Why Internet Atheists Are Like Crazy Straws…

Heretics all! There is only ONE “crazy straw”! And I have THE ONE! 

…and tweeters, and forum stars, and parody writers, and facebook atheists, and meet- up atheists, and splinter groups of splinter groups, and writers that focus on other writers, and singing atheists, magician atheists, scientist atheists, Ayn Rand fans, and secular students…

Whatever happened to simply not believing. Maybe this is some sort of privilege speaking because i don’t need atheism to put me outside of religion. i could not fit in just fine in any religion. I enjoy some big A Atheist perspective, but fighting about how to be an atheist seems pointless.

 That’s because you’re doing it wrong. Wait five minutes and someone will be along to instruct you in the correct approach.

I think you left out racists, misandrists, homophobes, biphobes, heterophobes and maybe a few others. Even though the internet has helped us Atheists to connect to other Atheists worldwide you get a lot of people who are part of the thing we are fighting against (or ignore in the case of misandry for example).

Unity among atheists doesn’t matter so much though, surely? Religion’s schisms are over truth claims, and if you’re claiming to know the only Truth, that matters. The only truth claim atheists make is that there is insufficient evidence for the existence of any god(s), and there’s no disagreement over that.

I’m not against atheist movements, but agreement on the non-existence of spiritual beings is no predictor that all atheists will be in agreement on other areas. Whereas if there’s a God who communicates with people, there should be significant agreement, which is why church splits are embarrassing for the faithful. 

People who hang out at the atheism section of reddit. 
http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism

The meta theory of crazy straws

The success of the atheist movement is that atheism is becoming more socially acceptable to people with a vast array of other attitudes and positions on things.  Some, though, have a idealized vision of what an atheist should be.  Once you cling to a particular atheistic idealistic vision, all other atheists seem lacking.  Then the idealist will start to group all these lacking atheists into various categories of how they are lacking the pure ideal.   Then the idealist believes that only their crazy straw is right.

Nice work Paul misogyny is simply a response to feminism, if only women would stop sticking up for themselves men wouldn’t need to put them down. Also being a woman is totally off topic to atheism, who let the women on anyway.

 See this comment sort of characterizes my side-eye toward the atheist “movement.”

The atheist movement (or at least a loud strain within it)seems to have a narrative of religion being a fundamental, primary contradiction within this society and the world at large and seeks to strip the institutions of their power or destroy it altogether. So in this analysis, atheism as an ideology seeks cultural hegemony, which is a very political thing. Yet the dominant narrative of the movement would also supposedly have you put aside politics. The problem with this is that a lot of the issues that atheism/skepticism touches upon and seeks to engage; from abortion to Muslim profiling to GMO foods; are inherently political and complex topics.

It is interesting to me that a subset of folks who are based in “rationality” would just out and out ignore the complexities within issues which the dominant narrative of atheism/skepticism engages and I suspect that it correlates with the “movement’s” race/class composition. To me it seems to point to the power of the social capital of privilege and how narratives always seem to flow from this tainted wellspring.

“A civil society can be measured by the treatment of its women”…or something like that is what some famous credible person said. Though religion plays a role in the treatment of women, it is not the key factor in the relationship of menfolk and the female bodied. Atheism is more a side-note to feminism in this sense. The fraternal bonds of patriarchy seem to supercede the divide of religious/metaphysical belief vs. atheism/skepticism; that is; male supremacy has shown a propensity to reproduce itself through a plethora of philosophical and theological systems. This points to the antagonistic and obtuse relationship between the male bodied and the female bodied as being a more primary contradiction than religion.

The same with race and class. These are fundamental contradictions in US society, but don’t dare bring them up on an atheist forum.

Allied Atheist Alliance? We’re the Allied Alliance of Atheists! Splitter!

I get that a lot of “atheist issues” have complications above and beyond the issue of freedom of and from religion, but you seem to expect the “atheist movement” to become essentially a political party, with a fully formed position on every social issue of importance. Not only would this be impractical, I suggest it misunderstands the role that (most) atheist organisations seek to play with regards to these issues.

The issues you mentioned all have a high degree of religiously motivated partisanship and it’s reasonable to expect an atheist group to oppose these attempts at imposing religion-based policy. On the other hand, if a church or some other group managed to present an argument that stood on its own merits, without any reference to god, then I would expect the atheist movement to step back and to let the debate proceed without them. To do otherwise is to risk losing credibility on our claims of seeking only religious neutrality from the state. What’s more, it would risk alienating those atheistic supporters who hold the opposing view.
If we define the movement’s role thusly, then discussions on the various feminist/race/LGBT/etc issues becomes unnecessary – in the context of atheism. On the other hand, if we define atheism to include all these other things then we’re left, not with an atheist organisation, but rather with a big-tent social justice movement – a nice thing to be sure, but still a different creature entirely.

‘Heterophobes’.

I…that’s meant to be a joke, right?

One straw to rule them all?

I always just assumed that the atheist movement valued free thought and critical thinking more; therefore, feminist values overlap more often in the lives of female and even male community members. I don’t know for sure if the same could be said of mysogynistic values, but perhaps we’re just more aware of such behavior amongst our peers than other community groups tend to be?

