The so-called “new atheist” movement is definitely not so new. Atheists have been around for decades, and they’ve been organizing for decades. But something new, something big, has been happening in atheism in the last few years — atheism has become much more visible, more vocal, more activist, better organized, and more readily mobilized — especially online, but increasingly in the flesh as well. The recent Reason Rally in Washington, DC brought an estimated 20,000 attendees to the National Mall on March 24 — and that was in the rain. Twenty thousand atheists trucked in from around the country, indeed from around the world, and stood in the rain, all day: to mingle, network, listen to speakers and musicians and comedians, check out organizations, schmooze, celebrate, and show the world the face of happy, diverse, energetic, organized atheism.

Atheists are becoming a force to be reckoned with. Atheists are gaining clout. Atheists are becoming a powerful ally when we’re inspired to take action — and a powerful opponent when we get treated like dirt.

Case Study Number One, “Powerful Ally” Division: The million dollars currently being raised — and the goodness knows how many people being mobilized — for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s “Light the Night Walks,” by the non-theistic Foundation Beyond Beliefand the Todd Stiefel family.

The Stiefel Family and the Foundation Beyond Belief have wanted to make a large atheist contribution to the fight against cancer for some time. Like many people, Todd Stiefel has had many people in his life afflicted with cancer. His family has the resources to make a large financial donation to the fight against it. And as the largest non-theistic charitable organization in the world, the Foundation Beyond Belief was the perfect organization to channel and structure the Stiefel family’s matching offer — and to round up supporters for it.

But it was distressingly difficult to give this money away. If this whole “atheists donating pots of money to the fight against cancer” story seems familiar… you may be remembering theAmerican Cancer Society controversy, in which the ACS initially accepted a $250,000 matching offer from the Stiefel family and the Foundation Beyond Belief to participate as a national team in the ACS’s Relay for Life — and then, suddenly and mysteriously, turned it down. (And were then deluged with angry protests — and withdrawals of donations — when the story hit the Internet. More on that in a tic.)

That isn’t happening this time around. The Stiefel family and the Foundation Beyond Belief have found an organization that’s more than happy to partner with them in the fight against cancer. When Stiefel reached out to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, they cheerfully accepted his offer — a half million dollars in matching funds, as a “Special Friend” team partner in the LL&S’s “Light the Night” Walks, with the goal of uniting the freethought movement around the world to raise a million dollars for the fight against cancer. Andrea Greif, Director of Public Relations for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, says, “LLS is appreciative that Foundation Beyond Belief has set such a generous goal to help us beat blood cancer and we look forward to having their teams join LLS’s Light the Night Walk.” And Stiefel describes the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society as “enthusiastic at the prospect of working with us.” He went on to say, “We LOVE working with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. They have been very kind, supportive and helpful. They have made it very clear that cancer doesn’t discriminate and neither do they. LLS just wants to put the mission of fighting cancer first.”

This could easily have been a controversial effort. For one thing, the Honored Hero for the FBB in this year’s Light the Night Walk is the recently deceased Christopher Hitchens — a hero to many in the atheist movement, but a very controversial figure to many outside of it (and indeed, even to many atheists). But Hitchens’ status as the FBB’s Honored Hero is apparently not an issue. The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society is accepting FBB’s partnership and generosity with open arms. And these efforts have been extremely effective. As of this writing, the Foundation Beyond Belief has already hit 50 LLS local teams — halfway to the 100 team minimum goal. (By the way: If you were ticked off about the American Cancer Society thing, and you want to translate that anger into action? Participating in the FBB’s Light the Night Walks in your area — or starting an FBB LTN team in your area– would be a great way to do that.)

And this isn’t an isolated incident. In recent months, the atheist community has proven to be extraordinarily good at raising money, visibility, and support for people and causes that capture their imagination. And they have exceptional skills when it comes to fundraising and hell-raising on the Internet.

