Life Under Secularism

Pick any nation that is not secular or industrialized and compare it to one that is.

http://hdr.undp.org/en/countries

While you may find exceptions, practically speaking every nation that falls under the categories of both “secular” and “industrialized” will rank higher in terms of human progress. That means not just gross GDP but civil rights, quality of life, opportunities and so forth. Human progress means individuals are free to pursue whatever they feel makes them happy in such a way that they’re not in constant strife with their neighbors. While religion may have been a prominent part of their past it no longer has the power to compel people in these nations to be religious or to behave according to religious values. Religion is a choice, not an obligation. The most respected people in these societies are not those who wear their religion on their sleeve but people who contribute the most to their societies without needing to broadcast their religious affiliation. Religion has a largely ceremonial function in these societies and as a consequence a growing percentage of those societies identify with no religion.

People in these nations aren’t desperate. They’re not worried about where their next meal is going to come from or how they’re going to pay the bills coming due. They’re generally not worried about getting sick and losing everything because they can’t work or having to toil in a menial job until they die because there’s no way to pay the cost of living otherwise. What we’ve learned is that there’s a demonstrated correlation between inequality and religion.

https://www.russellsage.org/awarded-project/relationship-between-inequality-and-religion

The more inequality people perceive in their societies the more religious they tend to be. High inequality makes it hard for people to ignore their own plight. They can’t help but face the fact that they don’t have security in their daily lives, that a bad accident or an unexpected bill can tip them over the edge of hanging on into destitution. So they turn to anything that offers hope, even if it’s a lie. Religion feeds on fear and insecurity.

If you wish to nitpick the HDI rankings then look at others.

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/quality-of-life-rankings

https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings_by_country.jsp

https://worldinfigures.com/rankings

You may find exceptions where highly religious societies rank higher in specific indexes, but by and large the vast majority of places where it’s good to be alive are secular. That doesn’t mean religion is forbidden in these places, it means religion doesn’t dominate people’s lives. If civil rights is even remotely a concern for you then secularism is the way.

We also have contemporary research showing that religious indoctrination doesn’t promote progress:

This paper studies when religion can hamper diffusion of knowledge and economic development, and through which mechanism. I examine Catholicism in France during the Second Industrial Revolution (1870–1914). In this period, technology became skill-intensive, leading to the introduction of technical education in primary schools. I find that more religious locations had lower economic development after 1870. Schooling appears to be the key mechanism: more religious areas saw a slower adoption of the technical curriculum and a push for religious education. In turn, religious education was negatively associated with industrial development 10 to 15 years later, when schoolchildren entered the labor market.

So why does the world work this way? In part, it's because modern governments are held accountable by the people they govern. When they're not then abuses and atrocities escalate. But it's also because people have the ability to compare promises made against promises kept. When governments make promises that they don't keep, those governments ultimately fall. But religions make promises [that can't be checked, let alone kept which is what makes them uniquely harmful in ways that governments aren't.

Here is independently verifiable evidence that human progress happens in spite of religion, not because of it. The goal is not to turn the world atheist; that's a choice everyone should be free to make for themselves. The goal is to turn the world secular, so no one is coerced into a choice they don't agree with. The end result is that the demand for religion diminishes with each generation as people discover they simply don't need it.

Why do I care if religion mixes with politics?

I truly believe that religion is a personal matter, a decision we all make about what reality is and how it works. As an atheist I don't believe religion has anything valid to say on the matter based on my observations of reality versus claims religions make. But I can't force anyone to agree with me and refuse to support public policy that would criminalize religious belief or worship.

When someone tells me that they approach politics with a religious mindset I can't help but roll my eyes. This is an example of what we're talking about when we refer to beliefs informing actions: how do you expect to formulate good public policy if your foundation of truth is a fantasy? I can't stop people from voting that way but I can uphold secularism in which people are entitled to believe whatever they choose but can't use our laws to coerce compliance with religious belief.

