Sunday, August 19, 2012

New Wave Atheism

Jen at Freethoughtblogs spells it out wonderfully:

I don’t want good causes like secularism and skepticism to die because they’re infested with people who see issues of equality as mission drift. I want Deep Rifts. I want to be able to truthfully say that I feel safe in this movement. I want the misogynists, racists, homophobes, transphobes, and downright trolls out of the movement for the same reason I wouldn’t invite them over for dinner or to play Mario Kart: because they’re not good people. We throw up billboards claiming we’re Good Without God, but how are we proving that as a movement? Litter clean-ups and blood drives can only say so much when you’re simultaneously threatening your fellow activists with rape and death.
 I arrived at this conclusion, and so have many over at FTB, many among the atheistic feminists, many among atheists who happen to not be white males. It is inevitible, really. We started with philosophers, then strong but reactionary public faces like Dawkins and Hitchens, now we need to define a movement not as what it differs from, theism, but what it is. We need a movement that is defined by what it stands for, what it hopes to gain. Holding one correct belief, there is no god, is not enough to move us into the future. We need not just correct beliefs, but justifiable ones. We need a construction, similar to science, to correct and form beliefs and causes.

Logic Priest

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