When high school atheist Jessica Ahlquist was being harassed, bullied and threatened by her schoolmates and community for asking her public school to enforce the state/church separation laws and take down a prayer banner from the school auditorium, the atheist community rose to her aid, with an outpouring of love, admiration, and emotional support… and a college fund totaling over $62,000. When high school atheist Damon Fowler was being harassed, bullied, and threatened by his schoolmates and community for standing up against prayer at his public high school graduation — and was kicked out of his home by his parents — the atheist community rose to his aid, with an outpouring of sympathy and support… and a college fund totaling over $31,000. When Camp Quest, the summer camp for children of non-theist families, was engaged in a major fundraising drive last year, several atheist bloggers (conflict of interest alert — including me) teamed up in a fundraising contest involving a series of grandiose and increasingly ridiculous dares and forfeits, ultimately raising $30,074.80 for the cause.

Atheists aren’t just raising money for their own, either. On Kiva — the microlending organization working to alleviate poverty and empower people in need around the world — theAtheists, Agnostics, Skeptics, Freethinkers, Secular Humanists and Non-Religious team is the #1 all-time leader in amount of money loaned… not just among religious affiliation teams, but among all the teams on Kiva. The Reddit atheist community raised over $200,000 for Doctors Without Borders last November, in a fundraising drive that came close to crashing Reddit with the traffic. The Foundation Beyond Belief has been supporting charitable and human rights projects for over two years — well before the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society project began — and to date has raised over a quarter of a million dollars to support human rights, the environment, education, child welfare, anti-poverty efforts, public health, and more.

And the power of atheist organizing extends beyond simple fundraising. To give just two recent examples: When preacher Sean Harris was caught on tape exhorting parents to beat their gay kids, the local atheist communities in the area immediately began sounding the alarm — and rounded up activists to protest at the church the following Sunday. According to Priscilla Parker, President of Military Atheists & Secular Humanists, 27 of the Sean Harris protestors last Sunday were from secular/atheist groups. That may not sound like much — but when you realize that there were a total of about 70 protestors at the event, the atheist presence suddenly looks a lot more significant. (Especially for an event in a highly religious, largely conservative town — and especially for an event that was organized on extremely short notice.) And when American Airlines was planning to air an anti-vaccination ad on their planes’ video systems and in their in-flight magazines, the atheist and skeptical communities dove into action: publicizing the Change.org petition against the Australian Vaccination Network’s ad, and slamming the decision all around the Internet. The story went viral, in large part because of the Internet power of atheists and skeptics — and the joint effort between heathens and other activists ultimately pressured the airline into rejecting the ad.

When a cause catches their hearts, the atheist community can be a powerful ally.

And when a cause catches their hearts in a different way, they can be a powerful opponent.

The American Cancer Society snafu is probably the most obvious example of this. When the ACS turned down the Foundation Beyond Belief’s offer to participate as a national team in the Relay for Life, they apparently didn’t expect much pushback. But when the story broke, it went viral — and made misery for the ACS. For weeks, the ACS was deluged with emails, letters, phone calls, and posts to their Facebook wall. For weeks, their Facebook wall was taken up almost entirely with angry posts about the story. Importantly, while the chief instigators of the rage-fest were atheists, they were quickly followed by a crowd of religious believers, who were just as outraged at the anti-atheist bigotry — and at the rejection of perfectly good money — as the heathens. And very importantly, a flood of people halted their donations to the ACS… including many people who had been regular donators for years.

But there are plenty of other examples as well. The abovementioned American Airlines anti-vaccination ad. The abovementioned Sean Harris protest. The sublimely ridiculousGelatogate, in which a local gelato merchant in Springfield, Missouri posted a sign in his store window reading, “Skepticon [a skeptical/ atheist conference] is NOT Welcomed To My Christian Business”… and then got a faceful of Internet fury when a photo of the sign was Facebooked, Tweeted, G-plussed, texted, blogged, emailed, and generally spread through the atheosphere like wildfire… and then backpedaled as fast as it is possible for a human being to backpedal. Like many social change movements, organizing atheists is like herding cats, and it’s not easy to predict which issues will catch their imaginations — but when it happens, the combination of passionate motivation and Internet savvy turns them into a powerhouse.

