(March 16, 2015 at 7:02 pm)Pandæmonium Wrote: Like I said, I don't follow any atheists or any atheist channels anywhere on the Internet. I've never felt the need to.From the little I know I think people from A+ believe religions helps ensuring discrimination and oppression, and since they don't feel welcomed to religious forums and are atheists they decided to create a group for atheists worried about social justice... I don't see it as invalid, it's just as valid as atheists creating a group called "Atheists + liberalism" or "Atheists + conservatism" or "Atheists + socialism"
I'm an egalitarian, so the 'ideas' behind A+, especially its pro-feminism, are not something I necessarily disagreed with in their entirety (that said, I find a lot of debates on feminism are often destroyed by people on both sides of the divide who have no understanding of liberation based politics). However I found A+ to be the complete opposite of what they professed to be (inclusive, pro-equality and fairness etc). There are theist forums more welcoming than the A+ forums. Thus I am against any group that censors people simply for believing in something different (which demonstrably happened over and over again on A+ - blockbot). By all means, start a group for like minded individuals, invite and ban whoever you want. But don't expect people to like it when they're silenced for simply disagreeing. Censorship doesn't get an organisation very far in the long run, and my experiences of A+ directly and indirectly were almost entirely negative from this standpoint.
Indeed, the entire notion that there can be an organised group with an MO within atheism seems absurd to me. Heards of cats come to mind. A lot of atheists may share a common ground (political, economic, social), but their atheism is irrelevent. A lack of belief in a deity doesn't inform any of my political or social beliefs. This forum is a good example. A diverse membership, mostly atheist naturally, and many agreeing and disagreeing on various points (the owner is a libertarian for example), but you'd be hard pushed to find people saying they're [x] within atheism.
Overall, to be short, I found A+ to be completely counter productive to the cause they were trying to promote (and to which I agree with).
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you