Atheists Have Values, Too

It troubles me that people tend to interpret atheism as the repudiation of everything that religion happens to represent in their minds rather than simply the principled rejection of the core of religion, belief in the supernatural. While it's true that someone could be diametrically opposed to absolutely anything even remotely associated with religion, it's wrong to assume that atheists necessarily are; I certainly have never encountered one who was. As for me, I embrace a number of values which religions commonly profess to promote such as peace, justice, empathy, compassion, honesty, loyalty, responsibility, temperance, introspection and reflection.

I also, however, strongly embrace skepticism, which has led me to disbelieve the supernatural claims of upon which believers (wrongly) claim to derive their moral values, and freethought, which allows me to evaluate the worth of moral values with my own individual judgement rather than deferring to an unquestionable authority such as scripture or a religious leader. These twin values foster others which most religions don't inherently support and which some even explicitly oppose such as liberty, equality and secularism. They have also led me to reject irrationality, superstition, fear, hatred and ignorance, which most religions support or have supported to varying degrees throughout their histories. It is my skepticism and freethinking which distinguish me from believers, not a lack of virtue.

In truth, I yearn for a community in which I can foster my personal growth through contemplation of, discussion about and action based on my values without any compromise to supernaturalism. My several visits to a Unitarian Universalist congregation and my casual online investigation of Buddhism were part of an as-of-yet unsuccessful quest for such a community and identity. Humanism presents the greatest promise for fidelity to my beliefs, but it lacks the type of formal structure that I desire, perhaps for fear of being too similar to religion, and it's not distinct enough from increasingly humanistic western culture to provide a unique focus and identity. All I can say is that I'm a naturalist in search of a place to call home.

Santa Claus: A Web of White Lies

Although with respect to religion I've gone from devout believer to devout skeptic, I've always opposed encouraging children to believe in Santa Claus. It has always struck me as very strange that parents spend so much money on gifts for their children and then lie to them by saying that a magical elf snuck into their house in the middle of the night to drop them off, thus giving him all the credit for their work. I don't like the idea of lying to children in general, but this seems like a rather odd lie. I understand that some parents truly enjoy playing along with the idea of Santa Claus and sometimes use him as an unassailable authority when kids whine for a toy late in the year, but it seems that children would enjoy the holiday just as much if they knew their parents were responsible for all their gifts; older children and adults certainly like receiving presents despite knowing where they came from. As a Christian, I wanted to avoid lying as much as possible and I was concerned that children who learned that Santa Claus is imaginary would then start to think that God is imaginary as well. As an atheist, I also feel uneasy about lying unless truly necessary, though I certainly don't lament any nascent skepticism created in children about what their parents tell them about invisible beings. Still it strikes me as a bad idea to build and maintain this web of white lies for children.

Despite what some readers may suppose, I myself didn't have a negative experience with belief in Santa Claus. As is common, I believed in him as a young child and stopped believing in him sometime in elementary school. I don't remember being at all upset when I learned the truth. I didn't feel disappointed, deceived or disillusioned. I've heard stories, however, about children who do experience some amount of grief and who do sincerely struggle to accept the truth for some time. No, it's not a tragedy, but it is completely avoidable simply by not perpetuating absurd stories about an ageless magical elf who lives where there is no land, who can make deer fly, and who can deliver free toys to hundreds of millions of households in a single night though still unable to give nice presents to poor children.

I don't want anyone to get the impression, however, that I have some sort of weird vendetta against Santa Claus. It's not something I spend much time thinking about and it hardly even qualifies as a minor issue. Since I don't intend to have children, the question of what to say will probably never arise, but I decided long ago that I wouldn't lie to any children that I might end up raising one day. I certainly don't interfere with anyone else's parenting choices by telling children the truth about Santa Claus. When children talk to me about him, I listen attentively, but I don't ever say anything to suggest that he's real or that I myself believe in him. It's actually completely identical to my personal policy regarding children when they talk to me about God.

Labels Galore

We nonreligious have a remarkable number of labels with which we identify ourselves. I acknowledge that each has a unique denotation and connotation, that we disagree amongst ourselves what each one means, that we debate the merits of the options and that we often change labels, but the terms greatly overlap and tend to describe essentially the same group of people. Here is an incomplete list:

• agnostic
• antitheist
• apatheist
• atheist
• bright
• doubter
• freethinker
• godfree
• godless
• heathen
• heretic
• humanist
• ignostic
• infidel
• irreligious
• materialist
  
• naturalist
• nonbeliever
• nontheist
• nonreligious
• rationalist
• realist
  
• secularist
• skeptic
• unbeliever

We often subdivide atheism into at least two types:

• weak / strong
• negative / positive
• implicit / explicit

And we have at least two words to label those who used to be religious:

• apostate
• deconvert

If you have another fairly common label which I have forgotten, please post it in a comment and I will consider adding it to this catalogue of nonreligious labels. I have almost certainly forgotten one of the numerous names we call ourselves.