And very importantly, the atheist movement is increasingly becoming a youth movement. The Secular Student Alliance – an umbrella organization of non-theistic college and high school groups around the United States and the world — is growing at an astonishing rate. In 2009, they had 143 affiliates: in 2012, they had 351. Impressively, their high school rates are climbing at an even faster clip. In 2010, the organization had only four high school affiliates: this year, that number has climbed to 37. And as anyone knows who understands politics getting young people inspired and on board is enormously important for the long-term future of any social change movement. What’s more, many of these student groups are active in service projects and social change activism outside of atheism… and are eager to partner with other groups to get the job done. If you’re in any doubt about the power of atheism to help move political mountains, now and in the coming years — pay attention to those SSA affiliate numbers. And pay attention to how they keep growing… and growing… and growing.

So what’s the take-home message?

Atheists are your friend. Or they can be. And they can be a very powerful friend indeed.

Progressive and social-change organizers and organizations are having a hard time seeing the atheist movement as… well, as anything, really. Except maybe as a pain in the neck. Many progressives are undoubtedly aware of the existence of atheists: the atheist community’s efforts at visibility have been paying off, and atheism is being discussed in progressive circles as widely as it is everywhere else. But somehow, while the existence of atheists has become undeniable, the existence of atheism as a social change movement is still largely being ignored. To give just one example: In over 100 panels, training sessions, and other presentations at the upcoming 2012 Netroots Nation conference for online progressive activists, not one is about atheists or atheism. (Conflict of interest alert: I was one of the proposed panelists on a proposed atheism panel for Netroots Nation 2012.)

It’s hard to tell what this is about. Do social change organizations see atheists as toxic — too controversial, too likely to draw negative attention, more trouble than we’re worth? Or are these organizations simply unaware that atheists have formed into a serious social change movement — and are growing this movement at a rapid pace?

If it’s the former… then shame on you. In the early days of the LGBT movement, queers were far more controversial than they are now, and associating with queers was considered by many to be toxic. It was still the right thing to do. (Not to mention the smart thing to do.)

If it’s the latter… then sit up. Pay attention. Atheists are here. In just a few short years, the movement has gone from zero to sixty, in both visibility and mobilization. And the atheist movement is largely comprised of people who are passionate, compassionate, courageous, Internet savvy, skilled at seeing through bullshit, willing to defy the status quo, excited about activism… and dedicated to changing the world. After all, as far as they’re concerned, it’s the only world they’ve got.

You want these people on your side.

We know with certainty that Christopher Hitchens’ body is today dead. Beyond that, nobody — neither believer nor atheist — can say with total certainty if there’s more to this life than this life, or what that might entail. Rick Warren can say he knows “the truth” till judgment day, but that doesn’t make him right. What his statement does, however, prove is the powerful, human need to feel right.

Hitchens certainly came face-to-face with that combative, evangelical desire to be right long before he shuffled off the mortal coil. The man who wrote a book called “God Is Not Great” and championed his atheism to anyone who wanted to debate it publicly cringed when Sept. 20 was declared a “Pray for Hitchens Day.” He likely knew that the Missionaries of Charity order of Mother Teresa, a woman he branded a “fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud,” would declare they were praying for him and his family after his death. But he also, in his gentlemanly English way, understood that people would pray for him anyway. Well, not quite for him. “Please do not trouble deaf heaven with your bootless cries,” he wrote. “Unless, of course, it makes you feel better.” 

I’m a Christian. A skeptical, questioning, frequently disappointed one who makes no pretense of having all the answers, but a Christian nonetheless. I pray every day. But my tacit deal with the universe is that I don’t need anyone I pray for to believe in God, any more than I take offense if someone who has a different belief system (or lack thereof) says he’ll set an intention or cast a spell or simply keep me in his thoughts. A prayer, like a kind thought, or good intention, or whatever you call it, isn’t supposed to be conditional. It can be graciously sent out — and gratefully accepted — without a commitment on either side. It certainly isn’t something one should undertake with a spiteful, I’m-doing-this-even-though-you-don’t-want-me-to-because-I-am-right-and-you-are-wrong-ta-da! flourish. So if you’re the praying type, pray. But don’t take those prayers as irrefutable proof of the existence of a deity, or an opportunity to do some Twitter bragging.

