The trouble with atheists is not that they are wrong. After all, as
they are fond of pointing out, the existence of God is not susceptible
to proof. Occam's razor being what it is, we do not normally assume the
existence of things that have not been shown to exist. And the world's
religions have no shortage of grotesqueries, barbarities, and absurdities, from
genital cutting to symbolic cannibalism, from the insistence that the
world is a few thousand years old to the quaint and touching belief that
we will somehow carry on after our mortal bodies expire.
No, the trouble with atheists is that they are antisocial; they are all
too often cranks, weirdos, and fanatics. In my favorite book by George
Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier, he spends the first half of the book
describing in heart-wrenching detail the plight of miners in the North
of Britain in the 1930's. He spends the second half despairing of any
change because the only people who care about the issue, Britain's
Socialists, are, well, all too often cranks, weirdos, and fanatics.
Just today I read a story in the New York Times about a woman who was
suing a Florida sheriff for harassing her because she is an atheist. Of
course, she had also been arrested for public simulated sex and
possession of marijuana, neither of which may be major offenses but
neither of which has much to do with atheism. To give her her due, most
of the progress toward greater religious tolerance throughout world
history has been accomplished through the willingness of cranks,
weirdos, and fanatics to speak out, and even sometimes to be jailed,
tortured, or immolated. However, while such stands may eventually prick the
conscience of the complacent majority, they are not well calculated to
induce emulation.
Marginalization works both ways, of course. Large, complacent,
comfortable religious institutions are not likely to accept an
existential challenge to the core beliefs justifying their existence
anytime soon. And the fact is, large religious institutions are likely
to remain quite popular for the foreseeable future because they are
socially useful, performing many good works, and provide some valuable
and comforting moral instruction amidst the spiritual claptrap they
peddle. The Sermon on the Mount will always be an inspiring speech
regardless of whether one buys the claim that Jesus sits at the right
hand of the Father, or even the that there is a Father.
For those who accept the Church as socially useful, even if empirically
risible, the best hope is a continued appeal to the civil, secular,
legal tradition in the country and its generally tolerant social and
religious climate. I believe in a maximum of personal
freedom, but I also recognize that one does not need to be outrageous to
be irreligious.