The following OpEd appeared originally as a guest column in the Yale Daily News. It has also been posted on The Huffington Post.

I walked into Commons early yesterday morning and saw blue-gray smears dotting the foreheads of a handful of my classmates. I’m embarrassed to admit that I was strangely surprised. Of course, I knew that it was Ash Wednesday. I knew that the beads and colored drinks from last night’s Feb Club party were to celebrate Mardi Gras — the last great celebration before the temperance of the Lenten season. But it still felt odd to see my classmates wear their religion so prominently on their foreheads. It was hard not to feel self-conscious on their behalf.

But I can’t say that I didn’t feel a little bit jealous, either. I’ve been an atheist since I was old enough to drive, and I don’t find the stories in the Bible any more believable now than I did when I was 16. But atheists still miss out on a comfort provided by religion — not necessarily in the beliefs per se, but in the ritual of it all.

I love Christmas far more than I have any right to, and I’d guess that I love it for the exact same reasons most Christians love it: there’s something really special about spending time with family, giving thoughtfully to those in need and those we care about and listening to nostalgic music while drinking hot cocoa by the fire with your cats (or dogs, or grandparents). I don’t see why Christianity is necessary to enjoy any of that, and I refuse to let the faithful have all the fun.

So it bothers me when other atheists are too quick to do away with the beauty religion cultivates, as if it were necessary to toss the beauty out right along with the cosmology. I think we make a mistake when we fail to distinguish the form from the content of religion. Doing away with both is like smashing a glass because we don’t like the drink inside it.

Depending on context, the exact same techniques can serve propaganda when used by fascists or public service announcements when used by our government. The form is all the same, of course. Good advertising is good advertising. But what matters is what the advertisements are about. Goebbels was an evil man, but he could sure sell a point. If we can use his talents for good, why not?

I see the practices of religion a lot like how I see advertising. If there’s one thing religions have gotten down since the Agricultural Revolution, it’s enriching the human experience through ritual. So why not borrow some of that, even if the content that currently fills it leaves something to be desired? Not that I’m comparing Christians to fascists.

Something along these lines is the premise of the writer and philosopher Alain de Botton’s upcoming book, “Religion for Atheists.” And while his ideas have been violently opposed by atheist bloggers (about as charming a group as you might expect), I actually find them pretty compelling.

So I was sitting in Commons yesterday looking around at all my classmates, and I began to think about Lent. Not about Jesus wandering through the desert for 40 days and 40 nights while being tempted by the devil, but about my Catholic friends’ yearly test of willpower, sacrifice and self-improvement. I realized that was something worth doing on its own.

I decided then that I’d take part in Lent. I’ve been mostly a vegetarian for the last two years. But the reasons I object to eating beef and chicken apply equally to drinking milk and eating eggs: I don’t necessarily object to consuming flesh per se, but rather how we treat livestock and how factory farming impacts the environment. So while I’ve been finding the transition from a vegetarian diet to a vegan diet particularly daunting, the Catholic Church provides me a perfect and relatively low pressure avenue for a brief period of self-improvement. I don’t see any reason not to try it out.

Is picking and choosing religious rituals and practices a bit irreverent and patronizing? Probably a little. Is it a potentially great way to enrich secular life? Definitely. That’s as good a reason to practice Lent as I can think of.

Vlad Chituc is a senior at Yale University, studying Psychology and Philosophy with an interest in how we form beliefs (particularly moral and religious), and an interest in metaphysics and moral philosophy on the side. He has served as the Community Service Coordinator and President of the Secular Student Alliance at Yale (formerly the Yale Humanist Society), during which he participated in the Inter-Religious Leaders Council and worked closely with the Yale Chaplain’s Office to foster relationships with liberal member s of the Yale religious community. In his spare time, Vlad enjoys listening to hipster bullshit and writing sarcastic articles and music reviews for the Yale Herald. If you want to read more of his writing, check out plaindamnfool.wordpress.com

Dear NPS readers: I’ve started up a blog of my own, which I hope you’ll check out at here. The following post originally went up yesterday, and I’ve expanded upon it a bit below. Check out the original if you want (and you know, subscribe or whatever).

Earlier this week, Cee Lo Green ruffled some feathers with his rendition of John Lennon’s “Imagine” on NBC’s New Year’s Eve with Carson Daly. He offended Beatles fans and atheists alike by changing the last line of the following verse:

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too

His replacement? “And all religion’s true.”

Personally, I don’t much care for the Beatles, so while I think the change was a bit dumb I’m not too bothered by it. On a deeper level, though, it got me thinking about what a world without religion would really be like.

