The Atheist Bus Campaign is a project of the Freethought Association of Canada to offer an atheist message in the form of paid advertising on public transit vehicles in Toronto. It emulates the very successful Atheist Campaign started in the UK, and which has recently enjoyed a victory that will ensure its ability to continue unhindered.

The TTC buses showing these ads should start rolling in May, and the proposed message is the same as that used for the UK campaign: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

Messages and hierarchy

I was made sleepy by the expected reaction from zealots, but was somewhat surprised to find opposition to the campaign from unexpected quarters. A non-religious acquaintance seemed baffled, wondering aloud what the purpose of it could possibly be. And Author Stephen Marche, a self-declared atheist who uses the term interchangeably with “secular humanism”, bemoaned the campaign in The National Post, finding it distasteful.

I believe what Dawkins and Hitchens write, and I certainly don’t need to be convinced of religion’s inherent toxicity… But turning secular humanism into a movement with a message is no way to stand in opposition to the terrifying global rise of religiosity.

It’s a startling declaration at first, apparently bereft of conviction and courage. But Marche is merely arguing that the first step toward dogmatism, the rigidity of viewpoint that atheism is supposed to refute, is hierarchy and organization. The kernel of his warning is a sound one: dogmatism, or militancy, of any kind, including militant atheism, is bad. It refutes rational investigation, the very foundation of most atheism, and ultimately rests on nothing more than unfounded propositions and opinions bleated loudly, lacking any appeal to reason.

Unreasonable lassitude

Like most atheists, however, Marche seems happy to silently live his life surrounded by the messages of religion, even while finding those messages to be irrational at best, and poisonous at worst. In October 2008, a “leading Vatican official” called homosexuality “a deviation, an irregularity, a wound.” There is a tiny, one hundred strong Christian sect in Kansas in the United States that has had global publicity far in excess of what is merited based on its size, the worthiness of its assertions, and the guttural offensiveness of its messages. And of course, Joseph Ratzinger, the current pope, previously head of The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — known a century or so ago as The Inquisition — said on December 22, 2008 that humanity needs to be saved from homosexuality and transsexualism, likening these conditions to its own destruction. (As an aside, I’ve walked down Church Street after midnight on many weekend nights in my youth, and humanity is in no danger of being eradicated by the various incarnations of Marylin Monroe and Jane Mansfield you can find flouncing around there.)

To my knowledge, Marche has not written any articles in major national newspapers decrying messages as offensive and anti-human as these. It is startling to me that he has decided to pick on the inoffensive and agnostic, even sheepish and apologetic message of the bus campaign.

This is morally repugnant to me. To take a position against the hurricane of life-denying poison coming from the lips of many of the faithful, a small position, so discrete as to be almost invisible, seems to be the only recourse many people have. To display one’s world view in quiet, gentle opposition to the regular religious harangue — to, horror of horrors, stand in opposition to all of this with an actual message! — is a noble effort, a kind of life-affirming “excuse me but” in the face of a pervasive, opposing rant. It is not only a good way to stand in opposition to the relentless march of religious intolerance and irrationality, it is a necessary act. A baby step perhaps, but an important one.

Much in a single line

Most importantly, much to the dismay of Marche and many people like him, the eleven words of the campaign message represent a coming together of people weary of the intolerant unreason issuing from the side of the faithful. Something quite simply has to be said, in as cheerfully inoffensive a way as possible. Gathering for this effort, sending money or putting up a website or ordering advertising on the side of a bus, is not the sure road to rigid dogmatism that alarmists are worried about. It is simply the required response of a growing population of reasonable people who reject the unreasonable, sometimes offensive and toxic, dictates of religion.

The message is directed at believers, and it is a simple one: Yours is not the only message around. There are others with a message more wholesome and more life-affirming. Fear is not the dictator of morality, and good works do not come from an abundance of faith, but from an unfettered love of humanity, from pleasure in humankind for its own sake, from the joy we take in our fellows simply because we live, because we are, because we eschew suffering and embrace life; because we believe in ourselves.

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The level of acrimony between atheists and believers is high. While atheists assert their right to challenge the faith of believers, believers feel mounting pressure to counter-attack. There have been a flurry of books in response to The God Delusion and others, but nowhere is the rancour more evident than in popular discourse, where there seems to be few rules of decorum, and where dogmatic positions in both views undermine whatever argument any particular adherent wishes to put forward. True communication in this scenario is not possible.

I understand the potential for militancy in atheists’ positions. Logical discourse mostly fails when attempted with many believers, because faith is necessarily impervious to logic. Many atheists assert that religious faith, especially fundamentalism, has seriously eroded education, science, and intellectualism, has made inroads in politics that have accelerated this process, and has changed the face of popular culture (such as it is). In the face of the inability of believers to accept rational arguments criticizing their beliefs, a reactionary response from atheists follows, buoyed by a feeling of fatigue with staying silent. This leaves the avenue of assault wide open — while simultaneously closing off common ground.

From the viewpoint of the believer, the nature of faith makes it impossible to reconcile its tenets with serious critical inquiry, and thus, there is no point in any dialectic concerning faith. To have faith implies that one accepts the infallibility of the articles of that faith. In extreme cases, inquiry of any kind is a sort of heresy. For example, even the soundest forms of biblical criticism and analysis would not alter the way some believers hold to the specifics of their faith. While this way of dealing with the world is a kind of refuge for believers, it necessarily cuts off all communication with those who do not believe.

In Canada, twenty-three percent of the population identify themselves as atheist, remarkably about double the number of the estimated percentage of atheists in the entire world. Even in the United States, where about 8% of the population report being atheist, the number of non-believers is growing, especially among the young. Even so, believers far outnumber atheists in North American society, and in society at large.

