atheism in america

The Documentary Real America. There is a lot going on to counter the conclusion that atheism soon will be America’s dominant “faith.” A 2020 Pew Forum survey supports the rise of the “nones.” Twenty-six percent of Americans identify with no denomination. Irreligion in the United States refers to the extent of the lack, indifference to or rejection of religious faith in the country. The first time I remember openly identifying as an atheist was when I announced to my high school freshman English class that I didn’t believe in God. Similarly, when I attended the annual conference of an organization formed to help nonbelieving high school and college students called the Secular Student Association in July 2016, I learned that getting out and helping people is a key concern for young secularists. Jefferson referred to himself as a Unitarian and expressed an unwillingness to abandon the notion of God’s historical presence, for example in “Notes on the State of Virginia.” But his “Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth,” commonly known as the Jefferson Bible, in which he removed from the Bible all passages that he considered supernatural, reflects the deist concern with purifying religion of its irrational elements. With over 56% of its population describing themselves as "nonreligious," Vermont takes a clear lead in terms of US states with the highest proportions of nonreligious, agnostic, and atheist citizens. In the United States, atheism is diffuse, individualistic, and heavily reliant on the media for the cultivation of a sense of community. The birth of the broadcast media era enabled an unprecedented degree of exposure for American atheism. Teaching evolution and giving out condoms might be at odds with what some religious people believe, but they’re not the same as saying that there’s no god. As someone who considers herself "non-religious" - definitely agnostic, bordering on atheist - this was a very interesting read. They used information obtained through the (online) U.S. Secular Survey to find out what roughly 34,000 non-religious participants thought about a variety of topics. Edward Herburt, first Baron Herbert of Cherbury, Sociology, Anthropology, and Psychology of Religion, Free-Thought and Infidelity in the 19th Century, https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.013.420. Before Madalyn, most Atheists were afraid to use the word other than in whispers. Harry Golden, “Foreword,” The World of Haldeman-Julius (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1960), 7. For those who see atheism as a modern phenomenon, 18th-century France serves as the site where the first philosophers proudly self-identified as atheists. An atheist loves his fellow man instead of god. By the time Madalyn Murray filed suit in the Superior Court of Baltimore in December 1960, she had already grabbed ahold of the media spotlight. Some atheists think religion is ridiculous or generally awful, while others don’t think about religion at all, and still others think religion is fine, or even a force for good. See Tisa Wenger, “The God-in-the-Constitution Controversy: American Secularisms in Historical Perspective,” in Comparative Secularisms in a Global Age, eds. In one radio broadcast, O’Hair complained: “As an Atheist and speaking for Atheists as well as American Atheism, I try constantly to find out why we have hidden ourselves under diverse names during our history.”18 For O’Hair, the primary goal of American atheism was to maximize the visibility of atheist identity, which meant resisting the temptation to philosophical hair-splitting and focusing instead on coming out and publicly identifying as an atheist. But skip ranting at me. The majority of American Christians realize there are fewer Christian round them and the opinion leaders - those who influence active church goers - are likely to know even more. Everybody in the United States has the right to practice their religion and to talk about how great it is and even to try to get other people to believe it too. By 1964, Life magazine famously dubbed her “The Most Hated Woman in America,” a title she relished and encouraged throughout the 1960s and 1970s. For those unwilling to identify with infidelity, the term “liberal” served briefly as the label of choice, particularly for readers of and contributors to the nationally circulated Truth Seeker, which would become the official organ of the National Liberal League founded in 1876.10 For the last two decades of the 19th century, “Liberal” became a popular term of identification for those opposed to institutional religion. Although I have an affinity for Asian religions like Buddhism and Taoism and even have a master’s degree in religious studies from a divinity school, I’ve been an unabashed atheist for my entire adult life. Commentators point to the New Atheists’ optimism in science’s ability to disprove the epistemic claims of religion, but this constitutes a difference in degree rather than a difference in kind. It wouldn’t just teach evolution; it would teach explicitly that the Bible’s creation story is flat-out wrong. The government cannot promote atheism over religion, that’s true. The parents of Katelyn Campbell, 19, from West Virginia, have been very supportive of her … In the early 21st century, atheism in the United States continues to be organized largely through the media, with official organizations operating primarily through annual conventions and local chapters. Indeed, O’Hair’s legacy in the 21st century consists primarily of her unwavering commitment to popularizing the term atheism. Nonetheless, patterns do emerge in contextual discussions of appropriate labels within the free-thought community. The epistemological unifier for contemporary atheism is a general commitment to science. For roughly the decade from 1925 to 1937, when Smith returned to the Truth Seeker as editor, 4A was a prominent feature of America’s religious landscape. An outspoken racist and anti-Semite, Smith cultivated controversy to an unpalatable degree. Things are much different now, thanks to her, although I can’t say the desensitization of society as a whole is yet complete. The Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRI) (incorporated 1978) and The Center for Inquiry (CFI) (established 1991 and merged with the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science in 2016), engage in broad campaigns of advocacy and education. When the government forces you as a kid to affirm something about the nature of the universe that you think is fundamentally incorrect, it tends to stick with you. Alongside the influence of European Deism in the Revolutionary United States was the effect of British secularism in the 19th century. See Martin Marty, The Infidel: Freethought and American Religion (Eastford, CT: Martino Fine Books, 1961). Ingersoll achieved national recognition following his “Plumed Knight” speech supporting the nomination of James G. Blaine at the 1876 Republican National Convention, and he became the most successful public orator of his generation. From 1986 until 1995, both Madalyn and Jon were tireless advocates for atheism and the absolute separation of religion from government, filing lawuits and building a nationwide atheist community. The answer to this two-part question is yes and no. I do not know of any other book on the market that seeks to bring together individual narratives of deconversion and the challenges