Last month—in observance of my graduate-school vow to heed Nietzsche’s sage advice about building my city on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius—I wrote an essay critical of a recent study conducted by the Pew Forum.
You may recall the study in question. Among other findings, its authors concluded that atheists and agnostics were among the most religiously knowledgeable Americans.
You can read Pew’s response to my diatribe (or was it an “intervention”?) here, and my response to their demurral here. I guess it’s all done for now and I guess we’re all cool.
But for me, one important point that emerged from that little scrum concerned the accuracy of information about atheists in popular culture.
You see, for years I have been telling colleagues, students, clerical staff, physical plant workers, and guys prowling campus asking me if I’d like to sell them last semester’s textbooks, that there exist widespread popular misconceptions about atheists (to my agnostic chums: I have not forgotten you—but since you are not identical to atheists I will devote a separate post to agnosticism).
The misconceptions have been fostered by friends and foes of atheism alike. New Atheists, with all their sound and fury, have gone a long way in lobotomizing the discourse surrounding nonbelief. Religious conservatives, for their part, are quick to lose any semblance of rationality when this subject comes up.
And then there is the mass media. Journalists and magazines of opinion have scrutinized the beliefs of about half a dozen celebrity atheists and inexplicably and irresponsibly ignored the rest.
Where are the rest? Well, after spending years researching the subject, it seems awfully obvious to me that the really interesting atheists and non-atheists who study atheism are to be found in the university.
To read these scholars is to learn that countless assumptions of Pop Atheism are incorrect. I list some of these erroneous assumptions here:
1) That the term “atheist” has a clear, agreed-upon meaning
2) That there are consistent, recognizable markers of atheist identity
3) That self-described “atheists” share common assumptions about what atheism is
4) That “atheism” and “secularism” are synonyms
5) That being an atheist necessitates a relentless hostility to all forms of theism
6) That atheism and theism are radically distinct, sharing little in common epistemologically, historically and even “theologically,” if you will.
Every one of these assumptions, I repeat, is either problematic or just plain wrong. In the coming months I will try to draw your attention to scholarly research on atheism and secularism which undermines these ideas. Much of this research has been sitting on the shelves of our libraries for decades; the reluctance of Pop Atheists or journalists to confront this work is deeply disturbing.
One recent study you might want look at is Stephen Bullivant’s “Research Note: Sociology and the Study of Atheism” (Journal of Contemporary Religion 23 (2008) pp. 363-368). I need not summarize the results here, but if you do get around to reading this short article think about points 1, 2, and 3 above.
***
Dear readers: This is my first post for Brainstorm and I look forward to writing, provoking, and being provoked for a good long time. I won’t, of course, limit my posts to studies of atheism and secularism. No. I have other things on my mind. Like Philip Roth’s recent novels. Like the fine art of ruining your colleagues’ weekends with a well-timed, menacing memo. Like funny things jazz musicians have taught me. Like the non-essence of Judaism. Like the one likable thing about Washington D.C. (Hint: The Whitehurst Freeway).
I will do my best to read all your comments. Sometimes I’ll even come over the boards and comment myself, like an agitated hockey player redressing an object fired at his head. But let me stress that perceptive, funny commenters are a blogger’s best friend. So set your edge and let’s go.
19 Responses to Pop Atheism vs. Academic Atheism
wbgleason - November 15, 2010 at 11:23 am
“Who,” said the caterpillar, “who are you?”
mjohnso9 - November 15, 2010 at 7:51 pm
An excellent question…lol.
iris411 - November 16, 2010 at 8:59 am
To add to your point 1 and 2, many self-claimed atheists are actually more religious than others. A good example is Chinese president Jiang Zemin, a hard-core Marxist, the first thing he did after his inauguration was to fix his ancestor’s tombs and temples — that’s ancestor worship.
My friends who scorn all religions named their new born using some kind of traditional wacky Chinese naming system, hoping that name will bring good luck to their baby. A understandable move, but nonetheless religious and superstitious. And their baby’s name is really really purely weird :)
Also, the definition of religion goes hand in hand with the definition of atheism. American’s football is pretty much a popular religion, Charles Prebish published a book on this.
