Atheism +

[thesummerqueen]

Same old song and dance - DJ's been getting hit for a while over various things.

You should follow the Coffee Loving Skeptics over on Facebook - they keep pretty tight watch on these fuckers.

[TaraJo]

Same old song and dance - DJ's been getting hit for a while over various things.

You should follow the Coffee Loving Skeptics over on Facebook - they keep pretty tight watch on these fuckers.

I probably will.

I can half understand one of the complaints PZMeyers has had: he's simply tired of all the criticisms and complaints he's had over atheism+. I can see why he's tired, though; he's getting a lot of complaints. Perhaps that should be a sign that something is wrong.

[thesummerqueen]

PZ's a cranky cantankerousness bastard who goes in looking for a fight - don't let him fool you.

[Red Celt]

[thesummerqueen]

That is fucking awesome.

[TaraJo]

That..... that's a little disturbing but funny at the same time. I don't know if I should be glad it's not animated (the elevator scene is way too easy to loop).

I've been thinking on it some and I can kinda understand why Watson was uncomfortable with the elevator incident, but I still think her closed minded approach to any questions puts her in 'fail' territory.

[DeistPaladin]

Does anyone else see this turning into South Park?

http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-epi...-go-god-go

I was just thinking the same thing, wondering if when atheism becomes the majority, that we'll splinter into warring denominational factions bent on each other's destruction.

It also reminds me of what I experienced being on the ground floor of what seemed at the time the most broad-minded and inclusive of free-thought movements. It had a terrible name but I liked the concept. It was trying to bring together free-thinkers of all stripes in a union against the fundamentalist theism. This was right after 9/11 and the early Bush administrations efforts to tear down the wall that separates church and state.

The movement's message was, at least at first, "think for yourself". We rejected supposed divine revelation or getting your information from some holy book, traditional beliefs or organized churches. Atheists were part of our group but being one wasn't necessary. You could also believe in God or entertain spiritual instincts, being a deist, pantheist or even a transcendentalist. The line we drew was against "I believe X because it's written here that... or my priest says...etc."

Sounds like a really broad-minded group, doesn't it?

No chance for some egotistical dickhead trying to use it to build a cult of personality, try to enforce superfluous ideology or start kicking out wrong-thinkers, right?

Think again.

I wasn't the leader of this group but was one of higher ups, enough to see the early warning signs of what was happening to the founder. I remember counselling him against some of his bad ideas and cleaning up the mess he made when he tried to execute them anyway. Later, I put my head down to work on my book and, a few weeks later, I looked up to find the organization imploding. The founder had gone out of control and pissed off nearly all those who'd joined. It was over.

So tragic to see that the same problems we see in religion can crop up in the very organizations that oppose them.

[Darkstar]

I was just thinking the same thing, wondering if when atheism becomes the majority, that we'll splinter into warring denominational factions bent on each other's destruction.

Well, it's possible, but that would just be a human problem, not an atheist problem. Sure there are lots of religious wars, but there are secular wars too. If almost everyone was an atheist and there was a war between one group of atheists and atheists+, they wouldn't include 'atheist' in their faction titles, they would just be opposing extremist groups. What I mean to say is that I don't think there would be wars over which form of atheism is the best, unlike the wars over which form of theism is best.

[cratehorus]

We are…
Atheists plus we care about social justice,
Atheists plus we support women’s rights,
Atheists plus we protest racism,
Atheists plus we fight homophobia and transphobia,
Atheists plus we use critical thinking and skepticism.

I thought that was called socialism?

[thesummerqueen]

Any sufficiently large enough group of people is going to have a smaller group who will end up saying "fuck you" to the rest - mostly because cliques form. It's happened to our local atheist group. It's the reason we have so many churches (aren't they all worshiping the same god? Can't people in the same 10 mile radius use one church instead of 6 within 1 mile of each other?). You can't escape it. It's only a problem when those splinter groups decide they can't work with others. This whole attitude of "you're with us or against us" is what caused the problem - not the fact that they want to concentrate on feminism and activism in atheism.