RE: General perception of atheists?
October 28, 2015 at 7:50 am
(This post was last modified: October 28, 2015 at 9:08 am by Excited Penguin.)
I wholeheartedly agree with you that it's on us to get through to the religious people, not follow our instincts and bash them regardless if it works or not, but see, the thing is, atheists are not necessarily an organized group. We don't have any creed to unite us. It's better to think about it in other terms. More reasonable people will comunicate better and others less reasonable will fail on that point. Both of those kinds of people may call themselves atheists, but that doesn't really mean anything as far as actions go.
Some of us wish for a completely secular society, where religion doesn't intrude on politics or any other relevant decision making. Other than that, what could we wish for? So I personally think there should be a movement at the political level made up of advocates of reason and science. And too, I agree with Sam Harris who made the point that we shouldn't even label ourselves as anything, especially not atheists, since there's such a strong stigma about that word and so much confusion as a result too.
Some of us can't see past the smaller picture, when they spot an idiot believing in totally unreasonable things and just can't help but point it out and ridicule it. It's a natural thing to do and it's certainly understandable. We can't really blame anyone for behaving like this, even though we don't think it's necessarily the best course of action. That's because we don't have authority over other people's actions. We live in free, democratic societies and that comes with the small price of acceptance. We can only hope to educate more and more people, both of present and future generations and make some general progress before we irrevocably set the world on fire and thus grant the wishes of some of the lunatics on the religious side.
Some of us wish for a completely secular society, where religion doesn't intrude on politics or any other relevant decision making. Other than that, what could we wish for? So I personally think there should be a movement at the political level made up of advocates of reason and science. And too, I agree with Sam Harris who made the point that we shouldn't even label ourselves as anything, especially not atheists, since there's such a strong stigma about that word and so much confusion as a result too.
Some of us can't see past the smaller picture, when they spot an idiot believing in totally unreasonable things and just can't help but point it out and ridicule it. It's a natural thing to do and it's certainly understandable. We can't really blame anyone for behaving like this, even though we don't think it's necessarily the best course of action. That's because we don't have authority over other people's actions. We live in free, democratic societies and that comes with the small price of acceptance. We can only hope to educate more and more people, both of present and future generations and make some general progress before we irrevocably set the world on fire and thus grant the wishes of some of the lunatics on the religious side.
