(February 12, 2015 at 9:10 pm)Strider Wrote: I don't know, Brian. I want to disagree with you in a way, but I think you're right because certain words take on a different meaning after people hijack them and twist them into something else. For instance, now it's racist to say "thug" even though I've used it in the past to describe criminals or bad people, regardless of their race. Now, you can't use it for fear of being labeled a hateful racist. When I still had a Facebook account last year, a discussion came up in a liberal group I belonged to about a white guy who had robbed an old man. I called him a thug. The members of that group came unhinged. It's ridiculous.
Anyway, even Dawkins has advocated before for "militant atheism" at a TED Talk. I understand where you're coming from with your line of reasoning regarding its usage. I tend to agree that I don't like the word either, nor its connotation, in the way that we tend to see it used nowadays.
I don't remember him ever calling himself a "militant atheist". If he referred himself as such, it would be the same context as Galileo telling the truth about the nature of our heleocentric solar system. But the truth is it is not "militant" anymore than telling someone "hey dipshit evolution is fact".
Hicks called himself a "anti theist" and outside his individual actions which were inhuman and cruel, I agree with that terminology. I am anti theist the same way I am anti unicornist. I simply do not see religion AS AN IDEA as a good way to attempt to view reality. It is not an indictment of believers in as much as it is indictment our species failure to accept it's own flawed perceptions.
His atom symbol on his page has "Atheists for equality". So I am having a hard time thinking that he was nothing more than a disturbed individual. I do not see anyone as being right in blaming Dawkins or Harris or Maher for his actions.
One thing our species does far to often is hid behind their own suffering to avoid criticism and no one should be allowed to do that. Suffering h as always been a part of our species evolution and depending on what part of the world we live in, all of us are both majorities and or minorities depending on geographics.
A Christian in America is part of a majority, but in Pakistan would be a minority. A Muslim in America would be a minority but in Iran would not be. But even within the same label a Sunni living in Iran would be a minority and a Shiite living in Saudi Arabia would be a minority.
Even within issues of race a black Nigerian who migrates here would have less in common with a black person born here.
And not even atheists are monolithic. We are all over the world. There are former Arab Muslims who are now atheists. Ayaan Hirsi Ali was a former Muslim. Jews in America, especially younger ones do not agree with the idea of blind support of Israel as say their parents might who migrated.
The point is ultimately we are still the same species and we need to get more people on board in humanity as seeing the individual first. Everyone suffers to some degree in their lives and some have it worse than others. But our evolution has never changed and our ability to be cruel or compassionate is still in us, not our labels.
