The future of atheist evangelism

Debating the future of the secularist movement, atheists, humanists and other religious skeptics gathered in Los Angeles last week to argue the best way to publicly criticize religion.

Some insisted that friendlier, more accommodating rhetoric could open doors for atheists to receive the support of religious moderates.

Others asserted that it’s best for atheists to be bold and confrontational, loudly opposing any religious belief.

Discussions about how best to evangelize have traditionally been held among religious individuals desiring to advance their beliefs in non-believing places.

However, the debate at the Los Angeles conference suggests that secularist leaders are quite interested in multiplying their ranks.

And if it’s growth they desire, I have a few suggestions from a young, religious rhetorician’s point of view.

If secularists want their movement to grow beyond the walls of the ivory towers where they have a strong foothold, if they desire to “save” those who might not hold a college degree, they must work to shed their status as intellectual elitists.

The perception of atheists as all brain and no heart can prove to be intimidating, overly-confident and rude to religious believers.  

A popular, religious perception of atheism asserts that it is a world view that claims to have discovered the truth behind religion.

It’s believed that atheism is an objective, scientific understanding of the universe that has correctly investigated religion, rightly dismissing it as an inferior world view.

I hardly intend to argue the merits of atheism’s claim to superior knowledge of what’s true or real.

I do, however, wish to suggest that atheists’ self-presentation as enlightened should cease if they intend to gain a larger following.

Though they might rightly believe that they have transcended religion, this position has allowed atheist rhetoric to arrogantly dismiss the actual objections to atheism that religious people hold.

Famously, best-selling atheist Richard Dawkins objected to debate William Lane Craig, one of the most academically-respected modern Christian theologians, by stating, “I don’t take on creationists. ... I’m busy.”  

Such a position is absurd and arrogant. If Christians and academics respect Craig, it seems reasonable for Dawkins, as a leading atheist apologist, to give him the rhetorical time of day.

In a recent interview with the New York Times, science writer Chris Mooney accurately noted that many Christians reject science because of a “perceived conflict with moral values.”

While the common atheist response to critics of evolution has been to argue that evolution is scientifically indisputable, that claim fails to address the real need of religious objectors, namely, the assurance that an objective standard for morality could exist without God.

If atheists intend to advance their cause to segments of the population that are not immediately persuaded by their intellectually-based rhetoric, they must address the beliefs that undergird individuals’ resistance to atheism.

Addressing the specific terms of debate in Los Angeles, it seems that a more accommodating atheist movement might gain supporters while a more confrontational atheist movement could gain momentum.

Only a rhetorically relevant movement, however, will gain new converts.


E-mail: tycherne@indiana.edu