a holiday in late December – HumanLight Day – to rival the dominant festivals of light in Christmas and Hanukkah. They have also begun observing a “National Day of Reason” on the first Thursday in May to counter the long-standing national observance of a National Day of Prayer.

This edition of ReligionLink explores the unusual phenomenon of unbelief in what has been called a “religion-mad” country.

Why it matters

Belief in God has been seen as an integral part of the American DNA, perhaps more so today than ever before. So if atheism and related forms of unbelief are multiplying, that represents a landmark step in the evolution of America’s religious history. Whatever the number of unbelievers, experts say that the increasing visibility and assertiveness of atheists in the public square and the judicial arena provide this group a potential for influence out of proportion to their actual numbers. Legal challenges to the use of the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance or the motto “In God We Trust” on U.S. currency are two well-known examples. Atheists’ growing activism is also a red flag to religious conservatives, and to many believers across the spectrum, who often see in this secularist trend a new reason to mobilize. That counterreaction gives the emergence of public atheism that much more prominence.

What’s new

  • In May 2007, the popular writer and polemicist Christopher Hitchens will publish God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, a volume that is expected to join Sam Harris’ The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason and Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion as widely cited arguments against religion and religious faith. In July 2007 InterVarsity Press will publish The Dawkins Delusion? Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine by Oxford theologian and former atheist-turned-evangelical-Christian Alister McGrath and his wife, Joanna Collicutt McGrath.
  • Thursday, May 3, marked the National Day of Reason, an observance started by nonbelievers to counter the well-established National Day of Prayer, in which thousands of Americans gather in public spaces to pray. The organization’s Web site features list of groups and individuals that support the observance, as well as a list of events in each state. This year, many atheist groups organized blood drives to highlight what they say is a rational response to illness rather than prayer, which they say has been proven to be ineffective. The New York-based Center for Atheism led the effort. Contact Jane Everhart, 212-879-2687, Jane9ev@aol.com.
  • By June, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule in Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation, a prominent secularist group that is challenging the government’s faith-based funding programs. The Roundtable on Religion & Social Welfare Policy has a primer on the case that was published shortly before the Feb. 28, 2007, oral arguments. Hein v. FFRF is the latest in a series of major legal challenges by secularist groups.
  • In March 2007, California Rep. Pete Stark, an 18-term Democrat, became the first congressman in memory to publicly identify himself as an atheist. A March 14, 2007, San Francisco Chronicle story describes Stark’s declaration, which came in response to a survey he answered for the Secular Coalition for America.

  • The Secular Coalition for America was founded in 2005 as the “only organization in the nation whose primary purpose is lobbying Congress on behalf of atheists, humanists, freethinkers, and other nontheistic Americans.” The SCA is endorsed and supported by eight secularist groups.

Organizations

ATHEIST/SECULARIST/HUMANIST ORGANIZATIONS


Nontheists tend to be highly individualistic, and perhaps because of their mistrust of institutional religion, they have rarely coalesced into organized movements. The secularist movement was especially fractured during the heyday of Madalyn Murray O’Hair, who founded American Atheists in the 1960s and led it until her death in 1995. American Atheists was one of the most prominent atheist groups, but O’Hair’s management alienated many supporters. Some of them broke off to found other groups. Since O’Hair’s death, American Atheists has recovered its footing. But there are many other similar organizations today. The Freedom From Religion Foundation, based in Madison, Wis., has become one of the leading activist groups on the nontheist scene. The Council for Secular Humanism remains one of the oldest and most established free-thought groups.

Below is a list of some of the prominent groups, most of which have state and local chapters.

American Atheists is based in New Jersey and has chapters and affiliated organizations around the country.

The Council for Secular Humanism is considered one of the leading free-thought groups. Based in Amherst, N.Y., and headed by its founder, Paul Kurtz, the CSH is an umbrella for a range of other organizations. They include the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, which includes The Skeptical Inquirer magazine, and a publishing house, Prometheus books. “Camp Inquiry” is a summer camp sponsored by the Center for Inquiry and the Commission for Scientific Medicine and Mental Health, which is “devoted to the scientific examination of unproven alternative medicine and mental health therapies.” The Center for Inquiry has a list of affiliated programs, which are active in most states.

The Secular Islam Summit is a relatively new Web-based group that aims to promote an “Islamic Enlightenment.

