Is The Position Of Atheism Growing Stronger?/Chapter I

by Joseph McCabe

In my 'Rise and Fall of the Gods' (1931) I traced the weird and ever-changing belief in Gods from the days of man's infancy to our own time. I showed that at every period during the 5,000 years of history when men developed a higher culture Atheism appeared. We find it in ancient Egypt in spite of the scantiness of the literary remains and the despotic power of the priests. We see it so widespread in civilization 2,500 years ago that it takes a prominent place in history in the form of the Ionian philosophy of Greece and the ethic of Buddha and Confucius in Asia. Then there is the high cultural development of the Greek-Roman civilization, and from 300 B.C. to 300 A.D. we find the thinly veiled Atheism of the Stoics. Epicureans, and Skeptics accepted by the great majority of the better-educated. Atheism perishes again with the crass ignorance and clerical tyranny of the Iron Age, but it spreads widely in the light of the Arab-Persian civilization, wherever the fanatics are checked, and at the Renaissance it reappears in Christendom. The hardening of the religious attitude after the Reformation again cheeks it, but in the 18th Century it enters upon a development which has, in spite of murderous clerical tyranny in some countries, proceeded steadily ever since.

On the strict ground of these historical facts, without taking account of personal valuations or hopes, I formulated the law that Atheism grows in proportion to the growth of knowledge and freedom. No law of history is more consistently revealed in the records. It follows that the 20th century ought to witness a development of Atheism immeasurably greater than has ever been known before. Our knowledge of realities is incomparably greater than the knowledge of any previous civilization: that knowledge is imparted to the mass of the people by a machinery of education which is as superior to that of the Greek-Roman as a giant Cunarder is to an ancient trireme: and it was understood that the heroic struggle of the last century had won for the world at large freedom of thought and expression. We shall now survey the world in an attempt to determine to what extent Atheism has grown. The task is difficult. Atheist organizations are so few and poor that there is no approach to a census of the number of Atheists throughout the world, while the name itself has been so changed in meaning by religious writers that a large proportion of the folk who are Atheists do not know it or are reluctant to admit it. The word is here taken in its legitimate sense, which is supported by most of our leading dictionaries and invariably accepted by Atheist writers—the men, one would say, who ought to know best—as the proper designation of any man or woman who has no belief in any being or entity whom he or she calls God. In dictionary language it means "one who denies or disbelieves the existence of God."

There is no census of such folk. Even in the few countries where a religious clause is inserted in the census-papers the results are, we shall see, apt to be grossly misleading, Except where Atheism is accepted as the creed of a definite political organization such as the Communists and, in some countries, the Socialists, it is so difficult to ascertain its strength in a community that for the compilation of this essay I have had practically no assistance from any other writer. Our post graduate research-students and professors seem at times to be running short of themes for those valuable monographs an contemporary life that they give us, but none cares to take up the exact study of one of the most startling phenomena of our age—the rapid growth of Atheism. one knows why. In the circumstances, instead of imitating the round liberality of a religious organization when it publishes a statement of its membership, I will use here only such figures, besides those which are accepted statistics, as are plainly within the truth. Yet with this cautiousness of procedure I will now prove the truth of statements I have occasionally made on the matter which seem to startle many folk and to others seem incredible:

That Atheism has grown in the last 10 years a hundred times more rapidly than any religion ever grew.

That it is moderate to claim that there are considerably more than 200,000,000 Atheists today.

That the growth has been checked only by fraudulent misrepresentations and savage persecution.

That the growth is such that if freedom is again generally secured in the next 10 years we may justly expect Atheists to be more numerous than genuine Christians in 20 years.

1. Our Meretricious Churches

But if we would appreciate the full force and implication of these statements we must consider the difficulties that are put in the way of the spread of Atheism in all but one or two countries. In America and England, for instance, one imagines a quite honest religions person scoffing at my thesis and pointing out that religion looms larger in public life today than it did in the first two decades of the present century; that the appeal of its ministers was never louder and more penetrating. Undoubtedly: but only because the majority of the community are cynically indifferent about religion and permit the clergy to usurp a power out of all proportion to the number of their followers, and because the discrediting of what are called "religious evidences" and the rapid disintegration of the Churches themselves have driven the clergy to adopt new and noisier methods. Not even in the Middle Ages were Churches so elaborately organized as they are today; and, since accessions to the Churches from one great churchless body are negligible in number in our time, a desperate effort is made to cheek the streams of secession and to camouflage the social and Intellectual failure. Religion was a reality when a church just opened its doors with silent dignity to admit men and women who felt an urge to worship. The noisier it becomes, with its braying out upon the ether, its publicity bureaus and camera men, and its boosting of its social attractions and entertainments, its pushing to the front at every civic ceremonial or public event, the more plainly it confesses its failure to appeal to either the intellect or the emotions of our time. It reveals itself as just a clerical corporation for the protection of an income of so many hundred million dollars a year.