Greta Christina blogged a few weeks ago about the goals of the atheist movement. She points out that a lot of the infighting seems to stem from a conflict of goals, and I think on this point she’s mostly right. She says:

Many of us don’t just want a world where believers and atheists get along and let each other practice their religion or lack thereof in peace. Many of us want a world where there’s no religion.

I wouldn’t say I’d be happy with a world where everyone did as they pleased in peace, because I’m not happy to simply say “you do you” to the fundamentalists who compare homosexuality to child molestation or bestiality. But a world where atheists and the religious can get along, because they have no legitimate complaints to raise towards the other, would I think be a better goal to strive toward. The more liberal brands of Abrahamic faiths, as well as some Eastern religions seem like they can fit in this picture just fine, and I think the interfaith work done by the Interfaith Youth Core and my buddy Chris Stedman is making good strides in that direction (though Greta may disagree).

It’s the second goal, though, that bothers me. Chris, responding to Greta in the Huffington Post, writes:

I do not think the termination of religion is an achievable goal, and I have no reason to believe it would eliminate dogmatism and totalitarianism, which I believe are the central causes of religious (and nonreligious) conflict.

And I think this is more or less spot on. Greta was off in her post a bit, I think, because I’m not so sure the fundamental disagreement is over our goals. It seems to me like the issue here is how we view religion: is it the problem, or just another institution that can, but doesn’t necessarily, reflect dogmatism and totalitarianism—the real problem? I think if you mapped those who answered the former against the latter, you’d see exactly the two conflicting sides in the atheist community (though there do seem to be some anomalies, like my co-blogger, Chelsea Link, who wrote a great and nuanced post just recently about evangelical atheists being involved in interfaith work).

So I’m imagining no religion. I’m imagining snapping my fingers and having religion disappear, and I’m not sure what I’m seeing is a better place. Maybe this is the conversation we should be having: is a world without religion, all else equal, a better world to live in? And if not, is eliminating it really a proper focus for us to have?

I’m not so sure it is.

I think it’s tempting to look at the success and well being of secular nations like Japan or Sweden, and conclude that the way to such prosperity is to get rid of religion ourselves. In fact, many recent polls show a strong negative correlation between a nation’s well being and how religious the country is. But the causal picture is almost certainly the other way around: reducing religion doesn’t increase well being, but increasing well being leads to a reduction in religion.

If a picture like this holds, then it makes just as much sense to desire an end to religion as it does to desire an end to aspirin, just because the world would be better place if we didn’t have headaches. More so, the method for this change wouldn’t be eliminating religion or telling people not to take aspirin; it’d be to relieve inequality and somehow otherwise prevent head pain.

So I think it’s important to not only seriously think about what our goals are and why we should pursue them, but of what methods are best appropriate, as well. If the goal of eliminating religion is grounded in making the world a better place, how best to go about it should give us pause. Too frequently I read vague references to other civil rights struggles paired with platitudes like “it takes both kinds” of activism, as if that somehow justify whatever tactics “firebrands” want to use to eliminate religion (which isn’t to say there’s no place for being a firebrand, though I’m generally unmoved by the firebrand/diplomat dichotomy).

If firebrands really think eliminating religion is an appropriate and plausible goal to pursue, they still need to consider what methods will work best.  And we already have a good idea of what does: working towards women’s rights, alleviating poverty, increasing education, and raising general well being. Frankly, we have no idea whether writ large criticisms of religion as a monolithic entity are effective, and I have serious doubts that  they are.

If nothing else, I think it’s important to take a step back and seriously think about our goals, why we have them, and whether what we’re doing is really working towards those goals. It’s not hard at all to look at history and find reasons to be frustrated by religion, but we shouldn’t try to rationalize behavior that makes us feel better while achieving little else.

Vlad Chituc is a senior at Yale University, studying Psychology and Philosophy with an interest in how we form beliefs (particularly moral and religious), and an interest in metaphysics and moral philosophy on the side. He has served as the Community Service Coordinator and President of the Secular Student Alliance at Yale (formerly the Yale Humanist Society), during which he participated in the Inter-Religious Leaders Council and worked closely with the Yale Chaplain’s Office to foster relationships with liberal member s of the Yale religious community. In his spare time, Vlad enjoys listening to hipster bullshit and writing sarcastic articles and music reviews for the Yale Herald. If you want to read more of his writing, check out plaindamnfool.wordpress.com

After turning in my final application for graduate school last Thursday, a few friends and I went to a bar to celebrate. Fifteen minutes into my first drink, a buddy of mine showed me what had popped up on his Facebook feed: the Vanity Fair obituary for Christopher Hitchens. All of us, ardent atheist or not, had been influenced by his work, and the next hour was draped with shock and melancholy. But it wasn’t long until the night turned from sadness to celebration—of his work, of his life, and of his memory.  We spent the night and early morning drinking, laughing, and watching classic videos of Hitch in his honor.

