Five challenges for atheists and secularists in 2016

These are my five challenges for atheists and secularists in 2016.

1. Oppose the silencing word ‘Islamophobia’
2. Promote robust civil dialogue not Internet rage
3. Normalise the use of the word atheism
4. Promote fundamental human rights
5. Promote ethical secular democracy

It is a follow-up to my review of 2015 for atheists and secularists.

Those of us who live in secular liberal democracies should actively support those who courageously promote these ideas in more dangerous regions. We should also directly promote the ideas in our own democracies and online.

1. Oppose the silencing word ‘Islamophobia’

We should reject and challenge the use of the word ‘Islamophobia’. It is typically used to conflate two ideas (criticism of Islam, which is just, and bigotry towards Muslims, which is unjust) and it uses language that suggests that those who criticise Islam have a mental illness.

By building the term around the word ‘Islam’ rather than the word ‘Muslim’, some people can use it to try to silence criticism of Islam, even when that criticism is aimed at protecting Muslims, who are the most common victims of Islamic human rights abuses.

I support the idea of popularising a phrase to describe and oppose bigotry towards Muslims as people. I strongly oppose the ideas of ‘anti-Muslimism’ or ‘anti-Muslim bigotry’ as unjust and harmful. But I reject the idea of ‘Islamophobia’, because criticism of Islam is reasonable and necessary.

We should give Muslims the respect of treating them as individual people, not a monolithic group. Most are ordinary Sunnis or Shias whose priority is to live normal lives. Some piously follow their religion, while some in the West drink alcohol and don’t wear veils but consider themselves culturally Muslim. Some are persecuted Shia or Ahmadi or female or gay or reformist Muslims.

Some lead Islamist regimes that impose Sharia by force on other Muslims and religious minorities, including the Wahhabi Sunni regime in Saudi Arabia with its religious police and a law that defines atheism as terrorism, and the Shia regime in Iran where a psychotherapist was executed in 2014 for publishing innovative interpretations of the Quran and having sex outside of marriage.

Some are international terrorist groups, from the Shia Hezbollah in Lebanon with its aim of obliterating Israel, to the Sunni ISIS who promote their supposed Caliphate by murdering concertgoers in Paris. Some are religiously motivated murderers. In Bangladesh, three secular bloggers and a publisher were hacked to death last year. In Pakistan, when Christian woman Asia Bibi was condemned to death for insulting Mohammad, two politicians who supported her were murdered, one by his own bodyguard.

Is Islam a religion of peace or a religion of violence? That’s like asking is a rainbow yellow? Parts of it are, but the rainbow itself is not. Like most religions, Islam is a religion of contradictions. For many faithful Muslims it is a source of comfort through submission. And for many dissidents it is a source of violence and oppression.

But unlike religions in secular democracies, Islam in Islamic States is an integrated religious, judicial, political and military ideology and system of social governance. And you cannot disentangle the religious, judicial, political and military elements of Islam, and say that just one of those is Islam, because it is the combination of all of these that constitutes Islam.

The laws of secular liberal democracy have evolved over the centuries to gradually reflect more nuanced ideas about freedom of conscience, and equality before the law, and individual human rights. But the values of Islam and Sharia are shackled to the Quran and the Hadiths, documents that are up to thirteen centuries old. And any proposed changes must be made consistent with those texts, that reflect the values of a more violent and undemocratic era.

Also, supporters of Islam, unlike secular democrats, must believe that the creator of the universe dictated the book that Islam is based on, and that book simply cannot be wrong. Whereas I as a secular democrat can happily say: show me evidence that I am mistaken, and I will change my mind. I won’t retreat behind theological claims to justify retaining the ethics of a more barbaric era.

The IHEU has just published its 2015 Freedom of Thought Report, an annual global report on discrimination against humanists, atheists and the nonreligious. The countries with the best records are all secular, with separation of religious and political authorities, such as Belgium, Estonia, Fiji, Kosovo, Netherlands and Taiwan.

Four fifths of of the countries with the gravest violations are Islamic or mostly Islamic. They include Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates and Yemen in Western Asia; Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Iran, Maldives and Pakistan in Southern Asia; Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia in South Eastern Asia; and Comoros, Egypt, Gambia, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Sudan in Africa.

Other States with grave violations are split between Islam and Christianity, such as Eritrea and Nigeria in Africa; are mostly Christian, such as Ethiopia and Swaziland in Africa; or are neither religious nor democratic, such as China and North Korea in East Asia.