faced afterward. Atheism refers to the conviction of the nonexistence of God. But that doesn’t mean the government cannot do things in public schools and elsewhere that happen to be inconsistent with what some religious people believe. It is important to note that secularism is not synonymous with atheism. Following his display of a storefront sign in Little Rock, Arkansas that read “Evolution is True. Atheists have also succeeded in putting up symbols and displays on government property celebrating the absence of god, including an atheist monument in Bradford County, Florida, and all sorts of godless displays around the holiday season. Learn more. One of the largest genres was rabidly antireligious—booklets like “The Meaning of Atheism” (1931) and Bertrand Russell’s “Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Society?” (1930) urged readers to cast off the shackles of religion and embrace atheism and free-thought. After 1937, Smith receded somewhat from the public spotlight. Based on surveys, between 8% and 15% of citizens polled demonstrate objectively nonreligious attitudes and basically naturalistic worldviews. If you’re a religious person, a monotheist perhaps, do you ever wonder why atheists get so bent out of shape by the fact that “In God We Trust” appears on our money and “under God” is in the Pledge of Allegiance? Academy Award winner Joaquin Phoenix is also an atheist. An atheist believes that heaven is something for which we should work now – here on earth for all men together to enjoy. It provides speakers for colleges, universities, clubs, and the news media. Why is atheism growing? The second wave of American free-thought saw greater success in distributing free-thought ideas and organizing official societies in large part because the Civil War greatly contributed to the wider consumption of print media and the pluralization of reading publics.8 Hence, American free-thought became a widely successful imagined community based on an explosion of new regional and national free-thought periodicals. By the early 1980s, O’Hair’s grasp on the atheist movement that she had helped create was falling apart. They are more dispersed regionally. Richard Cimino and Christopher Smith have claimed, for example, that the formation of an atheist community on the Internet generates a sense of communalism as it simultaneously cultivates feelings of marginality. About 10 percent of all Americans say they are atheists, although this estimate may be on the low side. I’ve taught First Amendment law at Boston University for nearly 20 years, am a strong supporter of the separation of church and state, and have recently published a book called Our Non-Christian Nation, which is about how atheists and other minority groups are demanding their equal place in public life alongside the Christian majority. For some of us, our atheism is central to our self-identity and drives what we do. It also publishes books and American Atheist Magazine.. In the United States, atheism is diffuse, individualistic, and heavily reliant on the media for the cultivation of a sense of community. Felix Adler and his Society of Ethical Culture (SEC), which grew out of a series of weekly lectures in 1876 and 1877, sought to articulate a religion free of ritual and theological doctrine. That their further use be discountenanced and discontinued by the Freethinkers and Liberalists of this and kindred conventions, and that we recommend to reformers everywhere the just use of words in all spoken and written relations of thought, that the righteous and rigorous phraseology of science may take the place of these theologic vulgarisms.9. American Atheists is a non-profit organization in the United States dedicated to defending the civil liberties of atheists and advocating complete separation of church and state. Elihu Palmer, Principles of Nature; Or, A Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery among the Human Species (New York: Literary Licensing, 2014 [1823]), title page. The story was quickly picked up by regional and national news outlets, and Murray expertly cultivated her celebrity status. Similarly, Benjamin Franklin wrote and said conflicting things about his relationship to deism, indicating some confusion on the possibility of God’s intervention in history. I watched an atheist give an invocation before a town board she had previously sued for violating the First Amendment, attended a Veterans Day ceremony held by a pagan priestess who successfully sued the federal government to approve the Wiccan pentacle for placement on national cemetery headstones, and sat on a 9-foot-tall bronze sculpture of a goat-headed occult figure that the Satanic Temple wants to put up on government property someday. But if Jefferson and Franklin represent a reticence to fully identify with deism, others were more outspoken. But it showed a gap between white Protestants and other people of faith. Speaker after speaker urged the atheists in the audience to go out into the world and actively serve their communities. Major digital platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube have thriving but nebulously defined atheist communities, often closely affiliated with the web presences of New Atheist thinkers. 4. Popular Deism was an intellectual byproduct of the Enlightenment which percolated through Britain, Europe and the United States, although as a creed it originated before the Philosophes. There's power in understanding. That is, the New Atheists resemble most closely updated versions of the Atheisms of Diderot and Holbach, attempting to empirically disprove the theological doctrines of revealed religion with scientific observation and logical positivism. Atheism, more so than infidelity, was understood in primarily philosophical rather than social terms. Atheists in America is a unique contribution to the literature on atheism touching on topics rarely discussed or researched. Posted on November 10, 2015 According to several measures, atheism is rising in both America and the wider world. In her opening statement before the Supreme Court, Madalyn said: “Your petitioners are atheists and they define their beliefs as follows. Atheists often purported to articulate an epistemological position concerning the nature of reality and occasionally derided infidels for abandoning philosophical rigor in the name of spectacle. I'm not the one they will have to answer to. The title might lead readers to think this is a history of atheism in the United States; instead, it’s a collection of 27 essays by Americans who identify as atheists, detailing how they came to understand themselves as nonbelievers and what happened when … He tweets @SCOTUSHUMOR. Jan Bremmer has also provided an accessible introduction to atheism’s ancient predecessors in his contribution to The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, titled “Atheism in Antiquity.” Gavin Hyman’s A Short History of Atheism provides an even more accessible historical survey. It’s always been around, since before the Bible was written. 11. Atheism Rises, Religiosity Declines In America. 