The Secular Coalition for America was founded in 2005 as the “only organization in the nation whose primary purpose is lobbying Congress on behalf of atheists, humanists, freethinkers, and other nontheistic Americans.” The SCA is endorsed and supported by eight secularist groups. Those groups are:

National sources

  • Victor J. Stenger is a professor emeritus of physics and astronomy at the University of Hawaii and an adjunct professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado. He is the author of God, the Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist, published in January 2007. Contact vstenger@mindspring.com.
  • Dr. Francis Collins is director of the National Human Genome Research Institute of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. Collins is a scientist who believes in God. He has explained his views in many press interviews and in his book, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. Contact 301-496-0844, fc23a@nih.gov.
  • Daniel C. Dennett is a professor of philosophy and director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University in Medford, Mass. He is the author of Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. A summary of his arguments can be found in this Jan. 20, 2006, essay, “Common-Sense Religion,” in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Contact 617-627-3297, ddennett@tufts.edu.
  • The Rev. Edward T. Oakes is a Jesuit priest who teaches theology at the University of St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein, Ill. Oakes wrote a Jan. 22, 2007, essay, “Reason and Pop Atheism,” posted on the blog of the conservative religious journal First Things. Contact 847-566-6401.
  • Susan Jacoby is the New York-based author of Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism. Contact through her literary agent, Georges Borchardt Inc., at 212-753-5785, info@susanjacoby.com.
  • William Lane Craig is a research professor in philosophy at Biola University in La Mirada, Calif. He lives in Atlanta, Ga. Craig wrote a chapter, “Theistic Critiques of Atheism,” for the Cambridge Companion to Atheism. Contact williamlanecraig@gmail.com or through his personal Web site.
  • David Hay is a scholar at the department of divinity and religious studies at King’s College, University of Aberdeen, in Scotland. He is the author of Something There: The Biology of the Human Spirit, released in March 2007. He argues that spiritual experience is on the increase and that Enlightenment skepticism of religion is harmful. Contact j.d.hay@abdn.ac.uk.
  • Alister McGrath is a former atheist and now an evangelical Christian and a theology professor at the University of Oxford’s Harris Manchester College. He is a prolific writer and public apologist for Christianity and is author of several books, including The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World and the forthcoming The Dawkins Delusion? Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine, with Joanna Collicutt McGrath. Contact alister.mcgrath@hmc.ox.ac.uk.
  • Erik J. Wielenberg is an associate professor of philosophy at DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind. He is the author of Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe, which argues that life has meaning and a moral structure even if God does not exist. Contact 765-658-6275, ewielenberg@depauw.edu.
  • Julian Baggini is a British philosopher, writer and blogger who is the author of Atheism: A Very Short Introduction. He is also the founder of the magazine and Web site The Philosophers’ Magazine. http://www.philosophersnet.com/ Contact julian@julianbaggini.com.
  • James A. Beverley is a theologian and professor of Christian thought and ethics at Tyndale University College and Seminary in Toronto. He is the author of The God Solution: A Reply to the God Delusion, due out in July 2007. Contact jbeverley@tyndale.ca.
  • Robert Altemeyer is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Manitoba. He is the co-author of Atheists: A Groundbreaking Study of America’s Nonbelievers. Contact 204-474-9276, altemey@cc.umanitoba.ca.
  • Penny Edgell is an associate professor in sociology at the University of Minnesota and lead author of the 2006 study on the social acceptance of atheists in America. Contact 612-624-9828, edgell@umn.edu.

  • Alvin Plantinga is John A. O’Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of “The Dawkins Confusion: Naturalism ad absurdum,” a review of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion in the March/April 2007 issue of Books & Culture. Contact 574-31-6254, plantinga.1@nd.edu.

  • Joan Konner is a professor emerita and dean emerita of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in New York City, and is author of The Atheist’s Bible: An Illustrious Collection of Irreverent Thoughts, which was published in June 2007. Contact jk25@columbia.edu.

Background

Atheism generally means a belief that there is no God or gods. But the term is notoriously difficult to define. Scholars say that the term in its most familiar current usage originated in the Enlightenment period in the late 18th century, when rationalists first began to identify themselves as having no belief in the divine or supernatural. The Founding Fathers of the United States were imbued with some of that worldview, and many of them professed no belief or held to a delimited role for God, such as that expressed by deism.

But scholars say that over time the country increasingly harked back to its Pilgrim traditions to revive a more overtly religious – and Christian – national character. Freethinkers such as Robert Ingersoll (d. 1899) in the 19th century and author Ayn Rand (d. 1982) and Madalyn Murray O’Hair (d. 1995) in the 20th century were prominent nonbelievers who reacted against that trend. While such secularists often had devoted followings, they remained profoundly countercultural figures.

Whether the prominence of today’s nontheism is anything more than a periodic vogue for unbelief is a matter of speculation. Many believe that the rise of religious conservatism, the political failures of President Bush and renewed debates over creationism and evolution have helped raise the profile of atheists in a way that it would not have been otherwise. The atheist movement also has been given a boost by the global focus on religiously motivated violence, which has sparked a debate about whether religion is inherently harmful. Breakthroughs in neuroscience, genetics and evolutionary biology have also sparked arguments that religious belief can be explained through science.

