Atheist Empathy
On one of the most recent Chariots of Iron podcasts, they talked once again about atheist community and how atheists need to have more “empathy” with their fellow atheists. In particular, author Darrel Ray was saying he thought long-term or lifetime atheists needed to understand all of the issues that new atheists had, issues that they had either never experienced or had long since dealt with. Granted, this is probably a very valid point and some of these new atheists do need kid-glove handling because they are coming from an inherently difficult position.
Religion, by it’s very nature, seeks to disarm a believer’s individuality. It wants to turn everyone into a part of the collective. You’re no longer you, you”re now a part of a larger brainwashed whole. As such, you are encouraged not to think for yourself, but to seek out your religious brethren and make decisions as a part of a religious hive-mind. All aspects of your life are subsumed by religion and the religious community to which you belong. You meet your mate there. You raise your children there. Many people get their jobs there. Your social life is spent within the walls of the church. Many people, especially long-term or lifelong theists, have never known any different. For these people, certainly I support groups which seek to re-educate these poor sots away from the religious indoctrination and group-think they’ve had forced on them their entire lives. I heartily recommend Darrel Ray’s Recovering Religionists groups, they sound like a great starting point for people who want to change the brainwashing they’ve received. Find a group, get sane.
However, I still have problems beyond that initial point where the religious mind-poison is still wearing off. If we’re really seeking to get to a post-religionist position, where religion is entirely irrelevant, it seems counterproductive to substitute an all-consuming non-theist support network for the previously existing theist one. It”s like treating someone’s heroin addiction by getting them hooked on crack cocaine. The whole idea of putting all of one’s social eggs in a single basket makes it all the more difficult to avoid group-think so that you fit in. That goes for both theological (or non-theological) thought as well as political and social thought and more. Instead of encouraging people to go out and find groups they fit into, it encourages people to change their views to fit into a group that they may not already be a good fit for.
It’s said that organizing atheists is like herding cats and it ought to be. Atheism isn’t something to congregate around. If religion vanished tomorrow, atheism would have no meaning. I would no more go to a non-stamp-collectors meeting than I would to an atheists meeting, assuming it was just about not believing in god(s). Political and social activism are positive things. Sitting around grousing about not believing in god(s) is not. If that’s not important though, if that’s not what you”re doing, why have an atheist group to begin with? If you’re just watching movies or playing games, what difference does it make what the other people you’re hanging around with believe, so long as they don’t try to push it on you? I could sit in a theater with 300 people and watch a movie and not care if any of them were theists or not, if any of them were politically conservative or liberal, if any of them were vegetarians, if any of them collected stamps, etc. It’s entirely irrelevant to me, it doesn’t make a bit of difference because we’re all here to watch this movie and maybe sit around and talk about it afterwards. What they might do in other aspects of their lives is entirely irrelevant. So long as they keep it to themselves, I don”t care. If they don’t keep it to themselves, I get to decide if I’m going to go to the theater with them again or not. If the entire group is not to my liking, I can go find another group or create one myself with people I actually want to hang around with. It”s my choice.
Unfortunately, I think most people are inherently lazy. They want to move from a theistic community that’s fully formed and realized to an identical atheistic community, also fully formed and realized, without actually having to do any work to get it. They just want to trade membership cards. They want to switch from a God-believing club to a non-God-believing club, but they still want to go to pot-lucks and play bingo every Saturday night. Far too many people are spoiled rotten.
The same can be said for all the people who become atheists and magically want a solution for their religious spouse. They just want a magic wand that they can wave and make everything all better. They don’t want to face the reality that the world is full of difficult choices and sometimes they have to decide what is more important to them and act on that decision. Is it hard? Sure. Nobody ever said life would be easy. The whole “My girlfriend is a religious zealot that drives me crazy with her Christian bullshit, but I still love her…” nonsense makes me insane. Is it more important that you have this one, particular girl, or is it important that you and your mate are compatible? Make your decision. Stick with it. Sure, it’s harder when you”re already married, especially if you have children, but the problem is still the same. Make your decision and stick with it. It’s going to be a difficult decision to be sure and it will come with serious consequences no matter which way you go, but that’s life. Deal with it.
I was just thinking of a personal example that, while it has nothing to do with religion, I think still applies. My father, who died almost 10 years ago of cancer, knew for a long time that he had cancer but he never let on. He refused treatment and kept it from everyone, including my mother, for more than a year, even as he got sicker and sicker. He kept telling her that he had a lingering case of pneumonia that doctors were trying to figure out why it wouldn’t go away. Eventually, after he had to be hospitalized at stage 4 and it came out, my mother thought it was a sudden thing that nobody ever knew about. Myself, I only found out the whole story at his funeral, when some of his friends from work pulled me aside and told me the tale, making me promise never to tell my mother the truth. To this day, I haven’t and whether or not she ever found out on her own, I have no idea. My father cared more about the mental wellbeing and happiness of my mother than he did about his own life. The chances of curing his cancer were slim and his quality of life, had he gone with chemo and other treatments would have been horrible and doing so would have bankrupted them, his insurance coverage lifetime maximum ran out pretty early on and it was only covered by his life insurance pay-out. It was easier to just accept reality and do the best for the people he loved that he could and for that, I”m eternally proud of him. It certainly couldn’t have been an easy decision to make, but it was the one he chose and so far as I know, it was one he lived with for the last months of his life.
One of the biggest problems I have with the whole hand-holding nonsense is that it doesn’t make anyone strong enough to stand on their own two feet. Back when I was a theist, I was probably the most fervent in the family, I spent many long hours with my butt in a pew, the majority of my social life was either through the church, youth group or highly religious school I attended. I stood to lose plenty when I deconverted, but I did it anyhow because it was more important to me to maintain my intellectual integrity than to maintain relationships. Did I lose family members? No, but my family wasn’t shallow. Did I lose close friends? Damn straight I did. People who I used to go to church with, who I had known and been close to for many years, suddenly vanished when I stopped going. I went from being reasonably popular to being an outcast of sorts. Sure, I still had some friends, the true friends who really care about you and not about the minutia, but lots of people just walked away when I stopped believing in their imaginary friend. And you know something? I’m entirely fine with that, no matter how much it hurt at the time. I had my integrity and I found out who really mattered in my life in one fell swoop. However, unlike my fair-weather religious friends, I didn’t reciprocate, I didn”t toss out my religious friends just because they were religious, which is why many of my best, longest-lasting friends are religious to this day. I don’t care that they believe, they don”t care that I don’t believe. Our friendship is not now, nor has it ever been based on mutual delusions.
Changing something so fundamental is going to be tough. That’s just the way things go. The idea that people ought to be hand-held the whole way to make the process as simple as possible is silly to me. Certainly, there ought to be support available but it doesn’t do anyone any good if they don’t have to actually fight to achieve a goal. This isn’t like trading in a used car, it’s changing one’s entire outlook on life – their complete worldview. That’s not a simple thing to do.
I am completely sympathetic toward people who can take such a monumental step, I can appreciate how difficult it is, what pitfalls lie in their way and what sacrifices they’ll likely have to make along their path. I’ve been there. Empathy is about understanding what others are going through because you’ve been in their position, not trying to take away every hurdle you went over because it makes their path simpler. I am not sympathetic, however, to people who just want to trade one fully-realized belief system for another with no muss and no fuss. I don’t respect people who are only changing from theism to non-theism because they’re in a no-loss situation, they get all of the benefits of religion with none of the downsides. Take a stand. Decide what’s right. Act on it and accept the consequences. It might hurt a lot right now, but in the long run, you’ll be a lot better off. Take it from someone who knows from experience.
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