Atheist Backlash

An article by Kate Cohen in the Washington Post last week makes one wonder how well-informed a writer must be to work for the WaPo. Ms. Cohen is upset with the Supreme Court for several rulings this term which she alleges were based on religious, specifically Christian, bias and proposes an atheist "backlash."

Her opening sentences make clear her animus against religiously-motivated citizens:

With its ruling last week to retract federal abortion rights, the Supreme Court essentially declared it won’t protect Americans from a powerful minority who insist their God gets to make the rules for everyone. This week, it declared it will not protect students from the coercion inherent in official-led prayers to that same God.

It's odd that Ms. Cohen would think that Justice Alito's exceedingly well-argued opinion would be based on religious preference when there was no hint of religious belief anywhere in it or in any of the concurring opinions. Indeed, they could have all been written by atheists.

The Court also found, contra Ms. Cohen's mischaracterization, that the high school coach who prayed after games did not coerce his athletes to pray with him, rather they freely chose to join him. The Court's decision actually expands freedom rather than limiting it and protects the First Amendment rights of everyone.

Whereas many people see these rulings as a return to Constitutional sanity after fifty years of judicial activism untethered to the Constitution, Ms. Cohen sees them as an alarming intrusion of Christianity into our politics.

She evidently believes that only Christians think that Roe was bad law, even though the late pro-choice Justice Ginsberg thought it was ungrounded and arbitrary, as have many secular law experts since 1973. She also evidently believes that only Christians are pro-life even though there are many Jews, Muslims and atheists who believe it's wrong to kill unborn babies.

Setting aside the Constitutional argument, though, she is correct that many who believe a woman should have the right to kill her unborn baby are not religious, and there's good reason for this. If one has no belief in any transcendent moral authority then morality reduces simply to whatever I want. It's not immoral, if there is no moral authority, for me to kill a baby in the womb if I don't want it.

The only moral imperative is to look out for #1. The only question that governs one's moral decision-making is "What's in it for me?"

In any case, Ms. Cohen proposes an atheistic "backlash" against Christian influence, such as it is.

She begins with a gratuitous swipe at those who are alarmed at some of what's happening in our society:

Some people work up a good backlash using bogeymen and lies. They invent a completely fictional world of child grooming, elementary-school CRT classes and sports teams overrun by transgender girls. For our backlash, we don’t need to make anything up. To demonstrate the looming threat of theocracy, we can (as atheists tend to do) stick to the evidence: actual laws passed, platforms approved and rulings handed down.

If Ms. Cohen really believes that these are "completely fictional" concerns she's deluding herself, but set that aside. Her response is to recommend that people shout their atheism, so to speak:

So, if you haven’t done so already, now would be an especially good time to say, “You know what? I’m an atheist.” You could call yourself an “agnostic” if you want, a “nonbeliever” or a “humanist.” But a good backlash should pack a punch, and nothing punches like the word atheist.

Tell someone you’re an atheist. Start with yourself if you need to. Tell your spouse, your kids, your parents, your pastor, your political representatives. And if pollsters come calling, definitely tell them.

For someone who recommends sticking to the evidence, proclaiming one's atheism seems an odd tactic. After all, what is the evidence that atheism is true? There just aren't any compelling arguments in support of atheism and certainly no evidence that there is no God.

Sophisticated atheists recognize this and find themselves reduced to attacking reasons put forward by theists for believing that there is a God. Having little or no evidence in their favor they can only argue, feebly, in my view, that theists' arguments are unconvincing.

Ms. Cohen closes with this:

Make it clear that, to you, no legitimate public policy can be based on the supposed wishes of a supernatural being. Right-wing politicians will have to find some other moral justification for forcing women to bear children they don’t want, keeping students from getting the education they need and withholding health care that might save children’s lives while protecting the guns that might end them.

This is disturbing. She's explicitly stating that no one motivated by religious belief should be able to contribute to the shaping of public policy. This is pure bigotry. Why should religiously motivated citizens be excluded from the public square? What's the Constitutional warrant for relegating Christians to second-class status? Would she make the same claim about Muslims or, for that matter, atheists?

Moreover, her demand that "Right-wing politicians find some other moral justification" for their policies is just silly given that that's exactly what happened in the SCOTUS cases that inspired her column. In a free society citizens' motivation can be whatever it happens to be, religious or otherwise, but their public arguments should be grounded in the Constitution.

Indeed, conservatives, many motivated by a belief that all life is precious and that killing innocent babies is immoral, have based their public arguments for fifty years on the secular claim that there was no right to abortion anywhere in the Constitution.

Her demand is also silly for the reason mentioned above that insistence upon a moral justification rests ultimately on the belief that morality is grounded in a transcendent moral law-giver. Take that away and there's no "moral justification" for anything. Morality becomes nothing more than egoism and emotivism.