Hitchens wasn’t right about everything, but he was a heavyweight and a hero. The world became a worse place last Thursday night.

So good night, sweet prince. You’ll be missed.

Vlad Chituc is a senior at Yale University, studying Psychology and Philosophy with an interest in how we form beliefs (particularly moral and religious), and an interest in metaphysics and moral philosophy on the side. He has served as the Community Service Coordinator and President of the Secular Student Alliance at Yale (formerly the Yale Humanist Society), during which he participated in the Inter-Religious Leaders Council and worked closely with the Yale Chaplain’s Office to foster relationships with liberal member s of the Yale religious community. In his spare time, Vlad enjoys listening to hipster bullshit and writing sarcastic articles and music reviews for the Yale Herald.

Vlad Chituc’s column, When Atheists Get It Wrong, is intended to critically examine bad claims and arguments, not to tear down their author or damage atheism writ large, but to critically assess those arguments and positions to build up better, more accurate ones, in order to promote a stronger atheist movement. As a reminder, the views of this blog post do not necessarily represent those of Chris Stedman, the other NPS panelists, or any of the organizations with which they affiliate.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the atheist movement can turn into a petty crowd that’s particularly prone to infighting. This year alone, we’ve been at each other’s throats about elevator etiquette, responding to sexism, gelato, and now most recently, poorly written rants from higher-ups in American Atheists and responses thereof. (I won’t link to any of the offending material. Either you know what I’m talking about or should feel lucky that you don’t.)

These criticisms we throw at one another bother me. For those waiting to prematurely call out “concern troll,” I’m not going talk about our tone or subject matter. And I’m not bothered by disagreement or strongly worded blog posts. That’s fine. Open marketplace of ideas and all that.

I’m not going to shoot platitudes about how there are people behind these blog posts. I’m not going to play the sappy humanist and wax poetically about the intrinsic value and dignity of everyone (I’ll leave that to Chris). I’m not even going to tell you not to be a dick.

I’m just asking we apply our own standards for sound beliefs to our beliefs about one another.

For some reason I don’t quite understand, it looks like JT Eberhardt has a grudge against Chris Stedman, and it’s come out in another blog post. Before I get started, I should mention that Chris started NonProphet Status, he’s hip as fuck, and he’s a friend of mine. I’d like to think these bias only how strongly I feel about this, and not necessarily my judgment on these issues.

I don’t particularly want to talk about the substance of JT’s post, because frankly there isn’t a whole lot to address and the charges he throws at Chris just don’t apply.  If you want a rebuttal, my friend Conrad addressed the specifics of the post much better than I could have anyway.

But the post is showing a trend that bothers me. JT first took a dig at Chris a few months ago. JT says, practically out of nowhere, that “[t]here are people in the world like Chris Stedman who think the way to get religious people to like us is to watch the intellectual poison in others and do nothing (or even nurture it).” Just in case you were wondering, Chris doesn’t think that, and if anyone wants to maintain that he does, please link to a quote supporting as much in the comments.

JT, in justifying his dig, made another post about a week later. Since I’m trying to be as transparent as possible in this post, JT and I got into a bit of a tiff after he posted this. I mentioned on a mutual friend’s link to the post, that no where in the few thousands of words that he wrote, did he do anything to justify his claim that the entire post was built on: that Chris holds religious beliefs to be above criticism.

Again, Chris doesn’t think this. He’s never done anything to suggest that he thinks this. And again, if there are quotes or links that imply otherwise, please help me change my mind.

This latest post of JT’s only continues the trend. He titles his post “Defending Horrors to Build Bridges.” It’s cute, but I don’t see anything in the post, or in what Chris has written, that entails defending any horrors.

My request is simple: if you’re going to make a claim about what people believe, back it up. I don’t think it’s too unreasonable to ask. Middle school students can do this when writing English papers; we grown adults can do it when addressing one another on the internet. If hearsay doesn’t stand for historical accounts of Jesus, it shouldn’t stand to condemn anyone.

