The Antichristian Phenomenon

икони*Movement is here used very loosely to include various kind of social groups and movements that all have some kind of anti-religion in common, may it one religious group against another religious group or various forms of atheist movements and the like.

One thing that has recently started to irk just a bit when communicating with people who often express a very strong anti-religious stance is the idea of “free-thinking” or “free-thought”. In particular, “free” is often equaled to that of a free mind, a mind that is not held back by any kind of logical boundaries but is able to expand into the great vastness of human intellectuality. This claim is often not questioned among those who are anti-religious, as it is considered one of the most important goals and is also one of most redeemed values. However, when analyzing the idea of “free-thinking”, the conclusion is unfortunately that “free-thinking” or “free-thought” in the strictest sense of the word cannot exist. Why?

First of all, free-thinking assumes that there cannot be any boundaries or limitations to human thought. If there are, the human mind can truly never be free. Here boundaries and limitations can include various ideas such as free to express one’s opinions without persecution, freedom of information or freedom to think and decide on one’s own without force. Of particular interest is the last example, the ability to decide what to think without having other forces doing it for you, as this is in general the kind of idea expressed in the anti-religious idea of “free-thinking”. To understand this aspect from a behavioral perspective, we must explore the relation between the individual and the society.

Within behavioral studies, it is now well-known that humans are quite capable of changing their minds under pressure. The Milgram’s Obedience to Authority experiment is most likely the most common example, where people are told to inflict pain to others under the pressure of authority. A surprisingly high number of people were willing to do this, and a rather recent replication of the experiment shows that the results pretty much remain the same. However, this is far from the only way the human mind can be influenced or persuaded to do something that individual would not do under “normal” circumstances.

The use of subliminal messages in adverts and commercials is another well-known phenomenon, and adverts and commercials are great examples of what I here would like to call “societal pressure” (notice the difference to “social pressure”). Societal pressure is a kind of pressure where certain values are supra-imposed over others by being expressed in mass media. Rarely do individual actors play any larger impact, although fashion icon Twiggy is one noteworthy example among others. The main use of societal pressure is to reinforce certain already existing values and make them “commercial” – the idea that we buy into the adverts and their products that often come with the assumption that we agree with certain values is probably a good way to express it.

Societal pressure is one kind of pressure that is very hard to reveal – because in theory, no one actually forces you to accept these values as truisms. In fact, you will often find that mass media may even fight to win you over to their specific camps of what is true. The way this kind of relation can be described is dominance through consent, you allow yourself to be dominated. We do this every day, may it be with our teacher or our boss, or the police officer we met on the street. We recognize that certain individuals or groups have the right to assert more social authority, and by becoming dominated by these groups we reaffirm this. In fact, many social relations would not function without dominance through consent – imagine the grown-up child still arguing as if he or she is a 3-year-old with his or her parent, the age that is most commonly associated with children rejecting the authority of the parent/caregiver. Another example may include a student who incessantly argues with his or her teacher during a lecture that the teacher is wrong, thus assuming that the student has more authority about the subject than the teacher. What this means in theory is that the society in which we live in impose certain ways of being that we often accept as true. These values are upheld by the people who exist within this society and when someone breaks the norm social sanctions will be carried out such as social exclusion, even if these people may not even agree with the values themselves. What is important is that the values are considered natural, personal agreement is of a lesser issue. Many people may for example disagree with the institution of marriage, yet we expect young couples to marry.

As shown above, a society can therefore have several different contradictive values being promoted at the same time. secularism and theocracy are two examples, or traditional versus liberal gender roles. To expand more on the latter example, I am quite sure that when I write the word “family”, most of you who are reading this will not think of a family consisting of for example, a homosexual couple, or even a so called “freely organized” family which may more properly be recognized as a collective of sorts, no, what you think of is the nuclear family: husband and wife with children. Yet most Western societies often promote a liberal gender view that allows for different family constructions aside the nuclear family – even though this may not be the case in actuality where the nuclear family is de facto still seen as the norm. More relevant to this article, I want to discuss the ideas of anti-religion and religiosity as two opposing values. As opposing values, different groups value them differently; however, they exist within the same society. What I am going with this is that anti-religion can only be allowed if the society itself in which anti-religion exists accepts anti-religion as an existing value. What this means is that the idea of “free-thinking” that anti-religion often promotes is not in fact free at all, it is rather free-thinking with quite some modification involved. Furthermore, the way society allows for this is incredibly subtle: dominance through consent. The reason why dominance through consent is so powerful is that people may not always notice that they are in fact dominated since they agreed to be. The crux then is that society tricks you into believing you are free by dominating you and you agreed to be dominated. Free-thinking as it is understood in anti-religion in general can therefore never be truly free, because the idea of “free” is already limited by the society in which these anti-religious movements exist within.

That individuals who claim they are free-thinkers are limited in their thinking by society becomes even more evident once you leave religion and anti-religion as values and investigate what other values related to religion and anti-religion that are considered of importance. From personal experience, I often find that these so-called free-thinkers indeed only see themselves as free because the society in which they live in allowed them to think that they are, they often hold very contradictive and conservative values in other areas. A recent example includes someone who responded to my entry about Sverigedemokraterna and presented “facts” and “evidence” why Muslims are bad, which to my trained eyes mostly seemed to be the same information regurgitated by others who are strongly anti-Muslim. This reveals a very subtle notion that Western values are considered more important than Muslim ones when it for example comes to gender, creating the contradiction that only Western women are “free” (again, with modification), by removing the freedom of upholding traditional Muslim gender values.

To conclude, free-thinking in the sense that it is mostly understood in anti-religious movements does not exist per se, as it is an illusion granted by the society in which the anti-religious movement exists within. Therefore, would you be one of these people who claim him- or herself to be a free-thinker, think again. Are you truly actually free in mind and spirit? What other values do you have that you deem as natural that may in fact not be natural at all (e.g. the gender division between man and woman)?

Lastly, I do not try to offer the key to break out of the societal shackles imposed by our societies. I cannot and I doubt that it is truly possible to do so. We can share values as we move between societies, something quite well-documented among transnationalists, but we cannot break out of our values creating new ones on our own since the very way we view values is limited by the society itself. Therefore, the only tool I can offer is the awareness that we are affected in numerous ways, often unknowingly so. By understanding that you are affected, you may not necessarily be able to always change your values, but you can at least see the consequences of them and act accordingly.

There’s been some talk of atheist movements and how they might work or be organized. I think this is a great idea, and the more push there is for the atheist agenda, the more sane our world will be. I wanted to write a small essay of sorts on how an atheist movement might be accomplished as well as ask for feedback from other writers and readers here at Anti-Christian Phenomenon. Serious change should be the on the minds of every active atheist or anti-theist, because the religious institutions of the world will never stop until everyone else is under their control. Beware, it’s a long albeit badly written, and very much thought out, at least I hope it is. Again, I’m looking for feedback and serious discussion.

Let’s address some serious questions. (more…)