2. Through new media, New Atheists can organize en masse according to a dominant understanding of identity. I. Atheism in America. In response to critics who accuse them of cherry-picking the most extreme forms of religion, the New Atheists go to great lengths to demonstrate that their criticisms apply to the very idea that religion is off limits as a topic for attack. Godlessness is the last big taboo in the US, where non-believers face discrimination and isolation . Nonetheless, a considerable minority of American free-thinkers tenaciously persisted in identifying as atheists. Later that day in gym, I broke my collarbone playing dodgeball. Displays have been torn down, school groups have faced hostility by teachers and administrators, and board members have occasionally left a meeting room rather than listen to an atheist invocation. Specifically, the community has been dogged by accusations of Islamophobia, sexual harassment, racial homogeneity, and classism. The number of people who do not believe in any god has been on the rise in recent decades. Religious affiliations in America are changing rapidly. "Atheism in America" explores what forces are working to define who and what atheists are, and the often detrimental effects they have. 10 percent of Americans identify as atheists — but there’s a lot that people don’t know about us. The organization was founded in 1963 by Madalyn Murray O'Hair. In the future, I may still be a little sad, but atheism as a whole will likely become a loud, mainstream, and inescapable force in American public life. For the majority of Americans the term atheism (or reference to an individual as an “atheist”) has a negative connotation. Initially comprised mostly of Unitarian ministers, the AHA maintains 150 local affiliates and a number of publications in the 21st century. Ultimately, this volume shows that claiming an atheist identity is anything but an act isolated from the other dimensions of the self. I mean, what’s the big deal, right? I like to watch Comedians like Jim Jefferies, Ricky Gervais, Jimmy Carr ect and whenever religion comes up there’s a skit about how some American got offended. Atheists in America today face a deeply religious populace that holds a powerful and resilient anti-atheist prejudice, outstripping its distaste for other stigmatized groups, such as Muslims and homosexuals. Unfortunately for me, I just don’t believe there’s a God or lots of gods or a Tao or anything else that makes sense of the world. According to the 2008 ARIS, only 2% the US population was atheist, while 10% were agnostics. This is misleading; AFP Fact Check traced the video to 2014, long before US president-elect Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential race. In decades past, the Northeast and West were seen as isolated hotbeds of atheism and agnosticism. Atheists are the last of the minorities in America to come out of the closet, and like other civil rights movements this one began with leaders like Dan Barker and his Freedom from Religion Foundation defending the civil liberties of godless Americans, who deserve equal protection under the Constitution. Atheism is also tied to education, measured by academic achievement (atheists in many places tend to have college degrees) or general knowledge of the panoply of … Atheism often seemed to constitute a more extreme version of infidelity, but this extremity typically had a philosophical dimension. With the popularization of broadcast media, in the form of radio and television, antireligious criticism was translated into a more centralized grammar, in which fewer producers and distributors held sway over larger audiences who simultaneously found their options for feedback limited. Atheists in America today face a deeply religious populace that holds a powerful and resilient anti-atheist prejudice, outstripping its distaste for other stigmatized groups, such as Muslims and homosexuals. Among other findings, 62% of Americans say their country is not currently or never has been a Christian nation, and only one-quarter believe that the U.S. is a good moral example to the rest of the world. But it seems to be making quite the comeback especially in America. Alongside these official organizations, atheism’s largest presence in America can be found on the Internet. In the United States of America, Atheism is individualistic, diffuse and entirely relies on media to cultivate the community sense. J. H. W. Toohey, “The Omitted Resolutions,” The Truth Seeker, September 21, 1878, sec. The Public Religion Research Institute survey did not distinguish between atheists and agnostics and people who are unaffiliated. Organizationally, 4A focused largely on establishing godless societies on college campuses across the country. About 10 percent of all Americans say they are atheists, although this estimate may be on the low side. Most notably, Hemant Mehta (“the friendly atheist”) has become a popular figure for those who regard New Atheism as unnecessarily hostile to religion, Atheism+, a movement proposed in 2012 by blogger Jen McCreight, has sought to place social justice concerns at the forefront of the New Atheism, and Alain De Botton has influentially advocated “Atheism 2.0” as a form of disbelief that maintains the positive trappings of religion like communal institutions, traditional ethical commitments, ritual behavior, and diffuse forms of transcendence. Atheism has constituted and continues to constitute an important form of identification for many Americans dissatisfied with a dominant religious culture. Percentage Of Atheists In America By State. Probably some voted for Jill Stein last time around. His three-and-a-half-by-five-inch booklets cost 25 cents and were initially advertised to the 175,000 subscribers to Appeal To Reason (Girard, Kansas), which Haldeman-Julius took over in 1915. Most of us … Atheism in America is increasing. In the first half of the 20th century, religious criticism and anticlericalism was largely dispersed among various organizations representing religious liberalism and secular humanism. When Horace Seaver (d. 1858) took over editing The Boston Investigator, the discussion of atheism took center stage, and the understanding of atheism articulated was almost exclusively philosophical. Well, how would you feel if the dollar bill said “There Is No God” and the Pledge of Allegiance proclaimed that we are “one nation under no God whatsoever, yay”? The most significant figure in the history of American atheism during the broadcast era is likely Madalyn Murray O’Hair (d. 1995), though this significance is belied by her relative absence from contemporary atheist discourses. It's a collection of vignettes from people across America who identify as atheist or non-religious and how they've handled the situations that arise at work, in their communities, with friends, and of course, with family. Here are just a few things I would like people to know about atheism and being an atheist in the United States. Collectively referred to as the “Four Horsemen,” the New Atheists became the representatives of atheist thought for the early 21st century, engaging in aggressive campaigns of “consciousness raising” through media activity. In the United States, the government represents all its citizens, which means that it should not and (if the Constitution is interpreted correctly) cannot promote one religion over others or religion over non-religion. In 1980, William J. Murray, O’Hair’s son and plaintiff in Murray v. Curlett, converted to Christianity and disavowed his mother’s atheism. In 1878, concern about the continuing popularity of “nicknames” and “party commonplaces” culminated in the adoption of a number of resolutions at the Freethinkers’ Convention at Watkins, NewYork: WHEREAS, the common use of the words Heretic, Infidel, Atheist, and others of like import only mislead the ignorant and offend the wise; therefore, Resolved. 