Webmaster's note: this story republished here with permission from The Weekly Surge.
By Timothy C. Davis
Staff Writer
It wasn't so much the brutal attack that outraged, but more so the fashion in which it was reported in the daily newspaper:
Admitted atheist attacked outside gym
"A Myrtle Beach man and admitted atheist was attacked and robbed on Thursday night by a group of men who took offense to an anti-Christian phrase on his windshield."
Reported by The Sun News on May 4, the entire mention was merely a small blurb, one of the police beat nuggets that so many cub reporters cut their teeth on. However, the story gained a life of its own, soon appearing on more than 100 secular humanist/atheist blogs and websites around the world. And as much as people had a problem with the fact that a person was beaten up and robbed, they moreover had a problem with the language - and, some would say, subtle editorializing - in the article's headline and in the article itself.
A reader posting on Unscrewing the Inscrutable (www.brentrasmussen.com) put it thusly: "The expression 'admitted atheist' is unacceptable. He didn't confess to doing something wrong like an 'admitted pedophile.' No one uses the expression 'admitted Christian.' The article's use of 'admitted' is editorializing in the worst way."
Indeed, despite the fact that no fewer than five atheist/secular humanist-related books have appeared on bestseller lists in the past two years - Sam Harris's "The End of Faith" and "Letter to a Christian Nation," Daniel Dennett's "Breaking the Spell," Richard Dawkins's "The God Delusion" (currently # 29 on the NY Times Bestseller list) and now Christopher Hitchens' "God Is Not Great" (currently # 3) - and the fact that, if polls are any indication, many American citizens are worried the United States is headed down the road to becoming a theocracy (more on this later), there's still pockets of anti-atheist/humanist sentiment out there, especially in the Deep South...and South Carolina.
Twenty-one-year-old Eric Heyd, the man attacked in the incident above, told police he was simply committing a "rebellious act against the National Day of Prayer," according to the incident report, by writing an obscene phrase on his rear windshield. The finger-penned phrase in question? "Fuck the Skull of Jesus."
When Heyd argued with the suspects - who have never been caught, despite strong circumstantial evidence that five men had "just left the gym" and still had their names on the Crabtree Gym sign-in sheet - about the statement, they attacked him and robbed him of his wallet. He was then taken to South Strand Ambulatory Center, where officers told him the case "could and would be filed as a hate crime," according to Heyd (the police report states that the attack was reported as a "bias motivated incident").
Heyd says he knew why the men were targeting him almost immediately.
"As soon as I got out of my car, they talked to me in a hostile manner, and after I told them I had no time to talk, one got out of the car and followed me to the door. Somehow it (the attack) was obvious to me even then."
Heyd was punched several times, kicked, and robbed of his wallet. While he's admittedly nonplussed about the whole affair, Heyd says he's come to expect the occasional hostile reaction to his beliefs...but adds that no one should expect him to apologize for them, either. To boot, he'd do it again.
"Yes (I would). Freedom of speech and all that sort. And they and anyone else can threaten me again; I will not back down," he says, before noting that he's not averse to believers of any stripe, as long as they don't impose themselves - physically or otherwise - on him.
"I know two agnostics and one atheist," Heyd says. "I know many, many people and they, in the vast majority, hang on to religious upbringings, even in the most inane way possible. My dad was never truly a religious Christian, (but) just believed in its cultural ideals. I was raised in a Catholic upbringing by my mom, but that changed as my mom left it and went to non-denominationalism. My entire family has a Christian aura, though as with religion and true human nature goes, it's just another farce: i.e., they never really practice what they preach."
Heyd says he's not surprised the attackers were never caught, but hasn't pursued the case any further - nor have the police. "The case has been administratively closed, meaning that there are no more leads to follow or evidence to solve the case at this time," said Capt. David Knipes, Public Information Officer for Myrtle Beach Police.
"The case ended. Which is my idea in point - Christians get every respect and liberty, but say anything or go against it and you will suffer. (It's) Christian love at its finest, huh?"
"Suppose I tell you that the universe was created just five minutes ago, at 11:28 AM, and that a supernatural being planted false memories in all of you. You can't disprove my claim, but you still think it is nonsense, right? Atheists have the same reaction to god beliefs."
- Herb Silverman, in a "sermon" to the Unitarian Church of Charleston
A professor of mathematics at the College of Charleston since 1976, Herb Silverman first felt the stamp of the scarlet "A" - atheism - in 1991, when he applied to be a notary public.