I draw the line when people try to inject religion directly into politics. It is a direct violation of our highest laws and a bad idea in general. Politics and government are subjects that require deep analysis and careful consideration of the consequences of policy whereas religion requires you to take your brain off the hook and do as you're told. Consider for the moment the way religious belief mimics drug use. Would you trust a politician who constantly nods off on morphine or freaks out on LSD? Would you trust a drug dealer to faithfully represent the interests of his addicted customers? If not, then why would you trust a religious fanatic with the intimate workings of our government?

When Roy Moore gave a religious sermon explaining why he refused to concede his electoral loss he used religion as a weapon against his opponent and our nation. His religious language was designed to bypass his viewers' cognition and appeal directly to their id and get them to respond on instinct rather than rationality. I can't respond to that in any way except as a threat.

There are many examples of how religion is a threat to modern society and human progress but I think this is fundamental: religion encourages us to bliss out in a dopamine haze and leave the driving to someone else. I can't stop someone from choosing to partake but I can help them recover from addiction.

Revisiting the Existential Threat to Western Society

I've argued this before but the topic is still hot so I'm going to approach it from a different perspective.

Believe it or not, Muslims are not inherently bad or evil. It's one thing to challenge their claims and criticize their actions when they behave badly, but that's not what a lot of the criticism is doing. I don't like vilifying Muslims as a group for a number of reasons. One is because they're not a majority in my society the way Christians are, so it's not as easy to punch up. Were I living in Iran or Saudi Arabia that would be a different story, but that would carry its own set of problems worthy of criticism in their own right. Vilifying Muslims in a Christian-dominated society doesn't promote secularism or anti-theism so much as give shade to Christian agendas. Even if you're not intending to promote Christian supremacy, unintended consequences are still a thing. If we want a post-religious society then I strongly believe that secularism needs to be our goal, not anti-theism. When enforced correctly secularism can't be so easily subverted to promote a sectarian agenda. Anti-theists can get so caught up in focusing on a particular threat that we ignore all others.

Another reason I don't support vilifying Muslims or other minority groups is because in spite of our recent gains atheists are still a minority. If there's anything that Christians and Muslims agree on is that atheists are a threat to religion. If you think that Christian society is a valid defense against Islamic aggression what you're doing is empowering Christians to fight against ideological threats. That necessarily includes us. Speaking as an atheist, if you think that Christians won't use the power we give them to shut us down with the same zealotry they'll use against Muslims you're sorely mistaken. We are the original Other, the true existential threat to all religious agendas. We may not use violence to achieve our ends the way Christians and Muslims do, but we are no less dangerous to their goals.

Christian extremists have been looking for ways to roll back the clock on the Enlightenment, to overturn secularism and restore their religious power in Western society. We should not help them achieve their goals by undermining secularism in our zeal to oppose Muslim terrorism. It will not stop with Muslims.

So think again before you share a post from Breitbart, World Net Daily and other right-wing sources. Look to see what else they have to say about religion in general; are they just anti-Islamic in particular or do they promote secularism in general? If the latter then go ahead and share it and I'll support it when I see it. But if it's just the former then most likely they're promoting a Christian agenda and no matter how much you may hate Islam or Muslims, that's not going to help anyone who isn't a Christian. Like me.

Why Does the Chapel Hill Atrocity Matter?

It's only the second day since Craig Stephen Hicks and a lot of atheists are already tired of hearing about it. Although the police have been careful to avoid accusing Hicks of a hate crime, everyone else has been quick to leap to that judgment. Of course, rather than blame anti-Muslim sentiment everyone assumes that atheism itself acted as motivation for Hicks' crime.

We've been saying it for a while but it needs repeating: atheism doesn't inform our actions any more than not believing in unicorns informs yours. That doesn't mean religion can't be a factor in an atheist's behavior, it means that our non-belief isn't justification for action. Religion can still motivate us to react, to speak up or act in response to something that believers are doing. It can make us fear for our safety, and fearful people are more likely to lash out. History shows us several examples of this.