3. Irreligion in Latin America refers to various types of irreligion, including atheism, agnosticism, deism, secular humanism, secularism and non-religious. When Cecil B. DeMille released The Godless Girl in 1928 about a young woman who perilously joins a godless society on her campus, Smith reveled in the notoriety generated for 4A. The 21st century’s most popular atheists come from the ranks of scientists and scientifically minded philosophers, but their celebration of the scientific method is far from new. Should this decline continue over a generation, the United States will change dramatically. At the same time, French atheism’s commitment to the absolutisms of logical positivism tended to be too extreme for Revolutionary America’s most important figures, who were more drawn to the English-language debates over sense perception and common sense coming out of British Empiricism and the 18th-century Scottish Enlightenment. American atheism: Low stature of American atheists in American society. But as a term of art, free-thought described a movement popular during the 19th century of applying skeptical tools of independent inquiry to religious theology. George Jacob Holyoake, The Origin and Nature of Secularism: Showing that Where Freethought Commonly Ends Secularism Begins (London: Watts & Co., 1896), 96. Adler advocated “deed, not creed,” which represented a shift in emphasis entirely from questions of metaphysics to morality. Since 2006, New Atheism has come to incorporate a broad coalition of loosely affiliated atheist thinkers committed in general to the scientific method, rationalism, and moral and political liberalism. And maybe some space aliens, I guess, but they don’t really help. American atheists tend to lean left politically and are most likely to identify as liberal democrats. American Atheists is a non-profit organization in the United States dedicated to defending the civil liberties of atheists and advocating complete separation of church and state. Prior to teaching, he worked as an attorney at the US Department of Justice and as a law clerk to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the US Supreme Court. Perhaps seeking more moderate positions, some of America’s founders, most notably Thomas Jefferson (d. 1826), Benjamin Franklin (d. 1790), and Thomas Paine (d. 1809), found valuable resources in deism. 5. The American Atheist organization claims 172 local affiliates and 392,000 members and supporters. The New Atheists have received extensive scholarly attention. But skip ranting at me. Despite these reservations, debates over the accuracy of terms like “infidel” or “atheist” simmered but rarely caused widespread shifts in opinion. If you have already made a contribution to Vox, thank you. Radically decentralized in production, distribution, and consumption, with low financial barriers to entry, print media in America lent itself to pluralism. Stephen Bullivant and Michael Ruse (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). image caption A student atheism convention took place in Ohio. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a single article for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). This pursuit of a religious common-denominator was a popular move among Deists and contributed to religion’s being understood as privately held beliefs in contrast to publicly shared political opinions—an understanding of religion that later atheists would adopt as they attempted to reduce religion to a series of scientifically disputable hypotheses about the nature of reality. I have a very clear memory of leaving out the “under God” part of the pledge when I was forced to recite it in elementary school, and I’ve talked to countless other atheists who have similar memories. 31 Edgell et al., supra note 13, at 217–18. The majority of atheists in America agree homosexuality should be accepted and are perfectly fine with same-sex marriage. In 1960, Madalyn Murray (who adopted the O’Hair surname in 1965) filed suit against the Baltimore Public School System for requiring her son William to participate in mandatory Bible readings. Not anymore. This is all good news because secular democracies tend to do better than more religious nations. With half a billion booklets sold in 30 years, Harry Golden’s 1960 declaration that “no other publisher will ever create so wide a reading audience” is not outlandish.16 Until the advent of the Internet, Haldeman-Julius’ publications arguably constituted the most explosive distribution of information in human history. “When we work together to move our town forward in a spirit of mutual respect and common decency, we showcase what is best about our community, our state, and our nation.”. While the New Atheism emerged largely in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks and the surge in popular interest in Islamic extremism, the New Atheists have often gone out of their way to emphasize that liberal religion is not off the hook. White Americans, who constitute two-thirds of the country’s total population, are well above average in their embrace of atheism and agnosticism; they comprise three-quarters of the skeptic segment. The principle of religious tolerance, to the New Atheists, is what generates their emphasis on religious fundamentalism and fanaticism. By the time Paine published The Age of Reason in 1794, he was widely regarded as a hero of the American Revolution. Evangelicals are losing 20-30% each generation. These disparate strands of religious criticism coalesced into an atheist political movement predominantly during the course of the 20th century, through the deliberate efforts of individuals like Charles Lee Smith and Madalyn Murray O’Hair to capitalize on the exposure afforded by new media formats. The paper provides a detailed description of the Atheism in the United States of America. Despite the use of the term “secular” in the Liberal platform, other secularist language was relatively scarce in the early decades of the free-thought movement. Millions of people rely on Vox to understand how the policy decisions made in Washington, from health care to unemployment to housing, could impact their lives. Even more so than contemporary atheism, free-thought described a fervent sense of plurality and individualism. 