How to Deal With New Atheists, or What's the Difference Between Richard Dawkins and Ayn Rand? The Accent

Last year I visited my parents for Christmas, and while I was there, my Italian mother (gifted with the Italian ability to guilt just about anyone into doing just about anything) talked me into going to church with her and my father. I hadn’t been in a church of any sort in more than a decade, and I’d never been in the sort of church they attend, a small, non-denominational church attended mostly by ex-Presbyterians, so I wasn’t sure quite what to expect. And nothing in my Catholic background could have prepared me for what I witnessed that Sunday morning: the service was basically a conversation, with the pastor talking to us like we were children (even speaking in that voice that most adults reserve for toddlers when explaining something difficult about the adult world); during musical interludes, the musicians (both of them) gave us mini-sermons on the meanings of the songs they were about to sing, using language that, to me at least, was only slightly distinguishable from Jabberwockian nonsense; and either before or after the service, almost ever person in attendance came up to me and offered to pray either for or with me.

What struck me the most about the experience, though, was not the service itself, but the “class” that took place before the service. This “class,” attended by most of the adults in the congregation, was supposed to be a sort of Bible study, headed by the pastor, but since it was the end of the year, the pastor spent most of the class issuing a challenge for the new year, and then opening the floor for discussion of the challenge. The challenge he gave them was to bring one person into the fold in the year to come. It wasn’t clear to me whether he meant one non-Christian or one non-believer, but it quickly became clear how the members of the congregation interpreted the challenge. Those who spoke up during the discussion all said they knew exactly who they were going to target, and not one of them mentioned a Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, or otherwise non-Christian but religious acquaintance. They all spoke of atheists. So the discussion was almost entirely about how to speak to atheists about Christ.

During this discussion it became obvious that these people had little or no experience talking to atheists, about religion or anything else. A few days later, I mentioned this to my mother, and she suggested that I write an email to the pastor giving him ideas about how to speak to non-believers. For some reason, I took this quite seriously, and started thinking about what to include in the email. I knew up front that there is no one way to talk to atheists, because there is no one sort of atheist, so I decided focused my efforts on explaining how to talk to the most visible sort of atheist, the sort that most Christians now seem to associate with atheism in general, the “New Atheists.” The only problem was, in trying to explain how to talk to this sort of atheist, I came to the realization that I myself have no idea how to talk to them.

I had tried talking to new atheists in the past. My first instinct, as is often the case, was to try to talk to them philosophically. That is, I would want to talk about epistemology and metaphysics, pointing out that the “vulgar positivism,” as someone recently referred to it, that they espouse was deeply problematic philosophically, and that while they frequently claim to believe in nothing that is not verifiable by science, in doing so they were committing themselves to epistemological and metaphysical positions that are, by their very nature, not verifiable by science. What’s more, without at least some of those assumptions, nothing at all would be verifiable by science. In other words, the science upon which they are grounding all belief was itself grounded on metaphysical and epistemological assumptions that they were, if not simply ignorant of, then at least eliding entirely.

The philosophical approach, however, had been worse than fruitless. In fact, I had usually been met with ridicule, with the new atheists telling me that I was trying to sell them quasi-religious nonsense. When I was engaged, it was usually with platitudes and silly clichés about how there is no evidence for theism, therefore atheism is one of if not the most proven positions in the history of science, nay, in the history of the world! How does one answer that claim? Other than shaking one’s head in disbelief, I have no idea. So instead I abandoned philosophical approaches, and I tried to discuss with them the psychology of religious (or at least theistic) belief, the social and cultural aspects of religion, the history of religion, the primacy of morality over metaphysics in religion, etc., but again, to no avail. Intellectual arguments were obviously pointless. The atheists of my youth, who were intellectually curious and open-minded to a fault, were nowhere to be found among these new atheists.

It was clear that I needed a different approach, then, so next I tried practical arguments. I pointed out that new atheism, with its focus on attacking religion and its strong association between science and atheism, was doing a disservice both to atheism and to science. New atheists were playing right into the hands of the American Religious Right by confirming widely held stereotypes of atheists and deeply felt mistrust of them among many evangelicals and fundamentalists (see e.g. this video). If atheists are seen as arrogant, elitist, and out to get Christians and Christianity, as many Christians believe they are, then having someone like Dawkins, who is nothing if not arrogant and elitist, and whose rhetoric can easily be interpreted as showing that he and those who follow him really are out to get Christianity and Christians (whether they are or not), can only aid those leaders on the Religious Right who seek to exploit fear of atheism and secularism to further their agenda of intolerance and anti-science. Myers, Harris, Dennett, and Hitchens are little better, and in some cases, even worse. What’s more, by turning science into a religious issue, they are providing fuel for the creationists in their Intelligent Design disguise. How can those fighting against attempts to put creationism in the science classroom argue that it should be excluded on religious ground when Richard Dawkins, P.Z. Myers, and their many, many followers are arguing that evolution leads directly to atheism (without passing Go or collecting $200)? How can we hope to educate those who have been duped by creationist “intellectuals” and public figures, if we begin by attacking their most cherished beliefs? We can’t, and we won’t, and it’s not a coincidence that the Intelligent Design movement has gained momentum, and followers, as new atheists have become more and more the public face of atheism.

