Atheism and suicide

[Fidel_Castronaut]

2. The atheist community is having a hard time (a) articulating a clear philosophy/lifestyle for its followers and (b) organising itself on a scale big enough to become a credible group.

The bottom line: atheism/humanism has a crisis of leadership, as do whites/Westerners. These problems are huge, but solvable. But it's going to take a new breed/generation of atheist leaders, who are more concerned with a positive outlook rather than simply bashing religion.

There are a lot of holes in your post, but I want to take this one up.

People need to get out of the mindset that atheism is a 'movement' or a 'philosophy'; its not. It's a lack of belief in a god or gods and that's it. Atheists can be disestablishmentarianists, secularists, conservatives, socialists, Eco-warriors, homeopaths etc etc. the only thing that 'unites' us is a lack of belief in a god or gods.

I don't want a movement, I don't want a leader telling me what to fucking do, and I certainly don't want to be viewed as a 'credible group'.

In the 2009 BSA survey 50% of respondents indicated that they had no belief in the UK. Every single one of those people have their own individual take on morality and 'life' in general, and certainly don't need a person trying to homogenize them. Why? Because its impossible to homogenize people into a 'group' that attempts to preach on morality and society when the only thing that unites them is a lack of something, and too right!

In short, I thinks you've got the completely wrong end of the stick about what atheism actually is, and what atheists actually believe. For example, humanism is not synonymous with atheism. Whilst all humanists may be atheists (I don't know if that's true), certainly not all atheists are humanists. Same with secularism, which is another [political] concept that often gets misunderstood to be a 'tenant' of atheism.