In 1793 French revolutionaries passed a law outlawing religion and religious belief. This anti-religious behavior added to the atrocities that history now calls the French Reign of Terror, as priests and devoutly religious people of all social and economic stations were tortured and murdered. In 1917 Russian revolutionaries formed the Soviet Union and seized all property and wealth of the elite including churches, beginning an era where religion was discouraged, suppressed or drafted to support the leadership depending on circumstances. In 1966 Mao Zedong duplicated the Soviet uprising through his "Cultural Revolution" with similar actions and results. In 1975 the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh and began a Communist dictatorship that oppressed religion and cultural minorities alike, classifying people into categories and starving or executing them as they saw fit.

Atheists will quickly point out that these actions were political, and they're correct. But the fact that religious followers were explicitly targeted can't be ignored. Atheism doesn't justify this, but humans can use any excuse to misbehave as long as we have reason to categorize people as "other." Why do I bring this up? Not to suggest that atheism is a religion or that it's just as guilty of promoting atrocities as any religion. It's to point out that even though we don't believe in any gods or follow any religion we can still rationalize our bad behavior, just as Craig Stephen Hicks did in Chapel Hill.

Human nature being what it is, we'll probably never completely excise our violent urges, and I'm not sure that we would be advised to do so. It's one thing to channel such urges into productive action, but another to remove them completely. It's not that these urges are bad in themselves, it's that allowing those urges to provoke us to bad behavior is the problem. What we need is not a lobotomy, we need to learn self-discipline. Atheism is not a cure for violence or any other bad behavior, it's just one less excuse for it. We can still find motivation through greed, fear, politics and so forth but we can't claim a divine mandate for it.

Given our tendency to rationalize our behavior I think it's in our best interests to police ourselves rigorously when someone suggests we need to kill all the Muslims or lock up all the Christians. No, it's not something that comes up often but I do see it from time to time. And when I do I'm quick to stomp on it. For one thing it's a deeply immoral thing to suggest, and for another it doesn't solve the problem. Religion spreads through indoctrination and justifies itself through fear. We can try to suppress indoctrination by force, but that simply aggravates the fear. Indoctrination goes underground and gets enhanced by fear of discovery and oppression. It didn't take long after the fall of the Soviet Union for the Russian people to return to their old religious habits, minus the aristocracy. Their reasons for clinging to religion for comfort were never taken away, in spite of the promises made by Communists. The Socialists of Western Europe offer a much better model by taking away the insecurities that drive both conflict and religious devotion.

Disavowing the Chapel Hill Murders

I've been slogging through a post taking another look at Pope Francis I as he enters his third year as the Supreme Pontiff, but the murder of three Muslim students in Chapel Hill demands a response. I disavow this act of bigotry. Violence is not justified by atheism or even anti-theism. I will happily do violence to your default assumptions about religion, but not to your body, your rights or your freedom. There is no justification for killing someone because of their religious beliefs. However, it seems that the primary motive in this case was just as petty:

Police said in a statement Wednesday morning that a dispute about parking in the neighborhood of rented condominiums may have led to the incident.

“Our preliminary investigation indicates that the crime was motivated by an ongoing neighbor dispute over parking. Hicks is cooperating with investigators,” Lt. Joshua Mecimore, a police spokesman, said.

Do I really have to express just how stupid it is to end anyone's life over parking?

Nevertheless, I don't think we can rule out religion just yet. Since this idiot has been a fairly vocal atheist the press is naturally digging into what appears to be the first major incident of "atheist violence" since Pol Pot. And I suspect there really was an element of religious bigotry involved, but if it was informed by either his atheism or his anti-theism I can't see it. Why target Muslims in a region dominated by Christians? Back in October I talked about the dangers of anti-Islamic rhetoric. I suspect this is my prediction coming true. "So let's stop pretending that Islam is the great threat of the Twenty-First Century and buying into the culture of fear that's allowing Christian extremists to undermine secularism in the West. If they succeed it's not Islam that will take over."

What to do about Islamic extremism?

