Shortly after the turn of the third millennium, the New Atheists set the stage for the generations who grew up abused by religion. Gen X and baby boomer atheists and secular humanists heralded authors such as Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett for bringing some scientific perspective (as well some scrappy philosophy in Harris’s The Moral Landscape) to the public discourse about the implications of religious belief in a nation that was becoming more secular.
The New Atheists brought the dirt, and many nonbelievers flocked to conferences and online forums to dish it out. A wave of atheist communities (who purportedly appeared “very online” for the early 2010s) took their once rare family holiday debates out onto daily Facebook forums with their moms, brothers, aunties, and grandmas.
Meanwhile, my own generation was growing up watching all this take place in a sort of bewildered stare.
As a relatively younger millennial who was born in 1994, I grew up with a peer group that had already embraced atheism and rejected religious dogma. However, many of us were silent atheists or, if not entirely mute, certainly not boisterous in seeking arguments online.
Debates about whether or not there is a god was an example of a “third-grade-level mentality,” according to my college boyfriend at the time. While some people took this as harsh criticism when I voiced it online, this was a noncontroversial position among the millennials I knew, online and off. My peer group scoffed at any “older adult” trying to debate a fundamentalist Christian. In our minds, that debate was obviously over and done with.
I grew up with one of these baby boomer atheists. My father, however, skipped the part where he took his time to argue with his religious aunts about whether or not there is a god and instead took to making digs at the Jehovah’s Witnesses that would come knocking at our door. “I should keep an atheist pamphlet by the door!” he exclaimed, a look of childlike delight and righteous satisfaction on his face.
My mother was loosely Buddhist, but she never truly took it upon herself to instill any religious views upon me. Our job as children of a Vietnamese refugee was simply to do well in school. Her superstitious beliefs and our family rituals of praying to a mantle with incense were more cultural customs than lectures about what spirituality was supposed to mean to us. As a result, I was nonchalant about religion for most of my life. But I was still curious about what it meant and why people were so interested in living a religious life when it clearly didn’t serve any purpose other than to maintain a fantasy.
Crisis came for me in high school in the form of a broken heart and a fractured mind. Something about my attitude toward religion and spirituality changed. I started experiencing hallucinations and delusions. I began to have insufferable nightmares and panic attacks. I developed posttraumatic stress disorder and schizoaffective disorder.
Deciphering the Voices
This fracture in my mind led me to embark on a search for meaning. While religion never interested me before that day, now I was interested in what other people were thinking. What were these voices I heard? Unwilling to accept that I was truly losing my mind, I began to wonder if there was more beyond this materialistic world and worldview that my father espoused. The philosophy of secular humanism seemed of no use to me. I didn’t believe that humans should be at the center of everything and what we value. There was obviously more to life than just us.
Essentially, I wanted to know why I was suffering and how I could make it stop. Due to the limitations of science and the immaturity of my own reason, I looked for remedies in other places.
I homed in on both my capacity for reason—my skepticism—and my recognition of what we simply do not or cannot know. I wrote an article for this publication in 2019 about my ability to use skepticism to combat delusions.1 But while skepticism helped maintain my grounding, it didn’t leave me with a philosophical worldview that integrated the experiences I was having.
To search for that, my interests took me everywhere, from Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason to Simone Weil’s mystic Christian atheism. I became enamored with the possibility that I might be experiencing a “dark night of the soul”: a religious and spiritual phenomenon that happens only to the spiritually gifted.
My delusions also took a religious turn. I started thinking that my friends in high school were part of a reincarnated soul cluster that would bind us for life. I started thinking I was Jesus. During this time, I never actually believed in God, but I think I understood that Jesus was a historical figure that got a lot of attention. Perhaps I wanted that too? Certainty, these delusions provided a form of comfort for me. If I felt inferior at any moment, at least I could be consoled by the idea that I was God. It didn’t occur to me to be concerned about whether these feelings, beliefs, and thoughts were correct. That was, in many ways, beside the point.
Science tends to agree.