17. Free-thought’s popularity peaked on either side of the American Civil War. Throughout the 19th century, the term “atheism” was never as widespread or popular as terms like infidelity, liberalism, and free-thought. In it, Paine decried Christianity as “a fable” and denied in absolute terms God’s participation in history. It would certainly relieve some of that “the world is meaningless and I am just standing on a giant rock swirling pointlessly through the universe” angst that I sometimes feel. Thinkers like Dawkins have received criticism for claiming that religion is a form of child abuse, but Diderot claimed that the most faithful adherence to religious logic would require smashing a child’s head against a rock. These include at least deism, skepticism, and theological agnosticism; religious and irreligious anti-clericalism and anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic prejudice; philosophical materialism, logical positivism, and varying degrees of scientism; the free-thought, Infidel, Free Love, Populist, and Communist movements; political secularism and ethical humanism; and the contemporary rise of the religiously unaffiliated, or “nones.” None of these strands map perfectly onto American atheism, but each one imparts some of its values, commitments, self-understandings, and political strategies to the background of contemporary atheism. Fueled by naturalism, science, and secularism, atheism has been emboldened. American flags fly over a sign reading ‘Pray For Our Nation’ on Friday, Nov. 6, 2020, in Rome, Ga. Ben Margot, Associated Press. Personally, I’m fascinated by religion and am a strong believer in religious freedom, although I don’t like how most religious beliefs these days tend to push people in a politically rightward direction. In the 21st century, American atheism exists primarily as a virtual community. I went to Catholic Private school from Kindergarten to 8th grade and was Baptised and had my first Communion and Confirmation. In many ways, skeptics resemble the rest of America … American Atheists also strives to educate, bring attention to, and dismiss false conceptions of atheists and atheism. Adler frequently made common cause with the burgeoning atheism movement, once remarking, “If [atheism] means the denial of being conceived by superstitious mortals in the image of themselves, a ‘big man’ above the clouds, then the sooner we accept Atheism the better.”15 As the free-thought movement survived into the early 20th century, it continued to overlap substantially with free religion and other social movements. In the United States, atheism carries within itself the influences of a web of intellectual currents and historical movements antithetical or parallel to a dominant religious culture. Additionally, 4A organized a series of popular debates with famous evangelists, including one between Smith and Aimee Semple McPherson on the subject of evolution at Carnegie Hall in 1934. The theme for the group’s 2019 conference, by the way, is “Better Together: Creating Meaningful Community.”. The community, or “subreddit,” r/atheism (reddit.com/r/Atheism) claims more than two million members and serves as a critical hub for the wider world of digital atheism. Their whereabouts became a public mystery for the next five years until, in 2001, David Roland Waters led investigators to the O’Hair’s bodies on a Texas ranch. An additional 5% of Americans call themselves agnostics, up from 3% a decade ago. Linell E. Cady and Elizabeth Shakman Hurd (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 87–105. This is a companion volume to his book on the fundamentalist take over of America. Some are fabulously happy, but not all of us are. atheism meaning: 1. the belief that God does not exist: 2. the belief that God does not exist: 3. the belief that…. In Our Non-Christian Nation, I discuss the many ways that atheists have started to demand their rightful place in American public life. According to a global survey conducted in 2011, 16% of the population has no religion (13% of non-religious, 2% atheists convinced and 1% didn't know answer). George Jacob Holyoake (d. 1906) coined the term in 1851 in response to the legal prosecution of blasphemy in 1840s Britain. Religion, always tending toward extreme fanaticism, could never be tolerated. On this point, the resources of French atheism were limited. Another popular method of distinguishing the New Atheists’ argumentative arsenal has been to argue that they, more so than in the past, have attacked not merely religion but the idea of religious tolerance. This is something I learned as I researched my Our Non-Christian Nation book. 6 things I wish people understood about atheism in America. Martin Marty’s Infidel: Freethought and American Religion explores the ways that 19th-century Christian leaders inflated the image of the infidel as a scarecrow with which to encourage congregational piety. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Macmillan, 1967, ed. And the cause is the false Christians of the religious right. As an atheist, it frustrates me when people say that public schools promote a secular worldview because they’re not allowed to sponsor prayers or do other things that some religious people would like them to do. -- … By James Burton on April 25 2017 in Society. I voted for Bernie Sanders. Historians have disagreed over the extent to which individuals like Franklin and Jefferson can be safely considered deists. About 10 percent of Americans say they do not believe in God, ... Gervais’s experience studying the stigma around atheism the world over made … And indeed, American atheists have maintained a relatively stable and perennial core set of political demands. Deism contributed to American atheism by reinforcing the understanding of religion as a question of beliefs, which could be empirically proven or disproven by scientific method. Because it is easy. (RNS) Religiosity is on the decline in the U.S. and atheism is on the rise, according to a new worldwide poll. The New Atheism has faced a number of controversies in the years since 2006. New Atheism appears uniquely comfortable with the tactics of identity politics, but this constitutes more an extension of the tactics deployed by Madalyn Murray O’Hair and American Atheists than a departure from them. Atheism in America is increasing. “Atheism” is, of course, a difficult term to pinpoint. Born in Philadelphia in 1889, Haldeman-Julius published and sold, from 1919 to 1949, between 300 and 500 million “Little Blue Books,” and he became one of the most prolific publishers in American history. But religious disbelief actually has a long and fascinating history. Roderick Bradford, D. M. Bennett: The Truth Seeker (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2006), 73. Historically, atheism has served as both a dangerous force to be resisted, providing fodder for religious leaders advocating conservatism and piety, and as a kind of buffer allowing religious liberals to frame their own movements as relatively restrained and pious.1 The former function is a familiar one; atheists are still often framed as immoral and un-American in ways that reify the notion of America as a religious nation. Atheism in America. O’Hair saw broadcast media as holding the secret to a successful atheist movement in America. Atheists in America is a unique contribution to the literature on atheism touching on topics rarely discussed or researched. Celebrity atheism seems to be more prominent with the show-business set than in middle America. Atheism in America. By Dale McGowan . For the sake of clarification, one can take “infidel” as a starting point. Nevertheless, Madalyn made it much safer — and much more natural — to call oneself an Atheist.17. 