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Bryce Canyon National Park at sunrise (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Maybe I'm just having an uncharacteristic moment of optimism where I am trying to look on the bright side of an unpleasant situation that does not have anything to do with our fascination with conflict, but I think there there is at least one small upside to
the atheist rift. It has helped me to confront at least one difficult truth:
just because someone identifies as an atheist, a skeptic, a humanist, and/or a freethinker does not mean he or she is rational, fair-minded, kind, or has any other admirable qualities.
Of course I knew this before I'd ever seen any real conflict among atheists. But knowing it in an abstract sense is different from having had enough direct experience with it to finally internalize it. In some ways, it is a lesson I needed. It helps keep me humble, and it helps me recognize that atheism cannot solve all - or even most - of the problems that need solving.
It is not that I ever believed that being an atheist, skeptic, humanist, and/or freethinker somehow made people more rational or anything else positive. Being an atheist may indicate that someone is correct on the question of gods, but knowing someone reached the right answer says little about how he or she got there. And while
skepticism and
freethought are certainly good things, it is quite easy to be selective about how and where one applies them. Someone could be a skeptic in some spheres and not others; someone could utilize freethought in some areas and not in others. And
humanism, with all its different meanings, is challenging to pin down. Many people who claim to be humanists can be seen to treat people quite poorly,
including their allies, and to violate much of what we might call the charitable "spirit" of humanism.