Atheists Criticizing Other Atheists

[VladK]

I wonder if anyone here is familiar with a certain atheist activist YouTuber named Thunderf00t and his statement a few years ago that atheists should "not divide the house of atheism", whatever that means. The argument is basically that atheists are a persecuted minority and should somehow stand together against the "onslaught" of theism or something, and should refrain from criticizing each other because it's not productive.

I don't know about you, but I don't agree with this line of reasoning. I'm an atheist yes, but I don't actually consider myself a "militant" or "activist" atheist. I used to call that myself a few years ago, no more. I'm not particularly fond of Islam as you may have noticed, yes, and I am a bit annoyed about Christianity's constant meddling in the lives of homosexuals or church opposition to prostitution legalization, but still, I don't view the world in terms of atheism vs. theism or atheists vs. theists. I don't care about "converting" people to atheism (not any longer anyway) and I don't believe there's such a thing as an "atheist community". I just care about secularism, but that's not something that people who believe in gods can't be supportive of. I would also say that I don't particularly care about trivial issues like the "Ground Zero cross" that American Atheists were blathering on about or that if you say "God Bless You!" or if you say "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Holidays" you're somehow infringing on other people's rights or dignity, I care about REAL threats to people's freedoms and in that regard atheists aren't somehow immune from being tyrants and control freaks given certain circumstances. I come from a country called Romania that was under communist rule for 44 years. These people were atheists, do you know what they did? They made prostitution illegal, they never legalized gay marriage, they were not pro-choice, they demolished churches, they controlled the entire economy and there was no economic freedom, they controlled the press, people who spoke out against them were killed without trial. So when some radical know-it-all atheist comes and says that religion is the root cause of evil and if we just get rid of it there will be paradise on Earth and everyone will be tolerant and there will be no wars and we'll fly into space (as Cultyofdusty seems to believe), I realize he doesn't know what he's talking about or he knows what he's talking about and is taking me for a ride. While religions can certainly bring out the worst in humanity, so can other ideologies, or even no ideology at all. People aren't naturally inclined to goodness.

I would even go as far as to say that just as religion can make "good people do bad things", other kinds of people are incapable of functioning without religion so in that sense, trying to convince them to be atheists would just be unproductive even if successful. You may have met people who said that if they didn't believe in gods they'd be self-serving. The only thing a sociopath or other self-serving person understands is punishment.

Now if you've been around YouTube atheists I think you'll notice a pattern and that a good chunk of them think of themselves as belonging to some "atheist community", some "atheist movement". A user named Coughlan made a video about it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jwu18ZDib-U I don't like Coughlan personally, but he does make a lot of good points in this video and I agree with at least 70% of it, so I gotta give him credit at least even if I think he's a twit.

It's a pretty bad idea to form a community or political movement or anything really around a disbelief in God or gods. Take for example this article and see if you can spot the problems: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/ ... message-2/ Like:

I would broaden the mission a bit, though. On economic issues, atheists as a whole ought to be behind reducing the rich-poor divide

But atheism is just disbelieving in gods, who said that they need to hold any particular political view? Where is the logical pathway from atheism to being a leftist or rightist? PZ Myers has no right to dictate what other atheists should or should not believe.

It also gets a bit on my nerve how some atheists, just because they don't believe in gods, they form an overinflated opinion of themselves and think that they are some kind of beacons of reason or rationality or skepticism, some big intellectual giants. Let's be honest, they're usually not. They've just average folks like everyone else and Mensa isn't going to be inviting them to join any time soon. They may not believe in gods but they can hold other irrational or bizarre opinions. They can even twist science for their own agenda just like creationists, if you consider folks like calpurnpiso or atheismdefended (both YouTubers) who say that "religion is a mental illness" even though that's not factually accurate and no reputable psychiatrist would ever agree with them. This is just a Soviet tactic, they too used to call their opponent mentally ill. Sure, some people use "insanity" hyperbolically like when you say "wow, what a nutty idea, you're insane man", but when you mean it as literally true, then there is a problem and you're wrong. Atheists aren't rational by default, some of them are racists, some of them are communists, some of them hold ridiculous political views that would never work like Atheism+, some of them publish libelous rape accusations if you consider the whole fiasco with Freethought Blogs publishing third hand accounts of rape accusations against Michael Shermer.


In conclusion, I don't find atheists to be particularly more rational or more moral compared to believers, I think atheists often call themselves "rationalists", "skeptical" and "logical" with little to back it up, and I'm not very fond of atheist supremacism in general.

[Poison Tree]

Criticizing other atheists for criticizing other atheists is criticizing other atheists

I certainly think atheists should criticize each other. If someone fucks up, atheism is not a get out of criticism free card. That said, I do think atheist should, as Thunderf00t has termed it, avoid civil wars--where everyone you kill is one of yours. I think Thunderf00t's comments stem from the whole atheism+ thing, and I think he is right, at least partially, on that issue.