But the story doesn't begin there. You see, way back in 1961, the United States Supreme Court ruled that state governments cannot require a belief in God as requirement for public office.
Thirty years later, Silverman was floored to find out that - simply because he'd crossed out the part of his notary oath that read "so help me God" - that he was rejected for the position. (Indeed, of the 33,471 notary applications received by the Secretary of State's office from 1991 to 1993, Silverman's was the only one rejected).
In 1993, after some deliberation, Silverman and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued the state. In 1997, the state lost the staring match, and Silverman and the ACLU won a unanimous decision in the South Carolina Supreme Court, which summarily struck down the religious test requirement for holding public office in the state.
Silverman - who also founded the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry in Charleston and who is the spokesperson for the S.C. Secular Council as well as a national board member of the Athiest Alliance International - says he's quite pleased that the subject of God (or god, as he puts it) is once again being tried in the court of public opinion. (Silverman, along with his SHOLC compatriots, was a key figure in bringing the "In Reason We Trust" license plates - the second such plate in the United States - to South Carolina.)
"I think the new interest in atheism is terrific," Silverman says. "I hope it convinces more people to come out of the closet. When people tell me I am the first atheist they ever met, I generally respond: 'No I'm not. You've met thousands of atheists. I'm just the first person you knew was an atheist.' The more people that acknowledge their non-belief in any deities, the less we will be stereotyped. There are good and bad atheists, good and bad Christians, and good and bad in all other groups. I hope someday that people will be judged more on their actions than on their professed religious beliefs. If all 30 million atheists acknowledged who they are, that action alone would change our culture."
Silverman remains convinced one of the main reasons the religious community remains adamantly opposed to atheism - in some cases, even more than to other religions who may worship different gods altogether - is that they consider the secular world to turn much as their own: i.e., if an atheist/secular humanist steps out of the shadows and shares his or her views, it's not about being true to who they are as people - it's evangelism. Silverman says that the contrary is true.
"(When) outspoken atheists are honest about their views, they are often called arrogant, egotistical, and uppity - just like women, Jews, blacks, gays, and other groups were when they demanded equal rights and challenged prevailing opinion," he says. "These atheists are not trying to convert everyone, like many Christians are. They are just asking people to read and evaluate their perspective, just as we have done with Christian and other holy books."
Silverman's analogy does have some statistical basis: according to a University of Minnesota study published in April 2006, atheists are now (and probably have been for some time) the least-trusted minority in America. According to the survey, 39.6 percent of people selected atheists from a list when asked which group was the furthest away from sharing their vision of America. This total was enough to top Muslims (26.3 percent) and homosexuals (22.6 percent). And this is despite (or in spite of) a 2001 American Religious Identification Survey, which interviewed more than 50,000 people and indicated that, if projected, more than 29 million adults - one in seven Americans - declare themselves to be without religion. (This was a doubling of the finding from 10 years prior.)
There are other parallels, too: Many atheist/humanist thinkers say that one of the main problems the so-called current atheist movement has is that there are too many descriptive monikers (atheist, unbeliever, materialist, humanist, etc.), and that the movement as a whole would benefit greatly by taking a cue from the homosexual movement of the 1960s and adopting just one term, preferably a pre-existing word with no ingrained bias toward it - i.e. gay - and embracing it.
Dawkins, an author and evolutionary biologist who is perhaps the world's most outspoken atheist, has started a new campaign, inviting - exhorting, rather - nonbelievers to "come out of the closet." Entitled The Out Campaign, its purpose is to inspire other folks who share the atheist/agnostic viewpoint - some 10 to 15 percent or America, polls show, and likely growing - to feel safer about going public with their beliefs without fear of reprisal.
Reid Johnson of Pawleys Island founded the (now defunct) Skeptical Humanists at the Grand Strand group, and helped start the South Carolina Secular Humanist Alliance (SCSHA). Nationally known on the secular scene, Johnson says that troubled times lead man to create God, and not the other way around - and as such, the current interest in atheism/secular humanism shouldn't come as a surprise.
