There will be no poll. It’s presumptuous of me to even suggest coming up with a symbol for freethought, and seriously, this is a small corner of the internet, with a small subset of godless people, and the ones who’d respond to a poll would be such a tiny fraction of the possibilities that it would be meaningless.
So instead, we’ll have discussion. Reason with each other.
Here’s the agenda: make an argument for your favorite, and sway me. Whatever symbol gets the most persuasive argument (and actually, the argument that larger numbers of people will like your symbol will have some weight with me), I’m going to use. Look ever to the left sidebar, where it says “Profile”—at the top of that, the symbol will appear at about the same size as the box with my face in it, and it will link to some godless manifesto (Russell’s? My own? I’ll think about it later). That’s all I’m aiming for at this point.
If it is successful, that means that some other bloggers start using it, putting a discreet or blatant symbol somewhere on their pages that link to an explanation. The hope is that readers will wonder what that odd squiggle is, click on it, and learn something.
If it is wildly successful, it will achieve fairly general recognition so that readers won’t bother to click on it anymore—they’ll get used to seeing it and know that the author is one of them goddamned freethinkers, and they’ll scurry off or settle down and read for a while. This is the most hopeful scenario, and I’m not counting on it; attempts to make that kind of widely recognized association fail much more often than they succeed.
So, what I did was simply skim through the suggestion thread and pick those symbols that generated some degree of repeated interest, and that also met my general criteria of being reasonably simple and easy to scrawl out. I stripped out colors and shading as well as I could and reduced everything to a high-contrast gray scale, and then scaled them all to about the same size…and show here some large ones and some tiny ones. If people want to get fancy and produce elaborate, full color versions with the flayed skin of Hypatia stapled to the sides and Robert Ingersoll’s happy face peeping out of some space, that ornamentation can be done later and on your own—the goal now is to get a framework that is recognizable.
| a period |  |
| affinity |  |
| asterisk |  |
| circle |  |
| dna |  |
| empty |  |
| galaxy |  |
| infinity |  |
| natural |  |
| phi |  |
| pi |  |
| spiral |  |
So, talk about it. Please don’t get hung up on details of the rendering—think of this as something that ought to be recognizable if it were chalked onto a sidewalk, for instance, and the final version that would go on a website can be cleaned up and made sharper—and let’s avoid new suggestions, unless you’ve got something utterly stunning and brilliant. Let’s just hash these out right now.
Another useful datum would be to let us know if you would use such a symbol on your weblog, or some other place. That’ll help us get a feel for the potential for wider use.
It’s presumptuous to act as though the results of such a poll would be binding or even meaningful beyond the tiny subset of people who would respond.
We’ve already had a thread where we reasoned and argued about what symbols would be appropriate.
I like the spiral, but the affinity seems to be the most unique and attention grabbing of the symbols. Shame it contains an english character.
I’m going to have to go with a period as my favorite, with the galaxy and the spiral both coming in a distant second. ‘A period’ is very simple and clean, and it isn’t a symbol that already has a lot of meaning. It’s appropriately abstract, yet beautiful, and the hidden question mark is a lovely reminder that everything deserves to be questioned.
Pi is nice and attractive, but it strikes me as a bit elitist. It’s not as much of something I’d wear and be proud of. The galaxy isn’t so bad, but I’d like to see something that comes with a little less meaning already attached. The spiral is ok, but not as clean. The asterisk and circle I think are too ubiquitous to work, and I’m not such a fan of phi for the same reason as pi. Greek letters just give off a snobby air to me. I use them all the time, but wouldn’t wear one. Ditto for the null set, DNA, and natural. I doubt all freethinkers could find meaning in them as readily as they could in ‘a period.’
So anyway, that’s my two cents. Even if it gets outvoted, I might still end up getting one of those ‘a period’ things made one of these days. It’s just too pretty, and I can see plenty of potential meaning there.
I like the Natural sign, it is easily recognizable, contains a double-entendre and it can go up anywhere. Even in my cubicle it work; right next to the crosses of my neighbors’ cubicles and the bibles sitting at their desks.
Plus, music is a universal language, right?
If we can’t just use a Georgia O’Keefe painting, I’m down with Affinity- and would definitely use it at our site.
Though it wouldn’t be all that international, I like the a-period symbol as it was presented before: Cyan ‘a’ with a gray period. I could put that on the back of a t-shirt and do one of two things:
If I was in a situation likely hostile to atheists, I could, for example, claim it was the corporate logo for Airex from Wipeout:Pure. The font and color would fit fairly well into that game.
Otherwise, I could tell the truth and hope to spread the meme.
Don’t think my plan would work out all that well for the rest of you, though.
The “a.” looks nice bold but to draw it by hand is a pain because you have to either colour it in, or leave it wimpy and thin.
Affinity – love the name of it. The symbol itself is so-so. Atheist isn’t something we capitalise as a proper noun, and really… what does infinity have to do with anything?
Take a pen and paper and try and draw the asterisk shown… for most of us it will probably come out looking out of proportion and messy. (Perhaps the difficulty in reproducing it by hand is not really important; I just know I would prefer something easy to doodle.)
The circle… can we really try and claim it as ours? I think it is way too ubiquitous to try and make people associate circles with freethought. I have the same objection to the infinity sign and the spiral.
The dna symbol makes me think of the X-Men. Maybe that’s a good thing I don’t know. =p
The empty set looks a lot like the “no entry” symbol, and I think we are looking for something without negative connotations.
Galaxy is cool, though the first thought that popped into my head was hurricane.
No real problems with the natural symbol, although I think something less angular and more flowing would be nice.
Phi I’m pretty indifferent to either way.
Pi I love most of all. “There’s just something about it…” isn’t a particularly convincing argument but it’s about all I have hehe. I like it for its elegance.
Hey, that’s not DNA: it’s a chromosome. What about all those poor bacteria you’re snubbing?
I like the empty set, largely because it has the greatest potential for humour (it means island in Danish, for example).
Bob
the natural sign.
has a kind of bad-ass death metal look to it.
The stick man. Because it’s the symbol nobody wants. That won’t happen of course, so if you’re going to use a musical symbol I would suggest the fermata, because that means you can hold the note for as long as you damn well please.
Having now seen how dated the American Atheists “atom” logo looks, I’d be against the DNA symbol. Sure, biotech is all the rage this generation, but 20 years from now? And what does DNA have to do with freethought, as such? Freethought is about more than science (and the particular “sexy” field of the moment).
I kind of like the affinity symbol. The “A” for atheism (or agnosticism) puts me off somewhat, since there are, strictly speaking, atheists who are anything but “freethinkers” (eg. those who live under political dogmatisms which substitute a quasi-religion of the State/People/Proletariat/Great Leader/etc. for traditional theism). However, crossing it with an infinity sign tends to nullify that by suggesting the symbolism that we, at least, do not accept that there are limits on acceptable thought and inquiry.
I’d want to circle that “natural” symbol, but mostly I like the Affinity symbol. Incidentally, that “A” is hardly unique to English — besides being a basic Latin-set character, it’s found in a few other scripts to boot. (I was just rummaging through the Unicode site….)
Your infinities are seriously asymmetrical — maybe you shouldn’t just rotate an “8”!
Limited computer skills prevent me from rendering a graphic. I think though that the classic cartoon picture of a lit lightbulb would serve very well.
Ken
They all seem to be nice,except for the asterisk. It makes me think of bath mats, bad wallpaper, and the Dating Game.
I like the affinity, and would certainly use it, had I a website.
The empty I dislike, because it can easily be misunderstod for the Danish/Norwegian letter ‘Ã’, which in Danish is also a word, meaning island. Even if it’s not misunderstod, I think it has the wrong symbolism.
i like µ = Microgravity; so i vote natural
Affinity is the clear winner. It’s memorable, incorporates an approximate “A” element, and will survive a primitive rendering (i.e. you could draw it on sand with a stick and it would be recognizable).
I like having the A, even if it is an english glyph, because it grounds the mark in something. Many of the other entries are simple appropriations of other symbols (infinity, the empty set, the circle, the musical “natural” symbol, the asterisk, or the phi) without anything done to the mark to indicate it’s supposed to have something other than its original meaning. And while using an A ties into a specific cultural context, it’s not an overwhelming meaning that overpowers the menaing we are trying to get our symbol to stand for. (“A-ness” is a less compelling meaning than specific mathematical ideas like empty set or pi, and lets us read things into it. In other words it evokes, rather than compels, a meaning.)
Going through some of the others:
The a-period I think doesn’t survive being drawn in sand as well; you’d have a hard time making it look like something other than a sperm with a partly detached tail.
The DNA version might work if we were talking mostly about biology, but we aren’t; we’re bringing in cosmology and ontology, plus a lot else. Likewise the galaxy is too specific, and also looks a lot like the yin/yang thing, which gets rather close to a religious symbol.
The spiral doesn’t really mean anything either.
The pi-circle is nice-looking, but the pi-ness of it overwhelms what we are trying to make it mean, which is something rather different.
Going back to affinity, it combines a pair a nice ideas – infinity and the A – without making one dominate the other.
The A can mean atheism, but it can also mean A as in the First, or A as in the primary, or best thing, or even A as in the rule of logic that says A cannot equal not-A. It can even just be a nice little non-symbolic triangle pointing upward. Or it could mean “all.”
Adding infinity to this somewhat evocative A suggests the direction we’re going with the meaning. We’re saying atheism (or free thought) can explain infinity, i.e. all that we can see, without adding in junk like invisible sky demons. I think that sums it all up nicely.
The empty set, simply because it says exactly what we need it to say. No gods. The set of gods is empty. Simple, direct, and difficult to confuse with (for example) agnosticism. It may not be the prettiest symbol, but it gets the job done admirably.
DNA! All The Way!
because its important to have a cheer too!
It also can be embelished into a larger 3-D model with the cross links and the actual helix shape or simplified down to the tiny x and still be recognized as a common symbol. It also represents physical evidence which is what we freethinkers try to base all our beliefs around.
Also, I don’t really see the accidental X-Men connection as a bad thing.
DNA! All The Way! Evolution is here to stay!
DNA! All The Way! Rational thought is on the way!
DNA! All The Way! We love you if you’re staight and we love you if you’re gay!
Wheee! I want to be in charge of the Freethinker’s Glee Club.
oops sorry. i should discuss. um, “free fall”? (hint, hint).
Despite whatever “negative connotations” it may have, I think the empty set symbol is pretty damn clever. There is also the added bonus that it’s easy to draw and could be substituted for the “O” in a certain three letter word. If I were to use it on my blog I would invert it so that the backroung is black and the empty set symbol is white (it matches the curtains).
I like the phi, it looks like a stylized tree and is easy to draw. However, given that the symbol has been around for a few years I’d wonder whether there are other meanings already attached to it.
The circled pi – mmm pie.
The a or A symbols are too atheisty I think.
I think the spiral is the strongest. It’s a simple shape, universally recognizable, present all over the natural world, easy to draw and aesthetically pleasing. Just don’t make rules about whether to draw it left or right handed, whether the opening is on the left or the right, etc. “A spiral” should be the definition.
The spiral is certain easy to reproduce, but you might want to keep in mind that it’s used in other places and cultures; Celtic, Australian aboriginal come to mind. It might be mistaken for something else. However, the galaxy is a spiral as well, and, like someone mentioned above, also looks like hurricanes and other natural shapes.
I like the affinity, dna, and natural shapes, too, although I find round shapes easier to reproduce quickly.
To be fair to Affinity it looks like a letter, but the letter is not exclusive to English, and the alphabet is widely used across the world (plus English and French are primary languages in transactions).
The most striking are:
a period, affinity, dna, galaxy,
infinity, natural, phi, pi
The most likely to facilitate a conversation:
a period, affinity, phi, pi
A PERIOD – I don’t know something is off with it to me.
PHI – I don’t know what people would make of it. “Oh, a tree. Pagan?”
DNA – This one would seem to make people make claims of “scientism”, or whatever sad term of the week is being used.