If you haven't seen the news today, Islamic terrorists shot and killed 12 people at the satirical magazine company of Charlie Hebdo. Their reason why? Because the magazine dared to print a cartoon caricature of the prophet Mohammad. It's not the first time Muslim terrorists have done this sort of thing, and it won't be the last. These people don't just demand unearned respect for their beliefs, they demand submission to them. The idea of civil rights and personal freedom doesn't seem to be part of their vocabulary.

This is a problem. It sets up a conflict between the Islamic world and everyone else in which no compromise is possible, it's either us or them. So far the Western world has been relatively measured in its response, which seems ridiculous considering the widespread destruction we've inflicted on Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and more but that's us restraining ourselves. If we truly commit to all-out war with people who are a dedicated threat to us we can do much, much worse.

There are factions in the Western world who are screaming for us to do just that. The more Muslim extremists provoke us, the more likely it becomes that people will listen to those factions. More and more people are looking at the Muslim world as problems rather than partners. I sincerely hope to avoid this, but as I discussed previously there are Christian factions looking to use this as an opportunity to come to power.

What do we do? Bringing these extremists to heel is going to be costly and troublesome on our own, and the more trouble it becomes the less likely people are going to treat it as a cost-effective solution. The Muslim world needs to be convinced to police their own, and it doesn't seem likely that this is going to happen. We're not hearing from the moderates, only the fundamentalists. Only it turns out that isn't true either, Muslim moderates are standing up in protest of their own extremists and we're not being told about it. Did I mention the Christian factions? Christians can be and are just as extreme but we're not hearing about them, either. We're getting a very skewed view of extremism in the world and it's not helping our decision-making.

We really need to put an end to this nonsense. We have competing religions vying for dominance, both of whom are willing to be ruthless in their use of violence to achieve their ends. We have moderates who are interested in peaceful coexistence and power elites who clearly have an agenda in which the winner takes all. It's time for us to take power back for ourselves and reach out to other moderates interested in peace. It's time to stop glorifying the extremists on both sides and acknowledge the destruction they're causing. It's becoming another Christianity versus Islam battle because we're allowing ourselves to be manipulated into it, but we have the power to stop this. We just have to stop buying into the idea that one side or the other is right. Neither of them are.

My Atheist Agenda Revealed

I was recently accused of harboring an agenda when I talk to people about atheism. I'm not quite sure where this accusation came from; it seems that outspoken atheists are perceived as being no different from the evangelical missionaries who knock on your door or the street preachers who accost you at intersections as you go about your daily business. And yes, I do speak up about atheism, primarily when someone else brings up the topic first. Ask me a question and I'll answer. Ask me for advice and I'll show you resources that I think will help. But the thing is, I've never heard of atheists going on a door-to-door campaign to preach the good news of no gods, nor have I heard of atheist street preachers shouting their message and harassing people in public.

However, as an atheist I concede to having an agenda: it's called secularism. In a secular state everyone is free to believe or not. There is no coercion one way or another. No one is told what to believe or how to think, because everyone is free to choose their own path. If that weren't true, if I weren't willing to let people cling to god belief then I wouldn't tell them the truth. I'd tell them whatever I thought would get the job done to shatter their faith. On the religious side that's known as lying for Jesus.

I know a lot of religious activists are threatened by secularism so they misrepresent it and fight to remove it from our laws. My old church used to wax eloquent about how secularism and humanism are against God's Will and open the door to Satan's evil. As godless people, atheists become the face of the secular movement, communists who want to take away your freedoms and burn your churches. It is not and has not been true. The military dictatorships that impose communism are not secular because they take away your choice, and that is not a secular agenda.

Personally, my agenda is that I want to see the end of religion but not by force. No one should abandon religion because they have to. The Soviet-model Communists tried that and it doesn't work, as well as being an indefensible violation of human rights. I want to see people abandon religion of their own free will simply because they don't need it any longer. I want to end the inequality and ignorance that breeds the fear religion depends on to bring in followers and keep them. I want critical thinking to be at the core of the education we give our children. My agenda scares them to death because they know what will happen if we succeed. We've seen it happen peacefully in other developed countries. They don't want it to happen here in the US, not without a fight.

