Mark Poprocki/iStockphoto

Mark Poprocki/iStockphoto

We classify people in all sorts of ways.

Some categories are based on a person's beliefs: A theist, for instance, is a person who believes in one or more gods. Some categories are based on behavior: A vegetarian, for example, is a person who doesn't eat animals. And some categories seem to straddle beliefs and behavior: Being politically conservative could be defined in terms of beliefs, but also in terms of corresponding behaviors, such as voting for conservative political candidates or donating one's time or money to conservative causes.

These different ways of defining categories of people and in particular the category "atheist" form the backdrop to an interesting episode of the Rationally Speaking podcast in which co-hosts Julia Galef and Massimo Pigliucci query astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson on his resistance to identifying (or being identified) as an atheist.

For Tyson, eschewing the atheist label is not a matter of rejecting core atheist beliefs he admits that he's not compelled by any arguments that have ever been put forth for the existence of God, and he accepts Pigliucci's suggestion that we're just as warranted in rejecting the existence of God as in rejecting the existence of unicorns. Rather, for Tyson the matter is one of behavior. The inferences that people make when classifying him as an atheist don't align well, he feels, with his frequent choice of Jesus Christ Superstar as musical accompaniment on family drives, or with his habit of standing for the "Hallelujah" chorus of Handel's Messiah. He has as much interest in meeting with other people to discuss their absence of belief in God as in meeting with non-golfers to talk about their absence of a passion for watching golf. In short, he doesn't take himself to exhibit the behaviors typically associated with being an atheist.

Now, this is a strange response if being an atheist is strictly a matter of belief (or lack of belief, as the case may be). Consider a vegetarian making the opposite move eschewing the label vegetarian based on her beliefs rather than on her behavior. "Sure," she might say, "As an inviolable rule I never eat meat, but I don't have the beliefs that one typically associates with being a vegetarian. For instance, I believe that making animals suffer is perfectly fine. I don't eat any meat ever ... but don't label me a vegetarian."

Part of what makes Tyson's response and that of our hypothetical meat-avoider understandable, if not exactly typical, is the fact social categories often come with baggage in the form of strong cultural associations, not all of which are accurate or positive. Atheists are among the most distrusted groups in America, for example, and people often think that vegetarians are annoyingly self-righteous. (Full disclosure: I am both an atheist and vegetarian, but trust me, I'm not at all self-righteous.) It's natural to want to distance oneself from these associations, even if one fits a category's constitutive core. It might be like the mother of a mother i.e., a grandmother by anyone's definition preferring not to be called "grandma" because she doesn't like to babysit or bake cookies and doesn't feel the label adequately reflects her true passions of motorcycle racing and number theory.

As Galef suggests on the podcast, however, there can also be value to appropriating a label when one doesn't fit the stereotypical mold. If a person belongs to a category by definition but doesn't like the cultural associations, why not take an activist stance and help bring about a change in those associations? Why shouldn't atheists enjoy Jesus Christ Superstar? Why shouldn't grandmothers be associated with number theory? Cultural associations are unlikely to change if only those who fit the mold adopt the corresponding label.

But perhaps an even deeper issue is this: Why do we define theism and atheism first and foremost in terms of belief? What would it look like if religious (and areligious) categories were instead a matter of behavior?

View post:
What If Atheists Were Defined By Their Actions?