I'm talking about this amalgamation of professional atheist speakers that go to conferences and stuff, maybe have regular podcasts just to tell everyone for the 597564532523th time there's no God... people like AronRa or Dillahunty or Thunderf00t (pre-2012 or 2013 anyway) Can we say it's been a long shit show?
Here are 3 main things that bother me about it:
1. It doesn't actually represent atheists accurately. Not every atheist or agnostic is interested in publicly "debunking religion" or promoting being non-religious. I'm not.
2. The repeated implication in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways that atheist=rational/logical, no merit to it whatsoever and is just a form of group supremacism at the end of the day.
3. Repeated attempts by far leftist ideologues to hijack atheist conferences and other atheist circles and try to impose ideological purity. Was tried with Atheism+, was tried with deplatforming Thunderf00t and Dawkins for not being progressive i.e. far left enough, was recently tried when SJWs sent letters to get Sargon of Akkad uninvited from the Mythicist Milwaukee conference over petty drama that no sane person would care about, real motive being that Sargon is a harsh critic of the far left. That only failed because these organizers had balls, but a few far left speakers did quit or promised to not come again if Sargon was on, which is just pressure to make MM kick him next year.
Well sorry, but if you want to be THE atheist movement, you have to accept everyone, not just the so-called uber progressives, you have to accept moderate leftists, centrists, conservatives, libertarians, apolitical and anything in between. You can't say "we represent atheism worldwide" and "btw, if you're not a progressive we'll shun you". Choose one or the other, you can't have BOTH. Ideological purity also harms free exchange of ideas so I'm not sure how these people want to get something "rational" out of it. You can't improve anything without criticism first.
Here are 3 main things that bother me about it:
1. It doesn't actually represent atheists accurately. Not every atheist or agnostic is interested in publicly "debunking religion" or promoting being non-religious. I'm not.
2. The repeated implication in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways that atheist=rational/logical, no merit to it whatsoever and is just a form of group supremacism at the end of the day.
3. Repeated attempts by far leftist ideologues to hijack atheist conferences and other atheist circles and try to impose ideological purity. Was tried with Atheism+, was tried with deplatforming Thunderf00t and Dawkins for not being progressive i.e. far left enough, was recently tried when SJWs sent letters to get Sargon of Akkad uninvited from the Mythicist Milwaukee conference over petty drama that no sane person would care about, real motive being that Sargon is a harsh critic of the far left. That only failed because these organizers had balls, but a few far left speakers did quit or promised to not come again if Sargon was on, which is just pressure to make MM kick him next year.
Well sorry, but if you want to be THE atheist movement, you have to accept everyone, not just the so-called uber progressives, you have to accept moderate leftists, centrists, conservatives, libertarians, apolitical and anything in between. You can't say "we represent atheism worldwide" and "btw, if you're not a progressive we'll shun you". Choose one or the other, you can't have BOTH. Ideological purity also harms free exchange of ideas so I'm not sure how these people want to get something "rational" out of it. You can't improve anything without criticism first.