It is important to note that atheism or secularism of any stripe is not the same as secularization, a societal trend that is not necessarily associated with an anti-religious agenda or belief.

Wikipedia’s online article on the history of atheism is a good overview. As with any open-source material, the content should be double-checked.

POLLS
It is widely debated how many Americans could be classified under the category of unbelievers. Part of the problem has to do with defining the category. Some argue that only those who affirm that there is no God or supernatural phenomenon can be classified as true atheists. Others say the category should embrace a “soft” atheism, or forms of agnosticism, or simply indifference to religion. There are others, including religious believers, who join forces with nonbelievers in advocating for an absolute separation of church and state.

As a result of these uncertainties, the number of atheists or nontheists in the United States can range anywhere from 1 percent of the country to 10 percent or higher. The figure has been bolstered in recent decades by a number of Americans who dissociate themselves from organized religion.

Here are a number of surveys on the issue of unbelief and religious intensity:

  • The 2001 American Religious Identification Survey, which surveyed 50,000 people, put the number of Americans affiliated with “no religion” at 29.4 million, a sharp rise from the 1990 survey that had the figure of so-called “nones” at 14.3 million. The survey, which was conducted by the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, estimated that 1.9 million identified themselves as atheist or agnostic.
  • A March 2007 Newsweek poll shows that 91 percent of Americans voice a belief in God. That figure reflects a fairly constant level of belief, as indicated by this February 2003 Harris Poll showing that nine in 10 Americans believe in God.
  • A 2006 survey by researchers at the University of Minnesota found that atheists are the least accepted social group in the United States. The researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants and homosexuals, among others, in “sharing their vision of American society.” The researchers say atheists account for about 3 percent of the population. The survey was published in the April 2006 issue of the American Sociological Review. Details are available in an online news release.
  • A January 2007 Gallup Poll (subscription required) shows that 32 percent of Americans would like organized religion to have less influence, 27 percent would like it to have more, and 39 percent say that the current amount of influence is just right.
  • A February 2007 survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that nearly four in 10 Americans say they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who is “Christian,” the second most positive trait tested. Only the trait of “military service” ranked higher, at 48 percent. Moreover, 63 percent say they would be less inclined to support a presidential candidate who “does not believe in God,” which the results indicated was the most negative trait tested. Some 46 percent say that they would be less likely to vote for a “Muslim” and 30 percent say they would be less likely to vote for a “Mormon” candidate.
  • A February 2007 USA Today/Gallup Poll showed that 53 percent of Americans would be reluctant to vote for an atheist candidate for president. That was the highest negative figure in the survey, exceeding the rank for a homosexual or Mormon candidate.
  • An August 2006 Pew survey shows how divided Americans are about whether there is too much or too little religious influence in American politics and society.

BOOKS
Books arguing for and against atheism:

  • God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens (May 2007)
  • Something There: The Biology of the Human Spirit by David Hay (March 2007)
  • The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, edited by Tom Flynn (April 2007)
  • God, the Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows that God Does Not Exist by Victor J. Stenger (January 2007)
  • The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth is a series of letters to an unnamed Southern Baptist minister from Edward O. Wilson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning entomologist, pleading for secular humanists like himself and religious believers to work together to save the environment.
  • Letter to a Christian Nation and The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason, both by Sam Harris
  • The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
  • The God Solution: A Reply to the God Delusion by James A. Beverley (July 2007)
  • Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel C. Dennett
  • Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism by Susan Jacoby
  • Atheists: A Groundbreaking Study of America’s Nonbelievers by Bruce E. Hunsberger (now deceased) and Robert Altemeyer
  • The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World by Alister McGrath
  • The Dawkins Delusion? Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine (July 2007), by McGrath with his wife, Joanna Collicutt McGrath

ARTICLES
News stories about atheism:

Regional sources

IN THE NORTHEAST

  • Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor in the psychology department at Harvard University. He is the author of several books that argue that morality and religious impulses are products of the human mind. He wrote The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. Read “The Mystery of Consciousness,” a Jan. 19, 2007, essay he wrote in Time magazine. Contact 617-495-0831, pinker@wjh.harvard.edu.
  • Alan Wolfe is a professor of political science at Boston College and director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life. He can speak about the role of nonbelief in American religious life. Contact 617-552-1862, wolfe@bc.edu.
  • Harvey Cox is the Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School and a renowned author and commentator on religious issues. He is the author of The Secular City: Secularization and Urbanization in Theological Perspective. Contact 617-495-5752, harvey_cox@harvard.edu, or through his faculty assistant Carol Edwards, 617-495-4519, carol_edwards@harvard.edu.

