Atheists turning to cult behaviour?

[Jenny A]

One of Watkins blog entries shows screen shots from Reddit of atheism male comments about a teen age atheist girl who posted a picture of herself with a Carl Sagan book. http://skepchick.org/2011/12/reddit-make...-atheists/ And yes the comments are appalling.

I just read them and they are pretty disgusting. I don't do reedit, because it seems like a lot of people that comment there, in general, took a lesson from a youtube comment's section in order to learn how to talk on the internet. Maybe I've just been to the wrong places though.

That would be the point. The internet breeds that kind of ugliness. It's not seeing people face to face and anonymity--sorta like road rage. What it isn't is the product of atheism in particular.

[Mister Agenda]

So you agree there is such a thing as an atheist movement after all, however fuzzily defined it is. This entity is what one should worry about.

There's a secularist and skeptic and anti-discrimination and social acceptance movement that's frequently short-handed to 'atheist movement'. Theists should be for all these things as well. It's not an 'entiity' of much concern, IMHO.

[SoFarEast]

The group of people who run around drive-by posting "That's a logical fallacy!" and then jerking off to how logical they are for being able to read wikipedia's list of logical fallacies.

So that's who they were. I thought it was Google Streetview, but that didn't explain the "Strawman!" nor copious masturbation....

The argument from personal incredulity in this case. I guess. They know better.

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Mister Agenda : Thanks for taking the time to reply. I shall read each and get back to you.

[Silver]

[thesummerqueen]

Blah, just after I told Esk that r/atheism isn't worth it, someone linked this fantastic discussion going on between a Christian mother and the atheist response trying to help her understand about her son's atheism. It's a compassionate and insightful conversation.

http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments...nd_my_son/

[Mister Agenda]

I'll give you an example: whatever brainfarts Richard Dawkins decides to put on twitter will be perceived by the public as something that comes from "the atheist movement", whether you like it or not.

Do you have a proposal for how to correct these misperceptions? Maybe some atheists could have a conference about it.

In particular in the anglophone world there are skeptical/atheist themed conferences and there's a range of speakers which are typically invited to these.

Rational skepticism is a good thing. So is broadening public acceptance of atheists and addressing misconceptions of atheists and atheism.

There have been numerous examples of e.g. women advocating social justice issues and getting a huge backlash of rape and death threats from self-identified atheists.

On the internet, almost completely free of context regarding who they are or their involvement in the 'movement'. Is this something that doesn't happen in non-atheist contexts? Is it atheist behavior or stupid young over-privileged human male behavior? If it is particularly atheists, what are we supposed to do about it? We already condemn it, what next?

There are examples of influential people in this circle sexually harassing women and being covered by organizers in the best traditions of the catholic church.

The members of the RCC hierarchy didn't protect their offenders because it's what religion teaches, it's how hierarchies behave (to protect the organization) unless specific and powerful controls are instituted. It's reprehensible, but last I heard, these organizers don't claim to have Jesus in their hearts to help them make correct and courageous moral decisions. That some atheists are bad actors, insensitive, defensive, or mean is not in dispute.

Of course you can then say - since atheism according to the dictionary is nothing, these are just random individuals who happen to pay attention to atheist themed activities and conferences, but really there's nothing there to identify them with, so there's nothing to talk about.

That's quite a sentence. The dictionary does not define atheism as 'nothing'. It's the state of not having a belief in a supernatural deity. But it's not the salient characteristic of either their involvement in these activities or their good or bad behavior. Their interest in skepticism and equal treatment of atheists is.

You can wash your hands of all that and say that it has nothing whatsoever to do with you - identifying as an atheist does not force you to somehow claim allegiance with any of these people or any particular group of activists.

Unless the person you're talking to actually belongs to the particular group of atheists you're complaining about, it's like griping to a Quaker about the behavior of the WBC. Once they agree with you that it's bad behavior, where do you go from there, since you're not addressing anyone in a position to change the behavior of this organization to which they do not belong?

In that sense, the OPs claim is problematic, or, let's say, prone to misunderstandings. There's a huge difference between pointing out tribal behavior in, say, atheist themed facebook groups or conferences, and attributing such behaviors in any way to atheism as a philosophical point of view.

That makes sense.

So I think after we clear up these things, there's still an important discussion to be had about what's up with the atheist movement(s).

