This essay was originally published in August/September issue of Free Inquiry.
Atheists come in many flavors in the United States. Many of us enjoy criticizing theists and debunking irrationalism while popularizing science. Many other atheists prefer not talking about it. I think we are all useful to a free-thought movement because we often represent different constituencies. I’m a “big tent” atheist who welcomes all to come out of their atheist closets to help normalize free-thought in America.
One advantage to being old is having had the experience of personally witnessing history in the making. I’m happy to say, at my current age of eighty-two, I’ve been a witness!
Recalling twentieth-century public attitudes toward atheism is one vivid example. Being an atheist usually brought social disapproval, so most atheists hid their lack of religious belief even toward the end of the century.
I “knew” as a trusting child that the Hebrew Bible was God’s word. Fortunately, Jews are taught to question. After many of my biblical questions—such as “Who created God?”—went unanswered, I became an example of what Isaac Asimov later observed, “Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.”
As a youngster, I was influenced by the movie The Wizard of Oz, in which the gatekeeper tells Dorothy that nobody has ever seen the great wizard. Dorothy replies, “Then how do you know he exists?” The fictional curtain is later pulled back to reveal that the “wizard” is an elderly man operating machinery and speaking into a microphone. So, the wizard doesn’t exist, and Dorothy is on her own. That sounded to me a lot like what I was beginning to think of God.
At age sixteen in 1958, I hadn’t told anyone that I no longer believed in God, thinking I might be the only one in this country with that opinion. (No one else was professing atheism, which was just slightly more acceptable at the time than a taste for cannibalism.)
I then discovered in the public library Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not a Christian. I felt better about myself after learning that Russell was more than just not a Christian. He was as many “nots” as I was and brave enough to say so. Russell transformed the lives of many in my generation. For the first time, we heard articulate arguments that confirmed and gave voice to our own skepticism and doubts. Even some theists were led on a thoughtful journey toward altered religious views. I also learned that Russell was a logician and mathematician, which at least partially inspired me to become a mathematician.
Around that same time, I read George Orwell’s 1984. I thought the character Big Brother was an omnipotent, omniscient, eternal, authoritarian figure who demanded absolute obedience. I didn’t know at the time that Orwell was an atheist. Here’s what Orwell said about Big Brother: “In 1984, the concept of Big Brother is a parody of God. You never see him, but the fact of him is drilled into people’s minds so that they become robots, almost. Plus, if you speak badly against Big Brother, it’s a thought crime.”
Later, when I became open about my atheism, I didn’t talk about it much because I assumed that all my friends and mathematical colleagues were also atheists who didn’t talk about it, and there was nothing more to say.
That changed when I moved to Charleston, South Carolina, in 1976 to teach at the College of Charleston. When asked by colleagues about my religious views, I was honest. That was fine with my colleagues there. In 1990, I became an accidental activist atheist when I learned that the South Carolina Constitution prohibited atheists from holding public office. I knew this violated the U.S. Constitution, which disallows religious tests for public office. I challenged this illegal requirement and eventually won a South Carolina Supreme Court victory in 1997, enabling atheists to hold public office in South Carolina. The state media gave my case a lot of publicity. I then heard from people who thought they were the only atheist in South Carolina. We then formed an active local secular humanist group.
The situation for public atheism in the United States then improved significantly, largely because of best-selling books about atheism by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Susan Jacoby, and others and national organizations that were formed to provide fellowship and support for public atheists and humanists.
Several popular blogs now promote atheism and secularism. In the internet age, people hear about many worldviews, not just the one in which they were raised. Every new national survey shows a significant increase of atheists, agnostics, and others who claim no religious affiliation (called Nones). Many Nones have broken from conservative religious denominations that are anti-LGBTQ, anti-women’s rights, and anti-science. Pedophilia by clergy has also discouraged some people from maintaining their church affiliation.
There is mounting evidence that many of today’s younger generation may be leaving religion for good. Changing views about the relationship between morality and religion also appear to have convinced many young parents that religious institutions are irrelevant or unnecessary for their children.
While our community is growing rapidly, we are still severely underrepresented in politics. We need to encourage more members of our freethought community to run for public office as well as encourage elected officials to acknowledge their nonbelief. The percentage of people who say they would vote for a well-qualified atheist has steadily risen from 18 percent in 1958 to over 60 percent today.
The national Congressional Freethought Caucus works to promote secular, evidence-based public policy was formed in 2018. It includes two humanist secular members of Congress: Jared Huffman (D-CA) and Jamie Raskin (D-MD). The Congressional Freethought Caucus now has twenty-two members and continues to grow. There are also more than fifty state legislators who identify with the atheist and humanist community.
Here are some of our important political issues: protecting a strict separation of religion and government; addressing climate change; advancing human rights and civil liberties (including ending disparities in incarceration rates, fighting for easier access to vote, and supporting women’s rights and death with dignity); promoting religious freedom abroad.
We need our atheist and humanist community to become more visible and welcomed by participants in the electoral arena. I hope to live to see the day when every political party at every governmental level embraces our constituency.
And I’m glad to have lived to see the current day, when being a public atheist is just matter of fact.