Comments on: If Atheists “Succeed,” Be Prepared for Some Disappointment

By: gabriel

gabriel — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 03:05:41 +0000

here in China where I live, most people are basically atheists (although by no means everyone, especially in the countryside). However christianity is making inroads even in China and Asia, so I am not necessarily hopeful about the future.

By: Efrique

Efrique — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:19:43 +0000

I’ll be glad if this particular thing becomes a non-issue in my lifetime. I don’t think it will happen, but I won’t miss it. I look forward to being able to say that I’m an atheist or simply that we don’t attend church without immediately being asked how will my kids learn morals, for example.

Will I look for another cause to put in its place? No. I have other causes already. I have even less hope for them, to be honest, but I wouldn’t mind if they all became uncontroversial and I could just live without having to worry about them. That said, more causes will doubtless come along in the meantime.

By: hoverFrog

hoverFrog — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 18:15:24 +0000

Ptah! We’ll all be too busy eating babies and having sex with each other to care about minorities.

The thing with religion is that it doesn’t get replaced by atheism. Atheism causes a gap to occur in the personal philosophy of individuals who were previously filling their lives with religion. It has to be replaced by other ways of living, reasonable ways of living. I imagine that all kinds of philosophies and ideas will be developed and will they will draw on earlier ideas as well as new ideas.

Including religions.

We may mock theists from time to time and disagree with them an awful lot but wouldn’t the world be a better place if everyone tired to act like we’re told Jesus wanted us to.

We’ll have plenty to argue about, I’m sure.

By: Richard

Richard — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 15:40:53 +0000

Hemant,

Thanks for bringing this post to our attention. This is one of the great things that you continually do and I, for one, am grateful for it.

I posted the below comment on her blog and thought it might be good to repost it here to encourage the discussion to continue.

Greta,

I want to congratulate you on this wonderful blog/essay. As someone who is not gay–but uses the gay/atheist analogy ad nauseam–it is nice to hear from someone who pridefully both.

I hope and pray (pun intended) the future you are predicting comes to pass. I live in Atlanta, which I’m sure you know, is quite bigoted in every way imaginable. It is difficult raising freethinking children in this environment. The threat my daughters encounter concerning God and Hell are quite disconcerting to say the least.

I long for the day when people of reason will become the status quo. However, to get to this point, we are dependent on the smug “special” feeling people you wrote about.

All movements depend on the pendulum effect. They must swing to the other extreme before they can bring balance. It took the crazy bra burners to get to equal rights for women. It took militant/pacifist blacks to bring racial acceptance. It took (and still takes) the flamboyant gay pride parades to get to equal sexual rights.

So, come what will, I am encouraged by your post to continue being outspoken. I hope you and all atheists will keep taking it to the streets. Let’s feel “special” and wallow in our superiority. For only this extremism will lead to eventual balance and our fading into mediocrity.

Richard
http://lifewithoutfaith.com

By: TXatheist

TXatheist — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 13:20:09 +0000

I think the younger generations are ok with it in most urban areas. Any time progressives push an issue it usually gets better. I didn’t realize what it was like to be a minority until I came to my atheism. It’s helped me to empathize with other minorities and I’d always have that in memory if I didn’t have to explain atheism against certain prejudices some people may have.

By: sabrina

sabrina — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 08:21:28 +0000

I think that being an atheist today forces someone to become an amateur biologist, astronomer, cosmologist, theologian, archaeologist, historian, and philosopher. There are lots of fundie arguments to overcome, and if you can’t answer one question (no matter what topic), you’ve already lost. They already have the answer in advance, “God did it”. It’s exhausting, but I’ve read and studied many subjects that I normally wouldn’t, and I’m very happy that I have. I have a deeper appreciation of evolution, astronomy, history, and pretty much any other subject under the sun. And from browsing the internet, it seems that many other atheists are in the same boat as I am (we’re becoming a very educated minority;)). It would seem a shame for people to lose that impetus to learn (even if you’re learning just to justify your ideas), but it would be nice not to have to constantly defend yourself, and (like Hemant says) not to have relationships end because the person realizes you’re actually serious about atheism. I shudder to think that atheists would come as lazy in their beliefs as most theists, but, I would love for atheism not to be a news story (ala look at those freaks, they don’t believe in god!). I guess I just wrote a horribly long post, and never answered the question. Oh well, I second that peace in the middle east:)

By: miller

miller — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 07:13:00 +0000

There appears to be some confusion here in the comments. If you go read Greta Christina’s post, by “success” she doesn’t mean the end of theism. By success, she means “making a world in which being an atheist is relatively easy, or at least a whole lot easier than it is now.” If that happens, the “atheist” identity will not become meaningless. It’s just that atheists will turn out to be normal, average people, instead of the highly individualistic group we have now.

Why does everyone around here jump at the idea of ending theism? I think this underscores my earlier point that the atheist movement is not just about civil rights and becoming accepted, but also about advocating certain ideas.

By: Aj

Aj — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 06:13:44 +0000

And that’s exactly as it should be.

Huzzah!

By: Sean the Blogonaut

Sean the Blogonaut — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 05:59:54 +0000

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. The situation is better here in australia. You are unlikely to be excluded on account of your Atheism. There is allways the need to keep an eye on the religious as evidenced by the recent controversy over Mega Churches and religious abuse here in Australia.

By: David

David — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 05:48:14 +0000

Here’s something indirectly related that I think about a lot: I’m a vegetarian, for environmental reasons. Suppose that a bit of Star Trek technology became real, and we could replicate food. Suppose then that we had some organically fed, free range chicken that got to lead a nice life in a good environment, before being sacrificed to become the “model” for a replicated chicken software package (sorry, trekkies, I don’t know they correct terminology).

The question is, would I still be a vegetarian? The answer should be “no”, there’d be no point in it any more, as far as my reasons (and most others’) are concerned. And yet… I spent 15+ years developing a diet that I like and that is healthy and looking at the world that way, it’d be hard to let go of, I can’t deny it. I believe my rationale to be sound, but I must admit that it now means something to me deeper than my rationale.

And that reminds me of something a very cool Mormon woman I know always says: “What would we (Mormons) do if someone came up with proof, by our standards, that God has never existed? How would we react to this huge news? Answer: go to church.”

The point of both of these stories is that I do think that we’re social animals, and there’s comfort in aligning ourselves with ideologies that make sense to us. Unlike some people posting here, I find it quite easy to be an atheist, I don’t feel oppressed. But, I do feel motivated to advocate for a rational view of the nature of reality. But, I don’t think there’s any getting around it, when one finds comfort relating with like-minded people, it becomes part of our frame-of-reference for everything. It’d be hard to let go of.

But, like many people, I’m not worried about it happening. I doubt the replicated chickens will be here first, but it could be a close race.