A tiny group of gallant men (and “their women”) go underground to fight the evil gynocratic overlords. Is this the plot of a terrible dystopian potboiler from 1971, or a description of how most MRAs see themselves, and the world, today?
Turns out it’s both. I found this pic in the Blue Pill subreddit, and now I really, really want to read this book.
Here’s a book review from someone who did.
Plus a certain schadenfreude in watching Mr “Should Never Be Allowed On Twitter” open his mouth to change feet.
His ability to bite off his own toenails is impressive, you have to admit. Most people would just go get a pedicure, but not Dawkins! He has social media for that.
Do Slymepitters fancy themselves Brights? No, I don’t think so, though it would fit right in with their ethos.
I do my best to not hold individual Christians responsible for the actions of Christian terrorists, even when I’m pointing out direct links between accepted theology and violent action. I try to acknowledge the existence of theists who oppose racism, sexism, homoantagonism, and all types of bigotry whenever it’s relevant to the subject at hand. So, no, I don’t think it’s an unreasonable request, on account of it’s something I do myself. I do it because I think opposing bigotry is a value that crosses metaphysical boundaries and that disagreement about the existence of gods (or conveniently vague god-like concepts) is less important to me than disagreement about basic human rights for all people.
Interesting, I didn’t know “freethinker” went back that far. I guess I’d assumed it was another product of this generation of atheists. Still, it’s hard to hear that term without thinking “…as opposed to people who don’t think freely.”
Point out the hostility, please.
::dies::
I saw that so clearly. If only I could draw it.
katz, yeah, I used to dislike the term before I knew its history. My reaction was “What’s so free about it if one’s not free to think differently on religion/supernatural/etc subjects?” Possibly it raised my eyebrows a bit because I live in a country where – at least in the cities most people live in – there’s waaaaay less conservative religious pressure or power over daily lives than there is in so much of the US. Not that that’ll last, the way things are going.
@SallyStrange, I agree that opposing bigotry should be an action we all perform irrespective of our cultural/religious beliefs. However, atheism has its bad press because of the perceived atheism community itself. As has been pointed out by others (not on this blog perhaps, I haven’t read enough of the comments to know whether it’s cropped up here), the common application of the term “atheist” relies simply on the absence of belief. I have read posts by PZ Myers where he argues that there should be other attributes that go along with being atheist (such as not being a misogynistic or libertarian idiot, for example). And then there ends up being the shit storm of arguments with some saying that the dictionary definition only of atheist should hold and others saying that there should be a wider moral basis.
I think that atheism will always have its arsehole elements, who form a sizeable sub-percentage, because people will continue to use atheist as the (correct) term to refer to themselves when they don’t believe in god. What other term are they going to use? The problem is the word, and people’s understanding of the word, and it’s not going to go away. Any attempt to redefine atheism so it excludes people who don’t believe in god is going to meet with strong resistence.
This is where I think feminism is better, because it opposes bigotry. As a feminist I don’t care about what people’s religious beliefs are, I just care that they have the same social values as me (except for the TERFs, who don’t sound particularly nice or insightful). If a person is a feminist, does it matter whether they are atheist or not?
tl;dr maybe atheism is something we should replace as a term.
Did freethinker exclusively apply to atheists back then? Or could it be given to any thinker who was outside their locale’s orthodoxy?
I haven’t really noticed any hostility to atheists here, except perhaps the accidental hostility of using “asshole atheist” in an unclear way. But given that multiple atheists in the past few months have said that they find this place hostile, I’m starting to wonder if perhaps I’m just not seeing clearly. As someone pointed out upthread, my culture it pretty hostile to atheists overall, and we know that oppressive memes can be internalized even by well-meaning people, so IDK, maybe we should at least be open to the discussion?
@SallyStrange:
I see your fingers moving but all I’m reading is What about the mennnnnnz?!
FWIW I am an atheist and I don’t feel unwelcome here.
I’ve had the impression that the “you’re hostile to atheists” comments have mostly come from people who’ve made swipes – intentionally or not – at not-atheists* and been called out. The complaints have tended to be from new commenters. My feeling is that some people, at least, have expected to be able to take shots not just at shitty stuff coming from organised religions, but at any form of personal belief. I could be totally wrong about this, of course.
