Maybe atheism isn’t a religion -- but is it like a religion?
“[Atheists] have their own prophets: Nietzsche, Russell, Feuerbach, Lenin, Marx. They have their own messiah: He is, of course, Charles Darwin. . . . They have their own preachers and evangelists. And boy, are they ‘evangelistic.’ Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens are NOT out to ask that atheism be given respect. They are seeking converts. They are preaching a ‘gospel’ calling for the end of theism.”[1]
Those are the words of Kevin Childs, lead pastor of The Rock, a Christian community in South Carolina. He sums up an opinion common among people who say that atheism’s a religion: atheist leaders are the same as religious leaders.
Most atheists would call that opinion a sack of bilge. Take the list of prophets, evangelists and others, starting with Darwin.
• Darwin -- the 19th-century biologist Charles Darwin -- wrote The Descent of Man and On the Origin of Species to present the facts behind his theory of evolution. Darwin’s discoveries revolutionized biology and other fields. To most unbelievers who think much about the subject, Darwin was a liberator like George Washington or Nelson Mandela.
“[But] his writings are not worshipped, nor even accepted uncritically,” says John C. Snider, who hosts the atheist podcast American Freethought. “Indeed, many of his theories and observations have been discarded and altered over the years.”[2]
What’s more, atheists don’t venerate Darwin the way that Muslims revere Muhammad or Christians praise Jesus. They don’t model their lives on Darwin’s or call to him in times of trouble. A blogger named Vjack, who runs the website Atheist Revolution, speaks for millions of unbelievers when he says, “Darwin was certainly worthy of respect, admiration, and praise for his many contributions. But worship? I think not.”[3]
In fact, the Darwin-as-messiah idea shows a key difference between belief and unbelief. Religions usually begin with a religious leader. There were no Christians before Christ came along, and Buddhism began only after Buddha showed up. But atheists had been around for millennia before Darwin. (See Chapter 5 for the details).
Related to the idea that Darwin’s a messiah is the idea that his books are an atheist’s version of holy scriptures. “Atheists have a bible (called the Origin of Species),” writes a blogger named Ben who runs the religious website Revelation.co.[4]
Odds are, though, that most atheists haven’t read Darwin’s books, which are pretty dry. Take the beginning of Chapter One from Origin of Species:
When we look to the individuals of the same variety or sub-variety of our older cultivated plants and animals, one of the first points which strikes us, is, that they generally differ much more from each other, than do the individuals of any one species or variety in a state of nature. When we reflect on the vast diversity of the plants and animals which have been cultivated, and which have varied during all ages under the most different climates and treatment, I think we are driven to conclude that this greater variability is simply due to our domestic productions having been raised under conditions of life not so uniform as, and somewhat different from, those to which the parent-species have been exposed under nature. There is, also, I think, some probability in the view propounded by Andrew Knight, that this variability may be partly connected with excess of food. It seems pretty clear that organic beings must be exposed during several generations to the new conditions of life to cause any appreciable amount of variation; and that when the organisation has once begun to vary, it generally continues to vary for many generations. No case is on record of a variable being ceasing to be variable under cultivation. Our oldest cultivated plants, such as wheat, still often yield new varieties: our oldest domesticated animals are still capable of rapid improvement or modification.[5]
That bit about cultivated wheat was a rollercoaster of thrills, wasn’t it? Or did you quit (or fall asleep) before you got that far? Give it up to the religious: the Bible’s a more intriguing read than anything Darwin ever put on paper.
• The Nietzsche, Russell, Feuerbach, Lenin, and Marx that Reverend Childs mentioned are philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Feuerbach, Russian dictator Vladimir Lenin and theorist of Communism Karl Marx. Most atheists don’t think of them as prophets.
Lenin and Marx actually disgust many atheists -- particularly people in countries like Russia that have suffered under Leninist or Marxist dictatorships, and people in countries like the United States that have opposed Leninist and Marxist regimes.
Nietzsche and Russell do have readers and fans among both atheists and theists. But their readers and fans are just readers and fans, not disciples who take their words as sacred.
As for Feuerbach: These days, most people -- including atheists -- don’t even know who he is. (The main exceptions are historians, philosophy students, philosophy teachers, and guys who write guidebooks for teenage atheists.) It’s hard to inspire people when they don’t know you exist.
• Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens are modern atheist writers Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. Childs and others have a point when they call these writers atheist evangelists. They're anti-religion, they evangelize for their position, and they have a following: their books are popular among unbelievers.
But trying to convert people to your ideas doesn’t make the ideas a religion, even if they’re all about God. Religious evangelists say, Listen to me, and you’ll join the world of ideas that are important and true. You’ll learn why the universe exists, how to live in it properly, and why people who live properly have to suffer while people who live improperly get all the money and the hot sex.
Atheist evangelists say, Listen to me, and you’ll join the world of ideas that are important and true. That’s as far as they go. Unlike religious leaders, the most prominent spokesmen for atheism don’t:
build churches to their beliefs;
gather congregations for weekly rituals;
lay out rules that tell people how to live;
predict something mystical, like a heavenly afterlife or a miracle-working messiah;
recommend one holy book as the only solution to all of humanity’s troubles;
ask their followers to sacrifice for their beliefs (often by tithing, fasting, or going on pilgrimages);
or tell people what emotions to feel, whether it’s guilt for committing sins, love and mercy for all mankind, or violent hatred for non-believers.
In any case, evangelizing for a viewpoint isn’t evidence that the viewpoint is a religion, because some religions don’t evangelize. Judaism’s a religion, but Jews generally don’t send out missionaries, launch massive revival meetings or preach on TV that the world should go Jewish. Neither do Hindus, Wiccans, Quakers, or Buddhists. (Not that Buddhists would preach that the world should go Jewish, but you know what I mean.)
[1] Kevin Childs, “What I’m Learning from Atheists (III),” Kevin Childs website, April 23, 2010, http://kevinchilds.com/?p=1821
[2] John C. Snider, “Podcast #116 -- Darwin Day vs In God We Trust,” American Freethought website, April 6, 2011, http://www.americanfreethought.com/wordpress/2011/02/18/podcast-116-darwin-day-vs-in-god-we-trust/
[3] Vjack, “Atheists Do Not Worship Humanity,” Atheist Revolution website, June 9, 2008, http://www.atheistrev.com/2008/06/atheists-do-not-worship-humanity.html
[4] Ben, “Is Atheism a Religion? Are Atheists Fundamentalists in their Religious Belief System?”, Revelation.co website, February 1, 2010, http://www.revelation.co/2010/02/01/is-atheism-a-religion-are-atheists-fundamentalists-in-their-religious-belief-system/
[5] Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, “Chapter One: Variation Under Domestication,” published by John Murray, 1859, http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/origin/chapter1.html
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