Ending The In-Fighting: Can We All Just Get Along?

Lee Moore of A-News has called for an end to the in-fighting between atheists. Personally, I would love to see this. I don’t have high expectations because I don’t think some of the bloggers involved are all that interested in ending the infighting. I don’t think they see it as the misunderstanding or issues that can be resolved through reasoned discourse. Instead, the in-fighting is often painted as a holy crusade against evil.

For me, I really don’t see where our views are all that different. Most of the people on both sides support the goals of equality for all, diversity, and fairness. So I look at this in-fighting and just see needless drama from people who pretty much agree with each other. But in fairness, I really haven’t kept up with the drama much so I might have missed the point of contention.

I’m turned off from the drama because I would rather focus on building a community of reason and fighting back against those who really are against equality, diversity, and fairness.

In any case, I would like to think that a community that values reason should be able to come together and talk this kind of thing out logically. I would like to think that South Park was wrong when they had their two-part episode where Cartman goes to the future and finds that atheists finally won the culture war, only to war with each other over semantics.

We haven’t even won the culture war yet and we have started in-fighting. We need to stop the in-fighting and work together as a community of reason. If we have differences and we probably do, we should be able to work out those differences in peace using rational discourse.

If we can’t do that, then what is the point of the community of reason? What will happen when we do defeat the Religious Right? Will be become that which we have fought against? Have we already?

I would like to think that valuing reason and diversity has made us better people and that if it were just us we could make a better world. But if we can’t even sit down together and talk out our differences peacefully, then I really don’t know what we are fighting for. It’s very depressing and I hate even blogging about this. I hate that I am adding to this drama simply by supporting a call for reasoned dialog.