Atheists turning to cult behaviour?

[Mister Agenda]

Yeah, that wouldn't make sense. For me, meaningful humanistic principles can only be incorporated within an atheist.

I disagree. A theist who does not believe that God communicates clearly how we should act can meaningfully adhere to humanistic principles. Deists and mere theists and what I call 'somethingists' are a thing, and they can totally be humanists.

At the same time I see a lack of humanism within atheism can lead to some bad behavior.

A lack of humanism or other moral philosophy that leads to similar behavior could be correlated with some bad behavior among people.

In light of the two, I was wondering if there is a need to combine them both. Not to redefine atheism with some guiding principles, but to encourage them together.

Encourage humanism and critical thinking and let atheism sort itself out. I think it's problematic to try to combine them more than occurs 'naturally'.

Most atheists don't need to speak out against Islam, they do.

There's that word 'most' again.

Their atheism doesn't insist they should, they still do.

But not because they're atheists.

Their rationale for speaking out against it, is the tribal inhuman behavior Islam brings about. But then very few speak out against non religious bad behavior, even though in essence it is inhuman. How can one claim to be rational and speak out sometimes and not some other times?

How can you know that? How do you know the same person who speaks against Islam doesn't speak against, say, CIA torture of people suspected of being Islamic terrorists? Minimalist is quick to speak out against Islam, but I've also noticed he's quick to speak out against police brutality and what he considers poor social policy.

One shouldn't expect someone speaking about against Islam to switch topics to something else they're against all willy-nilly though, right?

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You quoted what I was trying to get at. To rephrase,

Should pure atheism be necessarily followed up by a few humanistic principles?

If atheistm isn't about anything then why get together in conferences?[/qutoe]

Because atheists ARE about things. Those atheists who are about the things the confernce is about may attend if it's convenient.

[quote='SoFarEast' pid='820667' dateline='1418800558']
And if you are getting together, why not for something positive?

They ARE getting together for something positive. None of those conference are actually about atheism. They're about skepticism, or secularism, or civil rights, or socializing, or even addressing bad internet behavior by some online atheists.