What Became of Atheism, Part One: Wearing the Uniform

Metadata

Author: Freddie deBoer
Full Title: What Became of Atheism, Part One: Wearing the Uniform
Category: #articles
URL: https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/what-became-of-atheism-part-one-wearing

Highlights

This was a time when Christian conservatism was much more prevalent in the political discourse, after all. Once something gets pushed hard to one side of the debate, people who previously had absolutely no investment become fierce believers. And so in fairly short order the New Atheism debate went from an issue that orbited uncertainly around partisan politics to a site where liberals could engage in the only activity that gets them out of bed in the morning, showing their peers that the are One of the Good Ones. So “I’m not one of those vile New Atheists” became a new station on the cross for college educated professionals, and soon people were removing “atheist” from their online dating profiles. It became very costly to be associated with New Atheism at college or in liberal spaces, and since our storytelling industries like journalism are very much liberal spaces, the movement and its visibility shrunk.
it’s an issue where genuine intellectual progress seems impossible, and people got bored. You don’t really see much in the way of new facts about which to argue in the atheism debates. You just circle the same tired points.
“Of course Christianity isn’t literally true,” they would always say before excoriating arrogant atheists. What they never seemed to understand is that the “of course” was a more grievous insult to sincere Christians than Christopher Hitchens could ever come up with. What the atheists felt they needed to prove, the anti-atheists simply assumed away. They took as given that traditionally religious claims about the world were so ridiculous that they could dismiss them with a footnote. The difference is stark. Angry atheists think religion is wrong. Anti-angry atheist liberals think religion is not even wrong.
Strange to let it slip out of the debate quietly in the night. But then I suppose that’s culture war; sooner or later the only question that remains is who is on what side of the line, and all the rest dissolves. If you are masochistic enough to go in search of online spaces where atheists argue with believers you might find a notable disinterest in the question that once inflamed religious America, “Is God dead?”
But if they were less driven by contempt they may have noticed that they have won by losing. Every day religion recedes a little bit more into the background as ordinary people, religious or not, abstract religious meaning in their lives to the point where it’s hard to know how you would begin to define why the distinction between believer and nonbeliever actually matters.
But is that what the religious want for religion? That it be reduced solely to its communal function, a kind of stuffy Meetup.com that gives lonely people the impetus to shake a stranger’s hand? (Peace to you as well.) And have we fallen that far, as a society, in terms of basic community, that we have to mutually pretend to believe in ancient stories about the creation of the universe just to come together and admit that we need more friends?
Yes, religion provides psychic comfort in an unfriendly world, but it does so because it imposes sense on senselessness through the existence of one (or many) who literally determine what sense is. Yes, religion helps guide moral decisions, but it does so because it posits an entity from whom unerring moral precepts flow. Yes, religion helps rescue people from feelings of meaninglessness, but it does so because it tells people that they have a specific moral purpose that is defined by a creature of infinitely greater wisdom than ours. Yes, religion soothes the sick and elderly, but it does so because it tells them that they will soon be joined with a maker who will grant them some sort of eternal reward. You take away the supernatural element, as so many now seem eager to do, and you’re kicking two legs out from under a three-legged stool.