Up until a couple of years ago, I used to admire and identify with the so-called "New Atheist" movement, largely because at the time I felt a sense of belonging in its opposition to religion and ostensible promotion of values such as gender equality, LGBT rights, and freedom of religion.
Fast forward to today, however, and I find the idea of condemning religions or opposing them wholesale instead of supporting reformist and liberal interpretations and sects/denominations thereof quite myopic, unrealistic, and sometimes tribalistic. I'll explain why in this post.
First, the idea that religion is necessarily a negative thing—or that religions form an "axis of evil," as Hitchens put it—misses the fact that many charities and positive communities draw inspiration from their respective religious beliefs. While it is arguable that said communities would still be positive toward others even without any religion, the point remains that religion clearly doesn't necessarily impede progressive thought or inspire harmful beliefs or actions. To condemn religions as necessarily being an "axis of evil" or a force of bad in the world misses the point of promoting progressive ideals and instead focuses on pointless and tribalistic identity politics.
Second, there is also the fact that religions are often so encompassing of different aspects of life that they can easily include both beneficial and harmful beliefs, so it is simplistic to focus on only one aspect and declare them "wholly good" or "wholly bad" without considering the bigger picture.
For example, there are Islamist charities that have helped many families in dire need, yet some of those same charities are also run by people who believe in capital punishment for homosexuals and apostates. There are many discussions one could have about the net effect of such religions on the world, but said discussions are far from simple enough to allow one to definitively condemn or idealize religion without being off the mark in one way or another.
Third, I see no reason to believe that religion is going anywhere anytime soon, no matter hard some public figures try to combat its presence and sometimes basically preach against it. As far as I can see, the more realistic and useful approach is to support progressive, benign interpretations and sects of religion instead of aiming to get rid of religion altogether.
Aside from the fact that an absence of religion wouldn't even necessarily guarantee freedom of belief or abolish overly controlling laws and social norms (consider North Korea and China as examples), it seems to me that focusing on getting rid of religion instead of merely promoting progressive values misses the point and turns a pursuit of reason and tolerance into one of identity politics in a way that could alienate many potential allies of progressive thought among religious circles.
I don't think everyone who is anti-religious or anti-theistic is necessarily a bad or ill-intentioned person at all; in many cases, it seems to me that it is actually an important phase of personal growth that some people need to go through. However, the keyword here is "phase": I think it is crucial to grow past it at some point.
From what I have seen in multiple Arab atheist circles and multiple ex-Christian communities, for example, anti-religious bitterness and anger, as understandable as they are in many cases, do nothing useful for the rights or freedoms of said groups and often end up being unhealthy for the mental health of the person harboring them. In fact, sometimes they lead people to become exactly like the religious extremists they rail against, which demonstrates how counterproductive this kind of thinking can be.
I would much rather be defined by what I am rather than what I used to be as well as focus on promoting progressive values instead of opposing religion wholesale. This is where I think "New Atheism" misses the mark and why I no longer identify with it, despite my acknowledgement and appreciation of the fact that its vocal endorsement of secularism may have helped normalize atheism and non-mainstream worldviews in a useful way.
A while ago, I realized that the harm associated with a religion is based almost entirely on how much power and influence it has. The beliefs informing that power don't seem to matter that much.
IMO, if a religion becomes dominant in a society, it will become harmful. If the same religion becomes a minority in society, it will become benign.*
*unless the minority religion finds a way to isolate itself from larger society, but then it's still finding a way to be dominant... just over a smaller group.
This realization led me to a few conclusions:
- Institutionalized religion really is a problem in and of itself. It's not just a matter of having the "right" religion in a position of power. Power + religion will be bad in every case.
- The problem is with religious institutions much less than individual believers (though recognizing that every religious institution is made up of religious believers).
- A religion's size translates into political power. If the majority of the population of a country belong to a particular church, for instance, that church will necessarily be a political force in society.
- Small religions without much political power aren't really the problem. A Muslim in the West, for instance, or a Pagan, isn't going to impose their religion on non-believers or use their religion in a harmful way.
So I think that deconversion - at least from powerful, majority religions - is a valid goal and beneficial in and of itself, but only to a point: once the die-hard, devout believers are all that's left, then the religion won't have enough power to impose itself on non-believers or to compel dissenters and apostates to stay.
Religions have a "critical mass" based on their power and size. Above that critical mass, people will join the religion for the social benefit (or at least the lack of social cost or outright punishment), and then this increase in size tends to increase the power of the religion, which tends to push more people to join, etc., etc.
OTOH, below that critical mass, religions tend to lose their casual members: the small business person no longer has to rely on church as a place for business leads, for instance. This loss of membership causes a loss in power and influence, which reduces the social benefit of being in the religion, which reduces membership further, etc., etc. There ends up being a membership "floor", though: those die-hard members who don't care about the social benefit of their religion will stay no matter what... and that's fine. Generally, with just those people left, the religion ends up small and powerless, which has the effect of making the religion benign.
TLDR: I think that converting people away from religion is a valid goal in and of itself, but don't assume that someone who wants to reduce the size of major religions
from current levels is out to turn every religious person into an atheist.
If a church in my community had no more influence than a mosque in my community has now, and if both of them only got treated as a charity when they were doing actual charitable work, I'd be fine with that.