0 1. Not al… Throughout the 1960s, she appeared on dozens of radio and television shows—most famously the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and The Phil Donahue Show. Richard Cimino and Christopher Smith, “Atheisms Unbound: The Role of the New Media in the Formation of a Secularist Identity,” Secularism and Nonreligion 1 (2012). In the American context, James C. Turner’s Without God, Without Creed: The Origins of Unbelief in America, locates America at the center of atheism’s emergence as a modern phenomenon. The figure who most aggressively took up the mantle of infidelity in print before the birth of the broadcast era was Emanuel (E.) Haldeman-Julius (d. 1951). In response, there was a clear desire among many Freethinkers to reclaim the pejorative term and meet the social condemnation head- on. Alongside American Atheists, the Atheist Alliance of America (AAA) and its umbrella organization Atheist Alliance International (AAI), founded in 1991, host national and international conventions, publish the biannual magazine Secular Nation, and assist in the formation of atheist organizations in developing countries. But that is changing. Emma Goldman’s (d. 1940) short-lived Mother Earth journal served occasionally to voice her conviction of the sinister marriage of the state and religion. Learn more. For Palmer, the enemy was “supernatural and vindictive theology, which has served only to destroy the harmony of nature, and demoralize the intelligent world.”3 But the clearest bridge between American deism and American atheism was erected by Thomas Paine, who was regarded at least throughout the 20th century as a kind of patron saint of American atheism. At the same time, the ascendancy of television relative to radio meant that O’Hair found radio broadcasters more willing to take risks in catering to niche audiences left out by network television programming. For others, it’s just one fact about us among many and really isn’t particularly important. 1. This understanding of atheism owes in part to the influence of Abner Kneeland (d. 1844), the editor of The Boston Investigator who in 1838 became the last American tried and convicted of blasphemy. Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell, for example, is aimed primarily at rejecting the notion that religion deserves special treatment as a topic of conversation. Just as a student of Christianity would want to know about a few rather significant things that happened 2,000 years ago, someone who wants a better understanding of atheism likewise needs to know what atheism has been up to for the past 30 centuries or so. For thinkers like Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, in particular, a primary emphasis on Islamic extremism is deeply connected to the claim that tolerance for religious liberalism reinforces a logic that requires tolerance for the intolerant or fanatical. It provides speakers for colleges, universities, clubs, and the news media. Central among these have been the protection of public schools from religious influence, the taxation of religious property and income, and the removal of religious symbols from official governmental displays, including especially currency, the Pledge of Allegiance, and NASA missions. God’s a Ghost,” Smith was arrested once for disturbing the public peace and then again for blasphemy, in both cases refusing to swear the court’s religious oath against perjury and drawing public attention. In the 21st century, secularism is commonly understood as the political wing of American atheism—a commitment simply to the separation of Church and State. Atheists have also begun offering invocations before town boards all around the nation. We have been putting up with this kind of treatment for a long time, and our numbers are still rising. Felix Adler, Atheism, a Lecture before the Society for Ethical Culture, Sunday, April 6, 1879 (New York: Cooperative Printer’s Assn., 1890), 17–18. In 1991, however, the Cold War ended. The name most synonymous with this second wave of American free-thought is Robert Green Ingersoll (d. 1899), “the Great Agnostic.” A former Illinois Attorney General and prominent Republican, Ingersoll was world-renowned for his skills as an orator. Following World War II, when J. Edgar Hoover placed Haldeman-Julius on the FBI’s enemies list due to the subversive potential of the Little Blue Books, demand for the titles rapidly declined. Religion and the New Atheism: A Critical Appraisal, edited by Amarnath Amarasingam, provides a survey of some of the more popular diagnoses and criticisms of the New Atheist movement. Frank R Zindler, “Remembering Madalyn Murray O’Hair: April 13, 1919–September 1995,” American Atheist (Second Quarter 2013): 28. Upending common social, political, and psychological assumptions about atheists, this collection helps carve out a more accepted space for this minority within American society. That’s why no matter what the Supreme Court decides in the next few weeks, it is not okay for the state of Maryland to sponsor a 40-foot-tall cross on government property, even if that cross also happens to be a World War I monument. We hide our non-theistic identities from different people. Dawkins, in particular, has spearheaded the attempt to disprove the “god hypothesis” with contemporary theories from biology and physics. Some expressed dissatisfaction with an ambiguity arising from the term’s overuse by Christian opponents. Self-professed atheists interested in abolishing the separation of church and state are less common. However, methodological problems have been identified with this particular study since people do not have binary relationships … Edward Royle, “George Jacob Holyoake,” Journal of Liberal History 67 (Summer 2010): 35–37. In the late 1980s, she unsuccessfully attempted to legally commandeer The Truth Seeker. If you haven’t, help us keep our journalism free for everyone by making a financial contribution today, from as little as $3. Waters, a typesetter for American Atheists who had been exposed embezzling funds from the organization by Madalyn in 1995, along with two accomplices had kidnapped, extorted, and finally murdered the O’Hairs. On the long history of Western atheism and atheists from antiquity to modernity, Michael Buckley’s On the Origins of Modern Atheism provides a compelling intellectual history of atheism’s relatively modern emergence out of theological debates. The term likely describes other early American luminaries, including John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison and even George Washington. A former writer for the Truth Seeker, Smith’s approach to religion was confrontational, belligerent, and uncompromising. Atheism refers to the conviction of the nonexistence of God. New Atheists, such as Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, became intellectual celebrities; the 2006 best seller American Theocracy argued that … Why is atheism growing? A lot of people think that atheism is a recent idea. In contrast to the pluralism of free-thought, O’Hair frequently lamented the fragmentation of irreligious identity. It is important to acknowledge these forms of religious humanism as contributing to, rather than competing with, American atheism. Similarly, some have argued that the New Atheists are more caustic or polemical in their language, refusing to mince words like never before, a characterization obviously belied by the long history of truly polemical works of religious criticism. And He doesn't accept excuses or political slogans as explanations. Madalyn Murray O’Hair, “Secularism,” American Atheist Radio Series (Austin, TX: KTBC, November 25, 1972), in Vol. While organized atheism necessarily involves bodily practices and communal discourses and values, its proponents nonetheless tend to describe it first and foremost as a hypothesis about the nature of reality that lends itself to distinguishing between scientific and religious ways of knowing. Help keep Vox free for all by make a contribution today. Some of the most fervent antireligious sentiment was folded into the anarchist and socialist movements. I mentioned earlier that I watched an atheist give an invocation before a town board she had previously sued. I think of