Where are all of the atheists? There used to be a large number of atheists online, especially on Twitter (X). Today, I look under a couple of common hashtags on X and there’s almost no one around. So, I looked up a few that we used to follow each other. Their accounts are still there but in a couple of cases, there hasn’t been any activity in years. Was it that long ago that I would log on to Twitter and be able to have interesting conversations with others?
Well, it has been a while since being an atheist was a thing, but I don’t think most people, even then were atheists because it was something popular to do. At least none of those I regularly interacted. I think it was with a lot of the younger people (high school, college) back then and they were disillusioned over the debacle known as “Atheism Plus” (I would encourage anyone unfamilar with A+ to do an Internet search and learn how idiotic it was), not to mention, a movement within atheism, which actually received national attention (and derision) known as “Atheist Church”. Yep, you read that correctly: Atheists gathering together, sometimes in real churches where they’d mimic a Christian church service: Songs, meditation instead of prayer, and a secular “sermon”, by some local atheist “leader”. I personally thought it was silly but the reason for many was clear: They missed the community that church provided.
I really believe that both of these became the beginning of the end of atheism – at least online atheism. I’m not implying that people have converted to some religion although some may have. That actually happened before and as I have said, these were atheists in name only. Some were angry at their god for some reason or another, and then got over it. Others, well, it was like a weekend at the beach, until the shallow waters filled with sharks. Those sharks just happened to be fellow atheists and some discovered that being cool was not all that it was supposed to be.
I did a quick online search for channels on YouTube dedicated to atheism or skepticism. I found few. Of course, there may be many, they just aren’t categorized as either atheist or skeptic.If one of those is yours, you may want to look at how it’s categorized. I did the same for atheist or skeptic conferences annually held in the U.S. Although I don’t recall there being that many, today, there appears to be only four that I could find including American Atheists (Skepticon, Mythicist Milwaukee, and the Reason Rally consititue the others). If you know of others, I’d like to know and I’d be happy to publish details here.
Why was I looking for atheists online today over any other time? I wanted to see what the general opinion was about the war with Iran. Atheists have never been shy in sharing their opinions about anything, especially about those nasty republicans (yes, as I’ve mentioned before, atheists are mostly liberal/progressive and therefore align/vote mainly democrat.) I’ve seen nothing. Not a word from any atheists, prominent or just people I used to hang with online. I would think that this would be an even to draw at least some back out from wherever they’ve taken cover. Well, not yet.
But, to quote another, “If not now when?” would be a good time for atheists to wake up and speak out on current events? Will any of us change the world? Probably not, but if we don’t try, how will we ever get there?
Thanks for posting your thoughts.
I’m also interested in the low visibility of atheism now compared to, say, 2005. I am an atheist myself, and in theory I would like to see more people become atheists, as long as they didn’t turn to a toxic ideology which happens to be atheistic like nihilism.
When I read material that was written around the time atheism was prominent, I notice a moral charge to a lot of the writing by atheists. The immorality of religious faith was a prominent thesis of the “New Atheism.” I think one contributing factor was that the movement to promote atheism was never able to explain adequately where this moral charge came from, particularly given that most of the proponents accepted ideas that made it impossible like determinism.
Atheists: “You believe stuff without evidence? That’s wrong!”
Religious people: “Why?”
You need a strong answer to that. I am not sure there was ever a strong answer presented from the atheist side.
The lack of an agreed moral foundation also explains the fragmentation of the movement into conservative and liberal wings. If there’s no explicit moral basis then everyone will insert their own basis, which can lead to a split between different moral frameworks. It turns out a “lack of belief” is inadequate to motivate coherent, large scale social change.
Thoughts?
I don’t pretend to be an evangelist for Atheism because I honestly do not care whether someone DE converts or not, but if people have been struggling with their “faith”, as I did for years, I want to let them know that becoming a non-believer doesn’t mean you become a completely different person. We’re just like believers, with one exception. You’re no less ethical or moral simply because you don’t believe in some god or other. I became a better student of the bible as an atheist. I’ve also been diving deeper into religious belief as a whole. Why do people have the need to believe in a god and the afterlife? BTW, some atheists claim to pray, and believe in the afterlife (PEW Poll on religious belief). So, I focus on how it’s no different(personally) being an atheist than anything else.
There were some atheists. a decade ago, that tried to “take over” what was being called New Atheism by the press. Remember “Atheism Plus”? It didn’t take long for a lot of people to associate with it because a group, under PZ Myers, was pushing it, hard (to make money by selling merch, believe it or not). and just as soon as a lot of atheists went for the stupidity idea since “Atheist Church”, it came crashing down around their heads. Ever seen a bunch of ideologues attempt to eat one another? Even some notables that were behind it found out quickly that this was not something they wanted to be known as a part of. And what can I say about Atheist Church? If people needed to have the feeling of belonging so much then start a BINGO night or something like that. At least you’d be doing some actual good.
I walked away from this blog because I thought after a few years, no one really cared about the state of atheism or the world. I came back because, well, I did.