Having Faith In Atheism: Bad Religion And Richard Dawkins At Reason Rally

“Evolution isn’t just true; it’s beautiful,” he told the crowd, beaming, after the wild applause that followed his ‘needs-no-introduction’ introduction had subsided. “It’s beautiful because it’s true.”

And, since that’s pretty much all he has to add to the struggle for atheists’ rights at this point, Dawkins simply ran off some facts, figures and poll numbers related to earth science, biology and the number of people who do or don’t believe in God — and then exhorted all in attendance to continue ridiculing theists with great contempt. The question this begged, as he walked offstage to another round of thunderous cheers, was rather simple, and one perhaps vital to everything the New Atheists stand for: What did Dawkins offer at this rally that the comedians didn’t? Not much, one must think, regardless of how technically accurate he or they may be. But when you choose to build — to use the words of 17th-century Puritan John Winthrop, when he first settled in America — a theoretical city upon a hill, and then to look upon those who yet fail to understand you with little more than smugness, mockery and scorn, what else can you hope for? Whether argued by way of scientific posturing or comic one-liners, public shaming amounts only to public shaming. But, like I said, it’s not hard to understand why America’s nonbelievers might react to the religious right with such extreme passion and so little self-control.

And to my honest surprise, I found a voice over in the designated protest area off to the side of the rally that, in some ways, made a little more sense — at least in broader terms. It came from Blake Anderson, a Christian apologetic who had showed up to represent truereason.org (which serves to promote a book of the same name, subtitled, “Christian Responses to the Challenge of Atheism”). He wasn’t going to convince me of the veracity of his opinions on theology, but he did shed some light on something the New Atheists haven’t quite argued successfully yet, amid all the work they’ve done thus far.

“When they call this the Reason Rally,” Anderson told me, as we stepped away from a group of fanatically hollering, sign-waving Christians (whose tactics he claims to deplore), “we just feel it can’t be right to have it portrayed as something that says ‘Atheists have reason, and Christians don’t.’ Atheism doesn’t equal reason.”

Graffin, still lounging back in the trailer, might have responded to this by acknowledging that the intellectual path he follows draws as much or more from a new narrative — structurally similar to that of Christianity - as it does from a philosophical search for capital-T truth. Dawkins, using the rhetoric of self-assurance, certainly wouldn’t have been able to respond in any similar way that might push Anderson to challenge his own line of thought. Maybe that foreshadows the subsequent success of Graffin’s more tolerant approach over that of hard-line New Atheists, who may come to worry so much about presenting the inherently faultless logic of their views that they fail to take into account the politics of communication — the very stuff with which the religious right has maintained a cultural upper hand.

When Anderson shared with me his thoughts on Nate Phelps, the estranged son of Fred Phelps (founder of the notorious Westboro Baptist Church, which is known by its website title and general mantra, “God Hates Fags”), he actually put the whole debate in perspective.

“I’m not surprised that someone who came out of that would turn to being an atheist,” said Anderson. “Because when you do things poorly, there tends to be a reaction. I’ve heard a lot of reasons why people have become atheists, and I generally don’t think they’re good reasons, but on an emotional level I understand them, and I can sympathize.”

Just before Nate Phelps addressed the rally that afternoon, several members of the Westboro Baptist Church stood in silent protest beneath the Washington Monument, holding signs reading, among other things, “You Hate God” and “God Hates You”. These days, after all of the funerals they’ve crashed, and after alienating basically the entire spectrum of society, from staunch conservatives to free-speech liberals, the WBC folk seem more like welcome media props than real, dislikeable people. All they had to say about the son who got away was what one woman yelled at me as they stepped into a van: “He’s your schtick of the moment!”

And, though he may not be quite as heavily clichéd a person as those religious warriors who choose to remain in the WBC, Nate Phelps’ life after God is one that, perhaps unexpectedly, just goes to show further parallels between the narrative of theism and that which was on display at the Reason Rally. After running away from home upon turning 18, Phelps subsequently became an atheist — but he later realized two things: his religious past needed to be treated like an addiction, and he felt compelled to educate others about how they could escape from the clutches of religion.

