The atheist label - I don't really want it anymore

I have never believed in any gods. The correct term for a lack of belief in gods is atheist, and I've been happy to apply that term to myself for the past two decades. In New Zealand, Australia and most of western Europe, identifying as an atheist is not particularly problematic. Religion is no longer a major force in society and most people are not religious. Religion is generally considered a private matter, and religion or lack of it is not necessarily associated with any set of political or social beliefs.

The situation is quite different in the US. Although ironically, the US is actually officially secular, it is in practice far more religious than most western countries that are officially christian. Although the constitution guarantees freedom of religion, there are some who argue that this doesn't (or shouldn't) allow freedom from religion. Anyone who aspires to hold public office has to at least appear to be christian, and in many work settings, atheists will do themselves a disservice if they let their beliefs become publicly known. Morality is assumed by default to be solely the province of religion, and so atheists are widely distrusted, despite all evidence that shows them to be equally good citizens in every measurable respect.

So the US has (and needs) an atheism movement. It has some specific aims, such as preventing religious instruction in the form of creationism from replacing a proper science education, and preventing christians from turning their personal views on abortion and contraception into the law of the land. But it has a more general goal of just convincing the American public that atheists exist and that they are not actually evil satanists, but just nice normal people that happen not to believe in god.

The atheism movement overlaps significantly with the skepticism movement, which generally aims to promote critical thinking. Although the range of skeptical topics is wide and includes things like ghosts, bigfoot, alien abduction, homeopathy, it has traditionally not turned the critical thinking guns on religion for fear of alienating the majority of the population. Both movements have traditionally been dominated by straight white men and there is a fairly wide libertarian streak running through both. For these people, atheism is the only axis in which they are not part of the majority group in US society, and the only sphere in which they have ever experienced any discrimination.

As within any social movement, there is always disagreement about which issues are core and which tactics are best. In this case, there is also disagreement about what the ultimate goal should be. Some are of the opinion that the focus should be on atheism/religion specifically and the goal is for non-religious people to have parity with religious people, socially and legally. Anything other than preventing discrimination against atheists is out of scope.

Others believe the movement needs to go further to have any value. They contend that lacking belief in gods should have consequences, that it entails recognizing that there is no afterlife in which bad people will be properly punished for their evil. There is no heaven in which people experience bliss to make up for the suffering they had here on earth. Atheism means recognizing that this world is all there is, and relieving suffering and punishing wrongdoers has to be done here and now, by us, or it won't be done at all. This means that atheism as a movement needs to be actively promoting justice, not just in the area of religion/non-religion but fighting racism, advancing feminism and LBGT rights, reducing poverty, reducing the massive wealth inequalities and fighting the various industrial complexes that have co-opted government in the US and other countries. Basically they hold that atheism should entail a broad progressive agenda for improving society.

The straight white libertarian male contingent are aghast at the attempts to use the atheist label to promote any of these causes. They were quite comfortable being born on the high side of the tilted playing field and do not want a label they identify with used to try and level it. Feminism has been the catalyst for most of the major arguments (I think I'll deal with those issues in a separate post), and the movement has basically split into feminist and anti-feminist factions.

On the anti-feminist side are many extremely misogynist assholes who think that women's lib has gone too far and labour under the delusion that women now hold all power on society and that it is the poor men who are now being oppressed. The argument exactly mirrors that of US christians who claim persecution because their particular symbols and practices are no longer being forced on everybody, and yet those who delight in pointing out the fallacies in others, are blind when it comes to their own.

There are also many people on that side who are not actually misogynist assholes, but merely those who are so steeped in the general sexism of society that they don't see it. Because it doesn't personally disadvantage them, they've never had to think about it and so have never noticed it. Not having noticed it, they assume it doesn't exist, and therefore interpret any attempts to point it out and counter it as manufacturing drama, making mountains out of molehills and perhaps just being self-centred and spoiled and whiny. While these are mostly men, there are women in this group too.

The progressive faction briefly tried to relabel their broader aims under the banner of "atheism plus". Essentially being atheism plus social justice. However, the backlash from the other factions was so strong that anyone who publicly supported it was hounded, harassed and threatened until most of them gave up. FreeThought Blogs is basically the online bastion of this faction, with PZ Myers being the highest profile. The asshole faction has created a forum called the slymepit which is pretty much solely devoted to monitoring FTB and harassing anyone who posts there. The few times I've peeked in to see the level of discussion, I found it to be not much above the level of 4chan (in other words, about as low as you can get on the net).

It would be easy to write this group off as a bunch of inconsequential assholes, but sadly it turns out that the majority of people who are seen as "leaders" in atheism fall into either the misogynist asshole camp or the clueless sexist camp. Michael Shermer lands in the misogyist asshole square. As well as having said a few sexist things and being libertarian, he has a reputation as being sleazy and getting girls drunk to have sex with them at conferences. Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins land in clueless sexist (at least provisionally). Sam Harris thinks that critical thinking and his argumentative style aren't compatible with the "nurturing", estrogen-laden natures of women. He is also very anti-muslim and thinks we should profile based on race at airports. Richard Dawkins endorses anti-feminists, thinks that western women should shut up about sexual harassment because muslim women have it worse, that date rape is not as bad as stranger rape, and that being drunk means you are responsible for being raped. He also thinks that being sexually abused as a child is not as bad as being told about hell.

I do not want to share the atheist label with these people. Although it is still the most accurate label for my religious beliefs, it would be much easier for me to just say I'm not religious or I don't believe in god. Atheism isn't associated with any particular political or social beliefs in NZ anyway, so it isn't personally important as a label.

Part of me thinks the US atheists should just abandon the label and create a new banner to march under, where they don't have constantly apologise for the hideous actions of others marching alongside and won't have to waste time explaining that they aren't assholes like those others. They can just call themselves non-religious and pick another label for the progressive social justice movement as a whole. I'd like a useful shorthand label for a bunch of progressive social justice causes (since left-wing means something different in every country). But I also understand them not wanting to let the bullies win, wanting to reclaim the atheist label and turn it into something positive. I hope they can do it.