myself as a “sad atheist.” I would like nothing better than to believe that some omniscient and all-powerful being created the world for some purpose. This can make it difficult to create declarative statements about atheism as it manifests in the United States. Now, that’s a school I’d really like to teach at, but the fact that such a thing is almost unimaginable in today’s society (while of course private schools that explicitly promote the divinity of Jesus Christ are everywhere) just goes to show how marginalized atheism really is in the United States. Intellectually and socially, American Atheism has its roots in a number of prior movements, including in particular the Deism of Thomas Paine and other American Revolutionaries and the broad free-thought movement of the 19th and early 20th centuries. On August 27, 1995, O’Hair, along with her son Jon and granddaughter Robin, suddenly disappeared along with around $500,000 worth of American Atheist funds. Albert Post, Popular Freethought in America, 1825–1850 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943), 32. A strongly negative understanding of atheism as the absence of religious beliefs has generated an emphasis on the inclusivity of a diffuse atheist movement—the lack of theistic beliefs is regarded as a kind of bedrock or tabula rasa on which the individual is free to erect whatever personal beliefs they wish. Contributors to free-thought periodicals often employed the term “infidel” and “infidelity” much more readily than “atheist” or “atheism,” apparently in part because the term was frequently deployed by Christian leaders concerned with establishing religion’s cultural enemies in the eyes of their congregations. For one thing, I got to know a lot about the Satanic Temple, a nontheistic religion that venerates Satan as a symbol of rebellion against oppressive authority. 1 Percentage by country In response to allegations that conventions and gatherings associated with New Atheism have fostered unwelcome environments for women, in particular, Richard Dawkins has on more than one occasion used Twitter and other media platforms in ways that have stoked dissatisfactions. According to Gervais and Najle, atheism in the US may be as high as 26%, more than double Pew’s findings. In part, atheism has served as a productive foil for both its critics and allies, providing a push and pull that defines one edge of American conceptions of pluralism and religious liberalism. In decades past, the Northeast and West were seen as isolated hotbeds of atheism and agnosticism. Print media in the 19th century was well-suited to the nebulous and porous free-thought movement. Jay Wexler is a professor of law at Boston University. Shouldn’t we just chillax? In 1959, Madalyn filed suit on behalf of her son who was forced to attend Bible readings in his school and was the victim of harassment at the hands of school employees after he declined to participate. By Jay Wexler Updated Jun 14, 2019, 9:17am EDT. And O’Hair sought repeatedly to consolidate this identity into something stable, exclusive, and relatively homogenous. Of course, French atheism drew on several philosophical traditions closely aligned with absolute materialism and religious criticism, from Epicurean and Lucretian atomism to Pyrrhic skepticism and scientific naturalism, but these traditions had always been located, at least by their ancient and medieval proponents, within some form of religious thought. See, for example, Alan C. Kors, “The Age of Enlightenment,” in The Oxford Handbook of Atheism, eds. Less frequently recognized is the second function, in which the history of American atheism demonstrates a long and fascinating interrelationship between atheism and various forms of religious piety. Of the global atheist and non-religious population, 76% reside in Asia and the Pacific, while the remainder reside in Europe (12%), North America (5%), Latin America and the Caribbean (4%), sub-Saharan Africa (2%) and the Middle East and North Africa (less than 1%). There’s just us. They will have to explain their conduct to the Lord. About 10 … He is the author of six books, including Our Non-Christian Nation: How Atheists, Satanists, Pagans, and Others Are Demanding Their Rightful Place in American Public Life. Well, maybe or maybe not. And that kind of work takes resources. There were no miracles, no revelations, and no personal God. Thus, it is the Internet that largely generates feelings of oppression and a heightened perception of the intolerance of religion.19. He spoke from memory for hours on a wide range of topics for massive crowds across the country, but he was known primarily for advocating a form of agnosticism often indistinguishable from atheism. White evangelical Protestants are most likely to believe America has a special role in history (71%, down from 82% in 2016). Many of these have been quite good. When infidelity stood for unfaithfulness in general, critics alleged, it became too context dependent to be useful; depending on perspective, one person’s infidelity was another’s orthodoxy, and many free-thinkers sought to reserve infidelity’s sting for criticisms on religious hypocrisy. There is ongoing debate over whether there is anything essentially new about New Atheism or if it merely extends the rational atheism of Enlightenment Europe. In Holyoake’s understanding, secularism was a vitalizing force for morality, which theology had desiccated. Considering philosophical similarities between New and Enlightenment atheism, commentators have nonetheless sought to articulate a sociological uniqueness to the contemporary situation. Not to be confused with political liberalism in general, the Nine Demands of Liberalism, the official platform of the National Liberal League, indicated the specific centrality of the religious question, demanding “that our entire political system shall be founded and administered on a purely secular basis, and whatever changes shall prove necessary to this end shall be consistently, unflinchingly and promptly made.”11 Unlike infidelity, liberalism spoke almost exclusively to the question of secularism, serving as an appropriate term for those more interested in politics than collective self-identification.12 And by the end of the 19th century, “secularism” had begun to replace “liberalism” as the political term of choice. Atheists recognize this (and of course we can do the same), but as minorities, we also understand that the government is in a different position than the people it governs. Whitmarsh explores the scant but provocative evidence for atheistic philosophers and self-identifying atheists in ancient Greece and Rome, keeping in mind that they must have differed from contemporary atheists in the extent to which religion was regarded as a matter of belief rather than cultural practice. Using unproven theories, Darwinists indoctrinate youths in the United States in high school and college. When the National Liberal League splintered in 1884 over the issue of whether to advocate repeal or reform of the Comstock Law of 1873, it reformed in 1885 as the American Secular Union. Boston Investigator, October 14, 1846. This seeming attempt to rescue free-thought from a lack of philosophical rigor posed by the use of nicknames made explicit an underlying concern about terms like “infidelity,” namely whether a collective label should represent a purely philosophical viewpoint or whether it should serve a primarily social function