Getting Mindful about Religion
In a meta-analysis conducted by psychiatrists at Columbia University, our “Current Understanding of Religions, Spirituality, and Their Neurobiological Correlates” points to a somewhat unexpected finding. Religiosity and spirituality are actually beneficial for mental health. By adopting a set of worldviews that includes a sense of belonging, purpose, and meditation, those in mental distress can experience some positive effects.2
It has been shown, for example, that religious beliefs can help people cope with the turmoil of life. People with religious beliefs also appear to have higher life satisfaction, less death anxiety, and an improvement in depressive symptoms. Regular attendance at religious meetings correlates to a reduction in rates of suicide and can serve as a buffer against mental health problems in adolescence.3
These findings have been quietly growing in psychiatry and psychology while the science of more secularized versions of spirituality have exploded in the past decade in popular culture. Mindfulness, for one, has become so popular that it has even been incorporated into the workplace and implemented in regular psychotherapy sessions. The National Institutes of Health spent a total of $102.4 million on mindfulness in 2014.4 Commercially, mindfulness is a multi-billion-dollar industry.
The science of mindfulness might be a little more direct and easier to parse than the science of religious belief. That’s because when neuroscientists conduct mindfulness studies, there is direct evidence that shows the activation of certain brain regions in resting state neuroimaging and an almost immediate relief of stressful symptoms upon performing a mindfulness-based task.5
However, religious belief and spirituality are a bit harder to decipher. What is it about religious belief and participation that actually helps people have better mental health?
There is some evidence to suggest that certain religiously associated activities produce a more peaceful state of mind. Engaging in prayer, for example, has been shown to reduce stress. Participating in a community setting, where one can experience the feelings of belonging to a group, might be beneficial in providing a sense of grounding and social support. High emphasis on religious and spiritual practices have been shown to be associated with increased cortical thickness in the parietal and occipital regions of the brain; thinning of these regions is related to depression. fMRI studies show that greater religious and spiritual belief are associated with a reduction of activity in the default mode network (DMN), the famous region related to the self in which higher activity is associated with increased depressive symptoms and rumination.6
But these facets of mindfulness and religious/spiritual belief have remained distinct in scientific study.
Freethought in Fraught Times
When I was seeking further treatment for my mental health issues, I came across a health clinic that applied the research of Dr. Robert Cloninger of Washington University in St. Louis. His research focused on the science of well-being, and the clinic focused on life coaching, psychiatry, and therapy sessions based on what a patient would score on the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI), a tool that assessed which attributes produce a higher quality of life and mental health.7
One of the components of well-being was having a sense of higher purpose.
“But I’m an atheist,” I plainly said.
“That’s okay!” my social worker replied. “Atheists typically have a sense of connection to the greater world that they live in, like nature, or a connection to the mystery of the universe.”
Maybe this sounds familiar to you, because you might have already heard a very famous atheist also promote the idea that a sense of spirituality is both possible and crucial for people who are nonreligious. Sam Harris has a whole podcast about this. In fact, this is his entire brand, providing an alternative set of morals and values that produce a higher quality of life and directly contribute to the flourishing and expansion of human wellness and potential.
As a millennial student of philosophy and neuroscience, I scoffed at The Moral Landscape for being written in what I perceived as poor philosophy and for failing to include the latest science on well-being. But he did have a certain point. What can we do as people who don’t believe in a god or higher power to maintain our sense of community and preserve our wonder and awe if we don’t believe in a personified character that depicts itself as a “god”? And can it be done in a truly secular nation?
It seems that people are still searching for that kind of meaning. Based on my observations, there has been a resurgence of Christian beliefs, especially among young people who participate in the Twittersphere and subscribe to looser forms of spirituality such as astrology. Reactionary Twitter movements have spawned events such as “GODPILLED,” a Twitter live event—hosted by my former boss and mentor, older millennial Tyler Matthews of Fabricatorz Foundation—that encouraged the discussion of what it means to have God in your life.
I attended this event only briefly and found myriad people under thirty who were placing Christianity back into the culture to make some sense of the crazed life that plagues my generation. During the years of our youth, housing crises arose, the job market shrank, and college tuition skyrocketed and turned into crippling student debt years after graduation. American millennials came to working age at the height of the economic recession. Take all this turmoil and place it upon the heads of the United States’ most ethnically diverse generations—millennials and Gen Z—and the result is a nation filled with numerous displays of religiosity.