And the first step would be to recognize that whatever is wrong with it, it isn't atheism or atheists per se. More likely it's demographics: too many curmudgeonly old white privileged male atheists coupled with too many peeved young white privileged male atheists. That's fixable. And plenty of people are making an effort to do that fixing.

[dyresand]

I just read them and they are pretty disgusting. I don't do reedit, because it seems like a lot of people that comment there, in general, took a lesson from a youtube comment's section in order to learn how to talk on the internet. Maybe I've just been to the wrong places though.

That would be the point. The internet breeds that kind of ugliness. It's not seeing people face to face and anonymity--sorta like road rage. What it isn't is the product of atheism in particular.

The internet before


The internet after

[Mister Agenda]

I think I am in agreement with you. You do not need to identify with it, as an independent atheist you have the right to distance yourself.

Very reasonable.

However, if atheists are holding conferences, if atheists are congregating in public spaces and meeting in online forums, then this does constitute a community in a sense.

Yes. A community of THOSE atheists. And that community may have problems, which we are all free to criticize,

And I feel there has to be some set of principles that limit bad behavior. It's just not right when the others shrug their shoulders to these acts.

How do you propose to impose those principle on groups to which you don't belong? You're certainly free to join the group you consider the most despicable and try to change it from within. That's far more likely to have an impact than complaining to random atheists about it.

And I do not say that atheism causes their bad behavior. I just feel a group of atheists without rules can be as bad as a group of religious people with religion.

Granted. But freedom of religion is really freedom of belief and conscience. It means atheist groups have just as much right to be wrong as anyone else does, and the only thing we can do to counter it is exercise our own freedom to express our convictions.

And when they are meeting up regularly, whats to stop a crazy bunch from doing some damage?

Are you talking about terrorism? Really?

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Thank you. I think you put it way better than me. I don't think there is anything intrinsic within Atheism that leads to this. However, since each atheist identifies with a little more than just pure non disbelief I can see a few subcultures forming.

It would not be a good idea to arrange ourselves in such a way that subcultures can't form.

[Cato]

The fuck are you talking about? I have clearly explained my understanding of the source of misogyny in people around me is remnants of my national culture of misogyny. Picked all those stats off the net? Ever lived within such a society?

Imagine then laying hope on reason and rationality, and going to crude atheist meetings and see people totally disinterested in any change. Get that? Fuck off jackass!

As a reminder and quick reference:

I've observed a growing trend in public interactions and online spaces in the way atheists behave. Bullying women, insulting gays, alienating anyone who doesn't subscribe to nerd culture. Is the lack of humanistic principles in Atheism leading to cult behavior? Or what else explains this?

It may not be a religion, but most atheists behave exactly like members of organized religion. Sorry if this has been brought up before. It's a worrying trend. A lot of late teen, early 20 atheists I've met won't think twice before using 'cunt' or 'faggot', or other such forms merciless insulting.

If your understanding of the source of misogyny was as complete as you claim, then why did you ask "Or what else explains this?" in your opening post? Your admirable crusade against misogyny is noble; however, your tactics are quixotic at best.

You should probably stay away from anti-misogyny recruitment drives if your method consists of finding a group of people you think should/would support your cause and proceed to immediately implicate them in misogynistic complicity based on their one shared characteristic. This is more confounding if I'm generous enough to believe you know the source of misogyny; evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

If your aim is to truly call attention to, raise awareness of, and participate in the creation of solutions to misogyny, why did you choose to rail against anonymous online opinions and conference bad behavior rather than soliciting ideas about the well documented severe manifestations found in India and elsewhere? A little off the mark in my opinion. It's hard for me to understand your purpose with all of this knowing the state of affairs where you are.

It's as if you are attempting to extract a speck of fly shit from a boxcar of ground pepper while the train is coming off the tracks.

[Mister Agenda]

Well I don't know any examples of vandalism by atheist groups. I for one consider mockery, insulting, or threat of sexual assault to be trouble which is really out of hand, and one that the law will find hard to control.

Becaue it shouldn't. In America, people are allowed to say things other people don't like, as they should be. All countries allow you to say things of which they approve, the measure of free speech is how much you can say of which the government does NOT approve. Threat of sexual assault (or other violence), of course, can be prosecuted if the identity of the person making the threat can be ascertained, which is why such threats are almost entirely confined to anonymous venues. It's a shame such people are out there, but predictable the internet would have more than its fair share of them.