Again I was met with nothing but ridicule. I was labeled a “Neville Chamberlain” atheist, an appeaser on par with the appeasers of Hitler, and told that I was more concerned about the feelings of the religious majority than I was about the Truth. During one encounter with a Dawkins/Myers acolyte (at Netroots Nation '08), I was told, after stating my position that Dawkins and Myers were harmful to atheists, that my appeasing of the religious made him sick, and that he couldn't even look at me, much less discuss the issue any further. And at that point I was out of ideas. If neither intellectual nor practical arguments cant even spark discussion with, much less reflection in, new atheists, then my arsenal is bare.

Then a thought struck me: where had I seen something like this before? Where had I seen a complete lack of intellectual curiosity coupled with a blind certainty and hostility to even the slightest dissent? Among the Randians, of course! For a Randian, there is only one correct conclusion, only one correct world-view, and any other possible viewpoint is to be ridiculed or ignored. Dissent, even among those who hold similar viewpoints (not simply other libertarians, but even Randians who dare to question one or more aspect of the Objectivist orthodoxy), cannot be tolerated. And there are deeper similarities between the Randians and the new atheists. They also share a seemingly willful philosophical naiveté, a distrust of anything even remotely speculative, a blind commitment to Reason (as embodied in the scientific method, for the new atheists) and objectivism broadly construed (in both cases, in the form of a strange rationalist-empiricist admixture), and a complete disinterest in history, either intellectual or cultural, except to the extent that it confirms their prejudices (e.g. there have been religious wars, therefore religion kills people). And I should have seen these similarities before, too, because there are more than a few fans of Rand among the new atheists.

Once I saw this obvious analogy between the New Atheists and Randians, I knew exactly how to deal with the New Atheists: ignore them. You can’t talk to a Randian. Talking to a Randian is like talking to a brick wall, only brick walls can produce an echo so that you at least know that it received the sound of your voice. When talking to a Randian, even that is too much to ask. And you certainly can’t convince him (they’re almost all male) that anything he believes is wrong, so the best way to deal with him is to simply ignore what him. This, then, is the best way to deal with the new atheists as well: ignore them. Granted, individually ignoring them doesn’t solve the problem of them being in the public eye. That is a different sort of problem. As long as their message is one designed to be maximally controversial, they will get media attention, their books will sell, they will attract followers among the Randian-type social and cultural malcontents, and they will be seen as the spokespeople for atheism, regardless of whether they are being engaged directly. This means that we, those atheists who find their message as appalling as those of the most intolerant religious zealots, shouldn’t stop publicly engaging their message -- it’s up to us to counteract its influence, and to clean up its mess -- but we should engage the ideas, not the people, because engaging the purveyors of the ideas is pointless, utterly so. They will simply shout us down with insults and frame us as traitors to our own cause. Pithy insults and fiery rhetoric will always beat out careful reasoning and thoughtful discussion in a world of sound-bites and short attention spans. So we should create an atmosphere in which the new atheists are essentially talking to themselves, either in the form of other new atheists, or in the form of the fundamentalists on the other side of the religious spectrum.

And this goes for those among the religious whose reaction to the new atheists is not simply a knee-jerk “Ooh, atheists are evil!” as well. They should feel, for the sake of dialogue between the religious and the a-religious, and for the sake of the promotion of science and science education, that the new atheists’ message must be engaged. But they shouldn’t feel the least bit compelled to engage it by engaging new atheists themselves, because doing so is as pointless for them as it is for us.

So when I finally wrote that letter to my parents’ pastor, it was short and sweet. I told him that he must recognize that “atheist” is not a homogenous category, and that there is therefore no one way to talk to us about religion or any other topic. I told him that he and his congregation should treat us like adult human beings, respecting us by engaging us in dialogue, rather than preaching or lecturing us about the wonders of Christ. Who knows, in actually discussing religion with us, they might learn something, and their minds might be changed too. But, I warned, if you or one of your parishioners should come across an atheist who answers anything you say with ridicule, the best thing you can do is move on to the next one, because with this sort of person, no meaningful dialogue is possible, no learning will take place on either side, and everyone’s time will be wasted.