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As I implied, I am in many ways delighted that we are - apart from not buying into any god claim - unalike. No Dogma, no Chapters or Communes (1). No leaders. Of course we have prominent talkers, but I have disagreed with Harris, Dawkins and Tyson, indeed and so should anyone be free to do.
I don't care for the atheist churches, and after reading one attack on atheists by a U/U minister, I reckon I was right. It may be a sort of 12 -step program to atheism, and they may invite atheist speakers, but I'll take vanilla personally.
But it is true that those who go atheist seem to change almost overnight. Their opposition to No No's seems to vanish, their social view seems to tend towards the Liberal. We don't have to herd these cats: the simple fact of living without believing that Jesus is doing the driving, tends to do the herding for us.
(1) No atheist Rock,
No atheist quisine ("Sorry luv, Baby's Off."
"Really? I thought they always smelled like that." ) ,
no atheist costume. (No.. FSM piracy is a ploy, not a custom)
No atheist commandments.
No atheist flag...by golly, we ought to realize that it's GOOD that we can't agree on a common symbol...apart from the one we commonly display when we are told we are going to burn in hell.
Don't quote me on "no atheist history, Unfaith schools or atheist entertainments censorship committee".
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 07-23-2016 at 08:44 AM..
We 'new atheists' have a reputation for being militant, but make no mistake we didn't start this war. If you want to place blame put it on the the religious zealots who have been poisoning the minds of the young for a long long time."
PZ Myers
I'm not sure whether we started the war, nor even that we started the Revolooshunary and Evilooshunary war against the Tyranny of Relegious Authority, (Rally round the Blank Flags (1), boys and girls) but it was a war going on worldwide for a long time, And in the US, (if the information on the history of Creationism is accurate) it is a specific battle between science (which was pushed in the war) and religious repression (McCarthy), back to science (Kennedy and the space race ..."War" again ) and the rise of Creationism. Three victories, so far...the battle of Lemon, the Hamm /Nye conflict and the victory at Dover, which was Gettysburg for the "Fundamentalist South". They have been on the retreat ever since.
Our Yorktown and Appomattox (however the heck you spell it) is still a long way off, but, as Churchill said, "..it is, perhaps, the beginning of the end".
I enjoyed that, even if it does perhaps qualify as "pretentious post of the decade".
(1) "But there's nothing on it!"
"We're atheists".
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 07-24-2016 at 05:32 AM..
I think there's a sixteen hundred year war against unbelievers. Intolerance is a keystone of the religious psychology in the areas ruled by the Peoples of the Book.
What are this subforums' thoughts on this? Especially the Hitchens, Dawkins, and Maher style of thought. I've also seen this represented by an atheist club that sometimes meets at local cafes.
For years I just thought of atheism as nonbelief in God/deities, but through the internet I encountered a lot of people who thought of atheists as the vocal anti-theist/new atheist movement, which is much more vocal and much more of an active stance than "atheism" in the strict sense of not believing in a deity.
Does anyone here think of this movement as representative of atheism, or would you say it is an anomaly or a vocal minority?
It's difficult for me to guess whether or not it's a vocal minority. I was raised in an environment in which "God" did not mean a god of an organized religion. Before I looked at statistics I thought most people were agnostics or deists, believers in the kind of mysterious god Einstein claimed to believe in, or just didn't think about their religions too much or take it very seriously.
God, to me, until I began browsing the internet, was a combination of whatever I was in the mood to imagine it is and the mysterious controlling intelligence Einstein might have believed in.
I think that type of view of religion is fairly common in the United States...the view that when someone says "God" they mean a mysterious type of deistic-ish god, or just something people imagine to make themselves feel better.
Obviously though, to plenty of people their view of god/God/whatever is not some hazy, mysterious phantom but rather something concrete and very real with definite characteristics and demands.
I sympathize with the people who see the struggles of those who perceive god as this concrete, very real being with demands and punishments, like Richard Dawkins and Hitchens, who strive to wage a war of words against religion. I generally like the leaders of such movements. When I have complaints relating to new atheism, it usually has to do with the followers, because they'll think less about what they say before saying it.
There's this widespread view of god as meaning "that which is important in life." When you deny that, some people will feel irritated. Intelligent people will feel a little irritated at times. Atheism denies that. Atheism says god is just some intelligent controller of the universe of some kind. God means, basically, "shiny" to many people. God is that which solves all the problems to many people, and so some get irritated, sometimes, on some level, by atheists boxing god into an intelligent controlling organism, and it's easier to see atheists as the bad guys because of that.
I sympathize with the desire to believe in a solver of all problems some people see as god. I'm still not convinced that belief is entirely a negative thing...but some of the practical problems are that when people become too sure of their beliefs they'll have disadvantages in terms of planning their goals.
I don't know that widespread atheism would be better for society than agnosticism or deism or pantheism some other "light" religion. Also, fundamentalists aren't necessarily any more hazardous than followers of "light" religions, depending on their views. In general though...I think less religion would be better, and so I support the new atheist movement. They're sloppy at times, but they're attempting to make progress, and I'm not knowledgeable enough to be sure they're going about it in the wrong way most of the time so I'm not going to tell them to change in most cases.
What are this subforums' thoughts on this? Especially the Hitchens, Dawkins, and Maher style of thought. I've also seen this represented by an atheist club that sometimes meets at local cafes.
For years I just thought of atheism as nonbelief in God/deities, but through the internet I encountered a lot of people who thought of atheists as the vocal anti-theist/new atheist movement, which is much more vocal and much more of an active stance than "atheism" in the strict sense of not believing in a deity.
Does anyone here think of this movement as representative of atheism, or would you say it is an anomaly or a vocal minority?
My first thought was "who cares?"
Solomon was right, there is nothing new under the sun.
Perhaps. We didn't ask for the title "new atheists". That was coined by theists trying to put us down.
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) and the rise of Creationism. Three victories, so far...the battle of Lemon, the Hamm /Nye conflict and the victory at Dover, which was Gettysburg for the "Fundamentalist South". They have been on the retreat ever since.
I enjoyed that, even if it does perhaps qualify as "pretentious post of the decade".
