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It's a fortunate bump, When I first saw it, I thought it was a new thread and though.."Wheee...that saw some action already".
Which is why I think it apposite to revive. The public and popular image of atheism is none too good.Never mind what Christians think about it. I have no doubt that the bad image is because of hundreds of years of Church propaganda against anyone who does not believe in their god.
Where this is particularly bad (aside from Islamic countries where it is still Illegal, is in the US, and this I ascribe to the Red Square...I mean Red Scare. This was when the US saw Reds under every bed, particularly as Russia and China looked like they were part of a Communist world takeover, Russia with half of Europe and China going for Asia in time (1).
I lived through that scary time, and Marxist infiltrative propaganda was frighteningly pervasive in the UK, and in many other countries ostensibly allied with the West. When the wall came down, all that really changed almost overnight. It was astounding.
But the legacy remains, but really only in the US. The obsession with fighting 'Commies' seems to exist nowhere else. Americans don't understand how they differ from the rest of the world in that respect and how they have a major delusionary cult of Commie - fear that is the other side of the coin from patriotism and seeing atheists as not fit to be patriots or citizens.
I hardly need rehearse all the politically -motivated anti - atheism we (dear posters and browsers have seen posted and how accusations are aimed at atheism and misrepresentations of what atheist activism is trying to do.
The 'Nones' do not have an agenda of jackboots, pockmarked walls and cattle trucks, but of everyone, not just Christianity having a say in society, and of a level social playing field for all, not just for the Right wing religiously privileged.
Outside of the Islamic countries (or some of them) there is nowhere else that the religious credentials have to be flashed by politicians like in America. A candidate for the premiership here who did Bible -kissing had probably better look for another job (2). I say this because those who see atheist -bashing as permissible and probably quite true, don't realise how whacky it is, like the evolution - denial that (again ) we only seem to come across in Islamic countries. You see a pattern here, America? Do you get how the rest of the world sees you, particularly after the last 4 years?
I make no apology for getting a bit socio -political, because US religious fundamentalism can't be understood without knowing where it came from and why it is still here. It is, uncannily like how Islamic Fundamentalism can be traced back to One Event.
However, what can atheism do to improve its' image? We can only talk and explain. No chance that the atheist -bashers will suddenly say 'Oh...Wow..I didn't Get It..' We know that in Yore Face debunking is just dismissed. It is to the browsers that we talk, and I've said it before - I have Faith in humanity. That they want to be smart, they want to be good, and they want to be right. The don't like to be bamboozled any more than I do. And I believe that the 'Stay Angry' (as Overlord put it) at being lied to and exploited. is not a bad thing to be.
That anger is not the sort of Palace -storming violence that the atheist -haters accuse us of (and which their side rather showed was their style, not too long ago), but it is the motivation for change that drove race and gender equality, abolition before that (for all that Christianity likes to take the credit for that) and Freethinking that led to democracy before that.
(1) of course the McCarthy era was over by the time the Domino Push via Vietnam was considered to have started. That threat vanished with China going capitalist, as happened with Vietnam and Myanmar, even if they still use the Communist symbols. They have been a one party capitalist state ever since then, as in Russia. Whatever they call themselves, Communist it ain't.
(2) though the anomaly of Brexit landed us with that cut -price Mike Pence, Gove, who should have never been elected an M.P.
If this were true you wouldn't be doing the political angle to maintain the crusade in this forum.
Everything you said isn't wrong, but as soon as we have to do the same thing as fundy theist to maintain our reliability, like clipping education here (that's what you do when you say things like that belief doesn't get us anywhere and no science here) to maintain the unified front.
I'm an advocate of filling the trough and letting the horse drink, if it will. I am happy to let the theist proselytizers come to us eager to persuade us with persuasive logic and irrefutable evidences. To cite Rachel Slick, when she deconverted it was when she got out of the sealed bubble of her household and into college where she soon got down to showing the Doubters where they were wrong, and that entailed amassing sound arguments and refutations. With the result we usually get - finding that they are not sound and either modifying their views on the religious case or going into denial.
Anyone noticed how quiet it is around here just now?
