Anti-Preaching: Should Atheists Proselytize?

Eh.

It’s not my bag, really, but I think there’s a place for all of it. Might not get any converts, but you might reinforce the idea that there are people who are not going to take the abuse quietly.

Might get the attention of someone who’s struggling with faith, too. During my own deconversion, the loneliness was the toughest part.

Ummm… so exactly who IS that person holding up the sign? 🙂

Very awkward.

Is anyone who can be swayed by a sidewalk preacher rational enough to understand atheism?

Call may be doing more harm than good, although you have to give him credit for the entertainment value.

Personally, I have little interest in converting anyone to atheism. My primary agenda is to keep religion out of government and away from the public square.

Expressing oneself and having a positive effect on others are two separate goals, and often one will interfere with the other. You can see examples of this on this website. Some people comment simply to vent their feelings and are not interested in how their remarks will be received, or even if they are received. Others seem to want to influence the thinking of others, but the way they express themselves is counter-productive to that aim. Then there are a few who use their speech skillfully and sometimes make a difference in other’s minds. Even there, the particular difference that they want to make varies widely.

I’ve never wanted to change anyone’s beliefs about gods, only their beliefs about atheists or their habits of imposing their beliefs onto public policy, education and science. I try to use the skillful approach.

Call seems to be focused on expressing himself. Influencing others’ thinking seems to be only incidental. The guy wants to have fun in a somewhat risky manner. (shrug) Young guys do that. He’s probably not going to make any “converts” and I doubt that that is really his goal. I do cringe a bit and wonder if he is “making atheists look bad,” but who am I to say how we should “look”? We’re very diverse. We are more just people who fall into a category of thinking than we are a group. That’s both our strength and our weakness.

I love the crazy drama…..it gets attention…..gets people talking.

Has history ever changed with people not being offensive to the majority?

I doubt it.

One way to summarize the argument of the street preachers is that they’re all saying “I’m better than you.” At the very least, they’re saying “I know better than you.” It’s arrogance writ large.

I suspect that most of the street preachers are incapable of having a rational conversation, so talking to them is unlikely to be successful. Yelling back at them “No, I know better than you,” seems distasteful and isn’t going to work any better.

Furthermore, any effect they create, particularly if they see that the are evoking anger or some such reaction in others is only going to reassure them that they are on the right path.

I vote for polite indifference. That way they don’t even have the satisfaction of engendering rudeness in their audience. At the same time, they come to resemble dogs howling at the moon. The moon just don’t care.

I live close to a Mormon temple, and the missionaries are forever accosting people in the neighborhood. Their usual approach is to ask if they can invite me to church. I respond, “no thank you.” Their next move is to ask if I ever attend church. I answer “never.” After that the conversation usually degenerates into idle talk about the weather (apparently Ontario is much colder that Utah). This allows me to commiserate with them about the cold and the snow, or the heat and humidity, and totally takes the wind out of their sails.

Kill them with kindness. I think it’s an underrated strategy.

P.S. I don’t claim to have the self-control to be able to react like this always — it’s just too easy to get pissed off at fundies because they’re ultimately so divisive– but it is a goal to which I aspire.

Hmm, I like both Richard’s and Tao’s comments. The way I figure it, it takes all types. I don’t see anything wrong with what he is doing, after all, we’ve all had to put up with Christian street preachers more than once. Is he looking for a conversation? Probably not. But I do think Atheists need to be much more visible, and that he is doing.

Also, I’ve lived in Tempe, AZ for the last six years. (Though I’ve just graduated and moved away a few months ago.) Mill Avenue is just next to Arizona State and on Saturday nights its absolutely crawling with students. I think this IS a great way to let closeted Atheist students know they are not alone!

Alex:

IMO, they claim certitude about things that cannot be known, at least not if by knowledge we mean something in the public sphere, something which can be communicated through reason.

How would that apply to atheist preachers? Atheists, even “strong atheists” who would say “I believe there is no God,” generally rely on public facts to support their beliefs.

Ew. I’d avoid this guy like the plague. I don’t really care so much that he’s helping fuel stereotypes about atheists – I just think he comes off like a total loon. Also: the punctuation problem is a big one.

@Richard Wade – I’ve noticed you making intelligent comments more than once. Do you have your own web site or blog I could follow?

As for the guy in the article – it sounds like he just wants to get a rise out of people. I hope he doesn’t get assaulted.

seems a good thing to me, especially if a passerby saw the little girl damning him and thought “how badly they are teaching their children.”

Hi Dan,
Thank you for your kind words. I’ve been an occasional contributor of posts here on this site for the last couple of years, but I don’t do my own blog. Seems like a lot of work. Hemant is so prolific I don’t know how he does it. You can find my posts in the “categories” on the far right side board, and see how I’ve managed to annoy people from time to time. 😉

One of the things I don’t like about religion, is that many religious people claim that their way is the Only True Way.

Therefore, I’m not going to be the one to say that this Call guy isn’t doing atheism the Right Way. I don’t think you should either. There is no One True Way of Atheism, nor should there be.