AFFINITY (Maybe it is the Stargate fan in me.)and PI are my favorites. But there is a certain something about GALAXY.
Affinity by a mile. The A can stand for many things, as pointed out above, and the infinity just brings out the possibilities.
I’ll disagree with C.W. on the empty set. Although empty is interesting and can stand for no gods, fairies or leprechauns, it could also be interpreted to mean atheists stand for nothing…and most that I know of certainly do not stand for nothing. Humanism, freethought, intellectual discovery, etc.
I’m for Affinity and would definitely post it on my blog.
I’d prefer phi. I’d definitely display it.
However, I’d like to address some of the symbols and why I think we shouldn’t use them. Basically, I’m talking about the first two, ‘a period’ and ‘affinity’. From what I’ve read, you’re trying to get a symbol that represents freethought, and not necessarily atheism. As such, I really don’t think symbols incorporating an ‘a’ should be used. Now, if I’m incorrect in my take on what you want the symbol to represent, then of course you can disregard this comment (except for the part about phi).
The natural sign
I’d use this on my soon to be ressurected blog because it fits so “naturally” with naturalism. I suggest too you link the symbol to some part of naturalism.org or The Center for Naturalism website. In fact, why don’t you join them (the founders include Brian Leiter and Dan Dennet)?
http://www.centerfornaturalism.org/ has a Statement On Naturalism
Of course, if what you want to achieve is shock-and-awe, don’t link to that site. Most everything there is presented positively; they don’t go out of their way to poke theists in the eye in spite of making their atheism and freethinking abundantly clear. They do address what I think is the most important issue: applied naturalism. After you get to atheism and freethinking, what can you say about personal ethics and social programs that might appeal to a wider audience. Goodness, they even say naturalism leads to compassion!
I’ve been mulling this over. I voted for the spiral earlier, but the stylized ‘a period’ is pretty clever: both a question mark and a letter ‘a’ can be found, if one looks.
After thinking it over, I decided to play with my little Paint brush and I’ve sent out a suggestion that combines a spiral (which implies natural beauty, order and causation) within an ‘a shape’ that also looks like a question mark. I hope PZ will consider posting it as food for thought.
Another vote for phi. I like the natural symbol too, but unless it is altered in some way we’re just going to be mistaken for musicians. The galaxy symbol is interesting, but a bit too sci-fi. The affinity is ok, but I doubt I’d ever use it.
Phi for the win.
I’m still for affinity, and as PZ’s challenge have posted it on my blog.
http://braving-the-elements.blogspot.com/2006/11/affinity-p.html
I really like the empty set, for all the reasons mentioned above. It says no more than it should say. Plus, it’s REALLY EASY TO DRAW with chalk, pencil, put on a t-shirt, a bumper magnet, etc.
Affinity, or possibly, Pi.
I vote for the Affinity.
First, I don’t see any particular issue with using an English character. English contains plenty of words and symbols imported from other cultures, and we already export many more. The origin language should not matter as long as the symbol is understood.
As for the infinity, at first I couldn’t see just what it had to do with freethought. But it’s grown on me, even over the short time that I’ve been lurking around reading comments on the last thread. Infinity makes me think of words like “unbounded”, meaning that we do not recognize the strict limits on thought of many religions. It also contains a kind of promise– freethought will not die, because there will always be intelligent, rational people who figure out the truth. From now until infinity, the one thing you cannot kill is thought.
Unlike the asterisk, circle, empty set, (plain) infinity, natural, phi, pi, and the spiral, the Affinity is not already attatched to a meaning. And unlike the DNA and the galaxy, it is not dependent on scientific discoveries that have the potential to look old and dated later. And unlike the “a, period”, it is far from a corporate-looking logo.
Finally, the Affinity is simply the most intersting and visually pleasing of the bunch. It is not something you would see in daily life. It would look great hanging from a necklace or adorning the back of a car. It could easily be scrawled in a few seconds (I just tried it myself of a piece of scratch paper) and it says exactly what we want it to say. Nothing more or less.
Plus, it has the coolest name of all!
I like the circled pi symbol. It is simple, easy to draw, looks great, and is easy to recognize weather you draw it with a thin pencil or a thick magic marker.
When I was a kid, my grandfather would grade his students’ math homework with me on his lap. I would always reach for his scientific calculator and even though I couldn’t count very well yet, I knew which button would fill up the screen. All I ever did was push the pi button and get 3.14159…..
Come on, you guys gotta love pi. It has endless complex depths of non-repeating digits all represented by a single little symbol.
There is only one.
In every conceivable system, across all conceivable universes, it is the same. It is where all systems start. It is everywhere, but nowhere in particular.
Where no answer is to be found, here is your answer. It is the null set: Ã
The conclusion is inescapable. God=Ã.
One of the neat things about using à as a symbol for atheism is that it is not simply a negation. The proposition “God=Ô does not deny God’s existence; rather, it asserts an essential truth about God. As Ã, God is empty and powerless. Ã, like God, exists only as a convenience for those with nothing better to think about; it is totally negligible.
And it’s a pretty symbol, and a nifty decoration for T-shirts, Messenger Bags, Coffee Mugs, Stickers, and Mouse Pads.
Richard
Affinity.
It has a great name and demands the “What is it?” question.
The natural symbol is in second place in my opinion, but it suffers from prior associations. Too musical. That’s the problem with most of the other possibilities: circles? phi? asterisk? empty set? pi? infinity? All taken. And the fallen-over question mark? Too weak.
The DNA symbol has the advantage of being new, but too X-chromosomy (is that a word?).
The natural sign still looks like a Schutzstaffel symbol. Maybe I’ve grown up in the wrong neighborhood, but that really wouldn’t go over well with most people here.
I still like the asterisk, for all the reasons that guy mentioned in that blog post.
My vote goes for the null set b/c it conveys the meaning of what it is actually symbolizing far better than the other symbols. The affinity is very pretty, though.
I like Pi-circled the best. It has a strongly iconic, easily-recognized look. On the more abstract level, it represents the way science can provide utility and explanation, without requiring certainty (no way to calculate a final expression of Pi). Also Kate Bush wrote a cool song about it.
Affinity I like second-best. On a purely graphic level (speaking as a retired graphics designer), it has a classy look, and scales well. I still think Pi-circled is better overall, but this one doesn’t suck. It has the natural tie-in to athiesm/agnosticism with the letter “A,” but it’s also moderated (or extended? modulated?) by the infinity symbol so it’s not only “A for athiesm.”
Infinity and Phi I’m pretty neutral about. They don’t strike me one way or the other.
The others I don’t like very much. The asterisk reminds me of graphics used in the hippy/flower child days. The natural note is too strongly associated with music. The empty circle isn’t easily recognized as an intentional symbol at all. The DNA symbol doesn’t look like DNA to a layman (it’s been simplified too much). The empty set will be misread as an attempt to show the planet saturn. The galaxy symbol is too similar to yin/yang. The Fibonacci spiral doesn’t say anything to me as a symbol (even though I know about that sequence)… it’s just a pretty design. The “a period” is an interesting shape, but probably requires too much explanation.
I think the affinity symbol is gorgeous. Looks like a golden-age science fiction rocket ship, and the way the infinity symbol is woven into it, yum.
The natural symbol is a close second, on the basis of its attractive angular symmetry and the built-in pun.
Of the two, I think the affinity symbol is more likely to have people saying “wow, what does that mean?” If you want that, go with affinity. If you’d rather have something that’s meaningful to those in the know, but won’t necessarily start a lot of annoying conversations, go with the natural sign.
I have to add my vote for the Affinity symbol for the following ‘reasons’:
1) The symbol is the most aesthetically pleasing.
2) “A” is the first letter in the alphabet.
3) “A” can stand for ‘atheist’ or ‘agnostic’ or ‘affinity’ (for knowledge or truth)
4) ‘Affinity’, according to Merriam-Webster, means:
“Your infinities are seriously asymmetrical — maybe you shouldn’t just rotate an “8”!” – David Harmon
The infinity symbol is asymetric in many typefaces.
To show my enthusiam for the empty set symbol, I have posted an official endorsement up at my blog.
I like the spiral best. It indirectly represents phi and a few other mathematical concepts, and with the related Fibonacci numbers crops up in biology all the time. There was even a piece in Nature a couple of years ago suggesting that the universe has a dodecahedral structure, intimately intertwined with phi, so that if you could transit the universe, you’d make your way to the other side rotated by the same amount as opposite pentagons in a dodecahedron.
In short, the spiral exemplifies for me the recurrence of mathematical structural in the living world, which is beyond any human culture or club.
I like Affinity, because it’s unique — many of the other symbols already have an attached meaning (which is different from what’s intended here). And, pretty. I’d use it, I’d wear it (as jewelry, t-shirt, etc…).
I especially don’t like the empty set. What I see is a NO! symbol without the referent (NO smoking, etc.).
Galaxy: I like the idea, but what I see is “hurricane”.
Some of the others seem a bit too grounded in math/science geekery — not that there’s anything wrong with that, I’m one myself — but using them sort of pre-assigns a target audience, I think (if that makes sense…)
I like the ideas of Phi (which will always mean philosophy to me) and the natural sign, but the symbols don’t stand out for me. Maybe combining them? I know, you said no new ideas…
DNA works best as a symbol, though it could be improved with some lines representing nucleotides. That would make it look less “chromosomey.” But, as Steve Watson pointed out, it’s too specific to one branch of science, just like the AA atom. It also looks a bit like the copywright (c), as if freethinkers get a nickel for every mitosis.
AFFINITY is the strongest runner-up, graphically. But it looks too much like a New Age pyramid, or something from Stargate SG-1.
The a. is clever, but too easily rotates into a question mark. Which makes it the perfect symbol for agnosticism!
I’d like to use the “a.” on my blog, though I really like the Pi as well, and that would translate better into the sort of necklace pendant that the theists like to use to proclaim their affiliation.
I really like the asterisk, but as an English major, the asterisk says to me “there’s something more,” (footnotes, endnotes, translation) which seems antithetical to a nontheistic symbol. I suppose the case could be made that it means “keep looking” or “this requires further explanation,” but it still seems a little woo-ish to me.
As a Physics major (yes, double-major) the asterisk says to me “all the terms in the wavefunction containing e are negative,” and that added negativity also seems antithetical to the cause.
Affinity’s neat, DNA/chromosome less so, and I agree that the galaxy looks too much like a hurricane emblem. My only objection to Phi is the amount of woo surrounding the Golden Ratio (I’ve been reading Flim Flam lately, so that sticks out).
It could only really be the DNA/chromosome. Sure, other signs have their points, but the one that best illustrates the triumph of scientific method over dogma is life’s blueprint. I like it so much I shall adopt it myself herewith :-).
The one that jumped out at me was the affinity symbol. I hadn’t seen it before and it seems perfect for atheism. But isn’t this symbol supposed to encompass freethought, which usually includes agnosticism and deism? I’m also keen on the natural symbol. (Although it does look somewhat fascist; makes me think of Oswald Mosley.) I hate to agree with AndyS, whose tone leaves something to be desired as always, but connecting it with naturalism rather than simply freethought would be nice. I think the empty set symbol is perfect for atheism (and, again, only atheism) in theory; but looks too much like a stop signal in practice. The spiral and galaxy seem to be popular with pantheists and I’m not keen on them anyway. I don’t like any of the others. So I’d say affinity provided excluding non-atheistic freethought isn’t a big issue or natural symbol otherwise.
I think the Affinity logo is very nice, the only qualm I have with it is that it is very difficult to write or read at small sizes. Like the Christian cross, it ought to be able to be used as a footnote indicator.
Because of this, I feel like the Natural sign would be best. Exceedingly easy to draw, reproducible at small sizes, and even capable of being typed in Unicode – â®. The clever intertwining of rationalism and musical beauty also shows that artistry does indeed exist in the freethought movement. This is the most convenient, recognizable, reproducible, drawable, meaningful emblem for the purpose we are seeking.
