Recently, I’ve been thinking about the old days. No, not those old days, I don’t go quite that far back. What I was thinking about was the heyday of atheism, not that long ago, and how like a fireworks starburst, it quickly faded. For a short time though, there looked like there was some actual movement in what many atheists liked to refer to The Movement.

I never really liked referring to atheism as a movement, I always thought of it as trying to herd a clowder of cats. And what I thought turned out to be true. Not that we’re all individualists, but we’re also not like a bloc that can be depended on to share ideology whether political or social. Sure, according to a now 10-year-old poll, some 90% of those that say they are atheist or agnostic, are also left wing in their politics as well as social values. But even in that 90%, there are multiple factions with ideas as to what should be important to atheists. All of these are mostly social constructs as for these 90%, it’s expected that anyone in that group would tow-the-line as to voting for, well, in the United States, the Democrat or Green (even further left wing) party.

We conservatives occupy the final 10% and of course, do not occupy any space of note within atheism. If we were to go with those old poll numbers, we’d represent maybe 3 million out of around 30 million (I rounded down). Seems like a lot of people, if conservatives could be counted as a voting bloc. But we are no different than any so-called mainstream conservatives. It’s okay in my mind that I’m not considered like the majority. think it means that I am more likely to think for myself and not just go along with the echo chamber.

I can’t even say that conservative atheists hold any social values in common, although it would seem we do, or else we might not refer to ourselves as conservative. But that could mean conservative in fiscal matters, possibly a lot more liberal in social concerns, but I think that would be more libertarian than classical conservative. But then, we most likely have libertarian leaning atheists as well. In fact, every time I’ve done any kind of online search about American atheists versus the general population, we seem to parallel the general population almost exactly, with the single exception (so far as I know) the number identifying as [politically/socially left, left leaning.

We even make the same mistakes as the general population because like them, we would like to have someone to help us find our way. We draft people as leaders of our movement (bowel?) and after a short time, are often disappointed to discover that these too, are human and liable to the same foibles as the rest of us. I’m not saying there aren’t still some that could be considered thought leaders, but I doubt anyone would want to step up to that appellation after the past debacle. The godless cannot make their own Gods, without consequence.