Unfortunately probably not.

How do you spot these misandrists? Necklaces of dried testicles? Some kind of birthmark? Perhaps we could contact the Office of the Witchfinder General for help?

Atheism and feminism both came about during the same time for me when I started really thinking about what I believed. They are very closely tied for me. Christianity suffocated me for years because I was a woman. Only when I stopped believing in it could I fully embrace that I was a valuable person.
Don’t tell me that’s off topic.
I’m straight, so LGBT issues don’t really apply to me. That does not mean they are off topic to atheism.
You might want to cover up, your male privilege is showing.

How do you spot these misandrists? Necklaces of dried testicles? Some kind of birthmark? Perhaps we could contact the Office of the Witchfinder General for help?

I think we have a straw schism here.  We can

a) I’m sorry a gay guy was mean to you once, but comparing it to the oppression faced by the queer community is gross and insensitive.

b) if that’s not what you intended

I’m going to hold off a bit on a) and assume b) until I get evidence to the contrary.

That’s the thing with words, its very rare that they have the same definition. The thing is just because different words have different definitions, doesn’t mean that they bear no relationship. Especially if you combine those words like, feminist atheist or atheist feminist. You see what I’m getting at. Anyway condescension aside but what do you expect in response to such a puerile argument.

To say that feminism isn’t an atheist issue is completely fatuous, especially in the face of the wave of hostility faced by women who simply asked for an anti harassment policy at atheist/skeptik conferences. When atheist women get rape threats and are told they should be ‘kicked in the cunt” simply for asking that atheist conferences follow normal practice, feminism becomes an atheist issue.

Not that the wave of mass testeria that swept through the atheist blogs should have even be necessary for women to be allowed to talk about issues that relate to atheist women on atheist sites.

Or

C. He misinterpreted a friendly flirt or a bit of attention for a major come on, and his phrasing came across as hugely condescending. Kind of like ‘thanks but no thanks’.

I meant on here.  It’s worth pointing out privileged language and asking for clarification.  But having been on the receiving end, I can say it sucks to have a bunch of people you consider safe pile on because you fucked up your wording.  We’re not exactly piling on yet, but it doesn’t take much to light the torches.

I did say in that post that heterophobia is no where as near as common as homophobia and biphobia so I’m not comparing what I went through in any way to the countless nasty things that gay people have experienced around the world. I get sad when I hear about what gay people go through worldwide and since I love my gay friends I wouldn’t want those things to happen to them.

I have no idea why that guy was and maybe still is like that, perhaps yes it’s due to the homophobia he may have suffered but the way he was with me was like because of his bad experiences he may think all straight people are like that and it sure looked that way.

Well if we could travel back in time show Abraham Lincoln what the Republican Party has become I’m sure he may be disgusted. 

I just hope I made things clear in my posts cause I’m not anti-feminist in anyway, if I was I very much doubt I would be a fan of Joss Whedon.

That’s the thing with words, its very rare that they have the same definition.
Perhaps because most word pairs mean different things?

Anyway condescension aside but what do you expect in response to such a puerile argument
You say that as if your argument doesn’t consist entirely of saying, “Feminist atheist! See!” If I were to point you to a right-wing atheist would that mean that right-wing ideology was part of atheism? What if I showed you a left-wing atheist too?

To say that feminism isn’t an atheist issue is completely fatuous, especially in the face of the wave of hostility faced by women who simply asked for an anti harassment policy at atheist/skeptik conferences
So what you’re actually saying is not that atheism and feminism are related, but rather that atheism is “broken” and it should become a feminist project?

also suspicious of anyone who uses Joss Whedon as proof of their feminism. 

I always just assumed that the atheist movement valued free thought and critical thinking more; therefore, feminist values overlap more often in the lives of female and even male community members
You’ll have to explain that link to me. You seem to be saying that both atheism and feminism use the tools of free thought and critical thinking. Even accepting that, I don’t see why the use of a common toolset should imply the adoption of a set of values.

What I said was that feminism is an atheist issue in that it is an issue for atheists.
And my point is that there are few issues that don’t meet that criterion. That makes for a very broad range of potential “atheist issues”

Now can you explain to me why atheists shouldn’t discuss misogyny among atheists?
“Shouldn’t” was never my point. People should discuss whatever they want. However, a discussion of misogyny among atheists is not a discussion on atheism, unless you believe that there is something that sets the atheist community apart from the general population in this regard. Atheists are human, therefore it is reasonable to expect that all human failings be represented in the atheist community. Singling out a particular failing and declaring it an atheist issue seems unjustified to me. Why expect greater interest from an atheist forum than you would from a forum on accounting or gardening? Or is it your view that any forum, on any subject, should welcome a discussion on misogyny?

I’m suspicious that all because I mentioned misandry and heterophobia people are turning a blind eye to it even though I said things like heterophobia does exist even though it is small and misandrists trying to hijack feminism.

If you don’t agree with my opinion just say so cause I don’t have all day to explain everything.

You could call it ‘the protocols of the elders of the manhaters’

You’re a very rude person. I think we’re done here.

This blog is just here to grab traffic from XKCD. Theives! Fiends! Liars! In my experience, the more religious somebody is, the less kind and trustworthy they are.