Tia Rachel said:
“What I see is a NO! symbol without referent.”
Precisely! It’s crossing out something that was never there to begin with. In that way it points out that the beliver’s faith has no referent.
Eh, the affinity is the one I dislike the most. I dunno, it looks too complicated, though maybe that could be mitigated by using a sans serif font. I think it’s the mixing of two different symbols that I find unappealing. I guess that’s it, as I dislike the circle-pi as well.
I still like the five-lobed asterisk (I still think it should be turned 36° so it points down), though the natural and empty set are growing on me. The circle is too simple, and not many people can draw a good circle freehand. And the spiral is even harder to draw. Besides, it’s the symbol of the god Orlanth from the Runequest RPG.
I kind of like the a-period (it reminds me strongly of Redmond Simonsen’s work), but it only works if drawn in that exact way; as a sketch on a wall, it wouldn’t look like so much. Dna looks like the trademark of a biotech pharmaceuticals company. In fact I may steal it for a RPG game….
Not sure about the galaxy. It may be the rendering; the arms look a bit thin and elongated. I’d prefer a tighter spiral, but then you’re back to the problems of drawing a spiral.
Mmm, I think that leaves phi. What was the reasoning behind that one again? I like the rendering on that one, and it would be distinctive if drawn that way, as one continuous line.
I’m especially fond of the natural sign. It would be a good symbol of our natural abilities to use both reason and imagination to make sense of the world.
Plus, musically speaking, it’s an “accidental”, which summarizes our acceptance that there is an element of randomness in human experience.
I agree the affinity symbol looks nice, and better fits the practical goal of *making* a new symbol vs. co-opting one, but… infinity has mixed connotations, at best. Numbers are unbounded, but so is God; religion is sometimes described as communion with the Infinite.
I know we’re discouraged from proposing new symbols in this thread, but I wanted to respond to the charges of DNA or atom symbols being dated, or datable. One of the roots of Western naturalism and freethought is Democritus, originator or systemizer of the atomic idea, plus ideas such as the Milky Way being made of stars too far away to distinguish, that the gods were not immortal, and possibly that human society came up from the animals, vs. falling from a golden age. And his famous phrase is “nothing exists except atoms and the void.”
So perhaps a combination of atom and empty set. Something like the American Atheists symbol but with a null symbol in the nucleus. Maybe work a galaxy in there as well.
And just for inspiration, a Greek stamp.
Hmmm…just wondering, but does anyone else notice that if we made the natural symbol a little curvy, it could look a lot like the galaxy thingy?
Sigh. Am I the only one who likes the spiral? I’d like it better pointing/opening up, though, instead of down. I’d rather think of it as a nautilus than a snail. It’s got the natural world, it’s got the beauty of mathematics, it’s got something that looks intricately designed yet is a product of evolution, it’s got it all. I don’t think it looks too much like aboriginal art, especially if rendered well; those tend to be spirals with evenly spaced lines, and if done correctly the Fibonnaci spiral obviously gets larger as it spirals outward. Plus, it *is* a link to cephalopods, PZ. Come on, you knwo you want it.
I dislike any of the ones that incorporate the letter “a”, because it’s so Roman-letter-centric. Plus, the “a period” looks like a sperm when it gets smaller, and really, men think they’re the center of the universe enough as it is. (joke! don’t email bomb me!)
The asterisk has bee taken over by Cingular, ’nuff said.
DNA – blech. I get the point, but the entire world isn’t molecular biology, and the rise of proteomics has made DNA seem a bit less important.
I love the idea of the natural sign, but it would need something else to make it “not just the music symbol” natural. I’m trying to think of how infinity could be incorporated into it, sort of like the affinity but with the natural sign where the “A” is instead. Ooo, maybe with the spiral inside/around it? Does that count as not a new suggestion?
Precisely! It’s crossing out something that was never there to begin with. In that way it points out that the believer’s faith has no referent.
But is that the entire point? (no, I’m serious, I’ve lost track…) My approach to the world doesn’t depend on what goes on inside someone else’s head (so long as that’s where they keep it!). Is the intent to be anti-theist? Anti-believer?
But I don’t read it in that way. What that image says to me is strong negativity. Anti-ness, without any specific referent obviously present in the image itself. Just anti-everything. I think we want a pro-something impression…
Asterix.
(1) Has a nice viril sound. Asterix.
(2) It has no meaning in itself. Generally points to the source (of something).
(3) It has the same pental symmetry as the American flag’s star.
Haiku for yous science guys:
The spiral is perfect-
it implies expansiveness,
symbolizes growth.
Symbol of movement,
it looks like a nautilus-
its math: perfection.
Rotate 180-
the universe is pulled in…
cornucopia.
Sorry, I canna’ type today.
‘a period’ is not unusual enough. Too little visual detail.
affinity combines a very common symbol (capital A or capital lambda)
with a moderately common symbol, in a unique way. Easy to draw, easy
to describe, easy to recognize, and no confusing interpretations.
asterisk is too hard to draw, and has too many existing uses.
Of the two DNA symbols, the circle is bad because it has many existing
uses, and atheism is irrelevant to bacteria – they cannot believe in
any God. We all have chromosomes, so the chromosome is preferred.
The empty set has too many existing uses.
The ‘galaxy’ is actually a hurricane. I think it was foolish to even
suggest this symbol; if theists figured out that we were using Soviet
Weather Control technology to create hurricanes and smash up cities,
we’d be in a lot of trouble.
‘infinity’ has an existing use, and is not as visually interesting as
the affinity. Further, your examples are awfully lopsided.
natural, phi, and pi all have existing uses, and are less visually
interesting compared to the affinity.
The spiral is probably too common.
The problem with the spiral, for me, is that it’s used in new-agery & neopagan images. Not that there’s anything wrong with neopagans… ; )
in other words, other referents exist.
http://www.geocities.com/vinleys/music/notation/fermata.gif
Fermata Pluses: Symbol for musical free thought, i.e., hold the note for as long as you feel like. Already curvy. Looks like the sun rising. Looks like a bird’s eye, birds are free. Doesn’t look like some kind of a Nazi symbol or something.
Fermata Minuses: None.
the Affinity symbol is my fave. It’s simple and elegant, ballanced and pleasing. It will be easy to draw by hand and easy to use as a design element. I have a warm spot for the natural sign, but it’s just too esoteric.
On pure asthetic appeal, I vote, in order:
1) The asterisk, provided that it is presented like a sand dollar. I really like that imagery. The asterisk alone won’t do it…the naturalness of a sand dollar reinforces the naturalness of the atheist position. It’s a symbol that can be found all over the planet, naturally occuring, right at people’s feet. So, for me, I vote the sand dollar and the asterisk.
2) The affinity. It makes it look like we’re masons.
3) DNA. The building blocks of life, a life that atheists hold above and beyond ideas about religion.
That’s it.
Well shucks! Do we want a “logo for godlessness,” or a “symbol for freethought,” or something else, like naturalism, or science, or math, or…etc, etc. On the one hand, it’s hard not to be negative if we go with a “logo for godlessness,” and risk excluding our agnostic, humanist, and/or naturalist friends, while on the other, if we want something “positive,” we risk being too inclusive and losing focus. Just sayin’.
I don’t think inclusiveness is a problem. If the goal is to create a symbol for freethought, then it’ll have to be pretty broad. It doesn’t seem to faze the theists that various sects can use the same image to mean wildly different things, why should it faze us?
By the way, affinity is really kind of growing on me.
Heh, the fermata’s cute.
Case for DNA (Xeno)
“Xeno” the circle of life.
I’m not opposed to being more inclusive. I could live affinity or a-period.
Excuse me, “live with.” I was just wondering which way the wind was blowing:)
Definitely the Affinity.
Aesthetic, relatively easy to draw, the A can stand for at least three things.
I really liked “empty” first, but I think the Affinity is less… offputting(?) and can evoke an interested “What does that represent?” question.
Funny, when I saw the “affinity” symbol I immediately thought it was based on a capital lambda: Î. I like it because it is unique, though I am not so sure that I understand the symbolism behind it. The biggest problem is that it won’t render well in small sizes.
The empty set was my idea, and it pleases me that many people like it: But I won’t be upset if it doesn’t make the cut. I wouldn’t worry too much about any possible confusion with the Danish/Norwegian letter Ã. The empty set is usually (though not universally) written much wider, really a circle with a line through it wheras a the letter à is written as an O (sort of elliptically shaped) with a line through it. Here they are side by side, for comparison: Ãâ . How different or similar they will look is quite font dependent, of course.
Like others, I find the galaxy reminds me of a hurricane, or possibly the spin cycle on a washing machine. But the symbolism is powerful, much more so than any other suggestion. It really points out our true origin.
The neutral symbol still bothers me as giving me an SS association. The thought never occurs to me when I see it in sheet music, but taken out of that context it does.
The pi-in-the-circle is nice, but it’s more about mathematics than atheism, really! My own department has in fact been using a symbol very much like it (note also the icon that will probably show in your address bar when you visit the page). I think I have seen other math departments using a similar symbol, but can’t remember one right now.
Big fan of Xeno.
I think it refers to both freethought and atheism through focus on biological life, the only known source of intellect, as opposed to a deference to the thoughts or very existence of supernatural intellects.
Maybe I should have suggested a neuron (which can be easily stylized).
My vote is the affinity. I don’t see this “A” people are talking about. I see a lambda which, among other things, refures to axioms in logical thinking. Yay!!
About the natural symbol… as used in music notation, it’s just a corrective symbol that cancels a flat or sharp that would otherwise normally occur in a given key. It actually forces an “unnatural” note in the context of the key being used, unless it’s signaling a change to a new key. It’s a very technical and specific use of the word “natural” that doesn’t have anything to do with “naturalism”.
It could even have negative connotations… the idea of force-fitting ideas into a concept of “nature” or “natural” that wouldn’t normally occur. But maybe that’s a stretch.
“…axioms in logical thinking. Yay!!”
Yay, indeed!
No to the Asterisk. In “Breakfast o Champions” it means Asshole.
1st Affinity
2nd Natural
I prefer any variations with ‘A’, affinity is very good.
I think emptiness should be hidden by ‘A’.
http://img55.imageshack.us/img55/4896/ajc4.png
In this symbol atheism is not a form of emptiness, but opposed with religious emptiness.
I prefer any variations with ‘A’, affinity is very good.
I think emptiness should be hidden by ‘A’.
http://img55.imageshack.us/img55/4896/ajc4.png
In this symbol atheism is not a form of emptiness, but opposed with religious emptiness.
My favorite is the “a.” because it’s simple, but not too simple, and it looks like a question mark on its side, perhaps representing our questioning of the idea of faith.
I would also defend the null set symbol. People say it’s negative, but I half-way disagree. To say atheism is negative, and therefore bad, is to switch one definition of “negative” (“expressing a refusal”) for another (“bad”). Atheism is negative, but not bad, just like the null set symbol.
I don’t like the asterisk, because it looks too much like the 70s. I don’t like any of the science-related symbols, because it almost implies that atheism excludes non-scientists. Most of all, I dislike all the infinity-related symbols, because they remind me of my Catholic religion classes in which God was defined as infinite.
Pi is so cool and the best visual for me.
To those who think it isn’t a symbolic enough symbol, consider the story-telling power of symbols rather than strict literalism. The religious have crosses, crescents, fishes, big fat men, 666 etc. ….that become iconic through story-telling.
Pi is an example of mankind unlocking a simple secret of the universe, rendering what was unkown, though still an infinite series into providing information that is readily applied in the real world. Thats what science and thinking does.
natural – too much derivative of western music (which had religious foundations)
affinity – too much like a cheap corporate logo, too humanist laden (“yes we (atheists) all have affinity”). yuk.
and finally:
“mmmmmm pi(e)” works for me as well.
For a while, I really liked the A-Period. Now, though, I think it’s better for an atheist organization, not a general freethought symbol.
