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.

Last night, as I was doing reading for my 7 o’clock lab meeting, my modest twitter feed was inundated with posts bearing the unfortunately long #humanistcommunity tag. The controversy? A recent article published in the Boston Globe about the Harvard’s Humanist Community. The most prominent critic was PZ Myers, claiming simply that it’s just too much like church.

I think the twitter conversation (that is if you can count 140 character back-and-forths a conversation) did very little in terms of actual productivity, and would have been much better served by say, an actual back-and-forth of lengthy and nuanced responses. But I think it at the very least brings up some interesting issues.

I’m coming from this controversy somewhat on the outside: I don’t identify as a humanist and, as a Yale student, I’m under contractual obligation to hold everything about Harvard in disdain. But even with this in mind, I’m having difficulty understanding the contentions of PZ and the others in his camp.

As a general practice, I think it’s important to be as charitable as possible with your opponent’s positions, so I’m unhappy to notice a few strawmen on both sides.  I think it’s obvious that PZ doesn’t object to all structure or organization in atheist communities (PZ addresses this claim here), so some of the tweets and blogs chiding him for this seem to be missing the point.

On the other hand, I don’t see anyone with the Harvard Humanists claiming they want to make Humanist communities like church. PZ writes with characteristic vitriol:

Just don’t turn it into church. Don’t develop a structure. Don’t have it led by chaplains. I’ve heard Epstein speak; a lot of what he talks about seems to be fond recollections of the way familiar old churches and synagogues were run, and I’m seeing that echoing in the way he’s setting up this “chaplain” nonsense. It’s un-egalitarian, it’s non-secular, it implies a special knowledge possessed by a Head Bozo.

So as charitably as possible I’m trying to understand PZ’s objections. From what I take it, he objects to any atheist community that is not egalitarian in structure. I think Leah Libresco handled this objection perfectly, but even beyond her arguments, I still have difficulty seeing PZ’s point.

He rejects strongly the idea of an atheist church (and pristhood), but what is it about churches and priests that are problematic? Is it the structure or the content? I have trouble seeing the structure as a problem: Every week, I and many students like me sit quietly in a large and beautifully adorned chapel, as an authority figure we all revere imparts knowledge about ethics, religion, and life.  I can hardly think of something so structurally identical to church, but it’s my professor Paul Bloom’s philosophy lecture, “The Moralities of Everyday Life.” I wouldn’t imagine that PZ, as a professor himself, would object to something like this, even for a purported “freethinking” community.

Even this aside, I have difficulty seeing what the relevant difference is between the Harvard Humanists and say, a branch of the Center for Inquiry, which I think are structured very similarly and have similar projects (as well as leaders). What’s it matter if the leader is called a chaplain or an executive directer? So if the objection is that the structure is the problem, then I don’t see a coherent reason to take that objection seriously.

It seems like it has to be that the problem with church is the content. But if that’s the case, I don’t see any problem at all with structuring atheism like a church, so long as it avoids the content we find objectionable. If the objection is that an atheist church would be dogmatic like a church, then I’m equally not convinced. College lectures aren’t dogmatic, philosophy discussions aren’t dogmatic, and I see no reason a humanist  ”congregation” should be dogmatic, either. So it can’t be that having a “head bozo” is the problem with church; it’s that those “head bozos” have no qualifications, while holding and spreading their truth dogmatically. Having met Greg Epstein, I see no reason at all to take this concern seriously.

So long as there is some expertise to be had in terms of leading a community, discussing ethics, and facilitating service, there is a role for a leader, be it called a chaplain or an executive directer. I can see perhaps a cautionary warning to look out for dogmatism as appropriate, to not let leadership go to the chaplain’s head, so to speak. But I can’t see an objection based on those grounds alone.

