After watching the rest of CNN’s special, “Atheists: Inside the World of Non-Believers” (video here), I will say that other than my initial concern, the show did a decent job of representing the very human struggle that many atheists face when they come to the conclusion that they no longer believe and the consequences that often follow when former believers abandon the faith of their family and friends.
The story of David Gormley, a former Christian with an evangelical family living in Georgia, was particularly heartbreaking. Gormley seems like a thoughtful guy who just wants to live an honest life free of hypocrisy. Like so many in similar situations, he genuinely couldn’t believe now even if he wanted to, yet he gets branded as a “dead person” by his father for simply wanting to seek the truth and drawing a conclusion on how to live his own life. And then there was the anonymous pastor, who is still leading a congregation despite not believing in the words he preaches from scripture. Offering one of the most salient points of the show, which taps into one reason why religion is a bane on society, he said if churches would devote the millions of dollars they spend on ornate windows and buildings and use the money to feed the hungry, communities around the nation would be transformed.
The special also did a good job of highlighting the fact that although nonbelievers share a common philosophy, they all can’t be lumped into one monolithic unit. Some nonbelievers, like former pastor Jerry DeWitt, who reminds me of a kind of atheist version of Rick Warren, adopt the mission of making the world a better place and loving everyone, regardless of whether someone’s religious or not. They don’t ridicule religion. They adopt a live and let live approach. On the other side of the spectrum, however, is someone like David Silverman, with American Atheists, who takes a more hard-lined, combative approach. I hope viewers of the show understood the implication: Atheism doesn’t have a spokesman or spokeswoman. One person, neither Silverman, DeWitt or Richard Dawkins, can or should represent millions of nonbelievers. Silverman, in particular, doesn’t speak for a lot of nonbelievers (and he had a couple inaccuracies in his interview), and I, for one, was alarmed when he said:
People don’t realize how downtrodden atheists are. The fact is we’re the most hated group in the country.
It may be true that atheists are not liked in some sectors of the nation, but “most hated?” I don’t think so. That lovely tag could be applied to the God Hates Fags folks or some other actual hate group. And what about downtrodden? That’s news to me too. Even the suggestion that atheists are downtrodden or somehow subjugated in America in the 21st century goes against everything freethinkers like Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and damn sure Christopher Hitchens — along with their fans — have stood for. Silverman is hardly a “legend in the atheist world,” as CNN contends. And I think that is largely the point. From the atheist viewpoint, there are no legends; only people, striving “in our ordinariness,” as Dawkins said.
I did have a few points of contention with the special. First, the title would have been better if it was simply: “Inside Atheism” or “Atheism: The Real Lives of Nonbelievers.” “Inside the World of Non-Believers” seems to suggest that atheism is like Scientology or some other cult into which a daring reporter must become embedded to understand its true nature when, in fact, all a journalist has to do is walk down the street, and chances are they will run into someone who does not believe in God. Just like there is no spokesperson, there is no insular atheistic “world” to find except Planet Earth. In fact, one could argue that nonbelievers are more comfortable with this world and more attuned to this world than believers who constantly pine for some better reality than our own.
Second, as Hemant Mehta pointed out, the show largely consisted of nonbelievers who were white males, and as far as I can tell, Vanessa Zoltan, with the Humanist Hub, was the only female atheist. What was missing was someone from the African-American community. The Black Atheists group on Facebook has more than 12,000 members. Surely, CNN could have reached out to one of them. What about Morgan Freeman? Whoopi Goldberg? Lauren Anderson Youngblood? Mandisa L. Thomas, president of Black Nonbelievers, Inc.?
Finally, the special didn’t include a whole lot of insight, which would seemingly be critical to a special on atheism, into why former believers turned away from their faith in the first place. I would have liked to see a little more commentary on what compels people like David Gormley and the anonymous pastor to reject religion. Perhaps in the full interviews that we didn’t see, the interviewees did address that question more fully, but it was largely left off the show. In almost every case from which I have heard, former believers become atheists or agnostics only after a monumental philosophical struggle and lots of studying and contemplation; they don’t just wake up one day and decide to disavow the god of their family and friends out of the blue or because they want to be contrarians or hurt anyone. They come to their conclusions because of a genuine desire to know or get as close to the truth as possible and to know what really happened, or what didn’t happen, 2,000 years ago in ancient Palestine, for if Christianity or Islam or Judaism were really worth their weight in salt, they should be able to stand up to scrutiny. Millions have thus concluded that they can’t.
All that said, what the show did particularly well, I thought, was presenting Dawkins, DeWitt and others as approachable, pleasant and happy people to contrast with common misperceptions and stereotypes about nonbelievers. What it seemed to lack, as expected given the source and the audience, was depth.
[rating: 2.5/5]