Atheists, Don’t Do That!
On my Facebook page I opened a thread for suggestions as to what I should be writing about next. Some of the suggestions were great, and I plan to address them in the near future. But one in particular caught my attention. It was titled “Six Ways the Religious Embarrass Themselves.” So I decided to run with that, with two minor modifications: First, I prefer the number 10 to the number six, and second, I think it’s more productive to criticize ourselves than others. So here it goes:
Ten Ways Atheists Embarrass Themselves
- By constant infighting (including name-calling, defamation, and threats of violence) that divides the movement and hampers forward momentum;
- By alignment with 3rd Wave Feminism, which has made no progress in decades due to lack of agreement on almost anything, and by adoption of their “call-out” culture;
- By alienating people on the basis of their political stance;
- By spending so much time bickering online that it seems like we’re all living in our mothers’ basements;
- By establishing a careless connection to the Social Justice Warriors, who seriously hurt others in the name of “social justice”;
- By attempting to destroy lives from positions of power while clamoring for compassion, equality, and empathy;
- By failing to set positive role models that the religious may want to emulate;
- By using language that is inappropriate in professional circles or civilized debates;
- By alienating religious groups that share positive social goals as well as atheists who think the “wrong way”; and, most importantly,
- By failing to understand what “atheism” means* and using the same fallacies and broken reasoning as theists.
I am not saying that I’m not guilty of some of the above, and I’m not saying that all of you are. But before worrying about someone else’s house, let’s clean up our own first.
Please keep the topic suggestions coming (my Facebook page is public, and anyone is welcome to drop by) — I promise I will get to yours eventually if it fits the the goals of this blog. Also, if I choose your suggestion, and you want me to give you credit w/in the blog post itself, just let me know.
*Please check the dictionary, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, or any number of other online resources, including prior posts in my blog.
