Faith in America: Atheism in Oregon by David Loftus

This is the first in a series of articles about faith in America.

Last week, an organization that calls itself the United Coalition of Reason placed ads on subway trains in New York City, Philadelphia, and Boston; on billboards in Chicago, Newark, San Diego, and three Ohio cities; and aboard buses here in Portland, Oregon.

The sign shows a blue sky with white wisps of clouds and the message “Are you good without God? Millions are.” In the corner it lists a URL for more information.

I was struck by the local response to the brief story about this ad. It went online at The Oregonian's web site just before noon Wednesday, Nov. 18. In less than 48 hours, there were more than 200 comments in response to the story and a graphic of the ad. The total has now topped 300. Before it goes offline in another week or so, you can read the thread here.

As will become obvious if you visit the thread, after the first day I contributed some comments of my own. Several things surprised me about the contributions, however. Although there was some outrage, and a few snarky insults from both sides, many more of the remarks expressed puzzlement and genuine confusion on the part of religious people. The secular humanist front was well represented, in number and quality. And the discussion didn’t deteriorate into a flamefest between a couple of repetitive and abusive die-hards. By my count, more than 110 different people commented, most of them only once or twice; less than a dozen posted five or more times.


The sign wasn’t proselytizing; it addressed itself to like-minded individuals. Yet that was too much for some Christians. People acted as if atheists were on some sort of crusade; they made the classic complaint about “pushing it in my face”; they attributed multiple millions of 20th-century deaths to “atheistic Nazi and Communist regimes”; they were certain a person couldn’t be moral without a Christian god to guide him.

A lot of these arguments were familiar from my teens. They hadn’t gotten any more sophisticated. It’s odd that so many people would continue to presume that a life without God would be immoral and frightening. I don’t know why they haven’t noticed how many of their neighbors and coworkers live contented, fulfilling lives, and do good works, without church or God (especially in Oregon, where census figures have shown that regular church attendance is the lowest in the entire U.S.).

Religious people actually wrote that folks who don’t believe in a higher power would have to be “non-stop partygoers,” would kill and steal if they thought there were no afterlife, and morality would disappear completely.

Why would I want to party all the time, just because I know the world will end (for me) with my death? I’ve never felt like “partying hard”; to me, the need to party can only come out of a life that is otherwise dissatisfied and unhappy. I assume that’s why so many twenty-somethings party: because they’re confused, fearful, unsure about their futures. I was all of those things, too, but partying was never a solution for me; I was too busy reading, writing, going to movies, trying to make something of my life. When people continue to party into their 30s, 40s, and 50s, I have to think they continue to be ambivalent about what they’ve made of their lives.

Why would I want to kill and steal in a world without God? That wouldn’t give me any particular pleasure. Why would any reasonable person do such a thing, knowing that sooner or later, you will bring down the anger and vengeance of other human beings on your head? Knowing that this life is all I have and how mortal and vulnerable everyone else is, I feel a great imperative to live my life well, to seek and create beauty when I can, to avoid causing unnecessary pain, and to try to leave the place a little better than I found it.

For the most part, morality (or more accurately, ethics) seems a fairly simple matter. Purely selfish motives (that is to say, those that best serve your self-interest) can provide a groundwork for an ethical life without any resort to higher powers. Treat other folks the way you would like to be treated. Don’t cause unnecessary pain, because it makes other people angry and vengeful. Don’t spoil and waste natural resources, because that too will come back to haunt you or your descendants.