Atheists Criticizing Other Atheists

[VladK]

The reason I brought up Atheism+ is because it's an example of why you cannot have a united "atheist house" or "community". I personally find them so obnoxious and confrontational that they're about as desirable to me as Scientology. (And I'm sure they would find me to be just as obnoxious so I guess we're even.) I could probably find common ground easier with most Orthodox Christians than I could with them. Their obsession with "white male cis privilege" gets on my nerves, for example people who are white or who are male sometimes come to their forum to criticize some of the views they hold and are simply told that they should "check their privilege" that their opinions on racism or feminism are somehow less valuable because they're not of color or they're not female so they couldn't possibly know what people of color or women go through which amounts to a cheap ad hominem and is in fact sexist and racist in reverse. They talk about "male privilege" but deny that there's such a thing as "female privilege" and if you disagree you're called a sexist or "MRA" whether you identity as MRA or not. I mean if you want to claim that men have advantages in life in certain aspects, it would only be fair to recognize the areas of life that are advantageous to women. I certainly know that as a male I couldn't just walk in a club and get the same kind of attention as I would if I was female with roughly the same fashion sense, looks, personality, intelligence etc. And on average women in my country live 5-7 years longer. That what's someone interested in "equality" does. Maybe some of these inequalities are inherent and cannot be fixed, but the least you could do is stop denying them if you're such a great champion of "gender equality" in both rights, opportunities and outcomes. A lot of them define racism to mean "prejudice+power" which pretty much means racism against whites is impossible and again I don't think that's a productive way of combating racism.

They're way too friendly to Islam. Most of them are sympathetic to the far left, which, coming from an ex-communist country doesn't sit well with me. What else, they don't allow much dialog, they claim that people who don't share their values are "vile" and "not compassionate", they want to pretend they speak for some wider atheist community and impose an ideological purity on everyone. They complain about popular atheist activists like Dawkins or Harris or Hitchens (even though he's dead) being "old white male" rather than consider the claims they make on their own merits.

They claim to practice "skepticism and critical thinking", yet I don't find them to be some great beacons of either. If they're so smart, why don't they sign up for Mensa or whatever? What notable achievements do they have to make them stand out of the crowd?

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Hmmmm.. You sound like you've discovered American AM talk radio then.. :-k

[aitm]

pacifist atheists are the downfall of the fucking forward moving human.....er

pacifists atheists are the downfall of the forward moving fucking human


pacifists atheists are the downfall of the humans moving fucking forward...

hmmm

[barbarian]

pacifist atheists are the downfall of the fucking forward moving human.....er

pacifists atheists are the downfall of the forward moving fucking human


pacifists atheists are the downfall of the humans moving fucking forward...

hmmm

I choose option 2 as I like the human that is conscious about reproduction especially after war.  :axe

[MrsSassyPants]

The op said thunderballs was an atheis activist.  Read the first paragraph or 2

[PickelledEggs]

Only The Sith deals in absolutes.

The only thing I have ever understood to be an absolute truth is that no truth is absolute.

The whole point of being a skeptic and thinking rationally is challenging other people's and your own thoughts to see which is right. That is why we all are, or at least most of us here are atheists, right? Because we thought rationally and tested what we know about the world against evidence? You mentioned something about prostitution legalization and gay rights... but that really has nothing to do with atheism, that has to do with culture in general, which is a whole other topic. Lumping together all atheists in to one batch isn't right. Everyone is an individual and should be treated as such, at least I believe. All atheists have different life values. Some some have a similar batch of values, but not all the same. Some are going to want to be activists and some are going to want to keep to themselves. It's just how it is. But to group all atheists together to say you should all be activists or you all should mind your own business and keep to yourself is bordering on religion turf.... And you know the crazies that religion breeds.

Dividing the house of atheism is implying that atheists are all under one roof of belief and life values, which is simply not true.