But I’ll say this much: I wouldn’t like WHTM to echo specifically atheist sites where that sort of sniping’s the accepted norm – the very things this thread veered to, calling people delusional or woo-merchants or irrational or mentally ill or whatever. That stuff is why I would not feel at all safe commenting on Pharyngula, for instance. It’s not my safe space, it’s a safe space for people with different beliefs on that particular subject. Which is as it should be, but as I said, I’d hate for this place to go down that path.
All the same applies in reverse, about sniping at people for being atheists, not for being asshats, atheist or not.
*I don’t want to use the term theist in this context because it’s too narrow.
Thanks for that.
I think people are automatically on the defensive when it comes to atheists and primed to find anything we say offensive. Saying “I don’t understand X about Y religion” or “aspect X of Y religion doesn’t seem very logical to me” is taken as an attack on all practitioners of Y religion when it isn’t.
A higher burden is placed on us to not offend anyone with a different worldview than anyone else. Atheists are a marginalized group that gets treated as a dominant group for some reason. Even many atheists have internalized this. And because atheists are so knee jerk hated, many of us become defensive in return and are sensitive to perceived hostility. I don ‘t understand why we are the only non-privileged group that isn’t allowed to sensitive. It would be a huge social justice no no to believe that about any other group wouldn’t it?
What’s also getting a little lost in this conversation is that Grumpy Old Man doesn’t even identify as an atheist. He said something someone didn’t like about Christianity and was attacked for being an “asshole atheist.” Making an assumption that if a perceived to be assholish comment about Christianity must be from an atheist, is indeed an attack on atheism and an assumption that we must be assholes. I think that’s a big part of why a couple of atheists got upset and I don’t think it’s unjustified.
I know the intent to be bigoted against atheists isn’t there, but considering that so many non-troll atheists feel hostility, an effort to be a little more sensitive would be nice. Just remember that a lot of us aren’t assholes but have gotten a ton of unjustified flak elsewhere.
If I had all the time (and patience) in the world, I’d go trawling through the comments and see what I could dig up about this, although I’m not the stats whiz Argenti is.
There’s also all those first-time commenters who post a couple times and then flounce because we’re “mean to newbies” in general.
I think part of what’s going on is that we’ve drawn a definite correlation to a certain form of atheism–the ‘asshole atheism’ Kittehserf mentioned–and the MRM.
A flavor of libertarian atheism, if you will.
A very mock-worthy form of atheism.
And I think we take potshots at that on occasion.
There’s also been incidents where we’ve had dustups along those fault lines, and so I could have sworn everybody was walking softly about the subject recently.
PS: a near-synonym to asshole-atheism is ‘amazing atheism.’
Also, I am remiss if I don’t point out that at times we here at this site have had incredible adventures with religion and atheism.
INCREDIBLE ADVENTURES.
Hi Sally!
I’ll admit it. I thought the Brights idea was a good way to avoid way to avoid the stigma of atheism at one time. It seemed like picking a positive, sort of cutesy word to describe a lack of supernatural beliefs was a nice first step in re-branding the “community”. They refereed to people with supernatural beliefs as “supers”, in an attempt to create positive little labels for everyone. The problem is that you don’t pick a label to give to another group of people who already like their current label just fine and cute little nicknames don’t change anything about how people see a group or their beliefs. You could call skinheads “Shinies” and they’ll still be the worst. I’ll still think their worldview is shitty and wrong.
Sorry, Katz, it was at least 3 years ago and I didn’t keep screenshots. You’re just going to have to take my word for it. The way you acted towards Grumpy Old Man in this thread is about the size of it, though.
To be clear, the hostility wasn’t TERRIBLE. It wasn’t like, “Wow, these are a bunch of slavering fundamentalists who want to impose theocratic rule!” It was more like, “Wow, people aren’t receptive to my habit of constantly pointing to the connections between religious belief and the oppression of women, among others, and since I’m really interested in talking about that a lot, and since there are other fora where people are more likely to share my view on that, I’ll probably stick to commenting in those places.”
There is a serious rift developing in organized atheism right now – a lot of you probably know some of the background, since WHTM has covered many of the instances that constitute the genesis and development of this rift – but it seems to be widening and deepening at the moment. The rift is essentially between MRM style atheists, in whose ranks we can sadly place Richard Dawkins, the RDF, and American Atheists, and social justice, pro-feminist atheists and atheist organizations. Here you’ll see FTB and, to a lesser extent, the Center for Inquiry (who do a lot of good work advocating for reproductive freedom and science-based, secular health care, but not enough work advertising those aspects of what they do).
