There seem to be two general avenues for responses to Sam's case: 1) it doesn't matter what we label ourselves, as others will continue to do so, and any "new" label will ultimately be dealt the same fate as "atheist;" and, 2) it doesn't serve the interests of the group to abandon the label, as we need it for some reason X. Both of these two issues were raised in the Q&A session after Sam's talk.
Ellen Johnson writes along the lines of (1):
Blacks are still dealing with bigoted notions that they are lazy and on welfare. Jews are still dealing with claims that they are cheap or that they run the media. Italians are still having to deal with claims that they are all in the mafia, etc., etc. Yet, we don't seriously suggest that they change, or not use, their names in order to stop having to refute certain bigoted ideas. Should gays call themselves "non-heterosexuals" in order to be accepted?This is rhetorical, of course, but these are also very weak analogies. Race/ethnicity is undeniable, visual and physical, making easy markers for partitioning people into neat little categories. Gay behaviors (not the preferences) are the same. In addition, one day, would it not be preferable to be truly "race-blind" (unlike the Colbert version) -- without labels, and to no longer need to identify oneself as either straight or gay? If someone is a great music composer, need we introduce them with, "the great black composer..." or "the amazing gay composer..."? I think we subconsciously recognize that this does happen and that it is wrong, as a person's race or sexual preference is completely irrelevant to nearly every discussion in which it occurs. Is it necessary to invoke one's own race to battle racism? One's own sexual preference to battle bigotry? Do I have to say, "As a Jew/black/gay man, it is wrong to say that about Jews/blacks/gay men..."?
Second, she misses the mark with that last comment -- Sam advocates dropping labels entirely, not switching one for another.
PZ writes along the lines of (2):
Like you, I look forward to a post-theist future when the term "atheist" is a quaint relic that lacks any contemporary context, as silly as saying that one is an a-Zeusist or an aleprechaunist. That time is not now...Those labels you denigrate...are useful rallying cries for the tiny, scattered bubbles of rationality drifting in the sea of superstition and ignorance. It's how we find each other and grow. It's how we build whole communities working for a common cause, rather than acting as isolated individuals. I'd like to see more openly secular communities and institutions forming, and I think to do that we have to accept labels and banners and symbols, and we have to be open about expressing our ideas and encouraging others to join us. That's how we'll make a lasting difference.This pragmatic concern ignores important distinctions between things like ending slavery and gaining civil rights versus the "endgame" that secular groups have in mind. All that secular groups (responsible and ethical ones, anyway) want is to extricate religion from government and to present arguments in the public sphere that will convince extremists to abandon their violence. This is a far cry from the economic and cultural entanglements of slavery and racism, which always involved only one ethnic group and which did not affect a majority of the American public. A plethora of other distinctions can be drawn here.
Most important is that this isn't about ending some entrenched economic system or clear and flagrant inequality before the law. We have none of the same legal and moral authority that civil rights and abolitionist groups had on their side. And it was this very issue that became an argument a while back between D.J. Grothe and PZ when atheists today were contrasted to civil rights crusaders in the 60s. Ditto with gay rights groups, who are still denied marriage and have been targets of violence since time out of mind. We have to go back to the Puritans or Bruno to get that sort of comparison with atheists.
More apt is the analogy to racist attitudes; this is the problem non-believers face -- prejudice. No one group really accomplished anything worth mentioning to drastically change widespread attitudes about race. Instead, and quite like theistic conceptions of atheists, it takes years and years of access to and familiarity with former objects of derision to begin to recognize them as equals. Like Sam mentioned during the Q&A, there may be no real "strategy" to turn around public perceptions of atheism. It may be a decentralized phenomenon that occurs over a long period of time solely as the result of us (atheists) just being who we are and going about our daily business for the prejudices to start to fade.
I agree with him entirely that this won't happen as the result of some distinct and marginalized group being ever more vocal. However, I do think that this was an important "catalyst" -- if you will -- to spark the dialogs that must begin and continue indefinitely. It will happen as the result of sustained long-term social adjustment, not conferences and books (though they played an important part).
The other issue Sam spoke of is the need for atheists to be more accepting of subjective human experiences in meditation and contemplative exercises. Long story short, we need to come to recognize that a lot of what religion offers is based on something real, the human need to transcend our circumstances at times and find a sort of "center" through one of the various introspective means at our disposal. For far too long we've conceded that ground entirely to religion and cast it aside as "mysticism" -- though it need not be.
I plan to try to do more meditation and find out if it is beneficial to me or not. If so, then great; if not, I'll quit.
In the end, all this bickering about labels doesn't do a damn thing to accomplish what it is we are all hoping for: the end of extremist religion and recognition of the intellectual paucity of theistic arguments. But I do agree with Sam that the labels may hinder reaching those goals.
