It’s a nice day here in Southern Arizona and sitting outside on my patio, I suddenly had a thought about all the recent turmoil being generated in mainstream publications concerning the state of atheism.
As someone that doesn’t hide their atheism, I am convinced that recent articles do nothing for the advancement of non-belief. Not just in America either, but everywhere.
Personally, I am distressed a bit that there’s now a perception of non-atheists that we are sexists and misogynists. Can’t you just hear the theists chuckling right now? After all , we’re the ones that point out the sexism and misogyny in religion. We’re the ones that speak out for equal treatment for all.
There’s no question in my mind where any of this comes from but for the life of me, I can’t understand exactly why? Why would anyone, any proclaimed atheist, want to cause divisiveness among atheists and then shout it to the world?
Are we perfect? Of course not. But are we anymore sexist and misogynist than the general public? If anything, based on the people that I know, I would say less.
If you want to affect change though, do you start out attacking those people that may be your allies? I don’t think so and it’s something most, if not all of us, learned as children.
Maybe there’s some that require a Dale Carnegie course or if not, maybe they should read a book.
Conservative Skeptic 
Seems like good advice to me. If affecting change is the goal, alienating allies is counterproductive. Then again, if the goal is something else entirely – say making a name for oneself as a martyr of sorts and drawing traffic to one’s rage blog – it may prove to be an effective short-term strategy.
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I’m only willing to work with fellow atheists who also advocate for the National League adopting the DH.
Fuck the Big Tent.
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I’m only willing to work with Atheists that sign the petition to ban Baseball in the U.S. Forever.
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The problem is, this is almost entirely the extreme liberal left that is doing this and they’re not just concerned with having allies, they want complete ideological clones. You have to be ideologically pure on all of their bullet points and if you’re not, they’re going to attack you because, unfortunately, liberals tend to eat their own. This isn’t about making rational, tactical decisions, it’s about doctrinal purity.
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I love the “eat their own”. I wrote a post recently where I discussed that, but haven’t published it yet. It’s a great point because they do. Look at conservatives; Although we may disagree here or there, we don’t actively attack one another (I’m referring to the atheists/skeptics of course).
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“If anything, based on the people that I know, I would say less.”
Of course you know that this is of little value given that whom you know is a self-selected, biased sample from which drawing any conclusion is not a particularly good idea.
“If you want to affect change though, do you start out attacking those people that may be your allies?”
You do if they are say things that are sexist, misogynistic, racist, etc. Sexism, racism, misogyny and the like should not be ignored no matter where they show their ugly selves.
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