Atheism For Dummies (For Dummies (Religion & Spirituality)) (45 page)

“Part of the reason why Africans are deeply religious, spiritual and supernatural in outlook is because the people have given up hope of achieving justice and happiness in this life and in this world,” he wrote in his column. “Humanists must be involved in changing and challenging unjust institutions, customs, and traditions . . . For humanism to flourish in Africa, humanists must take the quest for justice and human emancipation seriously.”

Tacca makes a call to move beyond the exchange of ideas into social and political action to improve the human condition. That’s why African humanists are among the most active and passionate in global humanism, lobbying or petitioning their governments to take action against injustice — and not just injustice against humanists, but (like Igwe’s work in witch camps and Tacca’s calls for basic human rights) injustice against humans.

Atheists and theists alike in Africa often point to
Ubuntu,
a southern African humanistic philosophy of life, as a positive ethic that binds people together. Ubuntu is about recognizing the ways in which people depend on each other, and treating others with kindness, compassion, and a sense of kinship regardless of their relation to you or their perspective. One of the best things about Ubuntu is the fact that religious believers (such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu) and secular humanists alike embrace it. And it’s become a powerful way for African nontheists to frame their humanism in a culturally relevant way.

Exploding into a Thriving Online Community

There’s not much problem going public if you’re a new religious believer. But if a person begins to explore religious doubts, or even starts to consider him or herself an atheist, he or she can have a lot of anxiety about the reaction of the outside world. Atheists also don’t have many gathering places — no atheist churches on every corner. Add the fact that the recent growth in atheism has happened in the dawn of the Digital Age, and it makes sense that the atheists mostly “get together” and communicate online.

These sections take a closer look at how the Internet has facilitated breaking down barriers so that atheists can meet and a few of the different sites that connect nonreligious people.

Considering how the Internet has helped

Before the Internet, doing a proper investigation of religion was much more difficult. The Internet was made of paper. Websites were called “books” and kept in big brick servers called “libraries” which had to be visited physically, with your body.

The Internet offers several advantages for atheists and other nonbelievers:

The Internet has made connecting with other likeminded folks easier.
Before the World Wide Web, it often took half a lifetime for someone like me to really become a part of the humanist movement that is now such a big part of who I am. The Internet makes it easy to do in a few weeks what I didn’t achieve in 25 years.

The Internet’s anonymity helps.
A person usually needs some time to feel secure enough in his or her identity as an atheist before openly wearing the identity in the real world. Until then, it’s often SaganFan514 talking to OneLessGod about secular ethics in an online atheist discussion forum.

The Internet provides a relatively safe haven for discussion.
Many commenters talk about feeling safe in online atheist forums; they can kick off their shoes and be with people who see the world in the same way. This is especially true of atheists in areas where religion overwhelms everyday life. “It’s refreshing to come home after a long day in the Bible Belt and have people who I know are on my side making jokes I wanted to during the day but instead had to hold my tongue and keep quiet for fear of losing friends and influence at my school,” said one recent online forum comment. “Without these little jokes and articles I feel my life would be just a little harder to manage.”

Surfing to some popular atheist websites

In addition to blogs (see
Chapter 13
), several websites have been created specifically for atheists to meet, chat, vent, laugh, and just generally make plans to take over the world. The Secular Web (
www.infidels.org
) was one of the first. Founded in 1995 to provide resources about atheism and skepticism, the site includes a huge library of essays, debate transcripts, atheist arguments, and book reviews, as well as a discussion forum and several other resources. For about the first decade of its existence, the Secular Web was the only game in town, and it played an important role as the newborn modern atheist movement toddled into the 21st century.

In early 2008, a new social networking site called Atheist Nexus (
www.atheist
nexus.org
) was launched — a kind of Facebook for atheists. Because a couple of recent deconverts from Christianity launched the site — one of whom was a fundamentalist minister, no less — some atheists greeted it with skepticism at first. Was it a trick, a trap, a scam of some sort?

It was nothing of the kind. And after the site’s credibility was established, the atheist community giddily ran in and began filling out their profiles, writing blogs, posting videos, and forming groups around common interests, such as

Jewish Atheists

Gay Atheists

Parenting Little Heathens

Atheists Who Were Muslim

Eco-Logical (environmentalists)