The amiable professor or "psychological" essayist who calls this a superficial view of the religious situation, who asks us to distinguish between religion and theology or to perceive, as he more wisely does, the difference between natural and institutional religion, may be invited to reflect upon one fact. 'The more nearly any religion or sect of our time approaches his standard of intellectual resectability, the less successful it is.' It is not Unitarianism, Modernism, or Theism that attracts the millions who quit the old Churches, but Bible Religion, Four-Square Gospel, Spiritualism, Christian Science, etc. The biggest Churches are still those that are richest in medieval stupidities. The most successful of them all in restricting its leakage, accumulating wealth, and usurping the power to bully people who do not belong to it, is the most medieval of them all. Of the, let us say, 40,000,000 Christians of America three-fourths are Fundamentalist.

And the Churches hold such millions as they do by purveying to them a mixed diet of sacred and profane which their Jesus Christ would have drenched with the dregs of the Aramaic dictionary; by guarding their untruth with such dupery as I exposed in the last number; and by allying themselves, in every country where the alliance is offered, with Political adventurers who purchase their support by promising to crucify their critics for them. The first method is too familiar to need much comment. A church is now a social and recreational center with business methods of advertising its attractions. There is a foolish sort of person who asks us whether we suppose there are no longer genuine believers in Jesus who eagerly go to church to worship and to feel a sense of communion. Of course we grant the existence of very large bodies of such people. Whether even these, or how many of them, would retain their fervor if it were not for the untruth that is given them instead of science and genuine history is a question. But if the Churches had only, or mainly, such men and women to deal with, they would be content with the occasional chicken-supper or concert or picnic which is a time-honored concomitant of religious fellowship. They go leagues beyond these things today. They are no longer even content to have bright, brief, and brotherly services, with suave and natty floorwalkers at the door to pounce upon strangers.

Typical of the modern procedure is an experience I had in New York when, after years of nervous misgiving, the late Billy Sunday made his fatal descent upon the metropolis. Next to me at the end of the row (on my other side was an Atheist lady-friend) was a very prosy New Yorker who had just been attracted by the heavily- purchased publicity in the press and the report that Sunday's "personal magnetism" (which turned out to be as synthetic as the beauty of a manicurist) was worth seeing. But, when it came to taking the sawdust-trail, one of the ushers pressed my totally apathetic neighbor so warmly to "go up and shake hands with Dr. Sunday" that he went. Naturally he—though he had been plainly disgusted at Sunday's exhibition of temper at the smallness of the collections—was one of the hundreds of converts in the statistics issued.

But everybody knows the tricks and desperate devices of a modern city-church: the catchy titles of sermons published in the press, the professional and often profane soloist, the occasional invitations to a base-ball player or ocean flier, the cinema, the wide fringe of social attractions from matrimonial (or other) possibilities to cheap meals, better trade, political jobbery, or social connections. The Catholic Church may reject some of these aids to devotion but it is all the more assiduous in showing in other ways the social and economic advantages of being a Catholic. Why, the churchgoers ask, should yon growl about it? We might almost reply that, on the contrary, we are glad to see it. At the very least it confesses the failure of the religious appeal. However, it is enough to note that, clearly, church-going is no longer evidence of Christian belief, and that it is not simply a set of doctrinal formularies that we now attack.

2. The Intrigue for Wealth and Power

Much more serious is the use of the new business-organization of the Churches to prevent free trade in truth. I have said that it is a law of history that Atheism grows with the growth of knowledge, and that we have now a marvelous machinery for transmitting our knowledge to all. But every part of this machinery—the school, the public library, the press, the bookstore, the lecture-room, the radio—can be used just as effectively for the dissemination of untruth as of truth, and the Churches, with their enormous wealth and power, have gained a very pernicious degree of control over the machinery. They complain of the hostility of Communists and Socialists, yet they know that today it is essential to their security that a social-political order in which they can intrigue for power shall be maintained. With the passing of Capitalism and large private fortunes they lose not only the greater part of their wealth and its immunity from taxation, but the power they now enjoy of controlling education (to a great extent), securing the service of the press, bullying publishers and booksellers, censoring public libraries, and—in comparison with the Atheist—monopolizing radio-instruction.

The detailed evidence of this very extensive control of our educational facilities would fill a volume, but since it is unquestioned we need not linger. School-education, from the primary to the university, is jealously watched for anything that it considered "contrary to the interests of religion": which means that scientific and historical teaching is eviscerated or falsified. It is largely owing to the clergy, or the alliance of the Churches with capitalist governments, that education remains everywhere outside Russia and Turkey an unstimulating and very largely useless communication of facts that are irrelevant to the purposes of life. There are large cities like Boston where the Catholic Church notoriously influences education even in the schools to which it forbids its parents to send their children, but all the Churches keep an eye on school-manuals and teachers. I have letters from non-Catholic mothers, and far away from Massachusetts, telling me how in public high school their daughters have to listen to the most blatant Catholic propaganda. And this is only the first stage of their control of education. They have organizations, with local representatives everywhere, for watching the daily and weekly papers and threatening to injure the circulation if truths that are unpalatable to them are published or if good space is not given to their own utterances and activities. They get the work of reviewing books and even reading for publishers into the hands of the clergy or reliable laity. They threaten publishers—I have seen letters—and bully booksellers and librarians. They try to stifle all criticism, they insist on favors for their subsidized articles and pamphlets; and they make the ether throb with their ancient and modern untruths. Even employers are enlisted in the good work.

