RE: Why do atheists get singled out like this?
September 19, 2011 at 8:18 am
(This post was last modified: September 19, 2011 at 8:25 am by ElDinero.)
(September 19, 2011 at 3:04 am)fr0d0 Wrote: Min made such a non point there I thought that was the weakest post he'd ever made. Only in a group of like minded miserable old complainers would such a position be applauded.
No, he made a perfectly good point. You were basically saying we should market atheism better to be more popular by calling it something else. Now firstly, I don't particularly care about being popular, especially among people whose best friend is make believe.
More importantly, words have definitions. You can't call a house a car and expect it to sprout wheels and start travelling. Being a humanist is not the same as being an atheist. Being a materialist is not the same as being a humanist. As it happens, I am a secularist, humanist, materialist and atheist, but you can be one or some of those without being the others.
Finally, to refer to my atheism as something different would imply I was trying to camouflage my position. The only reason I would camouflage my position is if I felt it was flimsy. Say...that's a little bit like creationism being repackaged as 'intelligent design', isn't it?
Sorry, just to elaborate further. What needs to happen is that we need to increase public understanding of what it means to be an atheist, how many people are atheists, what we believe, how atheists lead full and happy and normal lives etc. Not to dress it up as something else.
