Living the Secular Life_New Answers to Old Questions

by Phil Zuckerman

  Next, the Internet has had a secularizing effect on society in recent decades. This happens on various levels. First, religious people can look up their own religion on the Web and suddenly, even unwittingly, be exposed to an array of critiques or blatant attacks on their tradition that they otherwise would never have come across. Debunking on the Internet abounds, and whether one is a Mormon, a Scientologist, a Catholic, a Jehovah’s Witness—whatever—the Web exposes the adherents of every and any religious tradition to skeptical views that can potentially undermine personal certainty, rattling an otherwise insulated, confident conviction in one’s religion.

  We see direct evidence of this happening more and more. For example, in her ongoing research on nonbelieving clergy, Linda LaScola has found that many pastors and ministers who have lost their faith in God cite their time spent on the Internet as a factor in their emergent atheism. In another study of an extremely segregated, close-knit, almost secretive Satmar Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn, New York, sociologist Hella Winston also found evidence of the Web’s secularizing potential. Many of her informants went online, often secretively, and what they found there helped to erode their religious provincialism, sometimes directly prodding their emergent questioning and even abetting their eventual rejection of their religion.

  Second, the Internet allows people who may be privately harboring doubts about their religion to immediately connect with others who also share such doubts. In other words, the Internet fosters and spurs secular community. Nascent atheists, skeptics, humanists, agnostics—even those in the most remote or fundamentalist of communities—can reach out to others online, instantly finding comfort and information, which encourages or strengthens their secularity.

  Third, and perhaps most subtle, the Web may be partly responsible for the rise of irreligion simply by what it is, what it can do, what it can provide, how it functions, and how it interfaces with us and our minds and our desires and our lives. The Internet may be supplying something psychological, or feeding something neurological, or establishing something cultural via its individual-computer-screen nexus, something dynamic that is edging out religion, replacing religion, or weakening religion. The entertainment available on the Internet, the barrage of imagery, the simultaneity, the mental stimulation, the looking and clicking, the hunting and finding, the time-wasting, the consumerism, the constant social networking, the virtual communication—all of it may be undermining religion’s ability to hold our interest, draw our attention, tap our soul.

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  DR. BARRY KOSMIN is the founding director of the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture, housed (none too ironically) at Trinity College, in Hartford, Connecticut. This institute, founded in 2005, is the first of its kind in America—or the world, for that matter. Its goal is “to advance understanding of the role of secular values and the process of secularization in contemporary society and culture.” Dr. Kosmin is emphatic about the need to understand the rise of irreligion. As he argues, “We need to study secular people because they’re a growing proportion of the population. This has political, social, intellectual, and moral implications. While the salience of religion has been duly studied, we also need to see what is happening on the other side. We need to examine the nonreligious portion of humanity. If we only study religious people, and we ignore secular people, we are not getting the whole spectrum, the whole picture.”

  I couldn’t agree more.

  There is an important, durable line that links the ancient Carvaka, Kohelet, Lucretius, Wang Ch’ung, and Muhammad al-Razi to Sally, the American mom of the twenty-first century. It is a fascinating, compelling line—part philosophical, part practical, part political, part personal—and it courses through history and winds ever strongly through our contemporary society. But it is a line of human culture that hasn’t been adequately recognized, scrutinized, or appreciated. The Sallys of the world simply haven’t been studied much. And this is not only strange but unfortunate, as it skews our understanding not only of what it means to be secular or religious, or what it means to be American, but what it means to simply be human.

  It’s Only Natural

  Given that secular people are now more abundant than ever before, and that social scientists such as Barry Kosmin are finally beginning to study secular people with real deliberate rigor, hopefully our ability to counter some of the gross mischaracterizations out there concerning secular people will mature and strengthen. And the mischaracterizations out there concerning secular people—people like Sally—are quite troublesome. For example, many people characterize atheists or nonreligious men and women as some sort of aberrant, anomalous, or unnatural species of human being. And I’m not talking about Roman Catholic Inquisitors of the sixteenth century making such assertions but contemporary academics.

  Consider Christian Smith, who is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Sociology and director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame. At a 2012 roundtable conference held at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University, Professor Smith—who is one of the most prolific and erudite sociologists of religion in the country, as well as a really affable guy—put forth the thesis that religion is natural to the human condition, while secularity is not. By way of analogy, he characterized being religious as akin to walking forward and upright on two legs and being secular as akin to crabwalking backward on all fours; the latter can be done, but it goes against our true human nature.

  And Professor Smith is far from alone in espousing this viewpoint; it is a fairly widespread notion, held by academics and nonacademics alike, that religiosity is the sort of natural, innate default position of humankind, while being secular is some sort of oddity, corruption, or aberration. Sociologist Paul Froese characterizes religiosity as “essential,” “universal,” and “fundamental” to the human condition, thereby rendering the secular condition as ultimately unnatural and untenable. Psychology professor Justin Barrett further argues that humans are literally “born believers,” and thus atheism is a problematic, indoctrinated retardation of an otherwise natural, normal human predilection. Theism, such individuals tell us, is simply in our wiring, in our human nature—while atheism is decidedly not.

