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[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

Keeping the Faith in My Doubt
By JOHN HORGAN

Published: December 12, 2004

Garrison, N.Y.
WITH the presidential election over and the holidays upon us - a 
religiously charged political season followed fast by the most religious 
time of the year in an overwhelmingly religious nation - unbelievers may be 
feeling a bit beleaguered. To cheer themselves up, they might visit the 
virtual home for a group called the United Universists.
Founded last year by a few brave souls in Birmingham, Ala., the Universism 
movement "denies the validity of revelation, faith and dogma" and upholds 
science as our most reliable source of truth. The Universists are asking 
atheists, agnostics and other infidels to join them in their effort to 
counter the influence of religious zealots in our culture. Since the recent 
election, the Universists have posed this question on their home page in 
large type: "Who will fight for the faithless?"
Good question. Obviously neither major political party wants to associate 
itself too closely with unbelievers - and understandably so, given polls 
showing that Americans are even less likely to vote for an atheist for 
president than for a homosexual. But as an areligious person myself, I'm 
intrigued by the notion of unbelievers banding together to increase their 
political clout, perhaps by speaking out on issues like sexual freedom, 
abortion, stem-cell and cloning research, and prayer in schools.
There are more of us heathens out there than you might guess. According to 
the Pluralism Project at Harvard, which tracks religious diversity in the 
United States, the number of people with no religious affiliation has grown 
sharply over the past decade, to as many as 39 million. That is about twice 
the number of Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and Episcopalians combined.
Not surprisingly, a slew of organizations - including older ones like the 
Council for Secular Humanism and the American Atheists and newer ones like 
the Universists and the so-called Brights - are competing for the devotion 
of the godless. The Universists, who claim to have enlisted 5,000 members 
so far, are especially feisty and shrewd at self-promotion. In September 
they took to the streets of Birmingham to protest Alabama's ban on the sale 
of sex toys, and last week they organized an online chat with Sam Harris, 
author of the anti-religion polemic "The End of Faith."
And yet I have no plans to sign up with the Universists or any other 
areligious group. First of all, I'm just not a joiner, more out of laziness 
than anything else; I avoid commitments that might jeopardize my sports- or 
sitcom-watching time. An organization for freethinkers - one of the 
Universists' self-definitions - also strikes me as oxymoronic, like an 
anarchist government. Isn't the point of being a freethinker eschewing 
categories like Satanist, Scientologist or Universist?
I'm also disturbed that these areligious groups have exhibited the same 
sectarian squabbling that they deplore in religious believers. When Michael 
Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine and director of the Skeptics 
Society, was invited to speak at an atheism convention in Florida last 
year, some organizers objected because he is agnostic - a mere doubter of 
God's existence rather than a denier. Mr. Shermer has likened this 
hair-splitting to the dispute between Baptists and Anabaptists over whether 
baptism should take place during infancy or adulthood.
At that same conference, two anti-religion educators also proposed that 
negative terms like "agnostic," "atheist," "unbeliever" and "skeptic" be 
replaced with the more upbeat "bright," which describes someone "whose 
worldview is naturalistic - free of supernatural and mystical elements." 
The term, which can serve as a noun or adjective, has been promoted by the 
philosopher Daniel Dennett and the biologist Richard Dawkins.
Members of some other groups have reacted with annoyance to the Bright 
movement, no doubt seeing it as an intrusion on their turf. Defenders of 
the old standbys "atheist," "agnostic" and "secular humanist" complain that 
"bright" is self-aggrandizing - and the implied antonym, "dim," a tad 
demeaning. Critics of the Brights include the Universists, whose Web site 
also distinguishes Universism from (and not-so-subtly asserts its 
superiority to) atheism, deism, humanism, pantheism, transcendentalism and 
Unitarian Universalism.
All this goes to show that even groups founded with the best of intentions 
- and what groups aren't? - usually become concerned above all with 
self-perpetuation, often at the expense of other groups with similar aims.
My main objection to all these anti-religion, pro-science groups is that 
they aren't addressing our basic problem, which is ideological 
self-righteousness of any kind. Obviously, not all faithful folk are 
intolerant bullies seeking to impose their views on others. Moreover, 
rejection of religion and adherence to a supposedly scientific worldview do 
not necessarily represent our route to salvation. We should never forget 
that two of the most vicious regimes in history, Nazi Germany and the 
Soviet Union under Stalin, were inspired by pseudoscientific ideologies, 
eugenics and Marxism.
Opposing self-righteousness is easier said than done. How do you denounce 
dogmatism in others without succumbing to it yourself? No one embodied this 
pitfall more than the philosopher Karl Popper, who railed against certainty 
in science, philosophy, religion and politics and yet was notoriously 
dogmatic. I once asked Popper, who called his stance critical rationalism, 
about charges that he would not brook criticism of his ideas in his 
classroom. He replied indignantly that he welcomed students' criticism; 
only if they persisted after he pointed out their errors would he banish 
them from class.
OF course we all feel validated when others see the world as we do. But we 
should resist the need to insist or even imply that our views - or 
anti-views - are better than all others. In fact, we should all be more 
modest in how we talk about our faith or lack thereof.
For me, that isn't difficult, because I've never really viewed my doubt as 
an asset. Quite the contrary. I often envy religious friends, because I see 
how their faith comforts them. Sometimes I think of my skepticism as a 
disorder, like being colorblind or tone-deaf. Perhaps I'm missing what one 
geneticist has called "the God gene," an innate predilection for faith 
(although I'm skeptical of that theory, too). But skepticism has its 
pleasures; I like the feeling of traveling lightly through life, 
unencumbered by beliefs.
Instead of banding together, maybe we unbelievers should set an example by 
going in the opposite direction. We should renounce all "isms" - that claim 
to speak for our most profound personal beliefs. Or rather, since we seem 
to be headed in this direction anyway, each unbeliever could create his or 
her personal ism, perhaps with its own name. Since Universism is taken, 
I'll call mine "Horganism." You can revile it, admire it, or ignore it, but 
you can't join it.
John Horgan is the author, most recently, of "Rational Mysticism."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/12/opinion/12horgan.html