So in many sense, religion or atheism are simply labels we invented to differentiate one another in order to form some kind of illusive identity.
dank48 - November 16, 2010 at 9:00 am
Well, you seem to me off to a good start. The WP article, with Pew response, are thought-provoking.
Is it just me, or is this subject somehow overly rich with opportunity to point out something or other that the other side hasn’t read, done, written about, or otherwise dealt with? Probably it’s just me. However, the silver lining thereof seems to be that we all get reminded that the discussion is taking place between human beings and that human beings are fallible creatures. In a not quite (I think) schadenfreudig way, I find it reassuring that thinkers I admire, Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins, could come up with a suggested synonym for atheists: Brights. I’m just not sure why this is reassuring, other than proving that the brightest may sometimes be incredibly dim.
copesan - November 16, 2010 at 9:16 am
“Widespread popular misconceptions about atheists” is matched by widespread popular misconceptions about most religious belief. At least its symmetrical.
iasccrd - November 16, 2010 at 9:43 am
Dammit, don’t tell anyone about the Whitehurst Freeway!
lynnefox - November 16, 2010 at 10:17 am
I was not surprised by the results of the Pew survey, although I haven’t actually seen the questions asked.
In general, I find that atheists often have a fascination with religion and the tenets of religion. A certain puzzlement over the beliefs of others may inspire the fascination, and they don’t focus on a single belief system but are interested in many. So it follows that they may be more capable of answering “Jeopardy”-like queries about the tenets of a variety of religions or religious texts.
Purely anecdotal. Feel free to come up with your own explanation.
swish - November 16, 2010 at 10:58 am
One reason I, as an atheist, felt the need to learn at least a bit about religion (particularly Christianity) was to avoid the “if you haven’t read it, how can you be so sure that it’s wrong” argument — a fair argument, in my view. And I’m able to talk about the things I like in the New Testament, which maybe helps to keep my encounters with would-be proselytizers on a cordial basis.
dank48 - November 16, 2010 at 11:15 am
Cardinal Newman once remarked that there is more religion in one honest doubter than in a hundred unthinking believers. In today’s US society, atheism is hardly a default position. You don’t get there automatically. I know plenty of people who regard themselves as religious who know virtually nothing about their own faith’s tenets.
I don’t want to pick on any particular faith (or lack of faith), but a glaring instance of this comes to mind. Ask a dozen self-identified Catholic laypersons whether they believe in the Immaculate Conception. Of those who say yes, ask them to explain it. In my of course anecdotal experience, I’ve heard exactly one person get it right, and he taught comparative religion.
Similarly, of the fundamentalists who claim to believe in the literal truth of every word in the Bible, hardly any seem to have read it. I say this based upon the shock they express when told that the Bible includes stories of murder, incest, fornication, adultery, and so forth. And when they are told that the verses condemning homosexuality add up to 0.05% of the whole thing, one-twentieth of one percent.
But most atheists, or free-thinkers, seem to have approached the matter as Swish did. And as Swish points out, knowing what we’re talking about helps keep things calm and civil.
jacquesberlinerblau - November 16, 2010 at 11:39 am
Interesting comments (for the most part). LYNNEFOX is spot on about atheists being fascinated by religion. Too, not actually having to believe in the religious tenets does permit sober atheists to focus rather substantively on those tenets,
DANK48 points out that there are always things that we have not read (especially now as the web produces such things at a frenzied clip). I agree and for scholars it is becoming increasingly difficult to “master” a bibilography. Awfully, hard to “let go” however. . . . .
On another issue, I think the designation “Brights” was something of a PR disaster.
I concur with SWISH and I urge atheists to be open to the secular epiphany of reading religious texts and finding things within that they may find profound or insightful.