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  I HEAR VARIOUS permutations of this position all the time, and it basically goes like this: “Religion has existed in every human society and culture, right? Religion is basically a universal, isn’t it? So doesn’t that mean that religion is an essential and intrinsic component of the human condition?”

  Not quite.

  First off, one can readily agree that religion is pervasive the world over. And one can also happily acknowledge that religion has existed, in some form or another, in every society and culture for which we have data. Good enough. But that does not mean that every member of any given society or culture is religious, nor even necessarily a majority of any given society or culture. For example, 42 percent of the Dutch today describe themselves as being nonreligious, and another 14 percent describe themselves as being convinced atheists—meaning that being religious in the Netherlands today is actually to be in the minority. Same thing in the Czech Republic. And Japan. And anthropologists such as Daniel L. Everett have even lived among indigenous tribes deep in the Amazon rain forest whose members don’t believe in anything supernatural—no gods, no ghosts. So just because religion is culturally and historically widespread does not mean that it is embraced by everyone.

  By way of analogy, consider dance. Dance is just as universal as religion: it has existed, in one form or another, in every culture and society, past and present. And yet we know that many individuals don’t care much for dancing. Many find it awkward. Many find it embarrassing. Many more are simply uninterested in it, or are downright oblivious to it. And still others are actively opposed to it, finding it to be immoral or wicked. So while dance may be “universal,” that does not automatically mean that all humans are dancers. Mill
ions are not.

  For yet one more analogy, consider violent crime. It is just as widespread as religion and dance. It exists in all societies and cultures, past and present. And yet we know that not all people are violent criminals. Most aren’t. So just because a phenomenon exists in all human enclaves does not make it innate or natural to all people. And I would argue that this is exactly the case with religion: not all humans are religious. As nineteenth-century abolitionist and feminist Ernestine Rose argued over a hundred years ago, “We are told that Religion is natural; the belief in a God universal. Were it natural, then it would indeed be universal; but it is not.”

  Which leads to my second point: as the earlier part of this chapter revealed, there are a hell of a lot of secular people out there in the world—according to recent analyses, approximately 450 to 700 million nonbelievers worldwide. Given those numbers, it is problematic to consider something so widespread as an unnatural aberration. As sociologists Marta Trzebiatowska and Steve Bruce have recently argued, “The proposition that all people are innately religious might have been plausible in 1800, but there are now so many people … who do not hold supernatural beliefs, who have no involvement with religious organizations, and who describe themselves as ‘nonreligious’ that … we have enough nonreligious people to defeat the universal claim.”

  Third, even if we can recognize that there are certain innate neurological, psychological, and/or cognitive predispositions that might tend to make humans religious (for example, the proclivity to see patterns, the tendency to assume some sort of agency behind certain phenomena, the desire to feel a sense of connection, to be part of a like-minded group)—as the work of such scholars as Pascal Boyer reveals—that does not mean that there aren’t other similar, simultaneous, competing, or complementary innate predispositions that tend to make some humans skeptical, agnostic, atheist, religiously indifferent, or affirmatively secular.

  So while the author Nicholas Wade writes of a “faith instinct,” we can certainly argue that there is also a “doubt instinct” or a “reason instinct” that is just as persistent and inherent to our nature. As cognitive psychologists Armin Geertz and Guðmundur Ingi Markússon so astutely argue, “Atheism … draws on the same natural cognitive capacities that theism draws on,” and both “religiosity and atheism represent entrenched cognitive-cultural habits where the conclusions drawn from sensory input and the output of cognitive systems bifurcate in supernatural and naturalistic directions. The habit of atheism may need more scaffolding to be acquired, and its religious counterpart may need more effort to kick, but even so, that does not, ipso facto, make the latter more natural than the former.” Amen to that.

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  THE TRUTH IS that many societies today, as discussed in chapter 2, are highly religious, such as El Salvador, Zimbabwe, and Bangladesh, but many others are highly secular, such as Scotland, Slovenia, and Estonia. Some ethnic groups today are highly secular, such as American Jews, while others are highly religious, such as African Americans. Some societies are very religious for centuries, and then religion dramatically fades in a matter of two or three generations. Some societies are relatively secular for a spell, and then religion suddenly erupts with vigor. Many individuals are strongly religious for decades, and then they suddenly lose their faith, becoming convinced atheists, while many other individuals are secular for many years, and then suddenly find religious faith, becoming extremely pious. And just to add to the complexity, we know that many people are neither totally religious nor totally secular, but exhibit both orientations simultaneously throughout the course of their lives. Some people find themselves feeling or behaving particularly religious at certain times, and notably secular at others.