You pretend you are among the middle-of-the-road atheists and agnostics that are similar to the middle-of-the-road theists, but you are NOT!. You are on the extreme fringe of atheist activism with a completely anti-God goal to eradicate religion and belief in God, period. If it was only the destructive beliefs in religion and the attempts to get them into the secular legal system, you would focus on those things, NOT the belief in God itself. That is intolerant and anathema to freedom of speech and of religion. In short, your arguments are disingenuous and deliberately deceptive. They do not aid the fostering of a positive attitude toward atheism.
Is your atheism a communal belief or a personal choice? IOW, what difference would your belief make if your were isolated?
There hasn't been a reply to this but I'll put in my 2 c worth as it's a good question. When I first got into atheism when it started getting Internet websites, I was wanly concerned with putting up the counter
- case to religious claims. I wanted to let everyone know 'Hey, look, they keep saying 'the Gospel - story is broadly eyewitness - it isn't'.
The social of atheist - community aspects only came out when there was one. Non- believers began to say how alone they felt and (while there was a Christian support initiative to help people losing their Faith) atheists felt alone. In the (mustwatch ) Tracie Harris talk 'religious family values', she mentions this also, how people were posting in to say how they'd felt they were the only ones, and later when groups stated happening, they found out other atheists were people they knew and they thought were believers.
Because atheists don't talk about atheism outside. Only on websites related to it.
Again I'm talking about the US because this isn't a problem so much here. Atheism is pretty much accepted as a norm in the UK. People who start banging on about religion are regarded as a person to avoid. People don't do religion here. I know it may seem hard for Americans to comprehend, but Religion is only required to be a citizen and Patriot in the US. It is not the norm, but an anomaly, in the UK and much of the West for all I've heard. The Philippines is probably not atheist -friendly, nor Indonesia or Malaysia last time I visited.
But I digress. I wanted to get on to how the idea of individual atheists looking for support and community in the late 80's - early 90's became a bit of a rumble in the US about how the dominance of religion made it hard to openly be an atheist. You could lose job, friends and family. You were expected to be religious in the military. There was preferential treatment for Christians in the prison system, or so it was said (there was a landmark law passed a decade or so ago saying that the non religious had equal rights in Law).
The clergy project was set up for (and largely by) ministers trained for the job who had lost Faith (there was a mention I remember that those Faithful who went to study in seminar for the ministry often came out with the Faith damaged, because they had studied the matter). There was a feeling, especially in the infamous remarks of a former president pretty much disenfranchising any American atheists, that some serious social changes were needed to give everyone an equal chance in life, and freedom of religion SHOULD include freedom From it.
I haven't even got onto the push of Religious Fundamentalism to take over education and rewrite the science -books to fit Genesis, but rather mention the growing atheist - community perception that they shouldn't have to just accept that the bad perception of atheism in America couldn't be improved. It had changed in Europe and (from what I heard) after the catholic scandal(s) even in Ireland, where Catholicism had a domination like Christianity had in the US.
I am sure that the idea of a political dimension to the idea of an irreligious community came out of all the talk about the 'Nones' which was simply figures about how many had put 'None' in a survey and it was a lot more than the usual '8%' claimed by religious apologists. The Pew report put up a lot of debate about this from whether 'no religion' actually meant atheism (or should) and whether this was a growing trend or not.
Again I won't go onto the series of bad scandals that the Fundamentalists got into, but rather the way that the 'Nones' began to look like a social grouping of atheists and this implied a voting -block, and a candidate for the presidency who alienated about 20% of the US vote was looking to lose. If only the 'Nones' had a political awareness of their clout as a voting -bloc.
I can only say that this doesn't seem to have happened. The last election hardly indicated it and the idea seems to have not been talked about for the last few years. But perhaps this can be my take on how (at least as I saw it) a politico -social aspect to atheism was hardly thought of until about 2010, or maybe I should say, 2011, when the idea of using the irreligious as a voting group that could make a difference became a thing.
There hasn't been a reply to this but I'll put in my 2 c worth as it's a good question. When I first got into atheism when it started getting Internet websites, I was wanly concerned with putting up the counter
- case to religious claims. I wanted to let everyone know 'Hey, look, they keep saying 'the Gospel - story is broadly eyewitness - it isn't'.
Nipped for space ...