So that is my first challenge for atheists and secularists in 2016: reject and challenge the use of the silencing word ‘Islamophobia’, give Muslims the respect of treating them as individual people, and criticise the human rights abuses inflicted on Muslims and others by Islamism.

2. Promote robust civil dialogue not Internet rage

We should robustly promote our ideas, and oppose ideas with which we disagree, while remaining civil and respectful to the people with whom we are disagreeing. This can be hardest to do online, where shock-bloggers and internet mobs prefer to promote Internet rage.

There are two ways in which Internet rage can spread. One way is when an individual like American shock-blogger PZ Myers spends years deliberately and consistently spreading hatred of people with whom he disagrees. Another way is when uncoordinated Internet mobs unjustly attack an individual like British scientist Tim Hunt, and the defamation spreads spontaneously through the Internet and into mainstream media.

PZ’s FreeThought Blogs network eventually imploded last year, with Ophelia Benson leaving after being unjustly labelled a transphobe, and founder Ed Brayton leaving citing the health impact of the drama and stress of running the network. It is now losing traffic and revenue. The departing Ed and Ophelia had accounted for a third of the traffic, and PZ now accounted for 90% of the rest. Another FreeThought blogger, Jason Thibeault, predicted some of the network’s bloggers might now have lean months with zero income.

The meltdown was like the movie Little Shop of Horrors, in which flower shop assistant Seymour feeds an exotic plant’s ever-greater craving for human blood, until the plant finally grows large enough to turn on Seymour himself and destroy the flower shop. But the bloodthirsty plant is not an analogy for the attackers themselves, some of whom seem vulnerable and unjustly hurt in life. It is an analogy for the channelling of anger, which can sometimes be valid, into personal hatred and unjust behaviour.

The defamation of Tim Hunt was different. After he gave an impromptu short speech at the World Conference of Science Journalists in Seoul, he was publicly smeared as a misogynist and had to resign from his position as an honorary professor with the University College London’s Faculty of Life Sciences, and from the Royal Society’s Biological Sciences Awards Committee

These smears were spread online mostly by decent people who believed the original story, and who believed that they were doing good by exposing somebody who they believed was bad, or at least who had engaged in bad behaviour. The mainstream media, who should have had more responsible editorial checks and balances, spread the smears uncritically.

But the people spreading the smears were mistaken. Painstaking research by English author and politician Louise Mensch later revealed that Tim Hunt, and other audience members, were smiling; that Tim ended his toast with congratulations to women in science, and a wish that nothing would hold them back; that Tim was mocking himself, using an ironic tone to do so; and that he sat down to laughter and applause.

It was only a day later that some people started criticising Tim Hunt, and that was after they said that he had attended another session, on sexism in science, and had stood at the back of the room smiling as he was questioned about his earlier speech. But they were mistaken. Tim was not at that session, and they had mistaken an audience member for him.

Louise Mensch then catalogues how three journalists, Connie St. Louis, Deborah Blum and Ivan Oransky, falsely reported, in a tweet they all verified, a misleading account of Tim Hunt’s speech from the day before. And the BBC later apologised for wrongly attributing wording to Tim that he had never said.

Please read Louise Mensch’s comprehensive research on how this smear began and spread.

Here are some things to consider when engaging in online debate.

• Not everything you read on the Internet is true. If you read a controversial claim, check the source. Keep searching for a reliable source that satisfies you of the truth or otherwise of the claim. Then respond, based on the most reliable information you have found.
• Online debates can magnify misunderstandings and intensify hostility, when compared to real-life conversations. Remember that we are dealing with real people who have feelings. Don’t humiliate, marginalise or ostracise people who are seeking to discuss things.
• It’s important to be angry when anger is justified, but it’s often not helpful to publish what we feel while we are angry. The best use of anger is for it to motivate us to take practical actions to make things better. We can best do this when we are thinking clearly about what we are doing.
• When responding to something we disagree with, assume good intent. Respond to the issues. Point out what we agree with as well as what we disagree with. Ask them to also assume good intent on our behalf.
• Don’t stereotype people who disagree with us. Engage reasonably with people who sincerely disagree with us on issues. Seek explanations and apologies from people who post personal attacks, but otherwise don’t let them dictate our agenda.
• Try to find creative ways to advance the underlying interests of both us and the people who we disagree with, rather than just compete with them or capitulate to them on the specific examples we are discussing.
• Be prepared to back down from our positions when we realise that we were mistaken. This can be harder to do on the internet, because our positions are permanently published not merely spoken, but do it anyway.