I just think that if you allow the former group of atheists to dominate your mental image of atheists, that means that the sexist libertarian wing of organized atheism wins. That means more struggles, harassment, and difficulties for women, feminists, and other marginalized people who feel strongly about atheism, secularism, and skepticism, and it means fewer opportunities for actual alliances between atheists and religious people who share similar values when it comes to social justice.
As to the term “freethinker”: it means, and pretty much always has meant, someone who doesn’t defer to authority and dogma in assessing reality and making decisions but instead looks at evidence and relies on their own judgment. It can and has included people who believe in god or gods but adopted heretical versions of religious teachings. These days, however, since the advancement of scientific observation of the world has pretty much removed any rational reason to believe in supernatural beings, there are very few people who adopt the label and still maintain theistic belief.
Before you go off on how mean I am to religious believers–I really don’t think that there’s any rational reason to believe in god or gods, and I’m not going to change my mind about that. (Unless you have some truly world-shattering new discoveries to tell me about, of course.) That means I think you’re being irrational on the subject of the existence of god or gods, not (contra the posturings of the MRM and their atheistic affiliates) completely irrational, delusional, idiotic across the board, or mentally ill. I’m fairly confident that I have some irrational beliefs (though I couldn’t tell you which ones; if I knew, I’d be getting rid of them) because I’m confident that all humans have irrational beliefs. It’s just the way our brains work.
But the fact that I had to go into a long paragraph of explanation detailing that my position that religious belief is generally inherently irrational (i.e. not based on evidence) is not an attack on religious believers nor an announcement that I think all believers are irrational fools is kind of annoying and I prefer to have discussions on the subject where I don’t have to interrupt myself constantly to offer those kinds of caveats. Usually. But this was nice.
Hi Lea!
You seem to be talking as if I had some hand in the invention of the term Brights, or was ever a fan of the term. I wasn’t. Hope that clears things up.
Also, I didn’t follow Falconer’s remark – my wanting non-atheists to not cede atheism, in their mental maps of things, to the libertarian sexist wing of atheism is a WATM complaint?
Is it feminism’s responsibility to deal with men’s issues?
Is it theists’ responsibility to reserve a notional space for atheists, or ours to keep it?
Why do the theists gotta fight our fights for us?
That’s about I feel about the subject of religion too. It is in no way an attack on a whole person, I just genuinely don’t understand why some people are evidence based in most things and then believe in a supernatural deity. I don’t get it at all. That isn’t meant as an offense to anyone who does. It’s just that I don’t understand it.
These are the atheists who are dominating the media, social and otherwise (fourth estate). It’s not a matter of theists, or other atheists allowing this group to dominant discourse, which is a perception issue, it’s that this group of atheists does actually dominant atheist spaces. The complaint inside social justice atheist circles is that this group is the dominant group.
The problem lies in atheism. The issue is that an atheist is defined by one trait only – disbelief in a god/gods. There is no central core of beliefs that defines atheism, unlike say a particular flavour of religion where we can see how that group contributes to the community, where they stand on social justice issues through their actions and teachings, etc. There is no atheist equivalent.
Given that being an atheist is no protection against being an arsehole, what is more important: how a person stands on social justice issues or whether they think there is a god/gods (or are agnostic)? And this is where feminism comes in.
We (in the West) do live in a Christian culture, so I freely admit that I have cultural biases here that I may well not be aware of, and other people should feel free to point them out.
And also I don’t want to turn this into a poll of how many atheists feel hostility here or don’t, because even if it’s a small minority, they have a legitimate right to not feel that way.
But within the context of progressive/feminist blogs, what you’ve described seems like the exact opposite of my experience. To me, it seems like atheists who are so inclined are quite comfortable dropping demeaning comments about religion of the “you’re deluded” or “you’re irrational” sort into conversations with rather little prompting and often don’t see why those sorts of comments are a problem at all.
In my experience on this blog, Kittehserf has been right: It’s annoyance at smugma that has been sometimes taken as hostility against atheists. Ann provides an example in this very thread.
While I’d very much like to change my behavior if it’s making atheists uncomfortable, I (again agreeing with Kittehserf) will not let this be a place where people randomly insult me and go unchallenged, which is what happens on basically every other feminist blog in the universe.
So can anyone provide an actual example of a conversation that made them uncomfortable as an atheist, or that they thought might have made other people uncomfortable? “Three years ago with no link” doesn’t count, sorry.