The best part of an atheism rally in Washington, D.C.? Obviously, it is when the speakers invoke Martin Luther King, Jr., to make their political points. You know, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Baptist minister and co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
And yet, Vox reports that at the recent Reason Rally 2016, that’s just what happened, even though that invocation, as well as many other comments by the speakers, didn’t gin up the crowd the same way an impassioned sermon might.
It is clear … that almost nobody who takes the stage at Reason Rally was ever trained as a preacher. The whole thing is languid, urgent words in measured tones. The goal is an ‘end to bigotry,’ in the pitch of a polite request, to ‘reject’ a supernatural worldview with all the force of tepid applause.”
Despite not having religious faith, atheists share a common belief:
Once religion is banished from the public sphere, the most pressing difficulties in our national life will largely fade away, rationally debated and swiftly solved according to the dictates of reason.
There is less agreement regarding the likely outcomes of those debates. …
Vox writer Emmett Rensin, himself a stated atheist, notes the inherent trouble with politically charged atheism: While atheists may oppose religion because its intersection with politics can create unfortunate outcomes, “atheism has never seemed to me to solve any political problems at all.”
Speakers at Reason Rally advance admirable goals: pluralism, reproductive rights, tolerance. But what about the absence of God tells me that these are civic virtues?
It is not surprising that religion provides rhetorical urgency to reactionary causes, but what causes of any kind has it not at times imbued with moral purpose? Most people are religious. The talk appeals. What would surprise is a world where the absence of faith produced an absence of bad politics or bigotry. Only a narrow imagination supposes that the depravity of men will not find other cudgels; that an empty sky will make good policy visible to all. …
Set aside that such clear skies are improbable, that religion is a stubborn thing and one that persists too well in climates far more hostile than the present. The promotion of an improbable goal is not Reason Rally’s sin.
What is troubling in Reason Rally, in Movement Atheism, among Dawkins and Nye, in the throngs of free thinkers turned out on a dry Saturday to hear the talk of turning points and revolutions, what is troubling in all of this is the optimism of these free thinkers. The extraordinary credulity of skeptics.
David Silverman, the president of American atheists and a “self-described firebrand,” demands we all chant atheist! together as an act of political unity. This activity consumes roughly half his speech. And then?
Banish superstition, and the major political struggles of the American state will solve themselves by measurement. Accept the facts, the prime fact, the fact of an imaginary God, and we will realize the dream of the Founding Fathers.
But a fact is not an answer. A fact, in this case, is just an absence. We are only interested in logic, but what are your premises? Empiricism is the only way to know the truth about the world. Well, what do you want to know about it?
The trouble with Reason Rally is how little it cares for what comes after; its hubris is the faith of so many attendees that pure reason will reward their politics.”