Then, I liked the natural symbol, especially when circled. It would make a decent symbol for jewelry or shirts or something. I still like it, but the arguments for Affinity are really getting me.
I’m really liking Affinity. If I can be convinced to like something that I didn’t like at all when it was first put out, I think others can too. It’s easy as hell to draw, though there is the fact that it loses detail at very small sizes. It’s exceptionally recognizable, as I don’t believe anyone else has any sort of symbol like that. The shape makes it *very* easy to churn out necklaces or earrings without it looking dumb, due to the point on top. And it doesn’t have any predefined meaning at all, so there’s no dissonance to overcome. The one failing would be that it’s A-shaped for Atheist, but that’s not too bad. At least it’s not a symbol for torturous execution.
I really, really liked asterisk for a while, but once the novelty wore off I found that I hated it. First, it’s difficult to draw in a 5-spoked form. Second, it’s got a ton of meanings already.
Everything else I hate. They either don’t do it for me, or they look like something else, or they aren’t general enough. I *definitely* agree with the people arguing against the dna as showing off the current times too much – it’s true, atom-inspired motifs look sort of dumb now. I’d rather have something abstract.
For me there are three strong contenders, but only one real choice.
The Asterisk, the DNA, and the PI are all strong, recognizable figures which most people are already familiar with.
The PI could be confused with some college greek reference, and also, at least as rendered, looks vaguely suggestive of something new-agey, like an alternative religion.
The DNA is a good reference because it’s not a letter, but I am not sure it can be iconized well enough to be universally recognized, at a distance- enough so that it could take hold in the minds of those not aware.
The asterisk is the sure bet, to me, even though the red hot chili peppers have been using a eight-pointed asterisk for years. If the same five-pointed type shown here were used, expecially with the rounded ends, it would clearly be a different reference.
Okay, here’s the fermata in all four sizes all ready for the front page. Just copy and paste and you’re all set there Mr. Pharyngula site manager person:
http://img48.imageshack.us/img48/7145/fermatavt1.gif
Oh what the symbol of beauty and freedom that is.
A simple question mark should suffice. That is what we do, as skeptics, is it not? I would would structure the question mark as a DNA chain, though. It’s the nature/nurture thing. I’m so confused. A thought. At the moment, the image of a Martini glass just flitted through my febrile brain. The toothpick in the olive is a DNA chain.
It can really only be the Affinity, and here is why:
It doesn’t have any existing definition. Yes, the pi is cool, as is the natural and the null, but all of those are already associated with particular meanings that don’t really have anything to do with atheism/agnosticism/freethinking. We are not a bunch of mathmaticians, or musicians, and like a previous poster, the empty/null sign makes me think “No Smoking” or “No Pets Allowed.” Or even “YOU are not allowed.” Not the message we want to spread.
Atheism is not scientism. Yes, many of us are scientists, amateur or professional, but look how dated the American Atheists sign is. Biology/genetics may be sexy now, but something will eventually take its place and in the future we don’t want to be associated with ideas that are no longer relevant.
I like the “a.” and I love how it can be turned into a question mark. It is my second choice, but cannot be my first choice because there really is something kind of corporate logo-ey about it.
The spiral makes me think of Neo-Paganism. It is a symbol of The Goddess, and it memorialized in a very famous poem called “The Spiral Dance.” Let them have it, they had it first anyway.
The asterix is too hard to draw (although I like the pansy/pensee thing), the circle is boring, and the galaxy looks like a hurricane. The Phi symbol is really neat, but using greek letters as symbols is pretentious and cliche.
I LOVE the affinity for the same reasons that many have expressed already.
Pi’s an irrational number, isn’t it? Not the best connotation.
I’ve always liked spirals.
The Affinity one isn’t bad either, but is there a unicode character for it?
The galaxy one stay topical, since it’s likely astronomy/cosmology will continue to be interesting after so many other questions are answered. And it connotes Big Questions.
I’m finding this continued fascination with finding symbols to be rather curious. Why the need for one to begin with?
I think that the more anyone ponders this the more they’ll realize that this need for a unifying symbol seems to denote something similar to what the fundies continuosly cry out for.
MYOB’
.
> dated the American Atheists sign is
> associated with ideas that are no longer relevant
It’s not like atoms have stopped being relevant. Or like DNA is going to stop being relevant, unless computers take over as the substrate of intelligence. If the AA logo looks dated it’s because of the particular art style, or else because the atom symbol isn’t as associated with Progress, or is associated more with The Bomb and radiation.
But you’re still made of atoms. Science doesn’t change because sexiness does.
It’s not like atoms have stopped being relevant. Or like DNA is going to stop being relevant, unless computers take over as the substrate of intelligence. If the AA logo looks dated it’s because of the particular art style, or else because the atom symbol isn’t as associated with Progress, or is associated more with The Bomb and radiation.
But you’re still made of atoms. Science doesn’t change because sexiness does.
It’s not that atoms are irrelevant, it’s that that symbol of the atom is so horrendously inaccurate as to be devoid of meaning, except what it gained through use in ’50s sci-fi. It is a stylized representation of an incorrect model of the atom, and none of that has much to do with atheism.
My vote is still on Phi- but I must say the DNA has NOTHING to do with atheism. The asterisk kind of reduces the whole argument to ‘an aside or footnote’. Cirlce and Empty do much the same.
Affinity is atractive.
PHI PHI PHI
Sorry about the wonky formatting there. One more thing: Science doesn’t change because sexiness does, but science does change.
PZ Myers wrote:
Hmmm…just wondering, but does anyone else notice that if we made the natural symbol a little curvy, it could look a lot like the galaxy thingy?
Yeah, I did in the other thread. I don’t know how to link to a specific comment, but it’s the only one in the thread by me – my first post to this blog, actually. :)
I’m still sticking with the Affinity, for many of the reasons already stated.
1. It’s unique, unlike many of the other suggestions which already have associations to other concepts. That will help generate “what’s that?” discussions.
2. Despite the infinity symbol, it’s less likely than other choices to appear elitist to those who are less scientifically “in the know”.
3. It’s easy to draw, and would be attractive on t-shirts or jewelry.
4. The A can stand for atheism/agnosticism but doesn’t have to; it could be seen as the starting point (first letter) while the infinity represents a lack of limitations to thinking.
I don’t have a blog, but I would put it on my website and use it in my avatar for any forums I post in.
Agree.
A-period is a best symbol of agnosticism.
“It is a stylized representation of an incorrect model of the atom, and none of that has much to do with atheism.”
Incorrect but understandable — what’s a better representation of an atom people would understand? The null set symbol is not the null set, and the infinity symbol is not infinity, but they get the idea across.
Several thread comments have asked what infinity has to do with atheism, or freethought. The historical connection of atoms+void to freethought I’ve already described.
Maybe as an agnostic I’m biased, but I do like that symbol, and I could see it as much a symbol of inquiry as agnosticism, and inquiry is pretty universal to freethought.
Then again, it could also be a symbol of objectivism, which has as much woo associated with it as most religions.
How about a vertical DNA double helix unraveling at the top, so that it kinda looks like the “pi” symbol?
Case against “a period”: it’s only just now, even after several exposures and knowledge of the name, that I realized the big curve is supposed to be a lower-case ‘a’. I simply didn’t see it; the absence of a little mark in the upper right hurt. I just saw a circle with tail, or fallen question mark.
If you wanted to be semi-scientific about this, you’d show the symbols without their names to naive viewers and see what they make of them.
Incorrect but understandable — what’s a better representation of an atom people would understand? The null set symbol is not the null set, and the infinity symbol is not infinity, but they get the idea across.
Except neither infinity nor the Null set have ever purported to be a visual model of the concepts they represent (and, in fact, the unending, uninterrupted path of the infinity symbol is a pretty good representation of the concept; it’s like a two-dimensional mobius strip). In the 1986 graphic novel “Watchmen,” the godlike Dr. Manhattan determined that same atomic emblem to be meaningless, and chose instead a circle with a dot at the center, and a dot on the circle, a simple and somewhat more accurate representation of the Hydrogen atom.
Seems like that wouldn’t be too bad as a symbol; it’s simple, it’s expressive, and it’s similar to the null set and other symbols here without looking generic.
I vote Affinity also
It is the most striking of the symbols and the most likely to start up a conversation. And since it has no current symbolic association or corporate logo(ish, ness?) attached to it, it can be readily claimed as our own and we will not need to ‘re-teach’ or re-assign a meaning to it.
Affinity: It’s attractive and unique.
The Affinity sign stood out to me as very unique and pleasing to the eye. It can be taken as either an “A” or lambda and any religious connotations of the incorporated infinity sign is mostly negated by the lambda/A. The combo demonstrates scientific, mathematical, philosophical, etc, meanings while still being easy to draw and elegant. Sure, compared to the more simpler signs it gets a bit difficult to distinguish the Affinity sign at smaller fonts but it’s still not impossible to do so (and who really needs it any tinier, anyway? Plus, I can draw it even tinier with a good pencil).
The a-period is just too corporate-logo to me. Looks bad when written with a thin rather than thick line. Easily ignored.
Asterisk gets a “blech!” from me because it reminds me of an awful multicolored asterisk-decorated shower curtain that I once saw at some store. Too hippy (apologies to all you 60’s folks).
The Circle is just too simple to mean anything specific unless put into some context (but then it wouldn’t be a representative symbol anymore).
The DNA symbol screams either “X-men!” or “Genetics!”. Too Sci-fi and/or science-oriented.
The Empty symbol is clever, and does get a (negative) point across, but it’s not as pretty or unique as Affinity. Oh, well.
The Galaxy symbol is too much like a yin-yang symbol. Also agree that it could easily be mistaken for the “hurricane” symbol.
Infinity symbol. Too common to be used alone.
Natural symbol. I don’t know much about music, so the meaning would have to be explained to me (see, I already forgot its meaning), but symbol-wise there’s not much to object to other than it doesn’t grab my attention as much as either Affinity or even Empty.
Phi. I don’t get the meaning but I guess it’s okay as a symbol. Hard to get the proportions right, though.
Pi. For MENSA, I’d think it’d be great but for something much broader than mathematics it makes no sense.
Spiral. Too common in decorations/art in general.
So, symbols that I see as (maybe) acceptable are Empty, Natural, Phi, and (my obvious favorite) Affinity (that’s such a beautiful name!).
If I had to choose a second favorite, I guess it would have to be the Natural, followed by the Empty symbol because the Empty symbol seems to be a bit immature in its basic idea (“Say NO to sky-daddies!”). The Phi I still don’t get the meaning of.
I like “A period”. It’s clean and stylish. I also like the asterisk. It’s whimsical.
I hope you’ll reconsider doing a poll. It’d be fun a fun brand fot the community of atheists who read liberal blogs. I’d find a place to stick the logo on my blog. I may do it anyway, using the “A period” logo of it’s OK with the designer.
The affinity symbol has one glaring problem: it’s provincial. The country with the highest number of atheists in the world is China; the country with the second highest is Japan. Although atheists living in Latin-script countries probably outnumber those living in Hanzi-script countries, a simple Chinese character could still be even more recognizable than a Latin letter (I’d vote for the character for person).
Mathematical, musical, or even Greek symbols are more acceptable, because they have a somewhat more international appeal. For example, the number 2 is the same in all languages; I’d venture that even people who use scripts with different symbols for numbers, like Arabic and Devanagari, are familiar with Western numbers (and at any rate, people using these scripts are very unlikely to be atheists).
Of the remaining symbols, the ones that appeal to me the most are the asterisk, the empty set, and the natural symbol. The empty set represents the set of all deities, though most non-mathematicians would probably not get the idea; the asterisk’s meanings have already been explained; and the natural symbol on the one hand can stand for naturalism and on the other for the beauty of music.
A good symbol should be a) international, b) self-evidently atheist or naturalist or humanist, c) easy to explain, and d) not temporary. Greek letters fail b); scientific symbols like DNA and a spiral galaxy fail d). The circle could work, but it’s used too often. Christians say, “Stand up for the cross”; it’s impossible for atheists to appropriate something like “Stand up for the circle.” And besides, I think it has some New Age undertone to it.