JT talks a lot about reason with a capital r. I’ve never found the concept particularly useful or even meaningful, but how would someone listening to Reason make claims about Chris? How would someone listening to Reason react to what JT has said? Should we listen to caricatures and unjustified claims, or take Chris’ writing at face value?

JT’s most recent post has gotten some attention, a lot of it negative. This doesn’t much surprise me, because I see it as little more than unjustified bullying and character assassination.

But mere hours later, a non-sequitor dig at Chris appeared on PZ Myers’ blog, in a post about calling out pseudoscience in medicine (something I’m delighted to see). PZ says, again, out of nowhere:

What is it with these woomeisters? Christopher Maloney,Burzynski, it’s a sure sign that you’re dealing with a delusional dingleberry when their reflex response to any criticism is to go running to the lawyers or start harrassing people’s employers to silence those who dare to question their methods (I’ve been hearing similar things about Chris Stedman lately, which doesn’t surprise me).

I’m hesitant to speculate, but PZ and JT blog at the same website. If the implication in PZ’s unfounded dig, the new heading at the top of JT’s post distancing his views from the SSA, as well as a comment JT left on Conrad’s post above, saying “I know I promised a response. I will regrettably be unable to render one,” is that Chris is going to somehow be held responsible for silencing JT, then I’m going to need a better reason to believe it than hearsay and dogmatism at its worst.

Chris has assured me he’s done no such thing. So if it’s hearsay on both sides, I think we all know where the default position falls. I don’t see how someone who values Reason and beliefs based on evidence could take such a claim seriously, let alone make as serious an accusation like PZ has.

So allow me to publicly and formally ask PZ to either retract his statement and apologize, or provide some evidence to back up his claim.

And full disclosure: Months ago, I complained to the SSA about JT. Not because of anything to do with Chris, let alone what Chris has asked me to do, but because I believe JT represents the organization poorly and hurts their mission. When JT and I got in a disagreement on facebook, he responded to me, a student leader the group he works for represents, with a “fuck you.” Chris is on the SSA’s speakers bureau, and I know a lot of groups are fans of his work. I don’t find it surprising at all that when JT makes unsubstantiated attacks on Chris, and thus those who identify with Chris’ positions, it draws complaints.

So maybe let’s try to be a little more careful about the claims we make to and about one another. Let’s not slander fellow atheists (or anyone else) just because we happen to disagree. The first step to productive debate is accurately and charitably interpreting the other’s position, and as far as I can see, we’ve been failing at it miserably. Skeptics and freethinkers can do better.

EDIT: Since writing, it looks like JT has confirmed in a comment on PZ’s post that PZ’s claim is unfounded. I think an apology and public retraction from both parties is in order, but especially PZ. Secondhand information from a blog administrator is not grounds for a serious accusation. My broader point about holding to standards of evidence for the claims we make still holds, I think.

JT still holds, though that “It is instead one of his fans who has orchestrated the complaints, and I have my suspicions who, but it was not Chris.” It seems absurd to me still to tie this to Chris, but if JT is sure that one of his fans “orchestrated” anything, I’d love some evidence to back it up.

EDIT #2: PZ offers something of a response.

Vlad Chituc is a senior at Yale University, studying Psychology and Philosophy with an interest in how we form beliefs (particularly moral and religious), and an interest in metaphysics and moral philosophy on the side. He has served as the Community Service Coordinator and President of the Secular Student Alliance at Yale (formerly the Yale Humanist Society), during which he participated in the Inter-Religious Leaders Council and worked closely with the Yale Chaplain’s Office to foster relationships with liberal member s of the Yale religious community. In his spare time, Vlad enjoys listening to hipster bullshit and writing sarcastic articles and music reviews for the Yale Herald.

Vlad Chituc’s column, When Atheists Get It Wrong, is intended to critically examine bad claims and arguments, not to tear down their author or damage atheism writ large, but to critically assess those arguments and positions to build up better, more accurate ones, in order to promote a stronger atheist movement. As a reminder, the views of this blog post do not necessarily represent those of Chris Stedman, the other NPS panelists, or any of the organizations with which they affiliate.

UPDATE: I’ve expanded on this post, clarified a little, and addressed a common objection here. I’d appreciate it if you read that to get my latest thoughts on the controversy! Thanks–Vlad

If there’s any good left in this world, my title hopefully gave you some pause. Atheists have our PR issues, but no one in their right mind could possibly think we’re as distrusted as rapists.

Are atheists the most reviled minority? If you use a useless definition of "reviled" and have a tiny list of potential minorities, then yes!