Christian Smith, a sociology professor, states that a freethinking culture happened to spike after 1990 for three reasons:
Associating the Republican Party with the Christian Right,” the end of the Cold War, and 9/11. It seems that the rise of religious Nones also came with a mass adoption of left-wing ideology. Additionally, notorious scandals within established churches, such as the Catholic priest sexual abuse cases and the conservative Christian rejection of rising social justice movements such as LGBTQ equality, turn Millennials off from religious organizations. These generational conflicts give us insight into what the younger generations could be looking for as an antidote to turmoil. The internet has given plenty of options for Millennial freethinkers to discuss with strangers from across the country or around the world about how to conduct their spirituality. Family instability, such as high rates of divorce, also erode the integrity of the church community.”8
(Here we have to distinguish the use of freethinker as a synonym for atheist from the more literal sense in which I’m using it here, meaning one who thinks freely regardless of what others may believe.)
Michael Hout, a sociology professor at New York University, described millennials as a demographic that is urged to “think for themselves.”9 Much of this freethinking culture, Hout claims, is due to our baby boomer parents who experienced social conflict that our current generation has expanded and built upon. Second Wave feminism, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, counterculture, and more were just the beginning. These changes, it seemed, brought the “spirit” of freethinking, which was passed down to our generation.
Millennials are still in fact notably more freethinking than their parents. Just 21 percent of millennials report going regularly to organized religious activities.10 Millennials are the least likely to go to church compared to previous generations.11 According to a 2021 study by the Pew Research Center, 29 percent of millennials say they define themselves as Nones—that is, a group that does not subscribe to any particular religion.12
This freethinking spirit is also evident in the resurgence of religious worship. While perhaps it might seem odd that young people are gravitating toward established faith traditions, these religions are not being practiced in a traditional way. American millennials and Gen Z have a knack for making something their own that also embodies what religion lacks. When we have science to tell us that exercise is good for health, psychedelics are potentially good for mental health, and meditation is good for achieving peace in a life of turmoil, millennials and Gen Z take those sentiments and also borrow from religion, harvesting whatever is leftover that has yet to be disproved by science.
The American Psychological Association cites millennials as being the most stressed-out generation of recent times.13 A study done in 1982 by psychologist Graham Tyson found that people turned to spiritual thinking, such as astrology, in stressful times of their lives. The Cut, Newsweek, and the National Alliance on Mental Illness have all reported on the staggeringly high increases in mental health problems within the past eighty years. Millennials embrace a therapeutic culture more enthusiastically than previous generations (The Wall Street Journal recently called American millennials “the therapy generation”), but they do not always stick to evidence-based practices.14
Because of this surge in reformed spirituality, alternative forms of divine connection are being invented by each young freethinker. As to their attitudes about crystals, tarot cards, and energy healing, “They don’t particularly care if you think it’s ‘woo-woo’ or weird,” wrote journalist Jessica Roy for the Los Angeles Times. “Most Millennials claim to not take any of it too seriously themselves. They dabble, they find what they like, they take what works for them and leave the rest.”15 That is, if it helps, it helps, even if your skeptical friends think you’re being sold snake oil and your Christian friends think you’re into witchcraft.
Secularism’s Challenge
So it seems that forms of religiosity are evolving, but to what end? What is required to lead a generation of freshly sprouted freethinkers toward a more naturalistic form of secularism, one that both embodies what was pioneered by our previous generations of atheists and secular humanists and can appeal to a younger audience?
If secularism is to thrive, I believe it will need to grow tremendously and adapt to encompass the sense of mystery and the appeal to beauty and wonder that young people know and feel.
Reactionary art movements reflect this. Artistic movements such as Dimes Square16 already represent a weariness with the older generation’s backlash obsessions with identity politics. Something like the “Intellectual Dark Web,” which includes many of the older generation’s atheists and freethinkers, is seen as representing a drab generation that cannot leave the past in the past. Podcasts such as Red Scare take this opportunity to discuss God as if it were a cheeky rebellious move, to reclaim religious ideas that older atheists reject. Along with all this comes opposing politics, which feature both liberal and conservative opinions, though it would be a stretch to call these artistic reactionary movements “right-wing” and “left-wing.” The whole point of these movements is to get away from all that.
Atheist or secular communities will have to adapt to a more diverse and changing American environment that caters to the growing racial and cultural diversity that is projected to grow in the next century. Atheists will have to be less dogmatic, less rigid, more tolerant, and more fluid in their appeals to art, beauty, music, prayer, and meditation—all aspects of religion that seem to produce good health.