Looking at life from the angle of social psychology, one finds it remarkable that so large a majority of the community contrive to keep clear of the contagion. For, that the constant aim of all this work is to prevent the dissemination of truth and purvey what is regarded by the great majority of properly educated persons as untruth I have proved in scores of works. The grossest historical untruths, to the advantage of Christianity, are repeated until even the non-Christian majority imagine them to be unquestioned. The social services and possibilities of service of the Churches are flagrantly misrepresented. The truths of science that are essential to a correct appreciation of life and man are concealed or denied. The activity of the Churches in America is glowingly announced; the beneficent action of Atheism in Russia is misrepresented; the crimes of the Churches in Europe which cooperate with truculent dictators are never mentioned; and, in particular, the growth of Atheism is so carefully concealed behind assurances of Church- progress that people regard a plain statement of it as fantastic and reckless. History and contemporary life alike are falsely described, because the truth would be resented by one or other Church.

For reasons which will be discussed in later essays even this comprehensive and unceasing miseducation does not make people return to the Churches, but it has one of the effects that are sought: it convinces most people that Atheists are a scanty and rather eccentric body who have no title to be treated in the press or on the radio with the same respect as Christians, The clergy attach more importance to that than many people imagine. The critic they dread above all others is the man with a clean-cut profession of Atheism, the man who neither in his thoughts nor his speech admits the slightest shade of mysticism. They care very little about the professor or the literary man who openly rejects their doctrines but still talks respectfully about religion and Spiritual realities and the sacredness of doubt and the open mind. He has, perhaps, a few hundred high-brow readers, and they, in any case, agree with him before they open his book. The clergy will even permit him to speak on the radio. He generally agrees with them that Atheists are dogmatic, lacking in good taste, superficial and anyway a nuisance. So the fiction is sustained and the people are duped.

3. The Gentle Art of Murder

The third chief method is the modern form of the medieval habit of invoking the secular arm. It is today cynical. The Churches were still assuring us that they are today in favor, on principle, of complete toleration and freedom when they eagerly grasped every opportunity that was offered them to cooperate in a policy of intolerance and tyranny. I have just completed a thorough study of the world-situation in this respect in the Appeal to Reason and must refer any who have not read it to that series of books. Here I would point out that, though it happens that these murderous dictatorships have nearly all been set up in Catholic countries with the connivance of the Catholic Church, all Churches in all countries will accept the same alliance if ever it is offered to them. The Lutheran Church in Germany was, 10 years ago, teaching the same gentle principles of tolerance, freedom, and humanity as the Churches are teaching in America. Today the great body of the Lutheran pastors support the blood-stained tyranny of the Nazi regime, and the dissentient minority of them quarrel, not with the truculent tyranny as such, but with its interference in their affairs. Catholics and Protestants alike are willing to see Hitler and his brutal lieutenants torture Jews, Communists, Socialists, Pacifists, and humanitarians generally as long as they do not attempt to interfere with the doctrinal teaching of the Churches themselves; just as American Protestants were generally silent about the criminal aggression of Japan in China because the Japanese promised to favor the Christian missions and Russian influence in China was destroying them.

The most positive and the largest figures of bodies of Atheists that I shall give in the course of this essay are those of Communist and, in most countries, Socialist bodies. These are professedly, if not aggressively, atheistic. That is the new situation which confronts the Churches. It explains the remarkable adjustment of the Sermon on the Mount to a support of tyranny and cruelty in Germany, Austria Hungary, Poland, Italy, Spain, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Rumania, and Greece. And there is not the least reason to suppose that if the occasion arose, there would not be a similar adjustment in every country. Some 200,000,000 people in Europe today live or suffer under a Fascist tyranny which scorns every principle of the American social ethic, even as taught by the Churches, yet all the Churches, with the reserve I gave in the case of Germany, support the tyranny. The chief pretext for establishing the tyranny was the growth of Communism and Socialism, and part of the reward of the Churches in nearly every case was the suppression of their critics, whether Communist or not. In other words, the Churches have gone back to medieval methods just as the dictators they support have. In six of the countries I have named atheistic Communism and Socialism had in about 20 years won at least 50,000,000 adherents, detaching most of them from the Churches. We shall see proof of that. Are we asked to believe that the Churches were austerely inattentive to that fact when they supported the dictators? And are we expected to be quite polite when we are assured that, if atheistic Communism and Socialism came to capture one-third of the people in America and England also, the Churches would serenely refuse to have anything to do with a successful Fascist usurpation