[barbarian]

The op said thunderballs was an atheis activist.  Read the first paragraph or 2

I did, this is why I asked because I responded as I thought thunderboob was too, not sure if he is or isn't now. If you read this sentence of a quote in a post I made within this thread you will understand what I am referring to though.

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/

[Cocoa Beware]

Ive always been strident in my opposition to atheists becoming unified in this way.

Almost straight away you get mired in common rules, even atheist "commandments"

I don't get it. It looks very stupid when atheists emulate religion.

[Youssuf Ramadan]

Ive always been strident in my opposition to atheists becoming unified in this way.

Almost straight away you get mired in common rules, even atheist "commandments"

I don't get it. It looks very stupid when atheists emulate religion.

Yes indeed.   =D>

Were supposed to be done with that quasi-religious shite...

[GSOgymrat]

Atheists have little in common and of course will not agree on many things. For example, I'm not an atheist because of rational analysis, I'm an atheist because God intuitively makes no sense to me. Also, unlike many atheists, I don't want to promote atheism, I want to promote secular societies where people with diverse beliefs and opinions can coexist without killing each other.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Hmmmm.. You sound like you've discovered American AM talk radio then.. :-k

I agree with Vlad.  The PC bandwagon is notable in several atheist blogs/forums/etc.  When Dawkins was accused of virtually raping a gal because he asked her out for coffee, PZ Myers had a field day assuming Dawkins's being guilty of sexism even though none of the story was corroborated.  And, whenever anyone on his blog disagreed with his take on affairs, they got dogpiled until Myers realized a fly was in the ointment and squashed it -- deleting their posts and banning them, simply for disagreeing with him.

He's not the only atheist who has done this.  Sarah Braasch and a flock of her fans at Daylight Atheism took me to task one time because I argued that her term "gender genocide" (describing the treatment of women in America -- "genocide"!) was far too dramatic and obviously designed with rhetoric in mind.  The only reason I wasn't banned is that that blog is Adam Lee's, and he's a fair-minded guy.

There is far too much  PC conformity browbeating which goes on in the atheosphere.  Vlad will understand this reference better than anyone here, I suspect: Don't be the first to stop clapping.

[VladK]

It wasn't Dawkins who asked her to come to his hotel room for coffee, we don't really know who it was and doesn't matter, but yeah, she overreacted.

Actually, use Atheism+ speak, she should have "check her own privilege".

[Cocoa Beware]

I like that I don't have to agree with any other atheist about anything if it suits me.

Fuck you!

[VladK]

"Rational" atheist champion PZ Myers thinks that patriotism, piety and inequity are more dangerous than Fascism, Nazism and Communism because these ideologies are "defunct" (news flash they're not, Communism still exists in North Korea which is hostile to the US, neo-nazi groups exist, fascism I suppose would include Islamofascist regimes like Iran or Ba'athist regimes such as the one Saddam had in Iraq, okay maybe that's "defunct" but it's only recent, think Assad in Syria):

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/ ... drawn-out/

I can think of quite a few things "more deadly — more sinister — to American Democracy" than those three fundamentally defunct ideologies: how about patriotism, piety, and inequity?

It's a shame that for a scientist, he talks so much crap when dealing with non-scientific issues and has a fundamentally utopian worldview.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBDJZaOuuNY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OYAFPlh2dc

He is trying to make atheism into a religion (his religion). If you have time to listen to videos above while you're alt-tabbed to something else, you'll notice that he assigns all sorts of things that aren't there to the definition of atheism. For example science, rationality, feminism, and a lot of leftist political positions like being pro-equality or being internationalist.

[GSOgymrat]

He is trying to make atheism into a religion (his religion). If you have time to listen to videos above while you're alt-tabbed to something else, you'll notice that he assigns all sorts of things that aren't there to the definition of atheism. For example science, rationality, feminism, and a lot of leftist political positions like being pro-equality or being internationalist.

Many people in China are atheists, they don't believe in God, but don't necessarily subscribe to those other beliefs.