That's fine with me. Religious believers brought this fight and I'll finish it; not with guns, knives or fists, but with words, passion and genuine concern for my fellow human beings. They can bring their gods and I'll bring my compassion. Let's see who is left standing.

I'll tell you what you did with atheists for about 1500 years. You outlawed them from the universities or any teaching careers, besmirched their reputations, banned or burned their books or their writings of any kind, drove them into exile, humiliated them, seized their properties, arrested them for blasphemy. You dehumanised them with beatings and exquisite torture, gouged out their eyes, slit their tongues, stretched, crushed, or broke their limbs, tore off their breasts if they were women, crushed their scrotums if they were men, imprisoned them, stabbed them, disembowelled them, hanged them, burnt them alive.

And you have nerve enough to complain to me that I laugh at you.

Religious Privilege Rears Its Ugly Head Again

Christians aren't the only one who can be obnoxious about their religious privileges. Once again making the news are ultra-orthodox Jewish men who have been delaying flights between New York and Tel Aviv because they didn't like their seating arrangements.

Many Haredi Jewish communities practice strict gender segregation and refrain from touching people of the opposite gender who are not close family members.

Haredi publications in Israel generally do not print pictures of women and girls. In 2009, the Israeli newspaper Yated Ne'eman famously doctored a photograph of the Israeli cabinet in order to replace two female ministers with images of men.

In the UK, the ultra-Orthadox Jewish community in Stamford Hill, north London, was recently criticised after signs requesting women to walk on a certain side of the street were erected, promoting segregation for a Torah parade.

I think it's time for us to draw a line here. You don't like your seat assignment? Okay, let's see what's available. If nothing is available or you don't like the options, tough titties. Sit down and shut up. If you cause a disruption you're off the plane without reimbursement.

If your religious convictions make it a problem for you to travel on public transport, it's your responsibility to make alternate arrangements. Airlines like Delta allow you to make special seating arrangements, or purchase extra seats if you don't want company. You can charter your own plane or take a boat if you're headed overseas. You can take the bus or a car if not. In any case, it is not anyone else's responsibility to accommodate your bigotry. No one else should be obligated or inconvenienced by the limitations of your religion.

What Is The Great Existential Threat To Civilization?

Thanks, Bill Maher.

Lately there's been a lot of discussion about ISIS/ISIL, Islamophobia and whether or not Muslims are a threat to civilization (or at least Western civilization). It came to a head when Ben Affleck argued with Bill Maher and Sam Harris, accusing them of bigotry against all Muslims for their criticism of Islam. Some people agree with Affleck that Harris and Maher take it too far, others side with Maher and Harris that Islam is a genuine threat. Also, Christianity has been reformed which is why we don't see these problems in Christian countries. I want to come back to this in a bit.

They're all correct and they're all wrong. Islam is a threat, no doubt about it. Any religion that isn't constrained by secular law is a threat both to its own members and non-members alike. But Islam is not an existential threat to civilization. They're not going to take over the West and establish a European or North American Caliphate. Yes, liberals in Europe have taken the idea of cultural and religious tolerance too far (as I've previously observed it's self-defeating to be tolerant of intolerance). But as hard as those immigrants try to avoid assimilation they can't succeed. Living in a non-Islamic country under non-Islamic rules means that you can't stop your children from encountering non-Islamic ideas and eventually they're going to pay attention. Yes, Muslim families are probably going to outbreed us but future generations born in France and Britain are going to be French and British. The world will continue to turn.

There are steps we need to take to protect ourselves from the threat of religious invasion and domination, and we already know what those steps entail: secularization. Most sane Western nations have already implemented it to great success. It's the reason why those countries aren't under any threat of living under a theocracy, because their laws aren't dominated by religious preference. Christians can be Christian, Muslims can be Muslim and atheists can be atheist. Everyone is protected and no one gets special privilege for their beliefs.