PZ also complains that Greg is dismissive of atheists, and fosters division in the community by marginalizing other secular groups. To justify this claim, he quotes the Boston Globe article, which ostensibly disses Jesse Gallef and the Secular Student Alliance.  But as Jesse himself points out in the comments, that wasn’t Greg’s message at all; it was how the Boston Globe was framing the differences between the two groups. Humanist Chaplaincies provide institutional support and continuity, something I wish my own community at Yale could have more of. There’s no reason a branch of the Secular Student Alliance and a chaplaincy should be an either-or situation, and there’s no reason to think Epstein is advocating as much.

So I’m having trouble seeing PZ’s objection as anything other than a negative reaction to simply the label “chaplain” or idea of an atheist “church.” I think it’s unfortunate to see so strong a reaction for what I can’t see to be for any justifiable reason, especially considering the great work the Humanists up at Harvard have been doing.

If I’m missing something, let me know.

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.

In case you missed the buzz early this summer, The Ledge is an indie-film written and directed by Matthew Chapman — the great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin. Billed as atheism’s Brokeback Mountain, and “the first drama in Hollywood history to feature an openly atheist hero in a story about religious conflict,” The Ledge was met with high hopes and initially positive reviews from within the atheist community. But outside the narrow confines of our movement, the movie fared much worse; it was largely panned by critics, with an 11% on Rotten Tomatoes, and was released to DVD last week after failing to receive a broader theatrical run.

But presented now with a convenient opportunity to judge the movie for myself, I ordered the DVD from Netflix and watched it with a friend last night. I regard this now as a bad decision.

I’m actually confused why the film received such a positive reception from many leading atheists; Greta Christina heralded the film as “smart, riveting, complex, emotionally engaging, visually gorgeous… and best of all, almost entirely unpredictable,” yet it was none of those things.

In fact there was very little about the movie that didn’t feel contrived or forced. The characters were profoundly one-dimensional, the narrative arc and structure were completely tired and predictable, and all attempted flirtatious dialogue was intensely awkward and difficult to sit through.

The film opens with a snarky and unlikeable performance by our protagonist, Gavin (Charlie Hunnam), who appears to be the trashy love child of Heath Ledger and the guy who played Sawyer from Lost. He recounts the totally believable chain of events that leads to this totally believable dilemma—if he doesn’t jump from this building, then this girl he’s known for a few weeks will die.

I found a dildo, and we should have sex. Also here's the new girl, Shana.

It begins with our heroine, Shana, played by Liv Tyler. She’s introduced to us in Gavin’s office by a coworker whose only role appears to be awkwardly flirting with our hero. You know, to let us know just how much of a ladies man he is. Because atheists are really well known for that.

We later discover that Shana was once a battered drug-abuser through our hero’s flirtation attempts, littered with cringe worthy advances such as “you have a very sexy mouth,” “note to self: decline blowjob if offered,” and “if you do the charitable thing and start having sex with me immediately, the heart will fix itself.”

But predictably, our poor, one-dimensional female lead — who lacks any semblance of agency while serving as little more than an object of the men’s competing desires and, spoiler, you get to see her topless — is rescued by the only well-played character in the film: Shana’s unbelievably fundamentalist husband,  Joe (Patrick Wilson). Joe is shown to be closed-minded, homophobic, and by the end so admittedly unconcerned with Christian doctrine as relayed to him by Gavin, that the religious conflict becomes ham-fisted and clumsy at best.

The film is no longer a struggle between atheism and religion, but that of between the average atheist and a hateful and crazy man who just happens to be Christian. I can’t help but notice the parallel in contemporary atheism’s treatment of religion in general, which is unconcerned with any actual doctrine or influence of religion, but fixated on extremism caused by either insanity or unrelated political and cultural factors. Despite many atheist’s exploitation of the tragedy at Oslo as an example of the potential evils of Christianity, the shooter was explicitly advocating a secular Christianity for political identity only, to use a recent example.