"Religion thrives in times of public conflict, fear, uncertainty and misery - as it always has, or else there might have been no religions," says Johnson. "And America is by far the most religious of the 16 so-called 'modern industrial nations,' so I wouldn't be surprised if having an ignorant, incompetent, highly religious president who has created most of our country's worst problems - which should be an omnipresent model of how not to think and act - will ironically result in an increase in Americans' religiosity for a while: the "no atheists in foxholes" line of thinking. There is an almost perfect correlation between a country's high degree of public misery and high religiosity (a la, if real life is so terrible, one can only hope and pray that there's an 'afterlife,' the sole providence of deistic religions).
"Europeans - especially the northern and western countries - are way ahead of America in their approaches to religion and religionists. Religionists are tolerated in a spirit of 'parental pity,' as an adult's attitude might be toward an ignorant and wayward child. That doesn't sound very likely to occur in our country for the foreseeable future."
Johnson's opinion on European attitudes toward religion (at least as far as the ruling classes go) was recently at least partially seconded in an August 6 article in Britain's The Independent, which showed British politicians' attitudes toward secularism are seemingly much more out in the open than are their American counterparts: Dawkins' "The God Delusion" was named by Labour Party MPs (members of Parliament) as their favorite summer read. Liberal Democrats placed it second.
"Here is my challenge...(let someone) name one ethical statement made - or one ethical action performed - by a believer that could not have been uttered or done by a nonbeliever. And here is my second challenge. Can any reader of this column think of a wicked statement made, or an evil action performed, precisely because of religious faith? The second question is easy to answer, is it not? The first -- I have been asking it for some time - awaits a convincing reply." - Christopher Hitchens, Washington Post, July 14, 2007
Rev. Jeffrey Kirby, a newly ordained priest of the Diocese of Charleston, suggests that atheism (or at least, the honest considering of atheist thought) is necessary for the theistic community to grow - and may even help believers strengthen their faith.
"In his book 'Introduction to Christianity,' then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger [currently Pope Benedict XVI] wrote that every believer must address the element of atheism within him or herself," says Kirby. "It is in recognizing the atheistic element within him- or herself, and seeking its conversion, that the believer will be able to grow in the faith, and have compassion towards those who struggle or doubt the claims of theism...just as the believer has an atheistic element, so does the atheist have a theistic element. If the believer asks, 'What if God doesn't exist?,' so the atheist asks, 'What if he does?'"
Tim Holt, Pastor of Myrtle Beach's Seacoast Vineyard Church, agrees. While he doesn't necessarily understand the going-gangbusters, in-your-face style of Dawkins and Hitchens and Co. - and moreover, their tenaciousness - he says that careful consideration of one's beliefs is never a bad thing.
"Do I think people will bail out of the faith because Dawkins and others write a book or books? Why would anyone be concerned about someone investigating, even questioning whether what they or someone else believes is true or not? Everyone should think, investigate, and explore what they believe. It can only build the foundation deeper and stronger, or expose our need for more information. "As people seek, (and) journey on, we take all kinds of routes trying to understand our existence," says Holt. "While I do not believe all roads lead to God, I do believe sincere people who will give Christ a serious consideration will be surprised and amazed at the evidence...(but) the truth is, I don't control that, so why should I get all hot and bothered by it? God has a way to reach people that I cannot substitute with my own apologetics and arguments. Eventually it comes down to faith. I don't think that much has changed in this world (with the current attention given atheism), so I'm not concerned. God is still active, drawing people to Himself whether I - or Richard Dawkins and his ilk - believe it or not. You know, it's funny. If I didn't believe in something, why would I spend so much time and energy trying to explain away what doesn't exist? Excuse my pessimism. Again, it's not God that has caused the problems in this world, it's people. (Joseph) Stalin certainly wasn't a huge defender of the faith and he wiped out millions."
Whereas atheists and humanists preach that there is no God passing judgment upon us, Pastor Darren Squires of Socastee Free Will Baptist Church says that there are no real atheists.
"I have studied hard through the years to try to learn the Bible and what it has to say about the subjects I preach on," says Squires. "The Bible says in Psalms 14:1 that 'The fool hath said in his heart, (There is) no God.' I preach that we are all blind, and until we realize that we are all sinners and that we are not perfect we cannot see the need for God in our lives. I truly do not believe that there are any true atheists in the world. I honestly believe that each human has a thought of a higher being than ourselves in their hearts.
"It (New Atheism) is no different to me than the same old belief that there is no God, or as they refer to it, no higher power. New Atheist just means new material, new books, new speakers, new money.
"'New' just means I have found a new way of making money."
