How Can Atheists be Subjected to Bigotry if They Can't be Identified?

Austin Cline makes some interesting observations about how the invisibility of atheists actually contributes to anti-atheist bigotry:

If anything, the invisibility of a group can contribute to their continued oppression on a number of levels. When people don't see members of this minority around them doing all of the same things as others, it's difficult to remember that they really do live much like everyone else. When members of this minority are invisible, their interests, needs, and problems can be ignored as well.

Viewed from the other side, the general invisibility of atheists makes it that much easier to remain invisible — to stay in the closet and thereby avoid even worse experiences at the hands of their loving, religious neighbors.

Ethnic and racial minorities rarely have any choice about appearing in public as who they really are, but others do — Jews, gays, and atheists are all groups in which many members have chosen to "pass" as members of the majority because it can make life easier. In some cases, light-skinned blacks learned to "pass" as whites in order to be treated with the basic dignities and decencies not normally accorded to other members of their race.

Atheists would be invisible enough without them actively hiding it, but hiding compounds the aforementioned problem of no one seeing atheists for who they really are: normal people who live normal and moral lives. Gay rights activists recognized this problem and it was a major impetus behind encouraging as many gay people as possible to come out of their closet and be open about their true sexual orientation.

Being quiet and inoffensive never provided any benefits to the gay community, never deceased hatred of gays, never educated people about gays, and never advanced the cause of equality a single iota. The same is true for atheists, though they are only now slowly coming to this realization. As with gays, atheists are being informed by helpful religious theists that if they just kept quiet and weren't so uncivil in their criticisms of religion or theism, then people wouldn't despise atheists so much — as if atheists were loved when they hid.

What religious theists fail to realize — probably because as part of the majority they have never had this experience — is that being told to be quiet is itself part of the system of anti-atheist bigotry which we have to deal with. Thus their "advice" isn't so much a means for helping us as it is for keeping us locked into the very system of unjust privilege which they so amply benefit from. How can atheists be subjected to bigotry if they can't be identified? The answer is simple: by ensuring that they don't want to be identified out of fear of the repercussions, and by advising them to keep quiet about who they are in the hopes that silence will buy a little security.

This is precisely the reason why atheists and agnostics must speak up and come out of the closet whenever possible. As I mentioned earlier, up to 1/4th of us could be either atheist or agnostic. There are potentially more of us than the second largest Christian denomination! There is voting power in this. There is safety in mumbers, too. But so long as atheists keep quiet we will be subjected to anti-atheist bigotry.

Okay, so what if you suffer some minor personal problems if you come out of the closet. At least you won't be burned alive at the stake like many heretics were in the past due to the Inquisition. Many of our freethinking forbearers suffered quite a bit for coming out of the closet. We are the recipients of their courage. The consequences keep getting smaller and smaller as skeptics come out in every generation. If enough of us do this there will be no consequences for doing so. And if you think like I do that the world will be a better place without religion, then by standing up and telling others what you think you could greatly contribute to society.

So I supported the Blasphemy Challenge of the Rational Response Squad, and I now support Dawkins' Out Campaign.

David Mills describes us as approaching the Golden Age of Atheism. If every skeptic would come out of the closet he would overwhelmingly be proved right! I do understand why some people cannot do this just yet. But I urge every freethinker, skeptic, agnostic and atheist who can do this to come out of the closet.

4 comments:

liniasmax said...

Man, John, I really want to. I understand totally. I long for it. I ache on the inside. I'm a recent deconvert (5 months) and things are so difficult. I was a local (very local) champion for the faith. I still get asked to speak and participate in faith discussions, because I was so public. My wife's not on board - she thinks I'll come around. Where we live, with all we have invested - to leave the tribe would leave us stranded and very much alone. Emotion and thought are not mixing well st the moment. If I had the time and was good at it I believe I could start a true "hypocrite" blog. Thanks for your site - It has really ministered to me... Sorry...

zilch said...

I have no problem with acknowledging my atheism. But I have it easy: first of all, I've never been anything but an atheist, and secondly, I live in a country where there's no (or not so much) discrimination against atheists- Austria.

Lines are drawn differently here than in America- while there's no constitutional separation of Church and State, and indeed there are crucifixes hanging in public school rooms, it's much more common to be open about being an atheist, and the Socialist party here makes a point of greeting people with "Guten Tag" instead of "Grüß Gott", the traditional greeting in Austria.

So no moral bravery on my part is necessary to admit being an atheist.

Anonymous said...

Hi non-believers,
You have to get to know someone to know if you like them or not.

Probably most people you know like you already.

If you haven't told them they probably won't be surprised very much if you did.

Stargazer said...

Most people who know me would be very surprised to find out where I've landed. This is a huge obstacle for me. I've tried to lay the groundwork for a couple of my closest friends,hoping to be able to speak freely to them about this; my husband is aware of the direction in which I have been heading, but it remains very hard for him. Other than that, no one knows. As I've stated in a couple other areas, this is a tremendous hurdle for me.