Regarding Hitchens, I’m with writer Tom Jamieson, who observed that it “would be nice to think God does exist, simply for the earful he’s getting right now.” Regarding God, I don’t consider the death of an author as evidence of anything other than what a vicious bitch cancer is. I don’t think it’s cause for a group affirmation of how this proves anything. I just think it’s a cruel loss and the silencing of a great voice. Maybe I’m wrong. But that’s all right, because as Hitchens himself once succinctly stated, “My own opinion is quite enough for me.”

Dennett says that I am concerned that Dawkins is “too darned clear, too brutally frank when he articulates his case” against religion. It is not Dawkins’ clarity that concerns me. It is his condescension toward believers and his labeling of this large group of people as non-thinkers. In contrast to what Dennett suggests, I certainly do not take lightly the problems posed by today’s religions. We should continue to oppose religious practices that cause harm to other human beings, and we should continue to oppose irrational thinking on issues that require rational thought. But does this mean that we should dismiss believers as non-thinkers? There are thousands of intelligent, thoughtful and rational thinkers who also believe in God.

Dennett says that I am “letting off the hook” Frances Collins and Owen Gingerich – presumably by not actively contesting their belief in an intervening God who performs miracles. I clearly state in my essay that I disagree with these scientists in this particular belief. But that does not mean that I consider Collins and Gingerich irrational people, or people who are somehow dangerous to our society, as Dawkins implies in his writing. Show me an instance where Collins or Gingerich has refused to accept a particular finding of science or been hindered in their scientific work because of their religious beliefs, and I would vigorously oppose them. Quite the contrary, these people have made valuable contributions to science and the history of science. Their ability to do so, in fact, demonstrates that religious beliefs and science can live side by side within the human mind. Have Albert Gore’s religious beliefs dulled his ability to think rationally and to work to protect the environment? Certainly, philosophers and other intellectuals, such as Dennett and Dawkins, should study and articulate what they consider to be logical and self-consistent systems of understanding. But we should also look at the evidence afforded us by real, practicing human beings, like Collins and Gingerich and Gore.

Dennett wants me to delineate my view of the boundaries of faith. I will do so. I oppose any belief that contradicts experimental evidence as determined by the methods of science. All beliefs not in such contradiction may be considered as faith. Whether faith in a particular belief is beneficial or not is another matter. For example, I would not embrace faith that mental concentration can affect the outcome of a coin flip, because experiments show that the distribution of heads and tails comes out in a random pattern regardless of the wishes of bystanders. On the other hand, I would consider as legitimate faith the belief that some intelligent being created the universe or that our lives have a meaning, because those beliefs have not been disproved by science.

Dennett says that because I have commented that some of the great works of art were inspired by religion, I imply that atheists (of which I am one) are “a philistine lot.” Surely, as a philosopher, Dennett knows that a statement does not imply its inverse. “If you are religious, then you create art,” does not imply “If you are not religious, then you do not create art.”

Finally, Dennett says that I “prefer to sing the praises of faith without holding it to account.” I’m sorry, but I do not think it is faith, as I define it in my essay and as I have defined it above, that has caused the sufferings of human beings through the ages. It is the lack of moral compass in individual human begins that has caused suffering.

Dennett reminds me that Richard Dawkins is deeply appreciative of the art, music and poetry that religion has engendered, but it is just that Dawkins believes that religion, on balance, has accomplished more harm than good.

I would find it difficult to attempt such a tally. Whatever the results of such a balance, does that mean we, like Dawkins, should throw out religion wholesale, take a condescending attitude toward people of religious beliefs, label people of religious beliefs as non-thinkers imperious to scientific evidence? No. It means that we should continue to oppose those practices of religion that do damage, we should continue to oppose irrational thinking on issues that require rational thinking and evidence. But, at the same time, I would argue that we should allow our existence to encompass some things that we cannot explain by rational argument and proof.

We live in a highly polarized society. We need to try to understand each other in respectful ways. To that end, I believe that we should make room for both spiritual atheists and thinking believers.