Reporter: "Surely you recognize the equal citizenship and patriotism of Americans who are atheists?"
President George H. Bush: "No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."
-Exchange with reporter on August 27, 1987
As previously established, there is a resurgence of atheistic thought in America (and in South Carolina, if not so much in the Grand Strand), at least so far as it concerns the attention being shown in the public sphere. But how far is the atheist/humanist cause really being advanced in the areas where believers (or unbelievers, in this case) say it matters most - politics, schools, and public functions? For instance, Horry County Council meetings are still begun with a prayer, and Bibles are used in courtrooms around the state every day.
When asked if the County Council still continues the practice of beginning its sessions with a specific ecumenical - read: Jesus-based - prayer, Lisa Bourcier, Director of Public Information for Horry County, says "the answer is 'yes.' We do an invocation prior to each Horry County Council meeting." Mark Kruea, Public Information Officer for the City of Myrtle Beach, says of the City Council that "Through the local ministerial association, Myrtle Beach invites ministers, pastors, rabbis, etc., of all faiths and denominations to give an invocation at the City Council meetings, on a rotating basis. The meetings do not always fit their schedules, so they sometimes are not present. In those instances, the presiding officer usually asks one of the Council members to say a few words of invocation." For his part, County Attorney John Weaver says that "To the best of my recollection, opening prayers by the individual Council members do not make reference to the name of Jesus. If they do, it is very sporadic. They all are aware of the judicial rulings that prayers referencing specific Christian name/phrases are subject to challenge."
Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-founder of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the largest atheist/agnostic group in the United States, says the next step for atheists is to create an atmosphere, via lobbying and educational programs, to effect political change - and to make it not a "sin" to be a nonbeliever seeking office.
"There is no question that atheists and agnostics have filled high offices in this country -
just as gays have," says Gaylor. "They just haven't been so identified. There are freethinkers in public office around the world, and have been historically. In America's current political climate, with poll after poll warning that the 'worst trait' in a potential candidate would be not believing in God, it is difficult to credit that any candidate for the presidency or
other major office will identify themselves as a nonbeliever. Although the Constitution forbids a religious test for public office, there is now a de facto test being imposed by media and many voters. Although we have never seen more assaults against the separation of church and state, we do see things improving generally for acceptance of freethinkers in this country. It'll happen."
"I think we are making slow progress," says Silverman. "I'm president of the Secular Coalition for America (secular.org), consisting of a coalition of eight national non-theistic organizations. Recently, we held a contest to find the highest ranking politician who would acknowledge being a non-theist. United States Rep. Pete Stark of California became the first member of Congress in history to so acknowledge. We know there are many more, but the climate is such that politicians feel the need to stay in the closet. The Secular Coalition for America has even hired the first lobbyist in Washington to look out for the rights of non-theists. We hope the publicity will help change the culture - atheists and humanists may not get elected to high office today, but women and blacks wouldn't have gotten elected to high office 50 years ago. The U.S. was founded as the first secular country - with a godless Constitution. All because our founders saw the devastation of religious wars in Europe."
Others, like Johnson of Pawleys Island, aren't so sure. Johnson says he doesn't see a political push gaining any traction anytime soon - but, he adds, that doesn't necessarily mean it's spinning its wheels.
"I wish there were such a momentum," says Johnson. "But I see little evidence of a culturally healthy turn toward secularism, especially in politics and government. Every one of the 14 major presidential candidates from both parties have eagerly and frequently professed their religionism - even the most rational and progressive politicians. You always have an unknown percentage of 'closet atheists' getting elected by avoiding or lying about their religious beliefs - just as you always have a few fringe candidates professing Libertarian or other more secular beliefs and political platforms - but I see zero growth of or tolerance of anti- or non-religiousness in the major mainstream political parties."
Johnson says that growth - or, better put, lack of it - also extends to education, something that might surprise those folks up in arms since prayer was excised from public schools.
"South Carolina is too typical of the widespread - and unfortunately very successful - ongoing religionists' assaults on children, adolescents and young adults in what should be their safest haven: the public schools," says Johnson. "There are two nationwide secular humanist organizations for college-age students (the Secular Student Alliance being the biggest), but they are not on the majority of campuses, and 18-22 years of age is much too late to combat the powerful initial determinants of religiosity for most young people. The core beliefs of religious thinking are equivalent to humans' cognitive and affective development level of three to six years of age, and unfortunately there are almost no agnostic kindergarten or pre-school programs. (Yet) there are hundreds of thousands of religionists' Sunday Schools, private parochial pre-schools, schuls, madrassas and the like. To expect college-level organizations to reverse 16 years of pathogenic propagandizement for most American young people - which is all that organized agnosticism/atheism/secular humanism seems to be targeting - is hopeless folly."
"Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, even if religion vanished; but religious superstition dismounts all these and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men." - Francis Bacon
The main question many of the atheists and agnostics we spoke to say they are faced with on a regular basis is this - if one doesn't believe in God, how can that person have a sense of moral absolutes?
The counter to that, says the atheist/agnostic/humanist community, is this: if God holds people to these absolutes by means of punishment (in this life or "the next"), is that really free will?
"This is my chief concern," says D.J. Grothe, Associate Editor of Free Inquiry, the premiere humanist magazine. "Secular ethics can be robust and every bit as meaningful as those moral systems derived by ancient nomadic tribes. Morality becomes all the more valued and important as you value this life as the only one you have, rather than denying this life in favor of an imaginary afterlife."
"I think the following comment of Abraham Lincoln could serve as a reasonable guide for most people," says Silverman. "'When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That is my religion.' I think morality should be based on evidence and experience, not on something that was written two to three thousand years ago in a small corner of the Mediterranean world. Morality seems to be at its worst when people put love of a god above love of fellow human beings. Abraham is considered a respected prophet in the three great monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). He is best known for his willingness to kill his son because he heard a 'voice from above' telling him to do so. If following blindly what you think a god wants you to do is morality, I want no part of it. One absolute I have is that it is never right to inflict cruelty on another human being for no other reason than you think a god wants you to do it."
"Most naturalists don't necessarily believe in moral absolutes," says Gaylor. "They recognize shades of gray are necessary in many disputes. For instance, the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' - which is a universal concept all societies embrace, and not exclusive to the bible -- is couched as an absolute. But our civil laws today recognize a right to kill in self-defense. Absolutism does not allow for mitigating circumstances or exceptions."
What all it comes down to seems to be this: people of all religious stripes, whether Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, or Hindu, pretty much believe theirs is the right way of thinking. Some might be a little more vocal about the consequences of not believing in their particular belief system, but why else does a human being take a position on something without feeling - at least at that particular point in their life - that it's the correct stance? (This includes atheists and humanists and agnostics too, of course, with their strongly-held beliefs that those who believe in a God - or gods - are deluded. )
Those folk who claim that they were made in the image of God may well get grief ("you say we're pushy and egotistical?") from atheists who believe they are but a grain of sand in a random - if unified - universe that couldn't be more indifferent to its inhabitants. Religious folks can - and often do - argue that, if we're all just random particles floating through space, what's the point to life? Truly, both camps could claim astronomer Carl Sagan's famous dictum that "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" as their own.
Of course, nobody knows the answers to these cosmological quandaries, and, more than likely, no one ever will. It all comes down to faith and where you decide to focus it - on yourself? Or on a higher power?
Yes, the so-called New Atheists, tired of being branded a freakish minority, are firing volleys of vitriol at the religious establishment. And yes, the religious establishment, as any establishment that wants to keep its stature, is firing back in kind. But, as Gaylor notes, humanity has a long history of battles against itself and its own divergent thinking - and indeed, against individuals such as Eric Heyd - but an even longer history of getting along.
While the religious thinker might look to God to protect them and lead them through life, the atheist/humanist looks at things with an evolutionary perspective, noting that, as with any species, the goal is to survive, adapt, and - if possible - thrive, and that we humans just happen to be lucky enough to be able to make conscionable, moral decisions to help ensure that outcome.
Most everyone we talked to agrees on one thing, however. Tolerance and rational conversation is a must. We might disagree on the specifics, but the goals - except with the odd extremist group - are still the same: the furthering of humankind.
"We shouldn't be surprised that the West's treasury of political and moral thinkers include, not only Christian believers, but also atheistic, polytheistic, monotheistic, and agnostic scholars and writers," says Father Kirby. "Even if unacknowledged, God is still God...and goodness is still good."
Gaylor puts it a different way.
"The golden rule far predates the Jesus of the New Testament, and was better worded by earlier thinkers, who couched the rule as a negative," Gaylor says. "'Do not do to others what you do not want done to you' - which is far wiser advice."