None of this is to suggest that we should silence ourselves, or allow ourselves to be silenced, when opposing harmful ideas either online or offline. In particular, Universities should be prepared to host events at which speakers cause offence to people who do not share their beliefs, as long as such events do not break the laws of the land or incite violence or crime.

This is important because universities are not the same as private bodies with their own political agendas. Universities are public bodies that should foster freedom of expression, and encourage critical thinking and intellectual growth among students and staff.

So that is my second challenge for atheists and secularists in 2016: promote robust civil dialogue not Internet rage, while remaining civil and respectful to the people with whom we are disagreeing.

3. Normalise the use of the word atheism

We should try to normalise the use of the word atheism in public discourse. Some atheists believe that it is more pragmatic to use softer words, like humanist or freethinker or nonreligious, to avoid the prejudice that some people associate with the word atheism.

But those linguistic retreats merely reinforce the prejudice against atheists, despite us having a reasonable and philosophically defensible worldview that is proportionate to the evidence. There is considerably more evidence that humans invented the idea of gods than there is that gods actually exist.

The unjust prejudice against atheists will continue for as long as nobody sees us doing constructive things while self-identifying as atheists. Indeed, the only way to gradually chip away at the prejudice is for us to be seen to self-identify as atheists while doing constructive things.

So if you self-identify as an atheist, then do so publicly if it is safe to do. And if you prefer to self-identify as a humanist or freethinker, because you think these terms add specific values to your atheism, then consider describing yourself as an atheist humanist or an atheist freethinker.

In Atheist Ireland we made it a priority, when we were founded seven years ago, to normalise the use of the word atheism in Irish politics. That is now happening. It is no longer unusual for the Irish media to interview a spokesperson for an atheist advocacy group, and Irish politicians now expect to be lobbied by atheists promoting secular policies.

In the Oireachtas, Irish parliamentarians used the words atheist and atheism 26 times last year, as many times as they did in the fifteen years combined before Atheist Ireland was founded, and increasingly most of the mentions are descriptive rather than pejorative.

Historically, TDs and Senators used the words atheist or atheism only 63 times in the first ninety years of the Oireachtas; that’s about once every year and a half. But they have used the words 97 times in the seven years since Atheist Ireland was founded; about 14 times a year. The average for the past three years has been 21, thirty times as often as before we were founded.

One of the first uses of the word atheism in the Oireachtas was in 1931, when Frank Fahy of Fianna Fail assured the Dail: “No Party in this House, and no Deputy in this House, desires to see Communism, Atheism or Godlessness spread in this country.” In 2016 you will be more likely to hear a TD or Senator support or oppose proposals from an Atheist Ireland briefing document about a Bill being debated.

Atheist Ireland also has a weekly email newsletter called Secular Sunday, a monthly Information Table, a Kiva team that raises money for developing world entrepreneurs, and monthly Secular Sunday Brunches and public meetings around the country. These also help to normalise the idea that atheists are normal people who do constructive things.

So that’s my third challenge for atheists and secularists in 2016: do constructive things, and be seen to do constructive things, while explicitly self-identifying as an atheist. That is how we will gradually end the prejudice against what is a reasonable, proportionate and evidence-based worldview.

4. Promote fundamental human rights

We should promote internationally agreed human rights, particularly the right to freedom of conscience, religion and belief, the right to equality before the law, the right to freedom from discrimination, the right to private and family life, the right to freedom of expression, and the right to an effective remedy to vindicate rights that are breached.

The 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights is a strong foundation upon which to build ethical secular policies, along with the two main treaties that seek to implement it: the International Covenant on Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. There are also other agreements based on particular areas of rights.

While these agreements are not perfect, they provide the strongest approximation we have to a set of human rights that can be objectively monitored. And while the UN Human Rights Council is flawed and political in nature, the UN Human Rights Committees are composed of independent legal experts who regularly question every State about their human rights record.

The Universal Declaration on Human Rights, and its supporting treaties, stand in stark contrast to the rival Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam. This was developed by the Organisation of the Islamic Conference in 1990. It filters human rights through the supremacy of Sharia law, and is more focused on protecting islam and Sharia than protecting human rights.

Human rights are not lofty aspirations, but are the absolute rock bottom minimum standards that we should expect to have without even having to campaign for them. Human rights standards are the most difficult for our opponents to argue against, because they are not merely our personal preferences, but minimum standards agreed by many States around the world.