As for the Whitehurst Freeway, IASCCRED, well, first, you are very funny and second I do think it is a sort of secret if only because it actually gets you from point A to point B without having 10,000 other fellow travelers on there preventing you from getting from A to B. So let’s just keep it between ourselves!
gomiller - November 16, 2010 at 12:27 pm
I am excited to read this series.
dank48 - November 16, 2010 at 2:03 pm
So, I must have missed it. Why is the headline “Pop Atheism vs. Academic Atheism”? Does Pop Atheism mean any nonacademic atheism, i.e. the kind encountered (or not) in the real world? Ordinary Jacks and Jills who, for whatever reason, don’t believe in God or gods, by whatever name?
I’m not sure what the significance of academic atheism, outside of departments/schools of theology, might be. I have to say that the “pop” designation puts me off a bit, as if belief outside the academy were somehow related to belief inside it as popular music is to “good” music, as popular culture is to “high” culture.
Somehow, when it comes to religious belief (including nonbelief), the distinction seems less significant, even when one considers that an academic will probably be better prepared to defend one set of beliefs or attack another, or both, with reference to the literature.
It may not be particularly relevant, but I remember reading a “review” of Christopher Hitchens’s God Is Not Great by a Notre Dame academic whose name you’d recognize in a minute. The “reviewer” made it appallingly clear, even as he went on the offensive, either that he’d barely glanced at the book or that he had no qualms whatsoever about lying in print. I don’t think willingness to violate the ninth commandment invalidates whatever one may say, but it certainly didn’t seem to me to reflect well on the well-credentialed academic who was pretending to give a balanced, fair, reasonable, and to the extent possible objective account of the book.
couchmar - November 17, 2010 at 6:09 pm
“Well, after spending years researching the subject, it seems awfully obvious to me that the really interesting atheists and non-atheists who study atheism are to be found in the university.”
I would like to suggest that the debate about theism and atheism has been around for a long time and discussed by philosophers in detail, well before this recent movement. I would hope that some of your discussion takes into consideration this rather large literature. In my view the “new” atheism doesn’t appear to have really added anything to the earlier arguments on this subject, except a rather hectoring tone. Most of the points were made many years ago by the likes of David Hume, Bertrand Russell, Ernest Nagel and others. A good place to begin on this research would be the entry on Atheism, in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
jacquesberlinerblau - November 17, 2010 at 6:28 pm
Hi Couchmar:
I concur completely on the New Atheists and a writer such as Tom Flynn over at Free Inquiry was recently doubting that there was anything “new” about them as well.
In my own studies I am approaching the question a little more historically than philosophically. I have been trying to track the semantic range of the term “atheist” across time and space (starting in classical Antiquity). I will talk more about all the fascinating research I have encountered on this soon.
One point of disagreement. And I am not saying this to be polemical. I find B. Russell’s writing on the issue of atheism to be extremely thin and fairly unoriginal. His personal travails and heroism are, however, worthy of our enduring respect. As for Hume–well he is the man.
Thank you for your comment
couchmar - November 17, 2010 at 7:55 pm
Fair point about Russell. I look forward to reading more from this interesting series.
amnirov - November 17, 2010 at 9:48 pm
This is just a little too masturbatory for my taste.
hijole - November 18, 2010 at 7:54 am
As an apostate, I’ll believe in something called Christianity when the people proselytizing that faith ACTUALLY practice what they preach. When will fundamentalist and so-called mainstream Christians follow a few tenets embedded in their religious texts — look at Matthew 19:16-28.
16 Now a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?”
17 “Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, obey the commandments.”
18 “Which ones?” the man inquired.
Jesus replied, “‘Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony,
19honor your father and mother,’d and ‘love your neighbor as yourself.” ”
20“All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?”
21Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
22When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.
23Then Jesus said to his disciples, “I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.
24Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
25When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?”
26Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
27Peter answered him, “We have left everything to follow you! What then will there be for us?”
28Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
29And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or motherf or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.
30But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first.
Christians will practice the tenets of their faith when pigs fly. So please — when the pious frauds start with their hosannahs about this and that — I’m always reminded of Mencken: Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
dank48 - November 18, 2010 at 5:00 pm
Bierce, Devil’s Dictionary:
Christian n. One who believes the New Testament of the Bible to be an excellent guide to the conduct of his neighbor. One who lives according to the teachings of Jesus Christ insofar as these are not inconsistent with a life of sin.