How two sides of the generation gap grapple with these opposing viewpoints of spirituality might simply be determined by time. When older atheists retire, younger atheists will benefit from the trails they blazed, but they also will be left to tend to the wounds their forebears inflicted. While inspirational to many atheists, works such as Letter to a Christian Nation and The God Delusion left many others unsettled, resentful of cold hard truths with no room for a middle ground.
When a new generation of secularists takes shape, I have a feeling it will be much more encompassing and inclusive of an increasingly globalized population that is now on the ascent in America. Will a younger generation, in its pursuit of nuance and with its admiration for beauty, be as brave and bold as its predecessors in standing against the extremist religious views that often lead to human rights abuses? Or will we collapse under a politically correct tolerance for all worldviews, no matter how abhorrent? Are the two even incompatible? I don’t think so, but we need a strongly defined, substantive worldview to create a future built on universal human health and values.
Notes
1. Sarah An Myers, “Schizophrenic Skepticism.” Free Inquiry, vol. 40, no. 2 (February/March 2020). Available online at https://secularhumanism.org/2020/01/schizophrenic-skepticism/.
2.James I. Rim, Jesse Caleb Ojeda, Connie Svob, et al. “Current Understanding of Religion, Spirituality, and Their Neurobiological Correlates.” Harvard Review of Psychiatry vol. 27, no. 5 (September-October 2019). Available online at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7195862/.
3. Ibid.
4. Washington Free Beacon, “NIH Has Spent $100M on Mindfulness Meditation.” December 20, 2015. Available online at https://www.foxnews.com/politics/nih-has-spent-100m-on-mindfulness-meditation.
5. Ibid.
6. James I. Rim, et al. “Current Understanding of Religion, Spirituality, and Their Neurobiological Correlates.”
7. Cloninger, C. Robert, Thomas R. Przybeck, Dragan M. Svrakic, et al. “The Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI): A Guide to Its Use and Development.” Center for Psychobiology of Personality, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, 1994. Available online at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert-Cloninger/publication/264329741_TCI-Guide_to_Its_Development_and_Use/links/53d8ec870cf2e38c6331c2ee/TCI-Guide-to-Its-Development-and-Use.pdf.
8. Derek Thompson, “Three Decades Ago, America Lost Its Religion. Why?” The Atlantic, September 26, 2019. Available online at https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/atheism-fastest-growing-religion-us/598843/.
9. David Masci, “Q&A: Why Millennials Are Less Religious Than Older Americans.” Pew Research Center, January 8, 2016. Available online at https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/01/08/qa-why-millennials-are-less-religious-than-older-americans/.
10. “U.S. Public Becoming Less Religious.” Pew Research Center, November 3, 2015. Available online at https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2015/11/03/u-s-public-becoming-less-religious/.
11. Ross Douthat, “The Overstated Collapse of American Christianity.” The New York Times, October 29, 2019. Available online at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/29/opinion/american-christianity.html.
12. Gregory A. Smith, “About Three-in-Ten US Adults Are Now Religiously Unaffiliated.” Pew Research Center, December 14, 2021. Available online at https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/12/14/about-three-in-ten-u-s-adults-are-now-religiously-unaffiliated/.
13. Julie Beck, “The New Age of Astrology.” The Atlantic, January 16, 2018. Available online at https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/01/the-new-age-of-astrology/550034/.
14. Jesse Singal, “For 80 Years, Young Americans Have Been Getting More Anxious and Depressed, and No One is Quite Sure Why.” The Cut, Mar. 13, 2016. Available online at https://www.thecut.com/2016/03/for-80-years-young-americans-have-been-getting-more-anxious-and-depressed.html.
15. Jessica Roy, “How Millennials Replaced Religion with Astrology and Crystals.” Los Angeles Times, July 10, 2019. Available online at https://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-millennials-religion-zodiac-tarot-crystals-astrology-20190710-story.html.
16. For more on Dimes Square, see Dean Kissick, “The Dimes Square Spiral.” Available online at https://spikeartmagazine.com/?q=articles/dimes-square-spiral.
Shortly after the turn of the third millennium, the New Atheists set the stage for the generations who grew up abused by religion. Gen X and baby boomer atheists and secular humanists heralded authors such as Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett for bringing some scientific perspective (as well some scrappy philosophy in Harris’s The Moral …