And similarly, the broader point that even atheists are willing to give up their lives for lofty ideals, loved ones, or whatever, is handled poorly just by dint of how unbelievably it’s raised. Spoiler alert: Joe is going to kill Shana unless Gavin jumps, so Gavin sacrifices himself. Even putting aside the fact that the romantic chemistry is so unbelievable, forced, and of nothing near the depth and level required for that kind of sacrifice, the police figure out where Joe is and save Shanna after Gavin dies, making his sacrifice unnecessary to begin with.

The entire film is an excuse to martyr an atheist, just to make the clumsy point that we’re capable of sacrifice, too. And it’s an unnecessary point, shallowly made, through an awkward and formulaic structure and cast of characters.

The Ledge is not the atheist’s Brokeback Mountain. It fails to make even a single likeable character, let alone humanize the purported plight of the modern atheist.

It frankly isn’t even a good film.

But atheists would be best served by a normal character whose atheism just isn’t a big deal. We have House and Dexter, but we’d be better off with a Will and Grace. These things grow organically simply as part of an interesting character or story — not shoehorned in to preach a point.

To make a movie about atheism for the sake of making a movie about atheism — plot and structure be damned —  is a recipe for disaster that in The Ledge went predictably awry.

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 members 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.

According to Dave Silverman, this is worth $10 million, making this by far the highest return on a $15 graphic design project in history.

Real talk: This post isn’t the most topical. But I’ve been spending the last few weeks impaling my arm, being in and out of hospitals, submitting an application to an international fellowship, starting to figure out plans for grad school, and actually being a student or something.

So I’ve been busy.

But for all my preoccupations, I’ve yet to be distracted from something I found about a month ago: Dave Silverman’s talk at the Secular Student Alliance Student Leadership conference. Now let’s get something out of the way first: I don’t really like Dave Silverman or the American Atheists, but because I don’t want to spend any substantive time attacking Dave Silverman or his reliance on dated and unoriginal memes as the only source of humor in his talk, I hope to focus instead on the claims he makes. Which are bad.

He calls atheism the last phase in the America civil rights movement.  He claims atheists are the most derided group in the country (we aren’t), yet still at an advantage because we’re “in vogue.” He criticizes Dinesh D’Souza for revisionist history in one breath, and frames every civil rights violation in the United States as the product of religion in the next.

I am astounded by the self-contradictions and misinformation in his talk, so allow me to take some time to address them here:

Atheism is the last phase of the civil rights movement.
Let me be clear about this for a minute.  Some people don’t like atheists and that’s something that’s worth fixing. Occasionally atheists are fired from their jobs, prevented from getting jobs, and generally ostracized from particularly religious communities. These are all practical issues we should be trying to prevent.

Dave Silverman says atheists are “lowest on the totem pole,” but no one to my knowledge has used atheist as a derogatory slur. Since coming to Yale, I’ve never had anyone be surprised about my atheism, let alone react negatively it, and I’ve received nothing but support from the religious communities on campus that I’ve engaged with. In fact, I’ve seen fat people treated with more discrimination than atheists.

I can marry whomever I want, attend whatever school I want, vote all I want, and enjoy the freedom any Christian has (all within reason). I have never been threatened physical violence for my atheism, nor have I heard any stories of atheist teenagers being killed because they were openly nonreligious. I know of no stories of any Christians brutally beaten for asserting the rights of atheists, nor have I seen groups of atheists systematically targeted to be shut down by local law enforcement.

In fact I can’t think of any substantive reason to imagine that we are significant targets of discrimination, other than that we’re unpopular in specific parts of the U.S. If any appreciable rights of ours are violated, they are surely as minor as “in God we trusts” and religious iconography tacitly supported by the state. And I don’t mean to marginalize their importance, but they are relatively innocuous and solvable without violence, so much so that any meaningful comparison between our movement and any other civil rights movement is shallow at best, and profoundly offensive and insensitive at worst.