“There are days when I feel like I’m right back in it,” Phelps told me immediately after stepping off the stage, where he had told the crowd his life story. “Now, I’m far enough down the road that the fear it used to invoke is gone, and those kind of successes give me the courage, when I do fall back into the hole, to say that eventually this will pass as well.” When I asked him about the work he does with a group called Recovering from Religion, which claims to help people do just that, he added: “I’ve always found in my life that talking with people with a shared past is encouraging and allows you to recognize that there’s a way out of this.”

Which is when I began to realize that the language he was using wasn’t just that of recovering addicts; it was equally that of a hallmark of the religious right: recovering homosexuals, or those who’ve, as the more common slang would put it, prayed the gay away. It was actually, if not in content then at least in context, exactly like that.

But why don’t any of the intellectual big shots want to acknowledge these similarities?

Probably for the same reasons Richard Dawkins was content to continue talking on the same intellectual level as the comedians who played sets before and after him. In the end, the only things the New Atheists have failed to remain rationally skeptical about are the correctness of their own methods and, more importantly, the ways in which they present their message to the general public. It’s a gaping hole in their movement. It isn’t even a new problem; it’s one that critics of Dawkins and his posse have been attacking for several years. And, looking at the obstinacy of both sides, we’re once again forced to face the roots of it all — the narratives. Regardless of how much more accurate the atheistic, scientifically-grounded worldview may be (or how much popular it may be in the next generation, when even more knowledge of that kind is discovered), we’re still at the point at which any theories about the existence or nonexistence of a divine power can’t be defensibly presented to the masses as anything more than a series of conflicting stories, with opposite and equal rhetorical thrusts to accompany bodies of literature and the personae of their champions.

Cue Greg Graffin.

The clouds have been relatively friendly for most of the day, but by the time Bad Religion takes the stage around 5pm it’s raining so hard that — as the less dedicated rally-goers filter out and those simply waiting to rock out edge closer — it becomes clear that Graffin hasn’t needed to work out his closing speech. He won’t have a chance to preach or choose not to, because those words, on their own, aren’t so necessary to him or his cause.

“My sense of humility doesn’t allow me to proclaim myself a leader,” Graffin had told me earlier, when I asked him about how he perceived his role within this movement. “Do I feel like a leader? I feel like I’m doing my duty. If we want a society full of enlightened people, then I feel like I’m as good an example as you can find.”

If spoken by someone like Dawkins, those words might’ve reeked of things akin to arrogance, or at least intellectual complacency, but, as Graffin lopes onto the stage with his band, they feel strangely innocent and prophetic. An academic only by title and not by temperament, he obviously doesn’t need to be Dr. Graffin here; and this is what gives him such clear (and, perhaps, unintentional) foresight and accompanying tact. Dawkins, the comedians, and even Nate Phelps all are, to some degree, confined to their doctrinal roles within this movement. Even at the greatest moments there is an inherent dryness to their words, simply because they’ve failed to fully comprehend the function of the cultural narrative. But Graffin is a thinker who puts the creation and telling of stories first, with the argumentative posturing existing only as gravy. He knows that literature doesn’t mean thick books that provide us with the conclusions to our inquiries; it means myths, it means passion within a structured framework, and it means, inescapably, religion.

So he tears through 'Generator', scowling and shaking his fist not at theists, but at their fictions and motivations. He shouts the chorus of 'New Dark Ages', imploring his followers to witness the errors of the Christian narrative and reshape it into one based on rational inquiry. He looks to the future in 'Sorrow', singing of a time “When all soldiers lay their weapons down/ Or when all kings and all queens relinquish their crowns/ Or when the only true messiah rescues us from ourselves.” He sings of his faith.

Then, Greg Graffin walks off. The Reason Rally is washed away by the rain, and the stage is disassembled to make way for the next gathering that will take place in the National Mall. As our culture chokes on all the tales of its existence, the throat of America is cleared again. It’s comforting. It is written. As we find new ways to pose life’s strangest questions, the protocols are still there to help frame our stories.

And thank God for that.