Atheism: An Anecdote
I recently posted a link to Richard Dawkin's The OUT Campaign on Facebook and Multiply. A friend criticized the initiative and pointed out that "just because Richard Dawkins needs to be obnoxious in his rejection of God" doesn't mean that we should resort to "divisive labels". Though in many contexts he would be right (particularly in North America and in Europe), I pointed out that in the Philippines, there is a need for a strong, unified secular voice that will oppose the overwhelmingly Catholic dogma underscoring, say, the utterly backwards population control program of the Philippine government. (And I don't care what you think about Malthus or "The Limits of Growth"; there are restrictions on the carrying capacity of the Earth, and population growth must be checked.)When I was in Grade 2, my homeroom teacher distributed personal information forms to our class to be filled out by our parents. Along with fields for my last name and my birthday was a field for my family's religion. My mother, who believes in utter honesty in all but the most dangerous situations, truthfully put down, "Atheist." And indeed we were.
The next day, I came back from school crying. "Nanay!" I sobbed. "My homeroom teacher gave me back my form. She said that 'atheist' wasn't an appropriate answer." Or something to that effect. I can't remember what my homeroom teacher said, but whatever it was, it hurt me that whatever it was my family believed in wasn't acceptable to everyone else.
My mother, exasperated, nevertheless acquiesced and wrote on the form what she knew my homeroom teacher would want to see: "Roman Catholic".
So when I talk of "atheists coming out of the closet" in the Philippines, I do not employ the metaphor lightly. Atheism is rarely seen as the product of a long, deliberate process of intellectual inquiry in adults or, in the case of children, perhaps a built-in response to the world (as it was with journalist Christopher Hitchens, who "was made as not to believe"), but rather as the result of bad parenting decisions that lead to the absence of appropriate role models coupled with excessive exposure to Western ideas—that is, the same reasons often given by the religious right for the the "rise of homosexual behavior" in contemporary, urban, Filipino society.
PS: I also think that wearing a scarlet A is pretty funny.
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