Abrahamic religion and the Constitution are incompatible.
This one, to me, is just so ignorant of history, especially of secularism, that I’m amazed it went unchecked. Let’s put aside “render unto Ceasar,” for a minute, and just look at the history of secularism. John Locke, the philosopher whose works include “The Reasonableness of Christianity, as Delivered in the Scriptures,” is often credited as the origin of the idea of the separation of church and state. And for all the deism of our founding fathers, many were undeniably Christian.

In fact, many arguments of philosophers such as Spinoza, who argued that coerced religious belief was not genuine belief and thus worthless, made the secular society most preferable from a religious lens. It was considerations such at these that were directly put into practice in some of America’s first colonies.

Just because there are those few extremists who would blur the lines between church and state, in no way points to anything substantive in the religion writ large, other than simply a few corrupt, ignorant, and at best mislead individuals and churches.

Religion is to blame for American Civil Rights violations.
I think this represents the most internally inconsistent misconception we have about religion. On one hand, we treat the bible and religion like a Rorschach test, wherein men use the dictum of God and the Church to reflect and reinforce their underlying prejudices against gays, women, blacks, and so on — racists and sexists pick the parts of the bible that fit their prejudices, while other believers ignore them.

But on the other hand, Dave Silverman is taking the position that because Churches had these specific prejudices, they must be causing them — which is entirely unjustified and untrue.

You can’t have it both ways. Religion can’t simultaneously reflect and cause prejudice; it seems like it has to be the one or the other. And if we are seriously holding religion to be the cause of slavery, shouldn’t we expect support for slavery to be divided by religion, rather than say, existence of a manufacturing rather than an agrarian-based economy? It seems to me that even a moment’s reflection on this should make it obvious that religion here is used as a rationalization, rather than a reason, for these civil rights violations, and that it makes no sense at all to hold religions culpable, especially considering how pivotal Christianity was in the black civil rights movement.

The theist is a marketing tool, and will be treated as such.
Let’s put aside for a second secular ethics, where we treat others as agents and hold objectification to be immoral. While I find this statement to be entirely repulsive and morally infantile, let me instead tackle it from a civil rights and pragmatic perspective. Silverman makes it clear throughout his presentation that many disenfranchised minorities facing civil rights struggles were able to succeed, despite having no money or power.

What he didn’t make obvious was that the reason they succeeded was because of their oppressors. Without men invested in the cause, there would be no suffrage. With no whites fighting for the freedom of blacks, there would be no emancipation.  With no straight allies fighting for gay rights, there would be no gay marriage.

I don’t know if Dave Silverman is planning on converting the entirety of the religious population. If so that’s a pipe-dream at best. But if there really is activism needed to be done on behalf of atheists, it necessarily requires religious believers invested in our cause. We simply don’t have the numbers ourselves.

Smaller claims:
Tyler Curtis tackled Silverman’s claim that 30% of those under 30 years old are nonreligious. It’s actually closer to half that. At best, fewer than 5% of the population is explicitly nonreligious like us.

Despite Silverman and American Atheists’ claims to the contrary, the cross in the 9/11 Memorial Museum is not the only religious symbol allowed, and it is not in the memorial — it’s in the historical exhibit detailing America’s response to 9/11, along with a Star of David (this claim was debunked in impressive detail by James Croft).

The claim that in 9 countries religion is going extinct is somewhat tenuous, and references religious affiliation and not belief.

Rupert Murdoch is not an atheist, or at the very least we have no reason to think he is.

And lastly, religion is not a scam. While there are certainly churches that can be best described as scams (Prosperity theology, megachurches, and scientology come to mind), the criterion that “saying things that aren’t true, even unintentionally” certainly doesn’t hold.

And Dave Silverman should be happy about this last point; it wouldn’t paint him or his organization too charitably otherwise.

Vlad Chituc is a senior at Yale University, studying Psychology and Philosophy with an interest in how we form beliefs (particularly moral and religious), with 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 members 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.