One Atheist, Underwhelmed
By Chris Mooney
Sunday, October 19, 2003; Page B03
PALO ALTO, Calif.
Half a decade ago, about to graduate from college, I found myself discussing my future with a professor I knew fairly well. My plans were rather extraordinary. A religious doubter all my life, I had grown fascinated with my apostate roots in much the way that others might embrace their Jewish or Christian origins, and had actually decided that I wanted to become a "professional" atheist. (Yes, such a thing exists.) As soon as I finished college, I planned to whisk myself away to western New York to enter a world of anti-religious folk songs and "Darwin" fish stickers (a two-legged parody of the Christian fish symbol common on car bumpers). Friends had already bought me a T-shirt, reading "Air Jesus," that depicted mankind's savior slam-dunking the globe like a basketball. Along with other fervent unbelievers, my job would be to vociferously protest the religious language and imagery that pervade American public life.
My professor, a novelist who taught writing, didn't think I would last long as an atheist rabble-rouser. He gave me two simple words of advice, which seemed directed more toward an aspiring writer than a budding activist: "Take notes."
Those notes -- most of them mental -- have new resonance now that the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether the words "under God," added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, represent an unconstitutional establishment of religion in violation of the First Amendment. This is the case many atheist and secular humanist activists have been dreaming of for years -- far bigger than previous lawsuits over congressional chaplains or the slogan "In God We Trust" on our currency. Victory here, these atheists believe, would serve as a powerful rebuke to the religious conservatives who like to claim that the United States is a "Christian nation."
The atheists may well prevail; even legal scholars who support the pledge admit the atheist side has a surprisingly strong case. And there's been some canny legal strategy. Michael Newdow, the folk guitar-playing atheist who brought the pledge case and plans to argue it on his own, has managed to get Justice Antonin Scalia to recuse himself on the grounds that Scalia has already discussed his views about the case in public. A believer in the "divine authority behind government," Scalia would have been a sure vote to uphold the pledge; now there's talk of a possible 4-4 split.
In short, this appears to be the heady moment that I, as a former atheist activist, should be dying for. Instead, I'm feeling worried. As a strong believer in civil liberties, I would never tell a group that considers itself oppressed not to rock the boat. Yet I wonder whether atheists and other doubters of religion will actually be doing their cause much good if they win the case.
Since I left the secular humanist movement, I haven't "found religion," and I don't expect I ever will. So out of sheer personal interest, I want atheists to be better off in the United States. I flinch at the 1999 Gallup Poll that showed that only 49 percent of Americans would vote for a known atheist for president (59 percent would be open to supporting a homosexual), a number that I can't help thinking suggests real bigotry. I wish most Americans could see that the non-religious, a significant minority -- some polls suggest 5 percent of the population, some much higher -- are, in the end, just ordinary people like everyone else.
Still, I've come to wonder about some of the confrontational strategies espoused by combative secularist crusaders -- strategies that the Pledge of Allegiance case typifies. Sure, the pledge is probably unconstitutional, a violation of the separation of church and state. But I'm not sure it causes anything more than minor coercion to schoolchildren (I recited it countless times myself without lasting damage) or that stripping it of religious language will redound to the benefit of America's unbelievers in the way they hope. Rather, overturning the pledge seems certain to make atheists even less popular than they already are, while distracting attention from the far more troubling entanglements of church and state that have emerged under the Bush administration.
The uproar created when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled the pledge unconstitutional in June 2002 was a scary thing. Suddenly the United States seemed much more like a majoritarian religious state than ever before. President Bush, through his spokesman Ari Fleischer, called the ruling "ridiculous," when it was thoroughly defensible legally. The Senate voted 99-0 for a resolution supporting the pledge, though I suspect there's more than one closet atheist in that body. And those were the more temperate responses. William Donohue, the president of the Catholic League, went so far as to call for impeaching the judges in the pledge case and encouraged teachers in states affected by the ruling to "break the law."
Atheists such as Newdow shouldn't duck controversy if they believe they are right. But at the same time, the anti-atheist/pro-religion backlash they're courting by seeking to overturn the pledge could make the serious battle against some of the church-state mergers that have taken place under the Bush administration all but impossible. Wouldn't it be more constructive to combat the doling out of millions of dollars by the Department of Health and Human Services to proselytizing religious social service groups, including organizations affiliated with controversial figures such as Pat Robertson and Chuck Colson? Or here's another suggestion: Why not worry about the Justice Department's recently created special counsel for religious discrimination, whose position seems to exist simply to ensure that the religious have extra-special protections in law for their beliefs? The special counsel was recently involved in the investigation of a Texas Tech University biology professor, Michael Dini, who had refused to write medical school recommendation letters for students who believe in Creationism, even though such letter-writing is voluntary.
Unfortunately, in my experience, the U.S. atheist and secularist communities contain a number of activists who are inclined to be combative and in some cases feel positively zestful about offending the religious. Madalyn Murray O'Hair, easily America's most famous atheist firebrand, wasn't dubbed "the most hated woman in America" for nothing. Despite her landmark 1963 Supreme Court victory in a case concerning the constitutionality of school prayer, O'Hair's pugilistic and insulting public persona hurt atheists a great deal in the long run. A head-on attack on the pledge seems to epitomize the confrontational O'Hair strategy.
When you think about it, America's organized atheists have two conflicting sets of goals. On the one hand, they want to join the mainstream of American life and end their marginalization. They want acceptance. Thus, they point to celebrities who supposedly share their views (check out www.celebatheists.com). Or they coin new names for themselves, such as "humanist" and more recently "bright," that they hope will improve their public image.
Yet at the same time, organized secularists engage in wildly controversial public actions, usually lawsuits, that are virtually assured of making them despised, and always have the appearance of attacking the beliefs of the vast majority of Americans. A group with a lust for argument, organized atheists both take offense easily -- don't say "God bless you!" when an atheist sneezes! -- and delight in returning the favor. In fact, when I met and interviewed Newdow in Washington, earlier this year, he told me he had just returned from visiting the Senate, where he had gone "to be insulted" by the legislative chaplains' invocation.
My experience is that many atheist activists, who revel in philosophical debate, really want something they'll never get: to win an argument against a religious believer. To have that person say, "Okay, okay, you win. God doesn't exist. I'm becoming an atheist." But with a couple of freakish exceptions, this just doesn't -- and shouldn't -- happen in real life. People don't give up their beliefs, and they get deeply offended if you attack them. Sometimes I wonder if many atheists really appreciate this. Following their more argumentative and combative instincts, a few atheist activists have certainly stirred up a hornet's nest with the Pledge of Allegiance case. It was bound to happen eventually. But I'm afraid that the cause of broader public acceptance of religious doubters could wind up suffering.
Author's e-mail:moonecc@yahoo.com
Chris Mooney is a freelance writer. He has written for Outlook about the intersection of science and popular culture.
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