in distinguishing the free-thought community from a wider religious culture. For example, Smith changed the subtitle of the Truth Seeker to “the journal for reasoners and racists” during his tenure from 1937 until his death in 1964, alienating many former subscribers and potential readers. Atheists come in all political stripes. The topics were diverse, inaugurating with Oscar Wilde’s “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” and Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat, but extending to classics of Western literature and pamphlets explicating liberal sexual education, Socialist propaganda, and psychoanalysis. Just as atheists come to recognize their belonging to a group, the transparency of the Internet also presents them with the fact that they are surrounded by a dominant religious culture. TST, as it’s often known, counts its followers in the tens of thousands, was just recognized as an official religion by the IRS, and is active throughout the country, with a particularly strong presence in New York City, Arizona, and Seattle. I’ve met and talked to a lot of atheists, and I can testify that we are a diverse bunch. At his conviction, Kneeland read before the Supreme Court of Boston a philosophical creed originally published in the July 12, 1833, issue of the Investigator: “Hence I am not an Atheist but a pantheist; that is, instead of believing there is no God, I believe, in the abstract, that all is God, and that all power that is, is God, and that there is no power except that which proceeds from God.”13 But Kneeland’s attempt to articulate the philosophical difference between atheism and Spinozan immanentism, and thus divorce himself from accusations of atheism, was unsuccessful. The organization was founded in 1963 by Madalyn Murray O'Hair. According to the Pew Research Center, close to a quarter of the population identifies as a so-called “none,” up 7 percent from 2007 to 2014, About 10 percent of all Americans say they are atheists, although this estimate may be on the low side, was just recognized as an official religion by the IRS, Fernando Alcántar, a former religious youth leader turned self-described “gaytheist,”, “Better Together: Creating Meaningful Community.”, state of Maryland to sponsor a 40-foot-tall cross on government property, even if that cross also happens to be a World War I monument, including an atheist monument in Bradford County, Florida, all sorts of godless displays around the holiday season, school groups have faced hostility by teachers and administrators, board members have occasionally left a meeting room rather than listen to an atheist invocation, Our Non-Christian Nation: How Atheists, Satanists, Pagans, and Others Are Demanding Their Rightful Place in American Public Life. 6. I am sure I will offend some people but since this question is asking for an honest opinion I will share mine. The 8–1 decision, issued in 1963, effectively banned mandatory Bible recitation in public schools, constituting a legal victory for secularism and a cultural victory for the atheist movement as a political force in America—a movement now closely wedded to the persona of O’Hair herself. Atheism, as indicated by its name, is the opposite of theism which is belief in at least one god; to include polytheism (belief in many or more than one god) and monotheism (belief in only one god). This, combined with Paine’s accessible language and its publication in cheap pamphlet form, meant that The Age of Reason was widely read, introducing the American public in explosively controversial fashion to deism’s capacity for religious criticism. The first wave of American free-thought owed much to a steady influx of immigrants from the British Isles and Germany to American cities from around 1820 to 1850.6 A number of short-lived free-thought presses emerged during this period, with only the Boston Investigator achieving financial sustainability. Although British secularism largely declined in popularity after the 1890s, Bradlaugh, in particular, exerted a profound influence on American free-thought, largely through a series of successful American lecture tours in the 1870s. 15. And He doesn't accept excuses or political slogans as explanations. I didn’t think so, but for a while there, I kept my atheism on the down low just in case. In response, Madalyn declared a “postnatal abortion” and repudiated William “for now and all times.” During the 1980s, American Atheist chapter leaders called for the removal of Madalyn and her son Jon Garth Murray from power and began defecting from American Atheists. On the figure of Madalyn Murray O’Hair, Bryan Le Beau’s The Atheist: Madalyn Murray O’Hair remains the most authoritative and exhaustive account of her relationship with American atheism, and her own publications, including those of her radio broadcast transcripts, serve as important source material on 20th-century atheism. It is definitely true that some atheists are angry — at religion, at religious people, at the government — but not all of us are. By the end of the 19th century, “secularism” had begun to replace “Liberalism” as the political term of choice. In part, the scientific bent of New Atheism is a reaction to a perceived threat from the Intelligent Design movement, largely centered around the Center for Science and Culture at Seattle’s Discovery Institute, which was active at the end of the 20th century in attempting to frame creationism as a scientific concept to introduce it into public education curricula. Religion News Service Religion News Service. Given our growing numbers, it’s important for non-atheists to understand what it means for someone to not believe in any god. The prevalence of atheism in Africa and South America typically falls below 10%. In October, the Baltimore Sun had published a front-page article detailing William and Madalyn’s alleged discrimination as atheists. Fifth-one percent of Americans would not vote for an atheist president. Atheism has become quite the movement in America and the Western world. In some ways, those characteristics of New Atheism highlighted by other depictions—the polemicism, opposition to tolerance, and minoritarian status—can be seen as results of changing media practices rather than as necessary components of a unique atheist epistemology. Evidence of this transition includes that when the National Liberal League splintered in 1884 over the issue of whether to advocate repeal or reform of the Comstock Law of 1873, it reformed in 1885 as the American Secular Union. The fragmentation of reading publics in the postbellum period meant that the free-thought movement had little need to draw rigid distinctions between various shades and degrees of disbelief and religious criticism. The success of r/atheism, however, has remained relatively insulated from widespread visibility. Other major nonreligious organizations in America include the American Ethical Union (AEU), Council for Secular Humanism, HUUmanists, Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, National Atheist Party, Recovering from Religion, Secular Student Alliance, Society for Humanistic Judaism, and United Coalition of Reason. For others, it was used mostly in explicit reference to an individual as an ancient in., “ the Age of Enlightenment, ” the Truth Seeker, 16 citizens polled demonstrate objectively attitudes... It ’ s the big deal, right 1980s, O ’ Hair sought to. 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