Atheists come together in the Adopt-a-Highway program. Photo courtesy of Wha'ppen, Flickr
Recently, a new campus organization called Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics (AHA) has been working to get approval by the Tucker Foundation as an “affiliated religious group” as you will see in Sora Ryu’s article on the group this issue. Despite the large number of students at Dartmouth who self-identify as atheists, AHA would be the first non-theistic organization to be officially recognized by COSO in Dartmouth’s history. In a recent article in The Dartmouth entitled “AHA’s Moment”, the author, Brendan Woods, said that as a Christian, he believes that all people should be permitted to join in religious discourse, no matter their faith. I agree wholeheartedly with his position of acceptance, and I think the recognition of an atheist group on campus is long overdue.
To my surprise, many students at Dartmouth are of a different opinion. The most common response of Dartmouth students, when asked about the approval of a new non-theistic group on campus was “Why would anyone want to join that group?” The real question here is why would an atheist—a person who does not believe in miracles or fate—be impassioned by the absence of faith? What would they talk about?
We all know the stereotype of the disillusioned atheist who has become alienated from religion and regressed into apathy. Many people who hear phrases like “The First Atheist Church”—which does actually exist and has ordained 2523 ministers—would consider it an oxymoron and assume that no such thing would exist.
All stereotypes aside, there are still those impassioned atheists who may not believe in God but who nonetheless believe in some higher purpose, whether it be achieving enlightenment or protecting the health of the planet. They can change their beliefs no more easily than religious people can change theirs. Although atheism is not technically, a religion, the fact that the Tucker Foundation has already adopted 25 affiliated religious groups and yet has not included the non-theists in their debate seems incongruous with their stance on diversity. Why is it that we have overcome the days of shunning “non-believers” as with people of different faiths, but we have not yet overcome our fear of allowing theist and non-theists to sit down next to each other?
I remember when I was in third grade, I would argue with a girl in my class over the existence of God. My parents had not yet explained to me that the subject was “taboo,” especially coming from seven-year-old. I would ask her over and over, “why do you believe in God if you have never seen him, if you have no proof?” And she would simply respond, “At least I believe in God!” To say the least, the conversation didn’t get very far. After having turned this poor girl’s face beet red numerous times, she finally offered one justification that made some sense to me: she needed no proof, and that was why it would always be true. They were simply people of faith and I was not.
Alas, I discovered that as an immature atheist, conversing with a religious person about morals and religion was nearly inconceivable. There is simply no way to hold a worthwhile conversation about religion, I thought, when you are missing the key ingredient: faith. Soon however, as I met people who practiced religions other than Christianity and Judaism, such as Daoism in East Asia or Santeria in Cuba, I realized that despite vast cultural and geographical differences most religious people obey many of the same basic principles. Though every faith may believe in a slightly different version of our creator and the afterlife, we all face virtually the same consequences for our actions here on Earth such as guilt, physical harm, or imprisonment. As many atheists have argued before—and Siyue Liu ’13 reiterates in her interview inside—you don’t have to have faith in a certain deity in order to have morals or even to consider yourself “religious” by a loose definition. By now, I would hope that this fact has become widely accepted amongst educated people if not a platitude.
Yet the reason that so many people are uncomfortable talking about religion with non-theists is not that they see them as immoral, but rather precisely because they do not have faith, at least in the traditional sense of the word. So we are back to the old wall of faith (or lack thereof). Having an honest, level discussion with others about religious issues, especially if they do not subscribe to the same religion, takes some mutual understanding of faith, and what it means to defend your beliefs instead of merely rejecting the beliefs of others. But this has to work both ways, and ignoring the voice of non-theists is no different than dismissing the faith of religious groups.
The idea that atheism is about disagreement is a misconception that has stunted ethical and moral discourse at Dartmouth for years. Something tells me that the members of AHA are not merely out there to start arguments. If this were the case, then why would the members participate so enthusiastically for years without official recognition? Even non-theists have beliefs of their own. Ultimately we are all searching for answers to the same basic questions, and whether we choose to believe that the universe began 15 billion years ago or a few thousand years ago is irrelevant. What matters is that if there are people out there who share a common system of beliefs, they should be permitted to hold a civilized discussion with each other and bring their discussion to a public forum.