In two weeks time, Atheist Ireland will travel to Geneva, where the United Nations will be examining the Irish State about its human rights obligations under the International Covenant on the Rights of the Child. In May we will return, when the UN Human Rights Council will be questioning Ireland under the Universal Periodic review process.

This will be our third year doing this, following our successful interventions in Geneva when Ireland was being questioned by the UN Human Rights Committee under two other important treaties, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 2014 and on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 2015.

Both times, the UN Committees told Ireland that it was breaching fundamental human rights of atheists and members of minority faiths, as raised by Atheist Ireland in our written submissions to the Committees and our lobbying in Geneva.

As well as getting many important decisions in our favour on secular issues, including religious discrimination in schools and hospitals, religious oaths for high office and blasphemy laws, the UN Human Rights Committee made a significant point to the Irish State that applies equally to other States.

Ireland told the UN that the reason that it denies pregnant women their abortion rights under the Covenant was because they are expressing the will of the Irish people as expressed through referendum. The UN Human Rights Committee told Ireland that this reason was totally unacceptable. It said that human rights cannot be denied by a majority vote in Parliament or referendum, and that the whole point of international human rights law is to avoid the tyranny of the majority.

As well as the United Nations, we also attend meetings of the European Union, the Council of Europe and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, where we advocate for secularism in the face of many better-resourced lobby groups advocating for religious interests.

So that is my fourth challenge for atheists and secularists in 2016: promote internationally agreed human rights standards, and take part in the feedback and lobbying process when your own State is being questioned by the UN Human Rights Committees.

5. Promote ethical secular democracy

With human rights standards as our foundation, we should build on that foundation by actively promoting fair and just societies, governed by ethical secular democracies. We should each do this as individuals, and some atheist groups may also choose to do so collectively. We can each share this goal while having different specific ideas about how best to pursue it.

Secularism is a force for good in three ways.

1. Secularism protects everybody’s freedom of conscience and religion and belief by staying neutral between them. Secularism is not the same as atheism. Religious States promote religion. Atheist States promote atheism. Secular States promote neither.

2. Secularism allows religious people to focus on preparing for whatever next world they believe in, based on applying faith to their imagined divine revelations, and it allows the State to focus on governing this world, based on applying reason to the best available evidence.

3. Secularism combines with human rights standards as a foundation stone on which we can build a liberal democracy, which can in turn combat other threats to human rights such as fascism and totalitarianism and communism and the unregulated free market.

Secularism has many practical advantages. The happiest countries are secular liberal democracies, including Scandinavian countries and northern European States. In general, secular countries have lower rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion.

Studies published by social scientist Phil Zuckerman and others have shown that atheists and secularists are typically less nationalistic, less prejudiced, less racist, less dogmatic, less ethnocentric, less closed-minded and less authoritarian; more politically tolerant and more supportive of gender equality, abortion rights and gay rights.

There is a pathway to secular rational values. The World Values Survey, conducted by a team of interdisciplinary social scientists, suggests that as individuals move from survival values to self-expression values, which is triggered by investments in health, education, communication technologies and democracy, societies then move from traditional religious values to secular rational values.

How can we promote ethical secular democracy?

• We can promote the principles that public policy should be formed by applying reason to evidence, and that there should be one secular law for all, democratically decided and evenly enforced, with no jurisdiction for religious courts to settle civil matters.
• We can tackle specific injustices that are related to religious dogmas, such as reproductive health rights, same sex marriage, blasphemy and apostasy accusations, genital mutilations and ‘honour’ killings.
• We can build alliances with others who, like atheists, also face prejudice and social discrimination. We can identify and work together on specific issues of mutual interest, and support and empower each other.
• We can ask candidates in elections their position on secular issues, and publicise their responses to enable secularists to know which candidates or parties are most likely to promote ethical, secular policies.
• We can objectively examine the impacts of social discrimination, and identify the best ways to promote fair and just societies, so that we can develop evidence-based arguments that can guide our ethical instincts.

So that is my fifth challenge for atheists and secularists in 2016: actively promote fair and just societies, governed by ethical secular democracies.

Summary

To summarise, these are my five challenges for atheists and secularists in 2016.

1. Oppose the silencing word ‘Islamophobia’
2. Promote robust civil dialogue not Internet rage
3. Normalise the use of the word atheism
4. Promote fundamental human rights
5. Promote ethical secular democracy

Those of us who live in secular liberal democracies should actively support those who courageously promote these ideas in more dangerous regions. We should also directly promote the ideas, in our own democracies and online.