I definitely like the affinity symbol, it’s very distinct and unique. Some of the other symbols, like the circle, aren’t unique at all, and could easily be confused.
#1 Affinity. Not everyone agreed on the specific meaning, i.e. reason to use it. (it does prompt thought – and it does look cool.)
#2 DNA: Not because if the allusion to evolution, but rather to the unique quality it bestows on each creature, including man.
Sorry to see the asterisk losing favour, but I think this may be largely due to the very hippy/flowery styling. Hopefully a more recent rendering can show that it doesn’t have to look quite so decorative (and starts looking more like a human form)
http://intepid.com/2005-05-25/00.39/ (scroll to bottom of article to see newer version)
A big plus is that it is one piece with no holes, so no issues with connectivity when cutting a shape or a stencil. In less rounded form it evokes a cross then breaks that by having two legs– Man can stand on his own :)
I think the “affinity” is great except that it looks too much like a secret society icon to me, as does anything based on greek/latin characters. It says “member of exclusive fraternity” rather than “think!”
“a period” looks like the graphic from a 70’s game show, and the styling can’t easily be changed because it is required to keep the question mark effect.
pi is a transcendental number, and as such it’s too easy to attach mysticism to that (see movie Pi for instance)
Similarly infinity is not actually observable, or necessarily relevant to godlessness. The universe itself is not infinite, nor will it persist (in a habitable way) for ever. It too is a bit of a “magic” number.
The only logic for the natural is in the name, and most people don’t know it as such (and “not sharp” comes to mind)
Galaxy symbol has a whiff of science/alien cult, and it doesn’t really say anything about godlessness.
The circle is too absolutist for me, and also has alternative spiritual interpretations like reincarnation.
What happened to the Darwinfish symbol? Was hardly mentioned in the original thread.
The Darwin fish is fine for specifically indicating your support for evolution in the face of creationism. Most Christians would argue that Jesus and Darwin are not particularly relevant to each other, and not mutually exclusive, so the actual meaning of the symbol is a little vague.
A good symbol should be a) international, b) self-evidently atheist or naturalist or humanist, c) easy to explain, and d) not temporary.
My vote is still for Affinity. I like that it’s A-ishness allows for atheism or agnosticism, as well as “first” or “primary.” I’m strongly drawn to it because it is a wholly new image — remember that the cross isn’t self-evidently Christian, except that the world has had two thousand years to associate the two.
The Affinity symbol will be international, self-evident, and not temporary as soon as everyone goes for it and starts using and explaining it. (Presuming it gets the majority opinion.)
And as to explaining it, who else out there likes Affinity? How would you explain it? To me the A is for agnosticism in the most literal sense: that I know next to nothing about the world around me, and that the only way to get a foothold is to observe, question, experiment, and form sound opinions based in facts. We’re all scientists, and all scientists are necessarily agnostic, if “a-gnostic” is simply “without knowledge.”
And if I went a step further, I’d even say that “not knowing” is almost exactly as good as knowing, because Not Knowing means you get to ask questions, consider new ideas, stretch your brain, and come out wiser and better-informed on the other side.
Sorry, am I going to hippie? :)
Also to point out, Alon mentioned the Chinese character. That’s again something that already has meaning; and considering the number of Chinese speakers in the world, it will color their interpretation of the symbol. The glyph you linked to would do, however, as a substitute for the A/lambda in the Affinity symbol…
Another vote for Affinity – it’s by far my favorite.
1. It is visually the most appealing: many of the others (e.g., a., galaxy, spiral, phi) are weirdly imbalanced or non-symmetric which is less nice to look at and wouldn’t work well as a pendant, seen from the wrong direction, etc.
2. It doesn’t have a meaning attached already. Others have mentioned this, but if the goal is to get people to notice it and ask about it, having no meaning already helps. Plus, people will remember it better if it has a new meaning — there is no competition with the old one in their minds.
3. It doesn’t give the wrong impression if people see it without asking about it (and most won’t). The “empty set” is bad because it has a high connotation of “go away, you aren’t welcome.” The greek letters say either “nerd” or “fraternity member.” The circle and asterix just look like pretty decorations. The natural seems like you’re saying you’re a musician. And I like the infinity sign quite a bit, but it does have unfortunate connotations of “God”, which is sort of the exact opposite of what we want.
4. Other people don’t like that the Affinity has an “A”, but I didn’t think of it as an A until reading the comments. It looks like the upside down lambda used in logic to me, too. Even if you interpret it as an A, as someone else pointed out, there could be many things that means: the first letter, as a metaphor for a starting point. “Ask”. “All”. If it really bothers people, you could probably move the infinity part up a little bit so it looked less like an A, but still was just as attractive.
5. The name Affinity is great – positive, unique, memorable, affirming and inclusive. Sounds like something I would want to be associated with.
6. The symbol itself is simple, easy to reproduce, and easy to recognize once you’ve seen it.
Hmmm…just wondering, but does anyone else notice that if we made the natural symbol a little curvy, it could look a lot like the galaxy thingy? – PZ
But that would make the natural symbol less METAL! You want something strong and assertive, well there it is. For all its corny “this is Spinal Tap” parody, a lot of Tampa, FL metal folks smacked the God-belief in the face with a metal fist in the late 80’s and 90’s, when the politicians were bowing in flaccid conciliation to the right-wing goddies. Drop the cheese, keep the angular symbol. The Natural symbol.
Compared to other options, it has less competition with other (mis)interpretations, it’s easy to render, and it’s bad ass. I mean, it looks cool. A little German, maybe, but cool nonetheless.
…and we have now recreated the previous thread in its entirety.
(sigh)
Looks like the affinity symbol is among the most popular, which pleases me as it’s my fave too. Pretty, distinctive, and I think even the Asian ideographers would recognize it. (Certainly better than we recognize any of their ideograms!)
The natural symbol is fairly popular, but some folks feel it looks out-of-context, and others are flashing on the SS logo. Circling it might help with both those issues. Perhaps you could put up some circled naturals for comparision?
To clarify why I don’t like the others:
As noted elsewhere, the bare infinity symbol is hard to make “hang straight”; I’d point out that the galaxy/hurricane and the null-set have similar problems.
The spiral seems too visually “busy”, and is too heavily used elsewhere.
The “galaxy” is too close to the hurricane symbol. Also, *our* galaxy doesn’t look like that, and it would be as “busy” as the spiral if we tried to draw the Milky Way.
Asterisk, pi (even circled), phi, and the null-set are all too heavily used elsewhere, with too much semantic freight.
The lone circle looks, well, blank, and carries it’s own semantic freight.
The circled DNA symbol is a little too topical (taking the lesson from that atomic-A), and doesn’t seem relevant to atheism per se.
The a-dot is too dependent on that particular font for it’s appearance — as shown, it does look pretty corporate, and freehand, it would likely decay into a scrawl. Also, you’d have trouble hanging it on a necklace, especially with that disconnected dot.
The fermata is pretty, but I suspect it’s too unfamiliar, and that dot is even more likely to “come loose” than the a-dot’s. For a necklace, you’d need some kind of background plaque.
a period
It doesn’t already mean something else.
I like the affinity. It’s distinctive (unlike a circle or spiral), and unlike the a lot of them (asterik, infinity, natural etc), it isn’t already in common use to mean something else. Using a galaxy as a symbol seems a little “alien cult” to me, and the “period” one looks like a stylized roll of toilet paper.
Besides, it looks cool.
There is one other nice thing about the Affinity symbol. If you squint and look at it just the right way, it vaguely resembles a Pentagram… which will drive the fundies nuts.
P.S. Just for fun, here’s what a few of the proposed symbols mean as American Hobo signs, from the early part of the last century:
Empty circle = “There is nothing to be gained here.”
Fermata = “Authorities here are alert.”
Infinity – “Police here frown on hobos.”
Empty (mirror reverse) – “Good road to follow.”
Lots of baggage in these simple symbols, and I’m sure the Hobo stuff is only scratching the surface.
The Affinity symbol looks the best, and has no prior meanings, but it does seem pretty pretentious: how is freethought related to infinity?
I think making a shirt with the null set would go over well, even if it does have prior meanings, though it would confuse the danes.
Other than those two I think the Pi and natural symbols (I especially like the pun involved) could work too. All of the others I don’t like at all (at least for this purpose).
My vote goes for the Affinity. It is quite nice to look at, easy to scribble or to render, and free from any particular symbolic baggage. The inclusion of the English character “A” might be problematic, but it looks sufficiently different from the actual character that I think people will be free to say it either is or is not an actual “A”.
If I get any sort of second vote (if there is a run off) I’d take phi. It just looks good…
I agree with other comments that the ‘a period’ symbol is actually not easy to draw, because it needs to be solid to have any resemblance to an infinity symbol. I personally also think it looks rather dated (although I do like the clever idea behind it).
I find the affinity symbol very appealing on aesthetic grounds. The use of â as a cross-bar for the A is rather elegant, and yes, it’s easy to draw. The prefix ‘a-‘ was understood in the same way in classical Greek as in modern English, so as well as being an intelligible symbol for ‘atheism’, it would be easy to explain a wider connotation of the combined A and â: atheism as a worldview that is not limited by the unnecessary starting assumptions of religion.
As a musical type, I quite like the fermata. As a purloined musical symbol, it beats the natural; I like its similarity similarity to an eye, and the encouragement to ‘stop and think – for as long as you want’. However, I do have two problems with it:
Firstly, most people I’ve asked don’t know what it means, but do recognise it as a musical symbol, probably because it’s so commonly seen on those appalling Christmas cards with non-musicians’ attempts at musical notation (‘Silent Night’ is probably their favourite victim. Knowing its original meaning, I think the fermata would be more appropriate for an organisation like Slow Food – whose logo, by the way, is a snail with a prominent spiral shell!
Secondly, how would you make a fermata pendant without either the dot falling off, or ending up with a T that you forgot to water?
Executive summary: thumbs-up for affinity!
It’s only international if you use the Latin script (or maybe Cyrillic). Since the region with the highest concentration of atheists in the world doesn’t, I think it would be prudent to come up with something more inclusive.
The character for “person” isn’t that hard to recognize.
A graphic artist objectively contemplates the candidates…. I have some criteria that I think are especially pertinent:
1. Recognizable from any angle and at any size.
2. Not easily confused with something else.
3. Easily drawn with a thin, single-width line on a poor surface.
4. Forgiving of poor drawing skills.
5. Meaningful to people from as wide a variety of cultures and languages as possible.
6. Useful in 3-D (as jewelry, for example) as well as 2-D.
7. Clearly associated with godlessness.
a period: Highly dependent on precise drawing (a sloppy oval wouldn’t make sense, and the period has to be huge enough to see well, very hard to do if the symbol is written large with a thin marking object). Would look like a question mark if rotated, or possibly a letter b or q (unless we also use the question mark as our symbol, this detracts from recognizability). Not meaningful to people who don’t speak a language in which a lower case “a” is the first letter of the word for “atheism” or who don’t use the period to indicate a sentence close.
Affinity: Very attractive symbol as a logo, but difficult for the unskilled to draw properly (especially if the breaks in the lemniscate have to be retained). Not clear what the lemniscate has to do with Godlessness. The “A” is obscure to people who use different alphabets.
Asterisk: Looks like a hippie flower. Impossible to draw quickly, or at all. Doesn’t mean anything (let alone godlessness, naturalism, or humanism). Resemblance to a human figure is at best strained. Dissention exists over which font to use or whether it should be in a circle.
Circle: Easy to draw badly. Good connection to godlessness (it’s empty yet complete). Recognizable from every angle. Competing Zen symbol. Very easy to use as a hand signal (suggest touching middle finger to thumb). Confusion might arise from its sheer ubiquity (is that circle JUST A CIRCLE, or…?). Meaningless as jewelry (or, rather too meaningful already).
