Conversation on Atheism, Part 2: Community
On Atheism, organizing and what the goals of Atheist groups should be
Today we continue a conversation about atheism. Atheism is burdened by being an idea focused on negation — it doesn’t state what exists but rather what doesn’t. It is an unlikely foundation for community, ideology, or political activism to grow from, yet it seems to have become just that. While freethought has a deep tradition in philosophy, the direct connection between the personal rejection of the divine and social and political change are rarely investigated. In this series Todd and Nathan discuss how they found atheism, what they found when they began to connect with other atheists, and what they think the role of atheism ought to be in the future.
Dr. Nathan Alexander received his Ph.D. in history from the University of St Andrews (UK) where his research focused on the intersection of freethought and the construction of race. His latest book is Race in a Godless World: Atheism, Race, and Civilization, 1850–1914.
Previously we discussed our religious backgrounds and conversions to atheism. What follows is a conversation on finding and joining other atheists.
Todd: You and I became atheist at different times in our lives. When did you start reaching out to other atheists? At what point did you start joining groups that were explicitly organized around being an atheist? What was your initial impression?
Nathan: So I became an atheist around the time of master’s, which was in 2009–2010. At the time, I mostly just talked about atheism with a close friend of mine. But it didn’t really occur to me to seek out a group while I was in Canada (where I’m from originally).
However, after my master’s, I moved to South Korea to work as English teacher. There were two main experiences I had with the atheist community during my time there. Soon after I moved there, there was a major atheist conference that was taking place in Australia. All of the big names like Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, etc. were going to be there, though Hitchens would pass away before the conference happened.
I was already on that side of the world, so I figured I would attend. The conference lasted maybe two full days, with constant speeches in a large auditorium. There were breaks in between where people went out into the lobby to have snacks but during the breaks I mostly chatted with a friend of a friend who was also attending. In hindsight, maybe I should have tried to talk to more people while there, but I wasn’t totally sure what to say to them! Overall I found it somewhat disappointing. The continual speeches, even if it was from people I liked, got a bit boring. There were probably at least a thousand people there, so it was hardly an intimate event and it was not as though they could have organized a group discussion with us all. There were also opportunities to get books signed by the big names, but there were long lines and there was no chance to interact in any meaningful way with the speakers. Another thing that struck me was the constant applause after every agreeable statement made in the speeches. I mean, I agreed with most of what was being said, but I am also someone who would want to pick apart certain statements or find exceptions, even if I did agree in general. So, while I don’t regret going, my first foray into the “atheist community” was a bit of a disappointment.
During my first year in Korea, I mostly just hung out with the other foreign teachers at my school, but after I found a new job in my second year, I figured maybe I should start reaching out to try to meet other people. I found an atheist group in Seoul, although I’m not sure exactly how I found it. I think I might have searched on Facebook.
Anyway, I went to one of the meetings with a co-worker of mine, only to find that in fact no one else had showed up! The next time, I think we met the group in a coffee shop or something. Maybe there were about a dozen people there. We went around and introduced ourselves but I recall the discussion moving on to other topics tangentially related to science and skepticism, to which I really didn’t have anything to add.
I think I went to another one of the meetings as well, but what really seemed to happen was that I would meet someone there and then hang out with them in a separate capacity. So in some ways, the meetings almost served as places to meet new friends.
But I guess my experience from those early meetings was that they were somewhat unfocused. What was the point? Maybe they served their purpose exactly in that I did meet some new people to hang out with? I’m not sure.
How about you? When did you start reaching out to atheist groups and what were your first experiences like?
Todd: The first time I met with other atheists was while I was still living in Seattle attending grad school. A religious group had come to the University of Washington to distribute edited copies of Darwin’s Origin of Species with a new introduction by a creationist pastor. I thought it would be cool to have one so I sought them out and got a single copy. Later I thought it would be cooler if the group didn’t have any and couldn’t trick people with that garbage so I went and asked for all of them. I guess they were having a hard time giving them out because I ended up with about 20 copies. I figured other atheists would enjoy having them so I found a group and brought my books.
When I went to the group I mostly just felt awkward. Meeting people is tough enough and I think trying to give away religious copies of Darwin probably made me look exactly like the Christian proselytizers on campus. Everyone seemed nice enough, but since grad school was a pretty busy time and I felt so out of place I didn’t go more than twice. If I had to summarize the group (and I think this is probably unfair) I would say that I got the sense that it was the sort of atheism where people sit around and talk about how much they dislike religion.
Like you, it wasn’t until I had been in Korea for a while that I started seeking out other atheists. We seem to have had the exact same introduction, too. I found a group on Meetup and had to make a commute from where I was living to the meeting in Seoul only to discover that no one was there! I probably didn’t try again until I had made the move to Seoul a few months later and I am pretty sure the meeting was about science. But also like you I found it was a great place to meet like-minded people and be able to connect and socialize.
