Atheists Mostly Aren't Jerks

Grief Without Belief, part of a
warmer, friendlier atheism.

Last Sunday, I angered some of my fellow atheists with my provocative title (“Why Atheists Are Jerks”) and my unflattering portrayal of the atheist population (too critical). Today’s post is for the people I offended. I know that it’s nearly impossible to use reason to convince someone of something they don’t want to believe, but these atheists raised a lot of points, and it’s only fair that I address them. First, though, let me rephrase the two elements of my core statement from last Sunday.

1. People in the atheist community are more argumentative than average. 

2. Let’s make the atheist community less argumentative overall. 

Now here are a couple common responses, which are opportunities for me to clarify my position.

“I’m an atheist but not in the atheist community”

My post is primarily about the atheist community in the US, which basically means people here who interact with each other and with others as atheists. There are plenty of atheists who aren’t in the community, and plenty of people who don’t believe in God but who don’t identify as atheists. My concern is with the community because it’s my community and because the people in this community give others the impression of what atheists are like. 

“Believers just think we’re jerks because their beliefs don’t hold up to our logic” 

It’s not just believers who think atheists act jerky too often. Famous atheists cause controversies with their hurtful or tone-deaf blog posts and Tweets. The people who are provoked by these atheists mostly aren’t believers. Often it’s fans of these atheists who wish that they would keep quiet. On atheist message boards, atheists go after each other in ALL CAPS over hot-button issues, such as race or Islamophobia. This year’s Atheist Alliance of America convention had such negative, anti-Christian programming that it put off some of the attendees. This negativity is real; it’s not in the imaginations of the believers. 

“There is jerky behavior in every population” 

It’s true that there’s jerky behavior in every group, but some groups have more jerky behavior than others. Consider our opposites in the New Age movement. If atheists are people who don’t intuit a mind behind the universe, then our opposites are the New Age types, who infer meaning and cosmic intentionality in every coincidence. New Age leaders aren’t known for saying inflammatory things about rape or sexual harassment on the Internet. I’m on a forum for people who get all mystical about evolution and the history of the universe, and these people fall all over each other saying nice things about each others’ work. On atheist forums, I come across as comparatively civil, but on these New Age-y forums I’m a rebel and an iconoclast. It’s true that stereotypes are false. Not every atheist acts jerky all the time. But generalizations can still be true, and on a per-capita basis the atheist community generates a lot of jerkiness. Enough jerkiness, for example, to make the community less appealing to women, on average, than to men.

“It’s important to be angry”

I can agree with that sentiment this far, that it sure feels right to be angry. It feels right down to the very bones. If you stopped being angry, that would feel like backing down or giving in. That’s what anger is for. Anger evolved to help us get up the gumption to go hurt someone, or at least to help us stare enemies down because they can see that we’re really willing to hurt them. Anger did not evolve to help us think clearly, and certainly not to help us think clearly about our enemies. People, it turns out, make their moral, political and religious decisions emotionally and then justify them rationally. So if you’re angry, the anger is influencing your perspective, a perspective whose “factory settings” already bias it in one’s own favor. Martin Luther King got a lot done. Was he angry? If you want to define him as angry, then so be it. Be angry like King was. Would King have indulged in sharing derogatory memes on the Internet? We each have a built-in bias, distorting everything we notice and remember in our own favor. In particular, we tend to exaggerate the virtues of our own “tribe” and to denigrate the virtues of other “tribes.” You’re never getting past that bias while you’re angry. You’ll never be able to objectively assess the impact of religion on world history or the historicity of Jesus if you’re driven by faith or by anger.

Anger is unpleasant. People who are less empathic presumably don’t mind anger that much, but even so none of the people locked in online forum debates are really having fun. These text-based duels are more like a compulsion than a joy. “Someone is wrong on the Internet!” Look at the angry exchanges with believers over evolution or religion, and you’ll see that nothing productive is being generated from these virtual fights. Perhaps less empathic people get stuck in online debates because they don’t mind the arguing enough to drive them completely away. You may claim a right to be angry, and you have that right, but you’re exercising that right at the expense of other atheists.

Anger also moves product. People with books to sell love to stir up the base with messages that get people angry. Talk radio knows how to do that. Politicians know how to do that. Atheist leaders are making money by churning up more anger among atheists. What if people were making money by helping us achieve focus or tranquility instead of trying to raise our bile? Here Sam Harris’s new book, Waking Up, is an interesting case, where he’s selling insight and equanimity. Can we please see more of that sort of thing?

Friendlier Atheism?

One commenter asked how to express one’s atheism without being confrontational. For general guidelines, I recommend using conversation to build connections with people rather than to one-up them. From a young age, girls learn to use conversation to create connections, and boys learn to use language to compete. We should take a page from the girls’ playbook. For example, how do you respond when someone says “God bless you”? If I said to someone “Good luck,” and their reply was to sharply inform me that they don’t believe in luck because the universe is unfolding as it should (or something), that rejoinder would not endear me to the other person. When someone says “good luck” or “God bless you,” they’re just trying to be nice, and it’s best to respond in kind. Here’s a hypothetical exchange with four different atheist responses. My advice is to use the response that will make little old ladies think that we atheists are sweet and funny.

Nice old lady: “God bless you, young man!”

Atheist: [mad face, angry voice] “How dare you assume that I subscribe to your ancient, genocidal myth?!”

Atheist: [mock solemn] “And may the Force be with you.”

Atheist: [sincere] “I don’t actually believe that invoking God will do me any good, but thanks anyway.”

Atheist: [smile] “Thanks. I’m an atheist, but I need all the help I can get!”

How do we develop a friendlier atheist community? We can try to reduce the negativity by calling out the worst behavior. Vitriol is taken for granted, and by questioning vitriol maybe we can get people to reflect on it and see it for what it is. Tribalism is bad juju for a community that sees itself as enlightened. And we can increase the positivity, finding ways to improve connections among us, both online and face-to-face. Efforts such as the Sunday Assembly (http://sundayassembly.com/) and Grief Without Belief (http://www.griefbeyondbelief.org/) are good examples of recent developments along these lines. In general we might not be the warmest, most empathic population on the planet, but we can sure do better than we’ve been doing.