DNA circle: Likely to rapidly degrade into an X in a circle (X-Men? A form of swastika?). Not terribly difficult to draw. Easy to recognize if seen from a different angle. Not dependent on culture or language. Science-y rather than purely godless meaning. Good for jewelry.
Empty set: WAY too confusing: depending on angle, looks like an electrical symbol, a Norwegian letter, the Greek letters theta or phi, some Russian letter, the planet Saturn, the NO traffic sign, or something cut in half. Could be construed as anti-Zen. Easy to draw. Sassy. Geeky.
Galaxy: Easier to draw as an open circle than a filled in one. Looks like a hurricane map symbol. Not clear what the connection to godlessness is supposed to be. Spacey. Sharp-pointy as a 3D object.
Infinity: Yes, it’s cool, but it’s nothing but a number 8 when seen from the side. No connection to godlessness, much connection to religion.
Natural: Connection between music symbol and nature is sloppy and REALLY reaching; connection to godlessness unclear. Fragile and pointy as a 3-D object.
Phi: Standing for what, philosophy? Not sure what this is supposed to be for, exactly. Easy to draw and good for 3-D. Easy to confuse with something else (a badly written p?) especially if seen upside down.
Pi: Great naturalistic symbol showing, for example, the infinite mystery and perfection that already exists in nature (no need for God!), so an immediate and direct link to godlessness. Graceful and attractive rendering of it in a circle, incredibly easy to draw and use as a 3-D object. Easily recognized at any angle and understandable by practically anyone. Not easy to confuse with anything else. Makes you think of things related to reality, thought, classical philosophy. Vanishingly unlikely to be offensive to anyone.
Spiral: Easy to draw and impossible to mistake. Tough to use as a 3-D object. Connection to godlessness, if any, unknown. Kind of pagan.
So, I guess that from the above my pick is the pi symbol… didn’t really expect that as I thought it was kind of blah when I first saw it. But it does really work.
In fairness, I should point out that I’ve just discovered a symbol similar to ‘affinity’ that is associated with Scientology: an infinity symbol either inside or across an equilateral triangle.
On the other hand, I doubt many people could even tell you the main symbols of Scientology, let alone this rather obscure one.
I was once a firm lover of the * but, after seeing that Affinity and thinking instantly, atheist. I change my vote.
1) Although, it’s not a reason exactly, I would get that tattoo’d onto my body (I have no tats currently).
2) A = Atheism.
3) Infinity = Forever.
4) The infinity loops seem to grab the legs, so it seems a very optimistic and yet grounded symbol.
5) Easy Pendant creation.
6) Infinity symbol looks like double helix.
7) Instantly recognized.
8) As much as the * looks like a pansy, which is said to be associated with free thought… I’ve never heard of it outside that wikipedia article. For all we know it’s just vandalism.
9) Affinity for a name is really positive.
10) Symbol is pleasing.
“I would get that tatoo’d on my body.”
Now that’s commitment!
It’s already been pointed out that the “Affinity” symbol can be thought of as based on a capital lambda rather than a capital A. It hasn’t yet been pointed out that capital-lambda used to be used by mathematicians to mean … the empty set. (It still is, occasionally.)
As others have already mentioned, the Affinity symbol is Western-centric. I’m sure there are other Asian atheists who read Pharyngula, no? I don’t like Affinity or a-period because nobody is going to know what it is if I wear it to China. Affinity also looks like a cult symbol.
My vote is for the natural symbol.
The affinity is my fave too. Simple, elegant, incorporates the infinity symbol which gives the a for atheist weight and depth. I’d happily use it on my sites. Tho I’d probably use some of the others as well….
I think Speedwell summed it up best. I will add my comments to each symbol in order of least favorite to favorite.
a period: It looks too much like a company logo. The tail is droopy and dull. Also atheism/naturalism should not be dependent on roman letters.
affinity: Too complicated to draw. Another roman letter.
infinity: Not unique enough. Seems like a cliche.
galaxy: Looks like the hurricane symbol. Also used by the Universist pantheist/agnostic cult.
empty: Too negative. I think Joe Sixpack would wonder why the cigarette is missing.
DNA: Looks like another corporate logo. Maybe a biotech company? What if we meet atheist aliens who aren’t based on DNA?
phi: Kind of OK, but too boring.
spiral: Too new-agey.
circle: I liked this one at first, but now I think it’s too simple.
asterisk: This was my favorite at first, but then I realized how hard it was to draw.
So my favorites are the natural and the circle pi. The natural is a little boring as it is displayed here, but maybe it could be jazzed up a little. How about putting it in a circle? I think that is how it appeared in the first post. However the simple version is a unicode character which is handy. I’m torn between the natural and the circled pi. Either would make fine jewelry, and they are both easily drawn. From a pure aesthetic viewpoint, the natural looks a little too angular and militaristic. So if I had to choose, my final vote is for the circle pi.
Based on G’s comment above about capital Lambda, I withdraw part of my objection to the Affinity symbol on the grounds of it looking like an A. But I’m still a bit confused about how a lemniscate bears any kind of special relationship to godlessness.
I know! I know! a person character with an infinity wrapped around its legs … (I’m not entirely joking – the bit at the top would help differentiate it from a certain scientology symbol .)
Affinity is, imho, problematic because of the latin A letter : what about indian, chinese ou arab atheists?
The galaxy symbol is quite nice, athough I have to confess that the dirty-minded like me could read it “69”.
I have a problem w/ both Pi and the chromosome. They’re nicely rendered, but far too restrictive a symbol, witha tiny bit “old-school-scienticism” flavor.
That, and pi=nerd ;-)
The a-period is a bit too reminicent of the eighties era of brand design to my taste.
About Phi : the upside is that it reminds us of Greek philosophy, mathematical tradition and what was called in the old times “natural philosophy”, which is good.
The downside is that it reminds us of those superstitious old grrek, always talking about wild theories they couldn’t test.
Still, one beautiful letter (but the alphabetic objection applies here too)
For unknown reason, i love the asterisk, but I am aware it’s difficult to drawn by hand. Still… It’s nice and simple, isn’t it?
Anyway, I willa gree with the final decision : my blog sorely lacks this king of thingies.
Another top vote for “Affinity.”
Second and third: “Natural” and “dna”
Least liked: Circle, Asterisk, Empty, and Spiral. Like others, I think the Empty sign and the Circle are too negative, and imply that atheists believe in nothing. And yeah, the asterisk and spiral make me think of bad curtain designs from the 50’s.
Caledonian, in this thread, commenters’ positions are consolidated around a smaller number of symbols.
I love the concept of the DNA symbol but hate the graphic. DNA isn’t just about molecular biology but is about the triumph of reason over superstition. But it needs to be a lot less like an X in a circle in order to be something unique and recognizable. Two crossings of the helix in a circle would be a really nice looking symbol that wouldn’t be hard to draw.
Phi is OK but needs something to make it distinct from just a letter. Two phi symbols, one rightside up and one upside down slightly interlocking, would sort of look like a loop of DNA from an oblique angle. Hard to draw though.
I really *hate* the Affinity sign. It’s not bad graphically but the capital “A” really suggests some kind of “big-A” Atheist movement, not just freethought. Lambda with infinity over it would be much less objectionable.
I know you didn’t want new suggestions but I really like the fermata. It’s eye-opening and so simple to render. An oldie but a goodie is the fish with feet — easy to draw and already well known. If you want new ones’s I’ll draw you a DNA you can’t resist.
If we had to go with one on your list I’d pick the asterisk. I have a certain fondness for it myself, and it can be drawn by hand with practice by drawing a five-pointed star with loops instead of points. As a freestanding symbol on a blog it would say “see footnote”, while as something on a wall it would be a caveat on your assumptions. And freethinkers can add it to their aliases, and I can claim I was the first.
In all modesty…
…as the originator of the idea for the Affinity sign (although that wasn’t my name for it) I feel I should register my vote for it. I especially like the way it has been rendered here.
Ï didn’t make the cut? What about a more stylised version: logo
Every chinese, indian and arab, who familiar with math will be familiar with A too.
Latin is the universal language of science. I don’t see the “Affinity” as uniquely western for that reason.
When the suggestion came down for the use of the Chinese person logograph in place of the A/Lambda in “affinity,” I thought it was a fine idea. The more I think about it, though, the less sure I am. First, it seems to divert the attention from reason/science/freethought to humanism/humanocentrism, and the infinity symbol compounds that manner. Second, while “a” is a word, while “a-” as a phoneme has some meanings of its own, and while the capital Lambda has various meanings in various contexts (I know the lowercase version is used to represent wavelength, but I’m blanking on the Physics meaning for the uppercase one), none of them are so pinned down as “person,” which seems to be the whole interpretation of the Chinese character (correct me if I’m wrong). While one invites a variety of interpretations, the other does not. Third, isn’t using a Chinese character just as Eastern-centric as using a Roman/Greek/Cyrillic character is western-centric? As far as I’m aware, philosophers, scientists, and mathemeticians worldwide use the same symbols (pi, phi, lambda) to represent the same quantities, whereas Chinese symbols, for various reasons, have not enjoyed the same universality.
Plus, A is the abbreviation for Amperage, which means the symbol can also be electric. Boogie-woogie-woogie.
No, on the other thread, σ got a few comments, and then interest dribbled away.
Right now, it looks like Affinity is carrying the day, with most people arguing strongly for it. If that’s the way it goes, I’ll abide by it, but I do have reservations.
I don’t really like “A” as a part of the symbol. It’s a bit trite, although I do think the version here is very nicely rendered.
The “infinity” part bugs me. I don’t think of freethought as encompassing that kind of abstraction. σ appealed to me because it implies uncertainty to me, or range of variation, something a little less absolute. I personally prefer the ambiguity of some of the symbols–I still like the asterisk (I grew up in the 70s, though, so ‘flower power’ doesn’t trigger revulsion), and phi, and the spiral, and the natural.
I think what I’d like to avoid is the plague of the Brights, where by going for something that they thought was positive and carried loads of good associations, they ended up fueling everyone’s perception of atheists as snotty and snooty. I’m afraid that enthusiasm for the plusses of affinity is going to sweep the cryptic and open symbology of the others away…when maybe we should avoid something that triggers gung-ho cliquishness.
I think I like the affinity symbol the best. As practically everyone else who has spoken out for it, it looks classy and unique. The natural sign and the galaxy are tied in second place with maybe the natural sign just barely edging out the galaxy symbol.
The swirl and spiral are terrible, because they look like California start-up logos from the 90s.
Music is NOT an international language… or at least western notation, theory, harmony, etc are not. It’s at least several languages. The “natural” sign is culturally specific to European music. Unfortunately, the Affinity as the same problem, it situates “atheism” within English-speaking.
I’m for the asterix (pretty much baggage free) or the null set symbol, because it’s cool.
Vote Early Vote Often: I still vote Affinity.
I have another reason to accept the Affinity icon. The logo can be seen as a network with 5 nodes of the order 4 and exactly two nodes of order 1. This means, via Euler’s proof on the subject that the Affinity icon can be transversed by a single path. You must start from the bottom and end at the bottom… ain’t that a metaphor for life.
Note that if the infinity within the arch is placed at the tangent. That is to say the infinity just touches the edge but does not cross, it becomes a network of 3, 3, 4, 1, 1 which cannot be transversed by a single path.
Euler’s proof on the Seven Bridges of Königsberg is available on any good math/puzzle website.
“. . . flayed skin of Hypatia?” Umm, I’m not nearly through with my integument.
Hypatia
Vote Early Vote Often: I still vote Affinity.
I have another reason to accept the Affinity icon. The logo can be seen as a network with 5 nodes of the order 4 and exactly two nodes of order 1. This means, via Euler’s proof on the subject that the Affinity icon can be transversed by a single path. You must start from the bottom and end at the bottom… ain’t that a metaphor for life.
Note that if the infinity within the arch is placed at the tangent. That is to say the infinity just touches the edge but does not cross, it becomes a network of 3, 3, 4, 1, 1 which cannot be transversed by a single path.
