Atheism on the Internet
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Practicing Disbelief: Atheist Media in America from the Nineteenth Century to Today by Eric Russell Chalfant Graduate Program in Religious Studies Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ David Morgan, Supervisor ___________________________ Randall Styers ___________________________ Joseph Winters ___________________________ Mark Chaves ___________________________ Leigh Eric Schmidt Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate Program in Religious Studies in the Graduate School of Duke University 2016 ABSTRACT Practicing Disbelief: Atheist Media in America from the Nineteenth Century to Today by Eric Russell Chalfant Graduate Program in Religious Studies Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ David Morgan, Supervisor ___________________________ Randall Styers ___________________________ Joseph Winters ___________________________ Mark Chaves ___________________________ Leigh Eric Schmidt An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate Program in Religious Studies in the Graduate School of Duke University 2016 Copyright by Eric Russell Chalfant 2016 Abstract While the field of religious studies increasingly turns toward material culture as a counterbalance to understandings of religion that privilege questions of individual belief, theology, and text, influential histories of atheism in the West remain largely confined to the mode of intellectual history. This is understandable when atheism is commonly understood first-and-foremost as an idea about the nonexistence of God. But like religion, atheism is not a purely intellectual position; it is rooted in interpersonal emotional exchanges, material objects and media, and historically-contextual social communities. This dissertation uses tools from the materialist turns in both religious studies and media studies to explore the history of American atheism and its reliance on non-intellectual and non-rational forces. Drawing on theories of affect, visual culture, and aesthetics, it argues that atheism in America has always been more than an idea. In particular, it uses different media forms as lenses to examine the material bases of evolving forms of American disbelief from the 19th century to today. Using archival records of nineteenth-century print media and political cartoons, transcripts and audio- recordings of radio broadcasts during the mid-twentieth-century, and digital ethnography and discourse analysis on contemporary Internet platforms, this dissertation argues that American irreligion has often eschewed the rational in favor of emotional and material strategies for defining a collective identity. Each chapter iv highlights different metaphors that have been enabled by print, broadcast, and digital media – metaphors that American unbelievers have used to complicate the understanding of atheism as simply a set of beliefs about the nature of reality. v Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... iv List of Figures ............................................................................................................................ viii Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................... x 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 1 2. Infidelity in Ink: Print Media in the Nineteenth Century ................................................... 1 2.1 Infidels in their own Words ............................................................................................ 1 2.2 A Golden Age of Freethought ........................................................................................ 5 2.3 The Truth Seeker: Room to Identify ............................................................................. 10 2.4 Visibility in The Trial of DM Bennett .......................................................................... 29 2.5 Watson Heston and the Imprinting Pencil ................................................................. 36 2.6 Infidel Identity Incarnate ............................................................................................... 40 2.7 Imprinting the Textual Image ....................................................................................... 55 2.8 Impressionable Children: Acculturating New Infidels ............................................. 65 2.9 Missionary Work ............................................................................................................ 72 2.10 Conclusion: E. Haldeman-Julius and Personal Atheism ........................................ 79 3. Atheism on the Airways: Secularist Radio and the Material Voice ................................. 91 3.1 Robert Harold Scott: Radio Pioneer ............................................................................. 94 3.1.1 The Atheist and the FCC ........................................................................................ 102 3.2 Madalyn Murray O’Hair ............................................................................................. 111 3.2.1 O’Hair on the Radio ................................................................................................ 113 vi 3.3 Listening Subjects ......................................................................................................... 124 3.4 Visibility and the Material Voice ................................................................................ 130 3.5 Print Resistance ............................................................................................................. 147 4. Irreligious Interfaces: Atheism on the Internet ................................................................. 156 4.1 Understanding reddit .................................................................................................. 162 4.2 New Atheist Media: Accounting for the Digital ...................................................... 169 4.3 Imaged Community: Lessons from May May June ................................................. 177 4.4 Moderation and Ideology ............................................................................................ 179 4.5 Bounding Images .......................................................................................................... 182 4.6 Echochambers, Hive Minds, Circlejerks ................................................................... 187 4.7 Intimate Deconversions ............................................................................................... 204 4.8 Agency Confused ......................................................................................................... 211 4.9 The Invisible Hand of the Interface ........................................................................... 219 5. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 224 Appendix .................................................................................................................................... 241 References .................................................................................................................................. 243 Biography ................................................................................................................................... 271 vii List of Figures Figure 1: Watson Heston, “The Modern Balaam,” Illustration. The Truth Seeker, May 2, 1885. .............................................................................................................................................. 38 Figure 2: Watson Heston, "The Cry of Collared Christians - 'Don't Hurt Our Feelings.'" Illustration. The Truth Seeker, May 5, 1888. .............................................................................. 43 Figure 3: Watson Heston, "A Hint," Illustration, The Truth Seeker, September 22, 1888 .... 45 Figure 4: Watson Heston, "Two Ways of Dealing with the Tiger," Illustration, The Truth Seeker, January 11, 1890 .............................................................................................................. 48 Figure 5: Watson Heston, "The Contest Between Theology and Skepticism," Illustration, The Truth Seeker, October 27, 1888. ............................................................................................ 50 Figure 6: Watson Heston, "A Choice for the Children - An Old Allegory Remodeled," Illustration, The Truth Seeker, July 6, 1889. ............................................................................... 52 Figure 7: Watson Heston, "Bait for the Credulous - Children, Beware of the Trap," Illustration, The Truth Seeker, May 28, 1887 ............................................................................. 56 Figure 8: Watson Heston, "How to Convert Infidels," Illustration, The Truth Seeker, May 9, 1891 ........................................................................................................................................... 74 Figure 9: Harry Fowler, "The Plumed Knight of Journalism - The American Freeman," Illustration, A Book of Freeman Cartoons (Reprinted from the American