From Chris Bowerman:
Nate Phelps balked at the opportunity to run the Calgary chapter of the pan-global, multidisciplinary Centre For Inquiry, a charity that posits itself as a “hub for rationality and critical inquiry worldwide.”
After all, he was a cab driver. He didn’t know how to run a professional institution on the provincial level, let alone direct its unorthodox coterie of secular humanists, atheists, naturalists, pagan dissenters and garden-variety infidels.
But since his own family had already condemned him, what did he have to lose?
Phelps took the executive director post this spring. Taking his newfound mission seriously, he said his job is to “interact with a diverse group of people, engage in debate over issues I’m passionate about, and try to understand ideas I would otherwise never encounter.”
Emancipated from hateful Phelps clan
Phelps was emancipated some 30 years ago from the notoriously hateful Phelps clan.
His father, “Pastor Fred,” leads the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., known for its varied slogans, such as “God Hates Fags” and “Thank God for 9/11.” Fred’s fanatic followers also picket and hector mourners at military repatriation ceremonies.
Nate escaped these foul clutches when he turned 18; two of his 12 siblings also made it out, but the others stayed.
Phelps moved to Canada
Free at last, Phelps traveled west, eventually winding up in Canada. Although distanced from the tyranny of his father’s hell-and-brimstone religiosity, he still suffers the psychological trauma of his brutal childhood indoctrination.
But he finds that talking about it allows him to gain new insight. “l’ve learned that by being more active and outspoken, I’m a tiny bit more in control of my life,” he explains. “Every day that I’m able to successfully combat the tapes in my head – to use my capacity to reason through an issue – I feel like I’ve succeeded at defying the hatefulness I was taught to embrace.”
Which securely places him on the CFI’s stated mission: “To foster a secular society based on science, reason, freedom of inquiry, and humanist values.”
The CFI challenges the kind of power-brokering imbued with mythology, largely supporting the separation of church and state; it’s opposed to the “principles that recognize the supremacy of God,” as the preamble goes in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms – the country’s moral bedrock, if it has one.
Somewhere between a modern-day Rosa Parks and a multinational buttinsky, the organization deserves a seat on the human-rights bus.
Science, reason and religious ideology
“A large percentage of Canadians still embrace some form of belief in God,” Phelps says. “By and large, science and reason are viewed as adversarial to religious ideology, and rightly so. The inability to separate the positive aspects of religion – such as charity and kindness toward fellow citizens – and the mythological components creates this constant tension between the secular perspective and religious groups.”
As Phelps sees it, “It’s a war of words between secularists and monotheists, both feeling disobliged and spiritually offended by the other.”
But words are OK, Phelps says. “Public discourse is important in all instances,” he adds, “because it shines light on human ideas and exposes them to consideration and, ultimately, acceptance or rejection by society.”
Secularism’s neutral position
Secularism, in theory, is a neutral position. The CFI can’t rightly say that it always maintains that ideal, but it does avidly promote civil discourse. Even in the most fixed dichotomies, human rights, controversy and debate often catalyze social progress. In the atheism-monotheism divide, says Phelps, both sides are heard, equanimous, and, perhaps more often than not, agreeable to disagreement.
Using dogma to justify hate
Theistic groups such as the Catholic Civil Rights League adhere to “Sacred Scripture,” allowing them free religious expression – but the parameters are vague.
Where does free speech cross the line into hate speech, Phelps wonders? “This is a very difficult area for me,” he goes on, “having grown up in America, where freedom of religion is sacrosanct. The overarching notion of hate speech speaks to the direct connection between the words and violence perpetrated on an individual or group. Of course, this extreme is rarely realized.”
In America, any notion of restraint in speaking one’s religious convictions is aggressively challenged, says Phelps. “A primary argument against restraining speech is the slippery slope. Too often, people use their dogma to justify hatred of another individual or group. This is abhorrent because it gives individuals the right to express hatred without taking personal responsibility for it.”
Could godless nonbelievers – infidels – become a prime new target for human-rights discrimination?
In The God Delusion, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins writes: “The status of atheists in America today is on par with that of homosexuals fifty years ago.”
Phelps carefully considers these notions in the context of rural Wyoming, circa 1998, and a 21-year-old gay man named Matthew Shepherd. Shepherd was tortured and bludgeoned to death by two teenage homophobes.
The case ultimately galvanized lawmakers, after bringing state, federal, and international attention to the issue of hate crime. Shepherd’s funeral, sadly, was picketed by Phelps’ estranged father, Pastor Fred, with his vile placards.
“There is certainly a thread of conversation within the extreme religious groups that argues the idea that atheists are satanic and represent a threat to God and country,” says Phelps. “That perception is an uphill battle for mainstream nonbelievers – but I don’t see the fundamentalist fervor that is visited on gays translating over to the atheist community.”
As Phelps sees it, atheists struggle with social alienation and unfair characterizations of immorality, not loss of life. “I just don’t see the extremists beating an atheist and leaving him to die, hanging on a fence in rural Alberta,” he says.
“God willing,” he adds, borrowing a phrase from his past.
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