IN THE EAST

  • H. Allen Orr is a biology professor at the University of Rochester in New York. He wrote a Jan. 11, 2007, essay, “A Mission to Convert,” in The New York Review of Books that critiqued the latest round of books on atheism. Contact 585-275-3838, aorr@mail.rochester.edu.
  • Stephen M. Barr is a theoretical particle physicist at the Bartol Research Institute of the University of Delaware and a member of the editorial board of the conservative religious periodical First Things. He writes frequently about the intersection of faith and science, often critiquing the strictly materialist point of view of many atheists. Contact 302-831-6883, smbarr@bartol.udel.edu.
  • John F. Haught is a Distinguished Professor of Theology at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and has written extensively on the relationship between scientific and religious belief. Contact 202-687-6119, haughtj@georgetown.edu.

IN THE SOUTHEAST

  • E. Brooks Holifield is a professor of American church history at the Candler School of Theology, Emory University in Atlanta. Contact 404-727-6319, eholifi@emory.edu.
  • Norman L. Geisler is a professor of Christian apologetics and co-founder of Southern Evangelical Seminary and Bible College in Matthews, N.C. He has written on secularism and humanism from a Christian point of view. Contact 704-847-5600, geislerasst@ses.edu.

IN THE SOUTH

  • Jay Geller is an assistant professor of modern Jewish culture and religious studies at the divinity school at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. He has written on atheism and modern Judaism. Contact 615-343-3968, jay.geller@vanderbilt.edu.
  • Franklyn C. Niles is an associate professor of political science at John Brown University in Siloam Springs, Ark. He wrote the atheism entry for the Encyclopedia of American Religion and Politics. Contact 479-524-7396, FNiles@jbu.edu.
  • Russell Tracey McCutcheon is a professor of religious studies at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Ala. Contact 205-348-8512, rmccutch@bama.ua.edu.

IN THE MIDWEST

  • Ronald Aronson is Distinguished Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Wayne State University in Detroit. He is a contributor to The Nation and the Times Literary Supplement and has written on the history of atheism and its current manifestations. Contact 313-577-0828, ronald.aronson@wayne.edu.
  • Bryan F. Le Beau is dean of institutional services at Kansas City Kansas Community College. He is the author of The Atheist: Madalyn Murray O’Hair. Contact 913-288-7281, blebeau@kckcc.edu.
  • Kelly James Clark is a professor of the philosophy of religion at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich. He has written about atheism in modern society, including the entry on atheism for the New Dictionary of Christian Apologetics. Contact 616-526-6421, kclark@calvin.edu.
  • Joseph Gerteis is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota and co-author of the 2006 study on the social acceptance of atheists in America. Contact 612-624-1615, gerte004@umn.edu.
  • Douglas Hartmann is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota and co-author of the 2006 study on the social acceptance of atheists in America. Contact 612-624-0835, hartm021@umn.edu.

IN THE SOUTHWEST

  • Steven Weinberg is a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Texas. He is a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics and the U.S. National Medal of Science, and is a foreign member of the Royal Society of London. Read his Jan. 17, 2007, review of Dawkins’ book in the Times Literary Supplement. Contact 512-471-4394, weinberg@physics.utexas.edu.
  • Francis J. Beckwith is an associate professor of church-state studies at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He writes and comments widely in defense of traditional Christianity. Contact 254-710-1510, Francis_Beckwith@baylor.edu.
  • George Alfred James is an associate professor in the department of philosophy and religion studies at the University of North Texas in Denton. He wrote the atheism entry for the Encyclopedia of Religion. Contact 940-565-4791, james@unt.edu.

IN THE WEST/NORTHWEST

  • David P. Barash is a professor of psychology at the University of Washington. He wrote an April 20, 2007, essay, “The DNA of Religious Faith,” in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Contact 206-543-8784, dpbarash@u.washington.edu.
  • Daniel Howard-Snyder is a professor of philosophy at Western Washington University in Bellingham. He wrote the article “Grounds for Belief in God Aside, Does Evil Make Atheism More Reasonable Than Theism?” in the journal Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion (2003). Contact 360-650-7767, daniel.howard-snyder@wwu.edu.
  • Gregory Koukl is founder and president of Stand to Reason, an organization devoted to Christian apologetics and based in Signal Hill, Calif. He is also an adjunct professor of Christian apologetics at Biola University and has written in defense of faith against the arguments of the new atheists. Contact 562-595-7333, melinda@str.org.
  • Phil Zuckerman is an associate professor of sociology at Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif. He contributed an article, “Contemporary Atheism: Rates and Patterns,” to the Cambridge Companion to Atheism. Contact 909-607-4495, phil_zuckerman@pitzer.edu.


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