This is how we defeat the Islamic threat: not with bombs and military action but with secularism. When people behave badly we don't bomb a village and hope we got some terrorists in the process, we do police work to identify the perpetrators and arrest them. We show the Islamic world that secularism doesn't just protect our innocent, it protects theirs as well. Islam rejected secularism a thousand years ago when their clerics took back control, but that doesn't mean it can't work again.

Secularism is the reason why people have the mistaken impression that Christianity has been reformed and isn't a threat to us the way Islam has become. No, Christianity has not been reformed, it's been leashed. Before we started instituting secular law religious authorities were brutal about purging anything they considered heresy before it could spread among the population. Men and women were murdered on the strength of nothing more than the accusation of a neighbor hoping to curry favor with the authorities or to exact revenge. Ideological purity was enforced by the priests who recognized no authority but their own, and they interacted as peers with the nobility in a mutually beneficial relationship. Is it any wonder that French Reign of Terror and the Communist uprising in Russia targeted the priesthood as enemies of the people?

Christianity has been restrained by secularism. Its priests and authority figures don't have the right to punish heresy, giving way for people to construct their own liberal interpretations of the old religion. That mighty bastion of the old guard, the Vatican, is currently playing catch-up to modern morality without ever publicly conceding that liberal interpretation is valid. How ironic is it that the current pope, bad as he is, is probably more liberal in his religious beliefs than was Martin Luther the German reformer?

What do you think would happen if we let Christianity off the leash? Do you think the liberal churches would survive very long? How long would it take before a new Inquisition or three are resurrected to root out the heresy within Christendom? Not very long. Fundamentalist Christianity is no better than Fundamentalist Islam, it just doesn't have as much slack.

So let's stop pretending that Islam is the great threat of the Twenty-First Century and buying into the culture of fear that's allowing Christian extremists to undermine secularism in the West. If they succeed it's not Islam that will take over.

The Myth of Christian Persecution in the US

A very nice Christian kindergarten teacher made a post about Christian priorities that I would find almost heartwarming if not for this poison pill right at the beginning:

Don’t get me wrong, it saddens me that a teacher can actually get fired if he or she offends someone by praying aloud or teaching scripture in a public school. It sickens me that some school systems (not mine) have taken the phrase “under God” out of their daily Pledge of Allegiance. It frustrates and sometimes angers me that other religions seem to be tolerated so quickly, yet Christianity simply will not be tolerated in some public school systems. It makes me want to cry out “What are we doing?”

This was my response to her. I hope she allows my comment to pass moderation, but I'm posting it for posterity.

I apologize for being the voice of dissent here, but I have to ask: do you truly believe that that there's some kind of War on Christianity ala Fox News? Do you really think your beliefs are under attack, that secularists are seeking to make it illegal to worship in a church or in the privacy of your own home? You claim that other religions are tolerated while your beliefs are being suppressed, but what schools are seeking to replace Christian prayer with Muslim or Hindu ones? Where are we trying to take down Bible verses in favor of those from the Koran or the Eddas?

I applaud your desire to live by your beliefs and show your conviction by walking the walk as well as talking the talk. This more than anything else is what secularists strive to achieve: where people feel free to live according to the dictates of their conscience without imposing them on others. Otherwise where does it end? It's frequently claimed that the United States is a Christian nation by virtue of the majority, but Christianity isn't a monolithic belief system. There are over forty-two thousand different sects of Christianity, many of whom directly contradict each other. Some deny the divinity of Jesus while others not only uphold the doctrine of the Trinity but the unassailable truth of predestination. Which of these doctrines should become the law of the land? Yours? Theirs? Who decides? Whomever happens to be in the majority at the moment?

The point of enforcing secular values in our schools and governments is not to suppress your beliefs. The point is to make sure that your majority beliefs do not suppress all others. You are always and have always been free to worship as you feel is right, but you were never supposed to have the freedom to make sure that others worship as you require.

Leading by example is fantastic. I utterly support this. Claiming persecution because we want to respect the right of others to follow different examples is something else entirely.