I can only say that this doesn't seem to have happened. The last election hardly indicated it and the idea seems to have not been talked about for the last few years. But perhaps this can be my take on how (at least as I saw it) a politico -social aspect to atheism was hardly thought of until about 2010, or maybe I should say, 2011, when the idea of using the irreligious as a voting group that could make a difference became a thing.
This is not a political forum. This is a religious and spirituality forum.
But your post does show just how right I am. You are determining reliability of spiritual claims abased on stopping religion in the united states.
So how to we determine the reliability of a claim? Understanding we are just in a spirituality forum talking about beliefs.
1- No science and use the above post as the standard.
or
2-Is a claim consistent with observations around us?
How would a person be presenting themselves when they are trying to insert a political agenda in a general discussion?
And you accuse me of being here for another agenda.
True. But while Arach's posts did not incline me to bother to respond, he does raise the political knock -ons of being an atheist as an individual or part of an irreligious group or, as you say, potential voting - bloc. That vote, of course being more aimed at electing representatives who would be more inclined to give atheism more social credit than they presently have in the US.
Not that this is an idea of off -loading responsibility for this onto such an elected representative, but the work falls to us, primarily. And, primarily, irreligion tends to lead towards the Liberal in ethical, if not political, thinking. Evidently, this has the Right up in arms, and yet, it needn't.
If I may stray into the political, for a line or two, the rationalist (of which atheism is a sub-set) will no doubt be aware that Communism dies not work. It was tried in Russia and China and both gave it up for capitalism - which does work; economically.
But there is room for Liberal thought, though economics is not its' forte, so they had best remain pianissimo about that. But it is more useful in social ethics. There is no conflict any more than between ethics and science. Science can (and might) do some pretty terrible things to advance science, but ethics puts a brake on what is permissible, and science ought to be grateful for that as it stops it from grave missteps that could come back to bite it in the lab -coated ass.
The same applies to the economics of capitalism and, while the present climate (and not only in the US) is to let it do whatever it wants to make money and ethics can be cancelled, wherever it pipes up, there is no reason why the two should not work together for mutual benefit.
Take away the extremes and both can work together, and should.
His post said nothing about stopping religion in the US. Why did you say it did?
Arach says he has told him privately of his agenda and I am inclined to believe Arach. This nonsense of expecting specific public statements as the only basis for criticism is ridiculous.
Arach says he has told him privately of his agenda and I am inclined to believe Arach. This nonsense of expecting specific public statements as the only basis for criticism is ridiculous.
He's said over and over and over and over that Trans said he wants to eliminate religion. Most people [that have that viewpoint] say they are only trying to keep religion out of the public arena and keep the government from promoting or endorsing any religions. It's a reasonable question.
He's said over and over and over and over that Trans said he wants to eliminate religion. Most people [that have that viewpoint] say they are only trying to keep religion out of the public arena and keep the government from promoting or endorsing any religions. It's a reasonable question.
It is more than reasonable and most of us non-fundamentalists, like Arach and I, endorse it, but I believe Arach and am convinced Arq's goal is well beyond that.
It is more than reasonable and most of us non-fundamentalists, like Arach and I, endorse it, but I believe Arach and am convinced Arq's goal is well beyond that.
That's the thing. Most fundamentalist do not realize they are fundamentalist themselves. What should serve as red flag/clue about one's own fundamentalist mindset is the constant need to correct others, especially other adults.
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It's a fortunate bump, When I first saw it, I thought it was a new thread and though.."Wheee...that saw some action already".
have seen posted and how accusations are aimed at atheism and misrepresentations of what atheist activism is trying to do. 
) we only seem to come across in Islamic countries. You see a pattern here, America? Do you get how the rest of the world sees you, particularly after the last 4 years?
that the atheist -bashers will suddenly say 'Oh...Wow..I didn't Get It..' We know that in Yore Face debunking is just dismissed. It is to the browsers that we talk, and I've said it before - I have Faith in humanity. That they want to be smart, they want to be good, and they want to be right. The don't like to be bamboozled any more than I do. And I believe that the 'Stay Angry' (as Overlord put it) at being lied to and exploited. is not a bad thing to be. 
) Tracie Harris talk 'religious family values', she mentions this also, how people were posting in to say how they'd felt they were the only ones, and later when groups stated happening, they found out other atheists were people they knew and they thought were believers.
