The winds of change are blowing through the world of atheism, as it
seeks a softening of its ‘Dawkinsian’ attitude to religion and a more
inclusive approach.
ATHEISTS ARE on the march.
Census results
published last week showed there was a four-fold increase in the number
of people who said they had no religion, or were either atheist or
agnostic, between 1991 and 2011, with 277,237 people falling into this
category last year.
The figures, however, only tell part of the story.
Ireland
is seeing the emergence of a newer kind of atheist, who is anxious to
dispel the myth that they are all one-dimensional, rabidly
anti-religious Dawkinsians.
The winds of change could be seen at
last weekend’s AGM of Atheist Ireland, where delegates agreed a new
focus on promoting “an ethical society”, engaging in charity work and
social justice campaigns, and even collaborating with religious groups
on issues of common concern.
Leonie Hilliard, a Dublin-based
science graduate who joined the group a year ago, admits, “Some of my
friends are quite surprised by the charity aspect.”
Atheist Ireland has
already raised some money for microfinance projects in Africa under its
“Good Without Gods” initiative.
Plans are afoot for a registered
charity (one delegate joked that it should be called “a non-prophet
organisation”) while members are also being encouraged to take on
informal outreach work, such as visiting people in institutions “without
preaching”.
Atheism might not have a clearly defined “ethical
backbone”, says Hilliard, noting, “atheism is a belief system in the
same way that not playing football is a sport.”
However, she stresses,
it does lend itself to a number of strong moral positions, including a
“worldview of not judging people”.
She adds: “Most people involved in
the atheist movement are compassionate and want to do something good for
the community and challenge the idea that it’s all about secularising
Ireland.”
Astrid Malachewitz, who is originally from Germany but
now lives in Arklow, Co Wicklow, is similarly irked by some Irish
misperceptions about atheism.
“I don’t think atheism is a negative
movement to start with. Belief in God is replaced with belief in
science, justice and equality, and that’s a positive thing.”
She admits some Irish atheists are extremely hostile towards the Catholic Church but such bitterness is not universal.
“I
am not one of those people who say if you are a religious person you
must automatically be evil,” she says. Nor must every interaction with a
person of faith be an opportunity for point-scoring. If attending a
mass, for example, a funeral, “I don’t kneel, but I went to my nephew’s
communion and it was a wonderful day, and it was very important for me
to be there.”
While she has never been asked to be a godparent,
“as a cultural thing I’d have no problem with it”, and she finds it
amusing rather than annoying that Irish people often finish
conversations with “God bless”.
She puts it down to cultural
Catholicism, something she can fully understand: “I feel culturally
Lutheran.”
In tone at least, Malachewitz and Hilliard seem to
represent a departure from the New Atheists, the sharp-tongued, all-male
troupe of writer-activists led by Richard Dawkins.
What might be called
the newer atheists are not only more diverse but perhaps slower to
judge and quicker to turn the spotlight inwards.
Such
introspection has triggered no small amount of debate in the atheist
movement internationally, a lot of it focused on the issue of gender.
Last August, a new online forum, Atheism Plus, or A+, was launched by
Jen McCreight, a Seattle-based blogger and secularist. Backed by a
number of prominent women atheists, it seeks “a new wave of atheism”
aimed at “promoting social justice” and “working against bigotry, hatred
and discrimination”.
Her biggest concern is what she sees as
deep-rooted misogyny in the atheist community.
Whenever she speaks in a
light-hearted way about sexual issues, she says she receives obscene
propositions, while posts about feminism are usually met with abuse.
Likening
atheism to a “boys’ club”, she wrote to fellow secularists: “I don’t
feel safe as a woman in this community – and I feel less safe than I do
as a woman in science, or a woman in gaming, or hell, as a woman walking
down the f***ing sidewalk.”
McCreight was not the first woman to
make this complaint. In a notorious incident, dubbed “Elevatorgate”,
blogger Rebecca Watson alleged she received an inappropriate late-night
proposition in a lift during the World Atheist Convention in Dublin last
year.
She wrote about the episode online, drawing a critical response
from none other than Dawkins, who sarcastically contrasted her situation
with the plight of women in Islam.
McCreight spoke on the issue
on a visit to Dublin last June, describing Dawkins’s response as
“totally inappropriate”.
Because atheists “are so hyperrational and
hypersceptical”, if a woman among them says she felt harassed, “if you
don’t have photographic evidence that it happened, it never happened,”
she told an event hosted by Atheist Ireland.
Malachewitz agrees
“there is a misogynistic streak” in the broader movement, but stresses,
“on the whole I do feel welcome as a woman”.
She adds that organisations
such as Atheist Ireland have done a lot to combat prejudice, adopting a
new policy on diversity and inclusion last year, and speaking out
strongly on the issue.
Its chairman Michael Nugent says he believes the
misogyny identified “is not a specific atheist thing. It’s a societal
issue and it’s an online issue. People are willing to say things about
each other online that they would not say face-to-face.”
He is
also keen to defend Dawkins, saying, “Richard is the opposite of the
uncaring dogmatist his critics unfairly caricature him as.” He is,
rather, “a sensitive, caring man.”
But what of the new emphasis
being placed on ethics as an atheist concern?
“I would not see it as a
departure,” says Nugent. While there is a “mini-dogma” that says
“atheism only means non-belief in gods, in practice we have already
moved beyond that.”
Nugent has published a manifesto on “ethical
atheism” (it “predates Atheism Plus”, he notes) which “tries to combine
the best of our existing ideas into a set of principles”. The manifesto
seeks to promote not only “reason, critical thinking and science”, but
also “natural compassion and ethics . . . inclusive, caring atheist
groups” and “fair and just societies”.
Practising what it
preaches, Atheist Ireland has built alliances with human rights, LGBT
and women’s groups to campaign on issues such as constitutional reform.
It is now hoping to work in partnership with religious campaigners on
shared concerns such as blasphemy laws.
“Ideally I would like to
see ourselves and various religious groups taking a common stance on
people being jailed or persecuted on the basis of belief. Our problems
with the blasphemy law in Ireland pale into insignificance compared to
problems faced by religious people in Islamic countries.”
In time, such initiatives may help to change the public perception of what it means to be an atheist.
“People
feel the word atheist has a stronger assertion that it actually has,”
says Nugent. “I think people believe, firstly, atheism means you are
claiming with certainty that there are no gods and, secondly, that you
are implying your position is unbreakable, whereas every atheist I know
will say this is a position based on currently available evidence and we
may be mistaken.”
Does this represent a softening of the New
Atheist stance?
Or are Irish atheists simply becoming better understood?
One thing’s for sure, they are no longer the novelty they once were.
Malachewitz moved here 12 years ago from a country “where atheism was
never a big deal”.
“I realised Ireland had changed when my mother-in-law started quoting Christopher Hitchens.”
ATHEISTS IN IRELAND by the numbers
320 – number of atheists in 1991 census
277,237 – number of people categorised as non-religious in 2011 census (3,905 atheists, 3,521 agnostic and the remainder no religion)
10.5% – percentage of non-religious people in Galway
2.4% – percentage of non-religious people in Monaghan
14:10 – proportion of men to women in non-religious population
56% – proportion of non-religious people with a
third-level qualification (compared to national average for such a
qualification of 36 per cent)
14,769 – number of non-religious primary-school children
47% – proportion of Irish people who consider
themselves religious, as surveyed last year by pollsters affiliated to
Win-Gallup International (a drop from 69 per cent in 2005).
Source: Census 2011.
Note: “non-religious” category covers respondents who declared themselves as either atheist or agnostic, or having no religion