Originally a comment by Maureen Brian on Be ever tranquil and mild.
What Dawkins et al do, which by my standards – yes, folks, I’m a socialist feminist atheist who uses “rude words” and I have standards! – is worse is that they demand to be treated as leaders because they say they are leaders. A useless project anyway but more damaging than any amount of boisterous argument among intelligent people who are trying to thrash out a number of important questions.
Among the matters they refuse to address are – does this multi-faceted rabble want a formal leadership? does it need one? if it does then is the market driven hierarchical one best suited to the task? have they asked any other atheists? does trying to set up an authoritarian regime before you have secured the territory make sense? does it matter who they’re prepared to get in bed* with to further their hegemony? why go forward with this when even an averagely bright Christian can spot that there are so many questions unaddressed? why choose this particular set of averagely flawed people above any other? what are they getting out of it and is that fair to the rest of us? And so forth.
I am driven back to Alexandra Kollontai who scared the wits out of Lenin with her assertion that until this revolution extends into the bedroom and into the kitchen then it is no revolution. (A paraphrase, not a quote.)
Compared with all that unfinished business, is the telling of the story confided to him by friend in the way she wanted it told, as PZ did, really worth quite so many pixels, quite so many exploding synapses? Does it justify ever more frantic attempts to impose conformity? Should anyone who says they have left religion behind be using the punishment of excommunication?
I say no!
Spot on. I’ve been wondering for a while why these guys are just accepted as the leaders of atheists. I’ve never read one of Dawkins’s books; the first time I heard of him was in a freshman philosophy class discussing the concept of “memes.” I haven’t read Harris or Hitchens either, and now that I think about it, I’ve probably never bothered with books about atheism. Same goes for groups and gatherings. Why would I? I was an atheist before I found out about any of those things (and before some of them existed). I don’t need anyone to lecture me about how to do it right, thank you very much.
EXACTLY. Perfect!!!
Well as a person with strong Anarchist leanings I would say NO wouldn’t I. It is interesting tat many people assume we need leaders.
Do the large media and news-reporting companies have a role in choosing the atheist leadership? It seems to me that someone publishing a book and knowing how to work the media might be able to get themselves put in front of the camera. Do that enough times, and such a person becomes a “go-to” name in reporters’ rolodexes (or whatever they use these days). Eventually they become leaders without any formal process at all, chosen by people who aren’t even in their theoretical constituency.
Isn’t this how Muslim “community leaders” do it, too?
And if I’m wrong about any of this, please say so.
Well as a person with strong Anarchist leanings I would say NO wouldn’t I. It is interesting tat many people assume we need leaders.
Atheism is going to have as many authoritarian followers in its population as the general population, once it got large enough. So – yeah – there are a lot of atheists who are primed to find a leader they can line up behind.
When this site was created “freethought” I literally cheered. I don’t know if it was accidental or not, but I make a distinction between “freethinkers” and “atheists.” If we have more of the former, there will be more of the latter. But it’s not necessarily symmetric.
I belong to a major secular organization. I accept that it has leaders and I think that they are good people. But my membership fee entitles me to have a say in who those leaders are, to hold them to account and if I’m not happy I can always leave.
To claim to be leaders of the atheist movement as a whole is extremely arrogant. It’s equivalent to, say, the Pope claiming to be the leader of all Christians even those who are not Catholic.
I can’t help imagining a Pythonesque dialogue:
“I’m your atheist thought leader”.
“Well I didn’t vote for you.”
“You don’t vote for atheist thought leaders.”
“Well how do you become one then?”
Not sure what the answer would be but it’s probably no basis for a system of government.
Psht. This isn’t about being leaders. Groups like SPI are simply setting themselves up to spend the political capital that the atheist demographic is generating now and in future.
They don’t want to lead. They want celebrity status and power.