Comments on: Quiet down the atheists

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Thu, 02 Jan 2014 03:57:00 +0000

Well not much has changed since 2012, which was actually just barely over a year ago anyway!

By: Adam Brandt

Adam Brandt — Thu, 02 Jan 2014 03:47:24 +0000

LOL, didn’t notice this was from 2012! Ha ha just ignore me.

By: Adam Brandt

Adam Brandt — Thu, 02 Jan 2014 03:44:25 +0000

Jane, you are very wrong in your proclamation that atheists are a small minority group. Atheists, in fact, have a larger population in America than African-Americans. To affirm: there are more atheists in America than almost every other ethnicity. I believe we are long overdue our voice in the political arena.

By: jane

jane — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 21:40:51 +0000

No, I didn’t tell you to shut up – I didn’t even tell the screaming namecallers to shut up – I just point out that open hostility or contempt towards people one claims to want to recruit to one’s cause does not make sense. You wouldn’t take up an offer to visit the church of a minister who told you that he knew you were an evil scumbag because you weren’t already a member. And I don’t understand why you would bring up the idea of “two wrongs making a right”, as it is precisely my point that they do not, i.e., the fact that some monotheists insult and belittle atheists does not make the reverse behavior either polite or productive.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 20:58:49 +0000

Jane, which atheists in this conversation have done what you claim? And, do two wrongs make a right?

But thanks, you did provide a great example of telling atheists who were speaking in normal voices to shut up and stop screaming.

By: jane

jane — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 18:53:58 +0000

Greg – When atheists make claims that are falsified by the listener’s own experience (e.g. that all religious people are stupid and irrational, if some of the smartest people we know are religious), they can’t complain if they are pigeonholed next to the purveyors of other dogmas that the listener knows to be false. Would you actually want to see agnosticism embraced by the masses? If so, heaping abuse on those who don’t already share all of your beliefs is counterproductive. Sometimes you give the impression that you would prefer orthodox atheism to remain the purview of a tiny minority who can sit up on an alleged intellectual mountaintop and sneer down at everyone else.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 22:50:09 +0000

Jane, thanks for the advice. That is, thanks for suggesting that we shut up, or at least, change our rhetoric to meet your specific requirements. We’ll try to do better next time.

By: arxs1

arxs1 — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 22:20:41 +0000

@jane
First, I find your staunch, principled defense of a complete stranger commendable. I can’t disagree with you on any particular point. I think Greg is just standing up for the atheists when they are treated with a good helping of contempt and disregard. Which is nice, because like you said we do appear to be a somewhat oppressed minority.
As far as the messy business of friendly-fire against temperate agnostics and religious fury caused by abrasive hardline atheists goes… well that is messy business and any time one ideology battles against another, with weapons or words, things are probably going to get messy. I don’t condone that, but I for one am glad that Greg is willing to take the time to fight that fight anyway, messy as it may be.

By: jane

jane — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 18:46:39 +0000

But I don’t see this quote as something that would be unacceptable if said about anybody else; either formulation is a reasonable statement of fact. And there’s a difference between saying “there’s no physical evidence whatsoever that there’s any god” – which might not offend people of faith, who sometimes like to say faith is belief without evidence – and saying that there is definitely no god and that the religious believer is therefore stupid and crazy. You’ve heard such dogmatic statements, I’m sure, and they are unpalatable not only to religious people but to people like me, an unbeliever who has friends and colleagues who combine intelligence and scientific productivity with devout religious faith.

Yes, on balance atheists in America get more abuse than they dish out, because they are a small and somewhat oppressed minority. (At least they haven’t been subjected to mass roundups in the past 12 years or so.) It’s understandable if they become sensitive to hostile rhetoric, but complaining about trivialities does not serve their cause, especially when they themselves are seen to use equally hostile rhetoric. Practically speaking, if you’re trying either to gain converts or to win the favor of members of the majority population, this is not an effective approach.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 17:14:56 +0000

Jane, I’m sure he is not a horrible bigot. That’s you saying that, not me. My purpose in the word substation is to make people realize that what they are saying about atheists would be unacceptable if said about anyone else, and the larger point here is that our society in general seems to not notice this at all (or, in some cases, obviously, actively supports the denigration of atheists and atheism).

Also worth noting: How often does one hear non-Atheists with any voice out there talking about preachers as dogmatic? I think right now we are hearing some pretty awful things form major accepted mainstream leaders in the christian community about Newtown. Who is calling them out and in what manner?

Trust me, atheists complain about each other quite a bit, I think quite a bit more than christians complain about other christians.

Jane: Indeed, consider the difference between an atheist telling a religious person that there is no scientific or material evidence whatsoever for their beliefs, even in strident terms, and a religious person telling an atheist that they will burn in hell for not accepting Jesus as our savior.