Two years ago I wrote about Arian Foster, a star running back for the Houston Texans football team, and discussed some advice he had written (and published) for his daughter. The telling item in “Six things I’ll try to teach my daughter” was the last:

6. The flying spaghetti monster. There are billions of people on Earth with hundreds of religions and sects that trickle off each other. I will never tell her what to believe in. I know parents are very influential on kids’ spiritual beliefs and that can be a positive or negative thing. I can give her a basic understanding of religions when she starts showing interest and asking questions. But I will remain silent otherwise. How can I make a young mind believe this is the truth for them when they don’t yet have the capacity nor the cognitive desire to delve into something like this? If she shows interest I would advise her to fully investigate a religion and see if it fits her. And if she chooses none of the above, I’ll be fine with that as well. The values I instill in her should guide her to her decision. What’s most important, I believe, is to support her decision no matter what.

Well, that was a clue to Foster’s beliefs, but he’s now made them far more explicit. That is, he’s just come out as an atheist. And although he won’t use that word explicitly (he says his model is Neil deGrasse Tyson), he still avers that he doesn’t believe in God. This is important because he’s the first active professional athlete in the US to openly profess nonbelief. Given the importance of sports in this country, and the pervasive religiosity of Americans (and athletes!), this is not only a brave admission, but an important one—especially because he plays for a team in deeply religious Texas.

This headline from the sports site ESPN, however, gives a clue about what it means to admit atheism in the U.S. (Click on the headline to go to the story, and do watch the video at the link.)

In other words, it’s a “confession”. Does one “confess” to being a Democrat or a Republican? This wouldn’t be the headline, I think, if a French soccer player said similar things.

Another sign of the importance of this move is that the ESPN article is very long, discussing his beliefs, the reason he abandoned faith, and the possible implications of the “confession” for his relationship with his fellow players. This is big news. I’ll give just a few excerpts from the piece, starting with this:

“This is unprecedented,” says Todd Stiefel, chair of Openly Secular. “He is the first active professional athlete, let alone star, to ever stand up in support of gaining respect for secular Americans.”

To me this represents yet another move forward in the un-demonization of atheists in America. The more often people like Foster stand up and profess nonbelief, the greater impetus it gives others to follow—and the more it shows people that we atheists aren’t minions of Satan, but simply normal people who can’t bring themselves to embrace superstition.

A few other excerpts (emphasis is mine):

Arian Foster, 28, has spent his entire public football career — in college at Tennessee, in the NFL with the Texans — in the Bible Belt. Playing in the sport that most closely aligns itself with religion, in which God and country are both industry and packaging, in which the pregame flyover blends with the postgame prayer, Foster does not believe in God. “Everybody always says the same thing: You have to have faith,” he says. “That’s my whole thing: Faith isn’t enough for me. For people who are struggling with that, they’re nervous about telling their families or afraid of the backlash … man, don’t be afraid to be you. I was, for years.” . . . he recently decided to become a public face of the nonreligious. Moved by the testimonials of celebrity atheists like comedian Bill Maher and magicians Penn and Teller, Foster has joined a national campaign by the nonprofit group Openly Secular, which plans to use his story to increase awareness and acceptance of nonbelievers, especially in sports. The organization initially approached ESPN about Foster’s willingness to share his story, but ESPN subsequently dealt directly with Foster, and Openly Secular had no involvement.

What I really like about Foster’s “deconversion” was his respect for and emphasis on science—in other words, he privileged fact over faith:

Foster stops short of calling himself an atheist, not because he isn’t — his language is the language of the atheist — but because someday he might not be. “I have an open mind,” he says. “I’m not a picket-sign atheist. I just want to be a happy human being and continue to learn.” He also has a visceral dislike of labels. (On June 28 he tweeted, “hop in the uber and the driver immediately turns it to the rap station. he’s absolutely correct, but don’t judge me, yo.”) “If I tell you I’m a Republican, your mind immediately starts telling you all the things I must believe,” he says. “Same with the word ‘atheist,’ and I don’t like people making assumptions about me. Neil deGrasse Tyson said any time you attach yourself to a group or an ‘-ist,’ you get all the stereotypical baggage with it. I’m not going to picket the White House lawn to get atheists a voice in Congress. But I have questions and concerns on our origins as human beings, and the best way to go about that is through science. “There’s no dogma in science itself. Scientists? Yeah, any human can have an ego, but if you take the human beings out of it, there’s no ego in science itself. It’s built on ‘prove me wrong.’ But religion can be like, ‘We’re right, and if you’re not in the boat, you’re going to hell.'”

Well said! Given that he’s a thoughtful man who’s pondered the issues for years, as well as having read the Bible and the Qur’an in an attempt to buttress his wavering faith, it’s demeaning and invidious, then, for ESPN to add this paragraph to its report:

IS THIS CASUAL rebellion? Does he provoke for a greater good or simply his own amusement? Is he somehow the conscience of a generation of athletes, the only one willing to say the things the ominous Sword of Pepsi has made virtually extinct? Or is he speaking to an entirely different audience, a counterculture that appreciates a man who stands on the sideline and sees the NFL’s embrace of the military-industrial complex as “the commercialization of everything — just symbolism, man, and it gets people pumped up and feeling good and takes everything to an extreme”?

If you read the article, you’ll find not the slightest indication that Foster’s doing this for “his own amusement”. What does he have to gain from admitting atheism as a football player in Texas? He’ll experience little positive reinforcement, and probably much opprobrium, from a league whose players often genuflect or give credit to God when they succeed—a league in which quarterback Tim Tebow would not only wear Bible verses on the black patches under his eyes, but drop to his knees and give thanks to God after throwing a touchdown. Tebow was much admired for that.

No, I believe that—especially given his advice of several years ago—Foster is absolutely sincere. And thank Ceiling Cat for his bravery and honesty. He’s got a hard road to travel.

Foster and his daughter:

h/t: Bernard