Some of the A+ers were saying things like "we" should boot from the "movement" Dawkins, Harris, Shermer, all the old white guys (minus PZ), anyone not "+" enough, anyone who'd dare go to a conference with the aforementioned, ect. Some were drawing up list of people to never work with again. I think Thunderf00t, in so far as he was attacking this idea (though he also went further), was correct because, like you, I'm a secularist. If there is some crap bill coming up, then I need 50% plus 1 vote to kill it and I don't care if those votes come from Jehovah's Whiteness, Fred Phelps' family, or men's righter--yet I'd still disagree with them for refusing needed medical treatment or being bigots or making rape jokes.

There is a difference between criticizing other atheists and instituting purity tests that insure your movement can't be large enough to actually accomplish anything. To go back to my earlier metaphor, I'd rather have a 2/3rds majority, big tent party (even with the infighting that would come with that) than the most solid, lock step party with 0 seats.

[Insult to Rocks]

This is ridiculous. Atheism is built on criticism and rational thought, as are all atheistic philosophies. Dismissing these things in order to "compete" with religion is a betrayal of the whole point of atheism.

[VladK]

Yes, I dislike Atheism+ a lot, it's a horrible idea. The name is stupid the concept is idiotic. Atheism has nothing to do with social justice or feminism or being against racism. It doesn't have anything to do with the opposite either. It's not a left-wing, right-wing, big government, small government, center whatever. It's not for or against social justice. I wonder how they would like it if someone made Atheism++ and declared:

We're atheists ++ we support free market, gun rights, we protest socialism, we support a strong army - if you don't agree with these values and want to stick with Atheism Less Less, we will exclude you from our movement. Oh and we're not divisive, we're just "compassionate" and "reasonable", only a hateful and stupid atheist could possibly disagree with our "basic moral values". - this is how the right-wing version of Atheism+ would sound like.

This is ridiculous. Atheism is built on criticism and rational thought, as are all atheistic philosophies. Dismissing these things in order to "compete" with religion is a betrayal of the whole point of atheism.

Atheism is simply disbelief in gods. Some call it "lack of belief" whatever, the point is atheists don't believe in gods. It's not a vaccine against further irrationality.

[Insult to Rocks]

I don't mind atheists having philosophies that stem from their atheism, so long as they make the stem part clear. I'm an existentialist, and I don't claim that my views are shared with all atheists.

[Jason78]

I think that constructive criticism is good.  I wouldn't give an atheist a free ride on using a logical fallacy

[youtube:2008c17a]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEQshrACCEA[/youtube:2008c17a]

[AllPurposeAtheist]

NO, NO, NO! Being an atheist gives you magic powers!  [-X

[Thumpalumpacus]

Nothing is sacred.

Next.

[stromboli]

Nothing is sacred.

Next.

^  =D>

[AllPurposeAtheist]

**uses magic atheist powers to say don't tell me how to think.  

[barbarian]

Divide the house of atheist? That is some fucked up statement their is no house of atheist. That's like that fallacy of the church being the house of "god." Sounds like this thunderb00b guy has some idea that atheism is some faith system that others must believe in something that he conjured up in his own mind. It is like I spoke of this "new atheism" crap of setting some fucking belief system up for the atheist, like they are some mindless wanderers because they think that we need someone or something (like a congregation) steering people in a certain direction like a cattle system getting the cow to the slaughter house because there is no way that the atheist are capable of doing something with no god belief system. These retards are just the next preachers doing stump speeches trying to get followers like they're some type of self righteous Shepard taking care of the a herd sheep.

If you like me preaching about how you should live your life, they way I  want you to, then you send your donations too... It adds up to nothing more than taking the free out of free thinking. This type of shit pisses me off to no end and these little atheist cults can fuck off. If, and that is if I used utube I wouldn't give this shit for brains anymore time than anyone listed here. http://www.oneplace.com/

[Sal1981]

Actually Thunderf00t is against Atheism+. You would know that if you had spent less than five minutes of your time watching his videos on it.

Anyways, although atheism is only a single statement about deities/the supernatural, it negates a lot of stuff believed about that stems from theism. Which is probably why we see such nice stats about atheists compared to theists.

[VladK]

I don't think anyone on this page has ever claimed that Thunderf00t was in favor of Atheism+.

[barbarian]

Actually Thunderf00t is against Atheism+. You would know that if you had spent less than five minutes of your time watching his videos on it.

Anyways, although atheism is only a single statement about deities/the supernatural, it negates a lot of stuff believed about that stems from theism. Which is probably why we see such nice stats about atheists compared to theists.

Is this a response to anyone here in particular or is it to the op?

[AllPurposeAtheist]

You know the old thing about atheism is a religion just like not collecting stamps is a hobby? Well, the poliics is basically the same way. Believe it or not there are a lot of atheists who are also staunch republicans. There IS NO atheist dogma or organizational flow chart. There are SOME people who like to lay claim to atheism AS IF it's some corporate entity.
Those people are every bit as delusional as snake handling nut case religious nuts if they think they all speak for me.