The first group I joined wasn’t composed entirely of atheists. This group was organized around rational thought and was meant to be a big tent group — atheist, agnostic, skeptical, curious and even religious — to discuss mostly apolitical and science based topics in a way that was free from God. If I can remember correctly, there was usually a monthly meeting with a speaker followed by a social hour that typically held at a restaurant. There was a really good core of organizers, both Korean and expats, who were bright and genuinely wonderful people. It turned out to have been a fantastic place to make some really great friends.
It wasn’t what I really craved though. The first thing that really grated on me was the inclusivity. I am not saying there isn’t a time and place for that — it is one of the foundations of a pluralistic society — but as an atheist I desperately wanted freedom from religion. I didn’t want to be preached at, I didn’t want to hear what “some people believe,” I didn’t want to be sensitive to the feelings of people who are objectively wrong. I was looking for a space where we could give positive definition to who and what we were as atheists instead of just sort of shunting religion aside for a few hours a week. I wanted a place to craft a culture, develop an ethos and construct a community. A group centered on rational thinking (whatever that actually means) could never do that.
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That was my initial reaction, but the more time I spent in the group and the more people I met the more I realized some pretty important things were missing. Very often people would come to the group who had lost everything in their lives because they dared to admit that God isn’t real. People who had come to Korea because they were basically excommunicated from their communities and their families. I met a couple from the American South who lost friends and were rejected by their families when they left their church. I met an atheist who had to leave his country because of death threats. A good friend of mine came from a family of pastors and was himself studying to become one. Losing his faith cost him his studies, his job and his family. I could go on and on. These were people who were really hurting. Many had lost all of their social capital, and were searching for ways to begin to rebuild it. Sadly, most only came to the group one or two times.
Those interactions really shaped my ideas about what atheist groups should be like. There is a real need for community beyond finding cool people to go to trivia with (although that is very important!) and there should be social provisions for and by people who have become atheists. A great first step seems to be what The Clergy Project has done, namely to organize a network of religious professionals who have lost faith and allow them to communicate with one another. That sense of understanding and support is something that I think most vocal or lifelong atheists overlook.
Having been a member of atheist groups yourself, I wonder what you think the point should be? What were you expecting it would become for you? What would you like to see these groups be like in the future?
Nathan: I think you raise a lot of good issues about the different goals atheist groups might pursue. The main problem I see is not that they are going about a purpose that I think is wrong, it’s that the people in charge are not totally sure what their purpose is.
There are a number of potential goals that overlap to some extent. These might include:
- building community
- providing emotional and other forms of support for those leaving religion
- providing forums for discussion and information (i.e. a guest speaker comes to talk about science)
- (re-)creating rituals, as in “atheist churches”
- propaganda against religion
- political activism on, for example, issues of ensuring boundaries between church and state, etc.
This isn’t an exhaustive list and these are not always mutually exclusive.
I have attended groups in Korea, in Scotland, and in Canada, and it seems like they have all focused on these different issues, although with differing emphasis between the groups. But I also felt like trying to do all of these things meant that none were done particularly effectively, or that it might have been better to narrow their focus to one or several of these aspects.
What people want out of atheist groups is going to be an individual thing. In my own case, I was less interested in the emotional support aspect because my own break from religion was not very traumatic, but I think you are definitely right to note that for many people, it can indeed be very traumatic and people can lose their families, etc., and they really need to find some kind of social support system.
I guess the times I have sought out atheist communities were when I moved to a new place and didn’t know many people, and I thought I might find some people there I had something in common with. I imagine a religious person might do the same thing if moving to a new place: to find the church, mosque, etc. as a quick way to know some other people in their area.
In the past, I think religious institutions did play this important role as community hubs. Should atheist groups try to fill this role as secularization continues? Maybe, but I think if this is so, atheist organizers really need to think about what it takes to build a community. And more than that, as secularization takes place more and more, what can this community be built around? Organizing in opposition to something that is growing less powerful by the day (that is, religion) is a dead end.
What are your thoughts on this? Do you have anything to add to the tentative list I made above?
Todd: That list is very ambitious, but not unlike a lot of other secular groups. I think it would be the same mold as something like the Lions or Rotary Club. The group I founded in Korea was originally imagined as reaching all those goals but some ambitions got dialed way back — political activism and ritual especially were pretty much eliminated. What we ended up doing was to have two meetings a month, one being informational and the second being social. We did manage to have some special events and holiday parties. We also had a few funerals which were both awful because of the loss, but it definitely added a lot of emotional support in a time of need. There was a lot of community building, but not so much social activism. My guess is that this happens a lot for atheist groups. When I was attending meetings in New York CIty there were two groups that each met once a month. One was more informational and the other was more social. Neither were actively political.
I am really interested in what you see as the political goals of atheism since you put activism on separation of church and state in the goals category, yet see secularization as something distinct. This is a good point to move from our experiences with atheist groups to the larger context of religion’s place in society and what ought to be done.