Euler’s proof on the Seven Bridges of Königsberg is available on any good math/puzzle website.
Also, I love the mix of symbology with the infinity on to the legs of a single finite rise and fall. Like the rise and fall is a symbol for life, whereas the infinite is spacetime as a backdrop.
sigma has an appropriate math connection, but it’s too much like circle, and degrades too easily when scrawled (as any student can tell you).
Far away, the empty set is the best, I put my vote on it.
I’d be thrilled with the Affinity, the empty set, or the natural (preferably in a circle). The only ones I would be unwilling to use are the galaxy (as rendered here) and the a-period, because they’re both butt-ugly. I don’t care so much about the existing meanings of some of the symbols, because when it comes to creating a symbol for a movement, the consensus to use that symbol matters much more the original meaning. The asterisk, circle, whatever, would represent atheism because atheists say it does.
Just throwing in my vote with the Affinity symbol.
Quick question. Are agnostics included? I believe in no God, I have a trust in the scientific method and inductive reasoning, and I feel that organized religion is an evil plaguing mankind. I don’t however, believe in the impossibility of God. I just can’t care a fig either way.
If God exists, he has no affect on whether or not the physical laws which act on the universe are constant. Either they are or they aren’t. Evidence consistently points towards the fact that they are, and I trust that. God? Meaningless. You need a well-defined question before you have an answer, and “God” is the opposite of “well-defined”.
I know people label this “weak atheism,” but I prefer agnosticism, specifically apathetic agnosticism.
Umm, I’m not nearly through with my integument.
But Hypatia of Alexandria is. Unless she…survived.
affect
Proofread. *headdesk* Proofread. *headdesk* Proofread.
Like Domomojo, I think Speedwell summed it up best:
“AFFINITY: Very attractive symbol as a logo, but difficult for the unskilled to draw properly (especially if the breaks in the lemniscate have to be retained). Not clear what the lemniscate has to do with Godlessness. The “A” is obscure to people who use different alphabets.
PI: Great naturalistic symbol showing, for example, the infinite mystery and perfection that already exists in nature (no need for God!), so an immediate and direct link to godlessness. Graceful and attractive rendering of it in a circle, incredibly easy to draw and use as a 3-D object. Easily recognized at any angle and understandable by practically anyone. Not easy to confuse with anything else. Makes you think of things related to reality, thought, classical philosophy. Vanishingly unlikely to be offensive to anyone.”
And if you turn the Affinity symbol upside-down, it can do double-duty as a symbol for Veganism/Vegetarianism! Can’t miss!
The goal is to have a symbol that atheists and agnostics and pantheists and deists could all use…which is another reason for some unease about using an “a”.
Aaaaah! Flayed Zombie Hypatia!
I’m going to keep pushing for the empty set symbol, and republish all its favorable posts.
C.W said…
“The empty set, simply because it says exactly what we need it to say. No gods. The set of gods is empty. Simple, direct, and difficult to confuse with (for example) agnosticism. It may not be the prettiest symbol, but it gets the job done admirably.”
And then I said…
“Despite whatever “negative connotations” it may have, I think the empty set symbol is pretty damn clever. There is also the added bonus that it’s easy to draw and could be substituted for the “O” in a certain three letter word. If I were to use it on my blog I would invert it so that the backroung is black and the empty set symbol is white (it matches the curtains).”
Then some decrepitoldfool said…
“I really like the empty set, for all the reasons mentioned above. It says no more than it should say. Plus, it’s REALLY EASY TO DRAW with chalk, pencil, put on a t-shirt, a bumper magnet, etc.”
Then Richard Blumberg said…
“There is only one.
In every conceivable system, across all conceivable universes, it is the same. It is where all systems start. It is everywhere, but nowhere in particular.
Where no answer is to be found, here is your answer. It is the null set: Ã
The conclusion is inescapable. God=Ã.
One of the neat things about using à as a symbol for atheism is that it is not simply a negation. The proposition “God=Ô does not deny God’s existence; rather, it asserts an essential truth about God. As Ã, God is empty and powerless. Ã, like God, exists only as a convenience for those with nothing better to think about; it is totally negligible.
And it’s a pretty symbol, and a nifty decoration for T-shirts, Messenger Bags, Coffee Mugs, Stickers, and Mouse Pads.”
Then Dave Carlson said…
“My vote goes for the null set b/c it conveys the meaning of what it is actually symbolizing far better than the other symbols. The affinity is very pretty, though.”
In reply to TiaRachel I had said…
Precisely! It’s crossing out something that was never there to begin with. In that way it points out that the believer’s faith has no referent.
Then Miller said…
“I would also defend the null set symbol. People say it’s negative, but I half-way disagree. To say atheism is negative, and therefore bad, is to switch one definition of “negative” (“expressing a refusal”) for another (“bad”). Atheism is negative, but not bad, just like the null set symbol.”
Then alon levy said…
“The empty set represents the set of all deities, though most non-mathematicians would probably not get the idea.”
Which could be a good thing. People tend to learn things when they ask questions.
Then Max Pulon said…
“I think making a shirt with the null set would go over well.”
So there they are, all in one place. Vote for Null!
After reading *all* the comments, my first vote goes to the Affinity.
I am empathetic to the criticism that it is biased towards English, yet I don’t think- in this era of ‘globalization’- that it is the kind of problem it might have been 100 years ago. Many people in this country recognize the Sanskrit for “Om”, and people don’t seem to complain. We also all clearly recognize the greek for “pi” “phi” “lamba” and the like, without it feeling foreign to us- the very fact that so many are voting for “pi” suggests that just because a symbol is based on a foreign language doesn’t mean people (who aren’t fluent in that language) won’t resonate with it. Likewise, in Japan many fashion brands (for example) intentionally use the english alphabet b/c it is associated with “cool” (even if the words used are actually nonsense in english… and my sister tells me that the same is true in China). Furthermore (for better or worse, and perhaps only temporarily) English does seem to be the de facto language of science (and, increasingly, business, although Chinese is a strong second, there) and is thus familiar to many people across the globe.
Additionally, the Affinity (besides just *sounding* cool!) is aesthetically very appealing, and has the advantage of being unique and thus free of baggage: because it is new, we are in a position to *determine* what it means.
I still very much like the natural symbol (without the circle!), but my first vote goes to Affinity.
I do NOT like null set (strong negative associations, and geeky). The circle strikes me as bland and more of a geometric shape than a *symbol* for something, and I can’t imagine anyone ever asking about it. The asterisk is hard to draw and leaves me cold. Pi, phi, the spiral, the galaxy, infinity, and the DNA all strike me as too science-y and/or too strongly associated with something *else* already. The “a period” is too hard to draw (and to say/write- notice how everyone needs to put scare quotes around it”.
I still very much like the natural symbol (without the circle!), but my first vote goes to Affinity.
(I’m really excited about the possibilities of this, if we can find something that a lot of people will adopt!)
The sword/cross/dagger is often used as a footnote marker too, after the asterisk, so asterisk is not too unusual a choice in that respect.
Again, affinity looks great and is a perfect choice if you want people to think you are a mason or a scientologist :)
Apart from that the asterisk is pretty much free of political or religious baggage, and quite easy to load up with meaning. Forgive the repost (i will resist the temptation to post again since it is hard to be objective here), but from the original article:
1. It is rotationally symmetrical, thereby privileging no single direction [actually it’s not quite rotationally symmetrical, see newer version below].
2. The odd number of arms means that no one is in direct opposition to any other, discouraging overly simplistic binary interpretations [good/bad, love/fear etc].
3. As a typographic element, it alludes to the significance of writing without being [too] language-specific.
4. It is easy to reproduce, and easy to describe. If someone asked “what’s an atheist symbol?” you could describe it over the phone (why you would ever need to answer this question over the phone is hair).
5. It is commonly employed to draw attention to things, so it is kind of anti-complacent.
6. It is commonly used as a “wildcard”, capable of representing a multiplicity of real things, and so it evokes the unknown without invoking the unknowable.
7. It can be seen as a stylized representation of the Big Bang.
8. It looks a bit like a little person reaching out for a hug.
9. Five is a very human/natural number– 5 fingers, 5 toes, 5 senses, 5 major appendages. And from the Pixies song: “if man is 5, then the devil is 6, and god is 7”
10. It also looks a little like a flower, and the pansy is considered a symbol of free thought.
I think, it is impossible to comprehend all languages and count all used symbols. But in most languages A used for ‘atheism’.
Some transtalions of ‘atheism’:
German: atheismus
Dutch: athéisme
Finnish: ateism
Sveden: ateism
Spanish: ateÃsmo
Italian: ateismo
Romanian: ateism
Greek: αθεÏÏμÏÏ
Bulgarian: аÑеизÑм
Russian: аÑеизм
Ukrainian: аÑеÑзм
Polish: ateizm
Africaans: ateïsme
Arab: اÙاÙØاد
Korean: 무ì ë¡
Chinese(s): æ ç¥è®º
Chinese(t): ç¡ç¥è«
Japanese: ç¡ç¥è«
Hindi: नासà¥à¤¤à¤¿à¤à¤¤à¤¾ nÄstikatÄ
Vietnamese: thuyết vô thần
Where I come from, mere repetition of statements already stated, quite without any further addition of sensible thoughts, is considered a form of trolling. Just sayin’.
Well, pardon me. I just thought my post would be a good tally. Maybe we should all try to come up with some numbers. I’m sure the affinity symbol is way ahead. A post of that size would be pretty annoying.
I hate hate hate the affinity. I even hate the name. Screw you all, I’m using the natural.
Alon Levy wrote:
The affinity symbol has one glaring problem: it’s provincial. The country with the highest number of atheists in the world is China; the country with the second highest is Japan. Although atheists living in Latin-script countries probably outnumber those living in Hanzi-script countries, a simple Chinese character could still be even more recognizable than a Latin letter (I’d vote for the character for person).
I think others have pointed this out by now, but that character doesn’t look all that different from the A with its bar removed. A little stylish modification is all it takes to give it both meanings.
Personally I prefer the straight, bold lines of the current version for an “official” Affinity logo (probably my Western bias), but if someone were to reproduce it by hand they could easily choose for themselves whether to put an Asian or Latin spin on it.
“The Affinity symbol looks the best, and has no prior meanings, but it does seem pretty pretentious: how is freethought related to infinity?”
An association of infinity to freethought could be “boundless”, yet within the confines of reasonable parameters (demarcated by the “lamda” portion of the letter), yet still allowing for “thinking outside the box” (of the “lamda” portion).
As regards to the symbol at small fonts, symbols usually aren’t rendered in small fonts; it’s not a letter, so it doesn’t have to be distinguished in a sentence like a true cap A would.
Also, consider all the typeface variations available for cap A; Affinity can easily cross most of those font variations, yet because of the distinguishing double-loop, it is still unique. As regards it being difficult to reproduce, that just happens to be font-specific for the “iconic” version above. Two straight lines and the squiggle are more than plenty to distinguish Affinity from the three-straight-lined A, if one were to use spraypaint.
I agree, it is Western-centric, but using Chinese characters isn’t going to prompt many Western people to question what the symbol is really for. And I’d dare say that non-Westerners are going to be more familiar with our alphabetic characters than we are going to be with theirs.
Many of the other symbols could be very useful (natural, phi, empty set, asterisk, circle, etc) if they could somehow be made somehow unique, without requiring specific typographic stylization. (For example, phi and the empty set symbol can each be made to look like the other stylistically, and therefore they could, iconographically, be interchangeable. But something needs to make them unique to set them apart from the generic phi or the generic empty set.)
I also like that the Affinity is both familiar (to Westerners especially) yet unique, and allows for a wide variation of styles maintaining that “familiar uniqueness”.
I also think that the “A” association need not be exclusive to atheists, but can include, as has already been said, agnostics, and therefore all who are “godless”. Remembering that there are an infinite (ahem… sorry) number of definitions for “atheism” and “agnosticism”, all those variations eventually accompany all the godless. And the symbol is to be inclusive, right? Whether the atheist is the True Atheist variety (“God doesn’t exist and I know it!” to the mealey agnostic (“I don’t know what I believe, or even if I believe…”), the Affinity can include all of that godless variety.