  Simply put, faith and doubt, credulity and skepticism, theism and atheism, religious fervor and utter religious indifference—these are all natural components of the human condition. In some cultures or eras, one is stronger or more pervasive than the other. In other cultures or eras, vice versa. For some individuals, one is more dominant, and in other individuals, it is just the opposite. Some men and women live a happy life permeated by religion, while others get on just fine without it.

  And it is to the actual details and contours of the secular life—its joys and challenges, promises and struggles—that we now turn.

  Chapter 4

  Raising Kids

  It was the whole grace thing. I had never dealt with it in such an intimate way, and I must admit that I found it difficult to navigate, at least for a while. We’d sit around that big wooden table at my in-laws’ three-story house, high in the Colorado Rockies, and it would be dinnertime, and my father-in-law would tell us to all join hands. I just wasn’t sure what to do, how to be. Not the holding hands part—that I liked. Still do. But the prayer that would follow?

  Stacy, my wife of more than twenty years, is not religious. But Stacy’s mother and her husband are—very much so. For quite some time they’ve been born-again, church-involved, Bible-believing Christians. Their faith in God and their love of Jesus are sustaining, nurturing, and deeply important aspects of their lives. And they always say grace before their meals. And during those earlier years, when the kids were younger and being a father was newer, I found it particularly awkward.

  Here’s how the whole grace thing would basically go:

  Having arrived at our in-laws’ house late the night before, after a thirteen-hour drive from California, we spend our first full day mostly taking it easy. Perhaps we saunter around the nearby golf course in the morning, looking for golf balls. Maybe my father-in-law takes the kids out for lunch, or for an ice cream in the afternoon. I unload the car and unpack the bags and then lie around and watch cable TV, or perhaps a Disney movie with the kids, while nursing a large mug of black tea, trying to get used to the altitude. Stacy and her mom go for a walk to the creek, then go marketing, and then get to work in the kitchen.

  Then it is dinnertime. And there we all are, assembled in the Protestantly perfect dining room: my secular self, my secular wife, our three kids, and my very generous, very loved, and very Christian in-laws. Our son fidgets and complains a bit in his big wooden chair, but his older sisters successfully settle him down. Then my mother-in-law nods to my father-in-law, and we know to quiet ourselves and grab one another’s hands, and then my in-laws close their eyes and tilt their heads downward. My father-in-law begins:

  “We thank you, Heavenly Father, for bringing Stacy and Phil and our wonderful grandchildren safely to us, for protecting them on their journey out here …”

  Okay. That’s it. I’ve entered the awkward zone.

  The fact is, I’ve never believed in God—and my kids know this about me, especially my older daughter, Ruby. She knows that I love and appreciate my in-laws and that I’m happy to be in their beautiful home again. But she also knows that I’m not a believer, and that I’m not into praying.

  My father-in-law continues: “We also thank you, God, for the beautiful nature that you have created for us …”

  I can feel my children’s eyes on me. I’m uncomfortable.

  Here are my options:

  I can just close my eyes and tilt my head, going along with the ritual. But it would be a decidedly feigned gesture. Dishonest. Tilting my head in prayer, with my eyes closed, has always felt strange and unpleasant to me. And if I did do that, then what message might such a choice be giving my kids? Perhaps it would simply be interpreted as a “when in Rome” kind of thing. Maybe they would think, “Hey, look at Pop, he’s going along with the prayer with his head downward and eyes closed—how nice.” But maybe not. Maybe it will look like I am hiding my secularity, or that I am ashamed to be nonreligious, or that I am comfortable being disingenuous and that disingenuousness is okay. I don’t want to convey such things.

  Another option is that I can just sort of sit there placidly with my eyes open. My children might interpret this as a benevolent, benign stance. I’m simply there, going along, not praying, but sitting pleasantly. But the
y might interpret such a choice as my being openly disrespectful to their grandparents. Inappropriately indifferent. I don’t want them to think that either. I’m not trying to be impolite or rude.

  Another option is to just stare blankly down at the table. But what might my kids think then? Am I mad? Annoyed? Shut down?

  And as my father-in-law finishes—“In Jesus’s name, amen”—do I say “amen” as well?

  This indecisiveness of mine went on for several years. There were some times when I went ahead and closed my eyes and tilted my head downward, other times when I just sat there placidly, still other times when I would stare at the table, and also times when I would exchange a knowing look with Stacy or one of the kids—and occasionally I would do all of these things, one after the other in rapid succession, during the same prayer, in a sort of awkward-atheist-at-grace combopalooza.

  There is no question that for most secular Americans, navigating one’s relationships with religious family members is one of the stickiest of situations; it is difficult to be honest while at the same time seeking not to offend, to be respectful while simultaneously not obsequious, to be genuine and open even in the face of that which mystifies or even offends, to be loving while strongly disagreeing about very important, personal, political, and existential matters.