I note with interest that Margaret Downey organized a blockbuster atheist conference in the Washington, D.C. area, to which she brought many of the “new atheists.” We congratulate her on her energy. However, may I agree with Sam Harris who states that in accepting the label of “atheist” that “we are consenting to be viewed as a cranky sub-culture… a marginal interest group that meets in hotel ballrooms.”

May I first compliment Sam (as the newest kid on the block) for his two fine books and his eloquent voice now being heard on the national scene. May I then disagree with his subsequent “seditious proposal” that we should not call ourselves “secularists,” “humanists,” “secular humanists,” “naturalists,” “skeptics,” etc. “We should go under the radar for the rest of our lives,” he advises. We should be “responsible people who destroy bad ideas wherever we find them.”

That sounds lofty but in my view it is counter-productive. For in order to develop new ideas and policies that are effective, we need to organize with other like-minded individuals. And a name is crucial. If we followed Sam’s advice, the critical opposition to religious claims would naturally collapse. If we generalize from this, we could not come together as Democrats or Republicans, Libertarians or Socialists, feminists or civic libertarians, world federalists or environmentalists, utilitarians or pragmatists. Should we operate only as single individuals who may get published or speak on street corners with little influence or clout? Come on, Sam, that is unrealistic; for almost no one would be heard and we would be lone voices in the city canyons, unheard and drowned out by the powerful media. We say that democracy best functions when the citizens of a country unite under whatever label they choose to achieve what they deem to be worthy goals. True, you have had a best-seller which brought you to the public forum. But for most people the opportunity to affect the public debate is lost unless they work together with others to make their views heard, and unless they build institutions dedicated to their ideals and to the values they hope will endure.

Paul Kurtz is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo, chairman of CSICOP, the Council for Secular Humanism, and Prometheus Books, and editor-in-chief of Free Inquiry Magazine.

Posted October 10 2007