It seems apparent that both sides should be communicating with one another.

There is some attempt to do this. David Emery, a pastor at Middletown Christian Church in the US state of Kentucky, offered a series of sermons that sought to respond to what he calls the valid arguments of popular atheists like Dawkins. In his short but incisive book, Atheism, Julian Baggini, who is not shy about revealing the abundant absurdities of faith, warns about militant and dogmatic atheism, and its cost to reasoned discourse.

A model of common ground that would temper acrimony would be the understanding that a moral position is possible for both the atheist and the believer. Believers can be coached to accept that morality is possible with no belief in gods; that, in fact, morality and altruism are the default modes that human beings operate from. The sheer abundance of evidence of moral behaviour throughout recorded history, where the nature of belief in gods has continually changed, is indicative of this. That most atheists are even concerned with moral and ethical issues should be proof positive.

Atheists must always operate from a position of moral grounding while recognizing the fundamental humanity of believers. What is more immediately important than what a person believes is what a person is, in terms of his or her relationship to the rest of the world, and how suffering impacts everyone, whether its source is an absurd delusion or not. There is no need to refrain from pointing out absurdities of faith, especially when those absurdities take on dangerous forms; but when communicating with individuals, what is important is the recognition of the sameness of the atheist and the believer. PZ Myers’ cracker desecration would have been impossible for him, if his concerns for the suffering of others outweighed his intolerance for religious absurdities.

As their demographic numbers, perhaps glacially, approach one another, the importance of the shared humanity of believers and atheists is highlighted.

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When I was twelve, I slipped on a hill of ice and broke my wrist. A few seconds of confusion led to a rapid slide into shock, and I was soon overwhelmed by deep nausea. I panicked and sought out a friend, who led me into the school building with his arm around my shoulder. And then I was looking at the scene as though from above, impassively: my friend with his arm around me, the two of us at the point of an arrowhead of curious children streaming into the school building, the hallway with its yellow light leading to the principal’s office.

One night at age twenty-two, a car not using its turn signal drove directly into the side of my bicycle, crushing my leg between the car’s grill and the bike’s frame before sending me over the hood, against the windshield, and onto the pavement. It was summer, and with my arms and legs outstretched while facing down, the first layer of my uncovered skin peeled away as my body rotated against the road in a full circle before stopping. Immediately and uncontrollably, a primeval howl of pain came up from the pit of my stomach. With near-total objectivity, I was then observing things as though from a distance. The pain in my leg and on the surface of my skin was total, certainly the most pain I’d felt before or since. But, intensely curious, I took note of the way my body writhed on the pavement. The night air was cool on my forehead, budding with sweat; there was a musical clatter of running shoes on the road as some kids from a nearby park ran to help me. The old woman who’d been driving the car stooped over me, breathing heavily. Somebody from one of the houses attempted to talk to me over my screaming, to ask for a phone number they should call. At once the impassive observer stepped forward, quieted the screams, and spoke the number evenly and calmly before allowing the pain, the writhing, and the vocalization to overwhelm me again.

Some years ago while meditating, I suddenly had the unbidden sensation of being watched. The observer was clearly myself. This was no schizophrenic episode, but a very intense sensation of “I” being cooly, impassively observed by “me”. “I” was lying outstretched on the bed, breathing deeply, hyper-aware of my surroundings but in a state of complete meditative relaxation. “Me” was a depthless reservoir of my consciousness, ever curious but universally impartial, an objective, dispassionate observer.

I, defined

After eviscerating religious faith and stripping it of its claim to moral authority of any kind, Sam Harris closes The End of Faith with a chapter on the nature of consciousness and the self. He argues deftly for a non-dualistic conception of consciousness that ultimately does not require “I” to be an important element to consciousness at all. He disposes with the notion that the self is either merely the body, with its self-regulating systems teeming with all manner of life, or the generic components that make up the mind, considering that, in the end, only genetics and social environments account for the myriad expressions of behaviour in human beings, and that one’s “self” is nowhere to be found in them. In fact, without wondering at the evolutionary path that may have led to such a state, he suggests that the concept of the individuated self is nothing more than a biological function of the brain, transmitting impressions collected from the environment to the receiving entity it has created for the purpose, called “I”. This “I”, this self, is not necessary for consciousness to exist; it is merely handy, and the apparent duality of our relationship to the universe, of a subject that perceives and an object that is perceived, is, on close inspection, wholly without substance.¹

Harris accepts nothing without evidence, so how are we to prove this for ourselves? Introspection through meditation, as evidenced by what he considers the empirically selected practices of Eastern mysticism, exposes the merely utilitarian nature of the concept of self. The act of investigating the self, of looking for “I” in the sea of one’s consciousness while meditating, reveals it to be illusory.

There is a further paradox: the best expression of selflessness, the best route to ethical behaviour and concern for others, occurs when one is sufficiently introspective in order to recognize that “I” might not exist.

Toward the within

Much of this is anathema to atheists, who connect the kind of mysticism that Harris is talking about with dogmatic positions of faith, or acceptance of propositions without evidence. But meditation is available to everyone, and the results of studied introspection will speak for themselves. There is nothing here that need be accepted on faith. It is merely the West’s allergic reaction to the potential abandonment of identity that stands in the way of honest inquiry into the nature of personal consciousness. Even for atheists, there should be an exciting terrain within reach, if only one would close one’s eyes and quiet the chattering observations of consciousness offered by the self, to investigate the nature of consciousness itself.

1. Sam Harris, The End of Faith, W.W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 210 ff. [↩]

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