The transformative power of atheism

Greta Christina thinks the atheist movement is doomed (but in a good way), much like the queer movement (her phrase) was "doomed" to make it normal to be homosexual. I think her analysis, good as far as it goes, is too superficial, though.

She's right: atheists are no more inherently extraordinary or amazing than anyone else; at worst (cough Ayn Rand) an atheist has one fewer stupid belief than a theist. In just the same sense, gay people are not inherently extraordinary, nor are women, or black/brown/yellow/red people, or Protestants, or monotheists, or anyone else.

On the other hand, I think the queer movement had an amazingly transformative effect not just on society but on individuals of every kind of sexuality. Yes, it's true that it's no big deal to be queer, but the idea that "it's no big deal to be queer" is a very big deal. And not just for gay people, because if it's nothing special to be queer, then there's no objectively right way to express your sexuality, straight, queer or bi; vanilla or kinky; by yourself, with one partner or a roomful.

In just the same sense the idea that "it's no big deal to be a woman (or black)" is a big deal, and it entails that you don't have to construct, protect or defend your masculinity or your whiteness any more than you have to submit to slavery and oppression if you're female or black.

And, in just the same sense, the idea that "it's no big deal to be atheist" is equally a big deal, because it entails that our moral, ethical, political and economic beliefs are our own, that these beliefs are fully human, and not the result or commandments of God, whether you construe God as a old guy with a white beard living in the sky or any sort of new-age woo-woo about cosmic forces. If it's no big deal to be an atheist, then obedience is no longer a virtue; rationally apprehensible mutual benefit, not Hobbesean submission to absolute authority, becomes the sine qua non of morality.

All rebellion is initiated not by those who choose not to submit, but by those who cannot submit, to whom submission is death. Only the queers could lead us all, straights as well, out of the grip of sexual conformity. Only the black people (in the US) could lead us out of racial conformity. Only the women could lead us out of gender conformity.

And only the atheists — those who would rather die than mouth the lies and bend their knees to the supreme authority of God — can lead us all out of the worship of obedience itself.