Atheism 2.0: Searching for Spaces for Atheism in Contemporary Kyrgyzstan

Abstract

Recent studies have convincingly demonstrated that Soviet state atheism continues to influence how religion is understood and practiced in present-day Central Asia. In Kyrgyzstan, however, a new generation of atheists is emerging whose ideas about atheism—and about religion—are informed more by globally circulating neo-atheist ideas and images. This paper explores their efforts to live atheist lives and be true to their atheist convictions, and the images of religion that play into the process. Focusing on the role of social media in particular, I will argue that while many, at least initially, embrace these platforms as ways to encounter like-minded individuals and experience moral community, what they encounter there are often images of atheism and its religious “others” with which they cannot identify and which often seem irrelevant to the challenges of everyday life, in which coexistence with (and caring for) religious others are central concerns for many.

Global Sceptical Publics

“…This led the rabbinic authorities to campaign against the internet as such, fearing that what they perceived as an 'anonymous heretical public' could bring about a general crisis of faith . Striking a balance between increasing visibility and providing the possibility of remaining anonymous, blogs and social media like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Quora forums and Reddit have formed crucial spaces for communication and activism among agnostics, freethinkers, sceptics and atheists in a wide range of places, including those where such media have not provoked the same degree of controversy, such as Indonesia (Schäfer 2016;), Egypt (van Nieuwkerk 2018, Morocco , Kyrgyzstan (Louw 2019), the US (e.g., Cimino and Smith 2014;, the Middle East (Al Zidjaly 2019;) and the Philippines (Blechschmidt 2018).…”

“…This dynamic, considered by Simmel more than a century ago in his reflections on modern urban societies (1908; O'Hara et al 2014, 2), has since accelerated because of many factors, including, especially, the rise of digital communication technologies. In places where public expressions of atheism may be treated as blasphemous and so pose physical and social dangers, digital technologies have seemed to offer a safe place for atheists to anonymously 'gather' and engage in dialogue, or to find moral closeness apart from their immediate geographic locales, or indeed simply to assuage loneliness, as reported for Kyrgyzstan (Louw 2019). Digital technologies can thus be a key tool for the imagining and construction of non-religious communities in sometimes uncongenial or even hostile locales.…”

“…The ability of digital technologies to grant atheist users instant access to 'other' atheists can force acknowledgement of separateness and aversion just as much as it facilitates productive exchange. For instance, Richter (this volume) finds that many Moroccan atheists come to be 'critical of French secularism and cannot identify with the most vocal non-believers, who are overwhelmingly middle-aged Western men', while the Kyrgyz atheists discussed by Louw (2019) are as likely to be disillusioned by the divisive atheist rhetoric in global online spaces as inspired by thinkers such as Richard Dawkins. This shows once again that, despite the supposedly 'global' reach and de-territorialising potential of digital media, social and geographic location continues to matter substantially for digital atheism.…”