But unfortunately, a certain camp of atheist has a contentious relationship with psychological research and surveys in the social sciences. Just do a quick Google of “atheists are the most reviled minority,” and you’ll see a depressing number of hits referencing this 2006 study from the University of Minnesota, which shows that Americans are reluctant to vote  for an atheist president, approve of their child marrying an atheist, and think that atheists agree with their vision for society.

I want to make it clear from the outset that I think these are bad things that are worth focusing our efforts to change, and that this is one of the areas where atheist and LGBTQ comparisons are appropriate: we do that by being “out and normal,” or open about our atheism without making a big deal about it. But I don’t want to go into detail about this here; I want to address how poorly some atheists misconstrue and misrepresent otherwise legitimate and important research.

So with a mixture of regret, frustration, and incredulity, I read a  recent Alternet headline, ”religious believers distrust atheists as much as rapists.”  Another post on Alternet went on in more detail, and the story was posted to reddit (with the not at all sensational headline that “rapists are viewed as more moral than atheists“). Even the Drudge Retort picked up the story. I realize that Alternet and the Drudge Retort are known for their objective, thoughtful, and well-written content being terrible, terrible blogs that no serious human being should ever trust for news, but even otherwise solid sources like The Friendly Atheist are misreporting this finding. Hemant says, “Somehow, we’re less trusted than even rapists. That’s disheartening, but it really says more about how religious people think than anything about atheists.”

Let me be clear about this: no it doesn’t. The only thing this result says about atheists and believers is that they don’t understand statistics. Let’s take a look at the graph that’s causing so much controversy:

If you’ve studied any statistics or research methods, this should scream out two things without even having to know what the graph represents: “not significant” and “ceiling effect.” First, if you’ll notice the skinny lines going up and down from each of the graphs, that’s called the error bar. The error bar basically frames the range where the real value the statistic is meant to represent lies, so small error bars are good and huge error bars are bad. If you’ll notice, not only are all of the bars huge, but the ”rapist” and “atheist” error bars overlap a lot. That pretty much guarantees any difference between the two numbers is statistical noise; the results are “nonsignificant,” which the study itself says clearly. There is no significant difference between their measure for atheists and rapists, which means you can’t actually say whether atheists or rapists are “distrusted” more; you can only say that how distrusted atheists and rapists are lies somewhere in those huge bars, and we don’t know which one is higher or lower.

Now maybe it troubles you that atheists and rapists are even so close as to be statistically indistinguishable (but again, check out how huge those bars are), this still doesn’t suggest they’re even close to as distrusted. That’s because the study is pretty likely reporting a ceiling effect, which means the measure the study uses has been maxed out. That is, it could be the case that it only takes a little distrust to show as much of an effect as the measure will show, so different levels of distrust are going to look the same past a certain point. Without reference to a group we know are more distrusted than atheists and rapists to compare the bars to, we can’t know whether atheists and rapists are actually comparably distrusted.

The authors, Will Gervais,  Ara Norenzayan and Azim F. Shariff are of course very careful about all of this, not making any unjustifiable claims about their results. But that didn’t stop their University’s press office from being sloppy and sensational, too.

The paper itself I’m not the biggest fan of, though Norenzayan and Shariff’s other work in the field is exceptional. The paper is smart, the findings are important,  and their measures are clever, so though I disagree with some of the theoretical underpinnings and how their results are interpreted, I’d definitely recommend checking it out (despite the minor misreport, The Friendly Atheist gives a good rundown of the study). My take on the results, though, is that the finding doesn’t report distrust in any meaningful way that we care about, but maybe that’s another post.

Lastly, I’m not blaming people who took the reports of these findings at face value, and expressed outrage at what looked like insane bias. I actually first heard about the study from Chris’ twitter, and saw it on a lot of my friend’s Facebook feeds. Not everyone knows about p-values and ceiling effects and how to properly read a scientific graph. They shouldn’t have to. Science reporters need to know what they’re talking about, and atheists need to stop taking sites like Alternet to be trustworthy sources of news.

Vlad Chituc is a senior at Yale University, studying Psychology and Philosophy with an interest in how we form beliefs (particularly moral and religious), and an interest in metaphysics and moral philosophy on the side. He has served as the Community Service Coordinator and President of the Secular Student Alliance at Yale (formerly the Yale Humanist Society), during which he participated in the Inter-Religious Leaders Council and worked closely with the Yale Chaplain’s Office to foster relationships with liberal member s of the Yale religious community. In his spare time, Vlad enjoys listening to hipster bullshit and writing sarcastic articles and music reviews for the Yale Herald.