This sort of fuzziness has its uses. The Vaseline on the camera lens that blurs out the wrinkles on the face of the aging movie star is not just a sop to her vanity; it is both considerate and self-serving. Let’s not dwell on what her face has become; let’s allow her to re-create the beauty that stunned us in the past. Everybody wins. Lightman defends much the same policy with regard to religion: Let’s keep our objections in soft focus and avoid drawing attention to even quite ugly flaws.

For instance, he notes that famous contemporary scientists Francis Collins, the head of the Human Genome Project, and Owen Gingerich, a Harvard professor of astronomy and history of science, defend an “interventionist” (miracle-making) God that violates the Central Doctrine of science, but he lets them both off the hook. What excuses them from the standards of rational inquiry that science demands? Lightman cites the existence of worthwhile areas of intellectual exploration (in art and literature and philosophy, for instance) that do not share the scientific ideal of restricting oneself to working on “well-posed problems” — ones that can be stated precisely enough to guarantee a definite solution. But some of the claims that Collins and Gingerich endorse are, in fact, unsupported answers to “well-posed problems”: Is there any rational grounding for a belief in a miracle-making interventionist God? (No.) Do we need God to account for the brilliant design of living things? (No.) Do we need God to somehow underwrite or ground our confidence that our ethical convictions are not just parochial prejudices? (No.) There is nothing gloriously, ineffably, tantalizingly imponderable about these questions, carefully crafted and vetted by philosophers and scientists over the centuries.

Lightman fails to consider the possibility, moreover, that the reason many theological questions continue to evade the bright light of rational inquiry is that they have been ingeniously crafted by theologians to do just that. As the traditional concepts of God, heaven and hell crumble in the collision with science, the theologians invent new, more “sophisticated” concepts to take their place. They are improvements only in the sense that they are more immune to falsification by any imaginable discovery. This is, of course, recognized by many, perhaps most, traditional religious leaders, who regard theologians as closet atheists, lapsed believers trying to hang in there.

Lightman argues for a broader definition of faith, but he doesn’t explain what the boundaries of a properly expansive view of faith might be, and what sorts of nonsense it might tolerate. Faith healing instead of medical care? The Rapture? The efficacy of animal sacrifice? Or, what about convictions less relevant to important decision-making in life: the virgin birth and transubstantiation of the host? As a scientist he would declare any secular claims along those lines to be outright hoaxes. Is it mere politeness that prevents him from telling Francis Collins that if he, as a Roman Catholic, believes these doctrines, he is — in a word — deluded? How far does Lightman’s tolerance extend? By failing to define the limits of his own tolerance for faith, his point, it appears, is to engender a warm, fuzzy protective glow around religion.

Like many atheists, Dawkins — as Lightman surely knows — is deeply appreciative of all the glorious art and music and poetry that religion has engendered. But still he trots out the canonical list of glories to float the implication that we atheists are a philistine lot. Shame on him. That is what I call faith-fibbing. Not so much a bald-faced lie as a carefully indirect misrepresentation. He can’t actually claim that Dawkins doesn’t weigh the many contributions of religion to the arts against the damage it has wrought. Dawkins does just that, and arrives at a judgment with which Lightman apparently disagrees: All things considered, religion’s blessings are outweighed by the harm they do. The problem is that Lightman doesn’t tackle that difficult issue; he prefers to sing the praises of faith without holding it to account. If you hawked a health spa or weight-loss regime with this sort of propaganda, you could be charged with false and misleading advertising.

Editor’s Note: Look for Lightman’s response in tomorrow’s Salon.

Adams’ writing beyond the Hitchhiker’s series included episodes of “Dr. Who,” “Monty Python” sketches, and “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency,” all of which add up to make him something of a Gandalf figure to comedy nerds. It didn’t hurt that Adams was a man of science, with an analogy of a giant sentient puddle to explain why he didn’t think God existed.

In May of 2001, Douglas died while working on a screenplay adaptation of “Hitchhiker’s Guide.” While Adams was a giant atheist, the almost religious devotion of his disciples keeps his works as relevant today as they were when he was alive. At the 10-year anniversary of his death, we remember one of his final appearances, speaking to students at the University of California at Santa Barbara about the wondrous absurdities of all life.