2013

This year's ad ends with happy holiday cheer.

Are Atheists Softening?

It’s Christmas once again, a time of caroling, brightly wrapped gifts, holiday cheer, and anti-religious billboards from the American Atheists. True to form, they are sponsoring an animated billboard in Times Square that insults Christians and features ALL CAPS, as if yelling is the atheist idiom. But wait, it’s not that simple. The 12-second ad ends with a cheery Christmas scene and holiday wishes. The ad might lead someone to suspect that atheists are regular, reasonable people who like the holidays just like anyone else. It's a step forward from the mean-spirited billboards that AA put up two years ago. Maybe in some future Christmas they’ll set aside the negativity and insults altogether. Meanwhile on the West Coast, the Freedom From Religion Foundation has put up billboards in Sacramento featuring smiling local atheists, each with a short phrase about their beliefs or lack thereof. These images imply that atheists can be friendly and thoughtful. Could it be that atheists are learning that a little niceness can go a long way? The general public distrusts us from the start, so anything we can do to show our human side has got to pay off.

This shift in public presentation comes alongside a growing number of atheist books that have challenged the anti-religious stance of the New Atheists. Recently I’ve read three books that offer atheist perspectives on religion as an admirable human endeavor: Alain de Botton’s Religion for Atheists (2012), Christ Stedman’s Faitheist (2012), and Frans de Waal’s The Bonobo and the Atheist (2013). Without denying that religions have dark sides, these authors address their light sides. De Botton examines the valuable social organization that religion can provide and that secular groups could emulate. Stedman encourages atheists to participate in interfaith movements to help fight religious extremism. De Waal criticizes the militance of the New Atheists and asserts that religion can have emotional benefits event if its supernatural claims aren’t true or even really believed. Together, atheists like these three are offering a more broad-minded take on what atheism means. I find it a welcome change.

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AA billboards from 2011.