I did a search and couldn’t find anything on the topic, so excuse the n00b if I’ve somehow missed it.
I’d like to get some opinions on the http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Atheism_Plus movement, or even the fallout and disputes that have arisen from it among youtube atheists like PZ Meyers, Matt Dillahunty, Thunderf00t, etc.
Are you on board with it? Do you think it’s an unnecessary ideological division? Is the entanglement with social and political causes like feminism, for instance, just too many dogmatic steps away from the core principles of skepticism and reason? Or is this just what Atheism as a movement needs to evolve into?
And for the adherents, if there are any, does it bug you that that “+” looks so much like you-know-what?
While such an initiative is eminently open to assorted criticisms from religious quarters, e.g. that it is weakly disguised evangelical atheism or itself a quasi-religious movement because it uses a central belief system/worldview to rally members towards social action, I think it is valuable inasmuch as it demonstrates that atheism doesn’t preclude a conscience or selfless/moral deeds. Also, it provides a focus for interested atheists to engage in communal activities intended for the greater good because the charm of sitting around and merely sharing all the things you don’t believe in with likeminded people quickly wears a bit thin. Perhaps its greatest danger is that it could threaten the cohesion of the greater atheist movement, much like Protestantism did with Christianity. Atheists tend to be more tolerant of dissenting views, but as unlikely as it seems, one may even end up with the extreme and ridiculous situation where atheist groups start accusing one another of sacrilege/heresy/profanity (whatever the atheist equivalents of those terms might be).
You know my feeling is that it’s all fine and well.
If you want to unite a bunch of people together under some banner to help address an issue/ issues, go for it.
What you call it only matters for your news releases.
I do think that Rational thinking is the core of this. And people who master this will apply it to the parts
in there life they feel comfortable to do so.
Elevator gate is an excellent example of rational people loosing the ability to think rational.
I tried to untagle the furore about this a while ago and came out with:
Still not understanding exactly what Atheism+ is supposed to be. Looks to me like yet another “denomination” of atheism.
Even if it was meant to unite atheists, with the best of intentions, it did the exact opposite. Mostly because both sides got overly sensitive and threw toys like a bunch of children.
Humans, it seems, just can’t “get along”. Rationalist or otherwise.
In the end all it did was make me long so much more for a world in which we can get on with the business of living without all this shit.
I wrote quite a bit about it on Synapses and SkepticInk, like this post, but a summary version a few months on would be: The problems are in the us vs. them rhetoric that sometimes emerged, where the “us” and “them” were poorly defined. So potential sympathisers got ostracised, and people who rightly should be shunned got to get away with obnoxious behaviour in the guise of fighting some new oppression (in their minds, at least). The A+ forums are also a nightmare - filled with really draconian censorship and though-policing.
Anyway - there are hundreds of blog posts on this, so no summary is going to capture the nuances, or fail to offend someone. Fortunately, I do think it’s becoming clearer who the real idiots are on both sides, and I’m feeling a consensus of reason growing. I’ve got friends on both sides, and some of them are talking to each other, so I think there’s hope…