As pointed out recently by one of the members of the Atheist Community of Austin (TX), public debates with true believers ought to be done not to convert the true believers, but for the benefit of those onlookers who witness it. You never know if an exchange of ideas, even if conducted at high volume without much decorum, might be just the spark someone needs to start considering the merits of both arguments for themselves.

I say more power to him!

I think we are so early into any sort of atheist movement that just getting people to talk about it is enough of a struggle. Tactics like these, while not my preference either, probably do accomplish that goal.

I like it, in kind of a silly way. No, it’s not a perfect way to reach people, but I think we heathens nit-pick each other too much. I like the idea of an atheist street preacher among all the fundies, just as I like the idea of a pair of atheist missionaries going door to door to try to convert mormons and Jehovas Witnesses. It’s funny.

I for one am in full support of this guy, and think more atheists should do it. I DO believe he’s making an impact, though you will never see that impact immediately on the street. People will go home and think about what he had to say, and perhaps visit an atheist site or two. Thus he has started a person’s journey toward rationality.

And I think his pictures are appropriately hilarious.

So I was googling myself to see some of the responses to the article. So far I have refrained from commenting on any, but I feel compelled to say something here, seeing how this is ostensibly a “friendly atheist” site and I would like to think of myself as a “friendly atheist”.

I realized that once I agreed to be interviewed for the New Times that they would do whatever they chose with the material, but I agreed because it seemed like a potentially good way to spread the message that “you can be good (probably better, I would say) without God”. Niki did sort of squeeze it in at the end. Naturally these alternative news weeklies do sensationalize these pieces (the photos are a case in point), and to this end, the article contains a fair number of (what I perceive to be) exaggerations, oversimplifications, and outright factual errors.

At first I was upset about the misrepresentations, but ultimately I think that the overarching idea that it can be okay to openly scrutinize, question — and yes, perhaps even ridicule — dogma is more important than the perhaps false details about how it all goes and has gone down.

In truth, I perceive that the atmosphere of Mill Avenue, this microcosm of the world, has indeed changed as a result of our actions. It used to be you couldn’t walk down here on a Friday or Saturday night without getting sermonized at on any number of street corners. Now at least the fundamentalists know, if they do choose to set up their soapbox, they can expect some exuberant opposition. And, in fact, more recently it seems they don’t come at all, or if they see us coming, they pick up and leave.

The signs have been designed to evoke a response. We have a fair number of them. I try to make them pithy and thought-provoking. My goal is to open a dialogue, which I would much prefer to do than trade insults via bullhorn. And with the Evangelicals quieting down now, it is much easier to do. Incidentally, the latest one reads “Godless 4 goodness”. Not surprisingly, the responses to that one are more reserved.

This article mentioned only the “Damn God America” sign, which was certainly the most provocative. It was intended to be a spoof on the “God Bless America” bumper stickers, but a fair number did unfortunately associate it with Reverend Wright’s remarks. Some people see someone with a sign on a street corner and won’t talk to you regardless of what it says. But the ones who are likely to stop and ask a question or make a comment or suggestion are sometimes more likely if the sign is more reactionary. And sometimes not. And the ones who are likely to tell say “You don’t believe in God? Fuck you!” (that’s an actual quote) will do so anyway.

So another aspect of the story the piece only incidentally mentions is the way this little movement has evolved. In the beginning it was enough to be confrontationally distracting, but that by and large (at least locally) seems to have achieved its immediate objectives, and now a more approachable, interactive, friendlier approach seems to be in order. So we are trying to do that.

I would never have used the phrase “preaching atheism” and I have never claimed that I am trying to convert anyone to anything. I do consider myself a devangelist, and I am prepared to talk about the failings and fallaciousness of Biblical literalism and religious belief. I care about truth and universal human values that are independent of superstition and dogma, and I would like it if others did too. I like to have conversations about it, and in truth, I get a lot out of the interactions that I do have. I would say that the responses and feedback are pretty evenly divided between positive and negative. Anyone who is willing to talk to me usually concludes that I have a respectful, if different view. The ones who don’t want to talk to me are perhaps not interested or prepared to have their viewpoints questioned, and that is OK too.

We can’t be advocates of reason without being reasonable ourselves. I’ve discovered that astonishingly many people today mistakenly assume that without a god, you must not care about anything; what I care very much about is illustrating that this simply isn’t true. I believe in Love, Life, Truth, Beauty, Science, Justice, Goodness, and zero gods. This is my message.

This reminds me of the days when I used to go to Madras Christian College in Madras, India by commuter train. In the train, one day, an old man started a sermon by calling out, “Oh all you sinners. Listen to me.” The first day I ignored him. The second day, I could not take it. I got up and addressed him loudly, “How dare you call me a sinner, you son of a bitch. You do not even know me. By calling me a sinner you have committed a sin. I want you to apologize.” He just stood there dumbfounded. A few others in the train intervened. “He is an old man. Leave him alone. He will not say things like that again.”
To day, when some one talks to me about Christian or Hindu scriptures, I just tell them, “I know enough Science to know there are no supernatural beings or phenomena.” If they still continue with the topic, I do not hesitate to engage them in a conversation bringing in logical and scientific ideas.