And I thought the goal is to signal godlessness in an inclusive sense; if the goal is to signal “free thought”, I might have other views, and certainly if we were to talk of a naturalistic worldview, then a unique variation on the musical natural sign would be appropriate. (Though as a godless symbol, I still like it, provided it can be somehow made unique, while retaining the abilty to be artistically variable.)
Well, that’s two of my cents, anyway.
The goal is to have a symbol that atheists and agnostics and pantheists and deists could all use…which is another reason for some unease about using an “a”.
Right. That one’s out the window. I’m partial to the fermata idea myself. Come on people, get in those votes for the fermata. Aaaarghh, you atheists can be so stubborn sometimes.
Perhaps I haven’t read the thread closely enough… but have there been any solid arguments that deal with PZ’s objection that “A” represents atheism instead of freethought? When I first saw it, I thought affinity was a pun for “atheist infinity,” is that what it means or am I reading too much into it?
If it only stands for the word “affinity” that just seems to make it meaningless to me. Affinity for what? Someone above said knowledge, but there is nothing in the symbol to show that. Someone could just as easily claim it means an affinity for pizza. (Although I am in desperate need of a symbol to show that.)
The vagueness of the infinity symbol bothers me aswell.
Okay, another half-cent or two.
The infinity portion of Affinity could, in a 3D rendering, be made to be a mobius strip, or an electron’s or planet’s orbit, or maybe even a DNA filament. (Also consider that the double loops could easily be narrowed from top to bottom (i.e., a flatter lazy-8) quite a bit and still be identifiable as an Affinity.)
Affinity: “Not finity” ;-)
The Affinity symbol reminds me of another famous icon:
http://www.anheuser-busch.com/
I like the xeno symbol = the yin/yangish feel with the circle of life aspect.
WRT the asterisk:
10. It also looks a little like a flower, and the pansy is considered a symbol of free thought.
And for those of us of a certain age, it will always be associated with things like this:
http://rowanandmartinslaughin.com/splash.jpg
It was a design element (along with tacky flower shapes) that was way over-used, back in the 60’s. Bad, bad associations for some of us… because the “real” non-mainstream graphics from that era were much more creative. But maybe that’s not relevant here. In another 20 years, nobody will remember the 60’s.
I’m still partial to circled-Pi as the most open-ended, neutral symbol concept, with a nod towards Affinity as the most eye-grabbing shape (although as PZ noted, it does have problems).
I’m very fond of pi (I even managed to get it as part of my cellphone number), but I think Affinity is a better symbol. (Not sure if this was brought up in the original discussion thread, but it reminds me of the Christian Alpha/Omega symbol, with the Omega replaced by infinity – I haven’t decided what the significance of that is.)
I’d like to argue very strongly that claiming that a specific symbol stands for atheism/godlessness is a profoundly bad idea, as it simply plays into the “atheism is just another religion” argument. As I think was said in the earlier thread- the symbol of no belief is no symbol.
Why not just pick something you like as a symbol for this blog? It doesn’t have to mean anything beyond that. That means you can use something with tentacles :)
Myers: “Look ever to the left sidebar, where it says “Profile”–at the top of that, the symbol will appear at about the same size as the box with my face in it”
In other words, you’ll be wearing a dunce hat with Mickey Mouse ears, eh? :-)
I vote for affinity, and I see it more as a Î rather than an A. I actually don’t like pi; it reminds me too much of the unitarian universalist symbol. No offense to them.
Topologically Xeno, encircled-Pi, and the Peace sign are equivalent.
PZ is right about the problems with “A,” but maybe he is concerned that the Xeno is too biological?
(x)
Null Set is the strongest symbol, in both appearance and meaning. Natual is a close second. Only symbols that can be easily drawn and easily recognizable are any good.
How about Affinity with the infinity part of it moved down (or up) just a bit, so it is not quite, but almost, a triangle? That will make it look more like a Capital Lambda than an A, and I think would be just as attractive.
I don’t really wat a symbol or a label, but if I must have one, I want something funny and offensive, like the Jesusbusters image from a couple of dyas ago.
I think Affinity can be varied along many lines as suits individual tastes, while retaining its distinctiveness. So if an individual wants to lower the infinity and narrow it (to give it more of a delta shape), or even size it smaller so that it fits within the Lamda, that would work. The lazy eight could be set in a different color so that the Lamda is more pronounced, or set in the same color and incorporated as a whole character to emphasize the A-ness of it, or the loops and strokes could be emphasized in different ways, say to bring out an emphasis on a slash going through one of the circles (to represent an individual’s emphasis on null or phi (lower or cap)); in short, I think a lot of variation is available for individual takes on it, while still remaining as a generic symbol for godlessness, whatever variation a person happens to subscribe to.
I could even see the loops as being modified to incorporate a galaxy symbol.
[blockquote]Null Set is the strongest symbol, in both appearance and meaning. Natual is a close second. Only symbols that can be easily drawn and easily recognizable are any good.[/blockquote]
Affinity fits the bill, then. (Provided you don’t get caught up in the specific font presented).
Personally I see no problem with the letter A. Atheism and agnosticism have been closely associated with freethought through the last few centuries, and I would be a little sceptical of claims to freethought coming from someone who subscribed to any organised religion, with its inevitable dogma and cultural trappings. As for the Roman-specific orthography, ‘affinity’ is much simpler than the Vernacular Chinese for ‘atheism’ shown above, and I doubt that Chinese or Japanese people, who can remember and draw hundreds or thousands of ideographs, would have any problem drawing it.
Still, if ‘A’ is too strongly associated with atheism and agnosticism, then why not simply ‘Ffinity‘ or ‘Finfinity‘: a capital F for ‘freethought’, with an infinity placed symmetrically on the vertical to replace the lower cross-stroke?
Apologies to GodfreyTemple for the plagiarism!
As a non-artist, I took a couple of my favorites- the Affinity, the asterisk, and the natural- and tried to free-hand them myself. Now, understand, stick figures are seriously stretching my talent, so I figured I’d be a pretty good test of what is reasonable to draw.
The winner, hands down: Affinity.
At first, I really liked the asterisk better. I especially liked the “mensis” name someone suggested. But it is, quite simply, damned near impossible to draw free-handed with anything approaching evenness.
The natural? Just too music-y, though I spent a year as a music major so I’m probably biased.
The affinity just looks the best when you try and draw it. And, it has surprised me that no-one has pointed out that the symbol itself will necessarily grow and expand over time. The affinity has expandability. I was able to draw it with the bottom of the A/lambda rounded up, and it gets an entirely new aesthetic feel while still being recognizable as the same original symbol. If you turn up the corners angularly (v^v to represent it graphically) you also get an entirely different look but, still, recognizable at it’s core.
It seems to me that the Affinity has the most versatility AND recognizability. I’m sure there are all sorts of other things you could do with it to. Heck, maybe those who like the sound of Scientism Atheists could replace the infinity with a helix (I tried, and it looked horrible, but I can’t draw). Groups will be free to adapt it to their need, as the christian cross is adapted, while still retaining the core symbol and meaning. So, my vote is for the affinity.
But, can we please please please call whatever wins the “mensis”? It just seems less new-agey to me than affinity, and more a focus on intelligence and thought.
As the designer of the Affinity (the symbol we’re discussing here) I have to say that I find the responses so far very heartening.
What I’m seeing is that the glyph is flexible enough to encompass many slants and personal explanations. It is loose enough to gain acceptance, and tight enough to retain recognizability on a chalkboard.
The “A” in the symbol can be seen as atheism or agnosticism, yes. However I had really considered the base symbol to be a “Δ after researching it’s connections to logical deduction and other things.
The inclusiveness of infinity is very much on purpose. All the possibilities. All the evidence. All the ideas. Which are then focused and filtered by the strong vectors of the logical and sometimess null “Δ. That feels like freethought to me.
I was unaware of the Scientology symbol. But I take comfort in that it looks goofy (no offense really, but I’m an opinionated designer) and is unlikely to be confused with the Affinity.
Did you mean “Mentis”?
I’ll fully own that naming my submitted symbol “Affinity” was the dark twisted marketing side of my brain at work.
I like the spiral, although the asterisk seems to already be in use for this purpose: see the Expanding Third Culture on the Edge, so I’d be tempted to go with that. Last thing we want at this stage s a schism…
Affinity looks like a munged Anarchy symbol from the Sex Pistols days, so my vote FWIW would be no to that.
….also, is it just me or does ‘mensis’ sound too close to menses for comfort?
Read some of my comments, and I think you’ll see our points are similiar. ;-)
a period – As someone who majored not in science, but graphic design — in the 80s — I was tickled by Abie’s comment. Tim expressed well in words what I was trying to communicate visually. I’ve enjoyed reading everyone’s impressions of “a period”, and agree that this symbol may better express atheism than freethought.
Yes, Patriotboy, you and others can use this symbol freely. I suggest that if you aren’t going to use the two-color version from the original post and need/prefer to display it in one color like it is rendered in this post, change the period portion from 100% to something like 60%.
affinity, dna, pi – I prefer these as they are unique symbols. As rendered, though, they look like two separate, known marks on top of one another. I’d like to see them combine in a more stylized way that creates something new without looking too eighties, or course. ;)
the natrualgalaxyspiral thing – Just to see what it would look like, I created a stylized natural symbol and galaxy combination with a spiral feel. Something like this. Could also be interpreted as “69”, a capital G, two boomerangs, or an “S” if you focus on the negative space between the curves. Maybe if the ends that point inward were to curl around just a bit more instead of straightening out to be parallel with each other? Feel free to play around with it.
I think I’m joining this discussion a bit late. I would definitely put my vote on “affinity”, which I think is both aesthetically pleasing and a novel design.
However, just for fun, I decided to make a small contribution of my own. This symbol is a four leaf clover composed of two infinity signs:
http://www.itstud.chalmers.se/~matand/clover.gif
Now, why would this be the ideal symbol for freethinkers? Well, I can think of a multitude of reasons:
– Infinity encapsulates the beauty of mathematics;
– A four leaf clover is a good example of mutations and genetic variations in nature;
– It is considered good luck to find one;
– It is easy to draw in the sand.
For more info about the four leaf clover:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-leaf_clover
I figured you were using it as a symbol for a god-free temple… ;-)
And you can certainly modify the loops by thinning the lines to help emphasize the Lamda (though I would still maintain a calligraphic effect). This all goes to show that the symbol can be greatly individualized while maintaining familiarity and uniqueness.
I think this really fulfills PZ’s criteria for a framework that’s recognizable!
I’m childish, but manxome’s rendering said “Itsy Bitsy Spider” to me. Oh, well, it’s late. :)
How about a galaxy symbol where the ends of the “arms” came back to the base?
Mattias, that’s a cross.
>>I’m very fond of pi (I even managed to get it as part of my cellphone number), … Theo Bromine
That’s nothing my entire phone number is part of pi. Also, my entire social security number, my age, my entire family’s social security number…
Heck, the exact number of cells in my body is included in pi. You just gotta go out far enough.
Four leaf clover: Not bad, Mattias!
GodfreyTemple:
I’ll fully own that naming my submitted symbol “Affinity” was the dark twisted marketing side of my brain at work.
I like the positive vibes from that name. It’s great marketing. However, it instantly begs the question… “affinity for what?”
We’d probably get 1000 different answers from 1000 different responders here to that question. It’s my 2nd favorite symbol in the list, but the name bothers me because it’s undefined, and maybe undefinable.
Alan W:
….also, is it just me or does ‘mensis’ sound too close to menses for comfort?
The first thing I thought of was “MENSA,” which has the “Brights” holier-than-thou stigma (oops… that’s two religious terms in a row).
Logos!? We ain’t got no logos. We don’t need no logos! I don’t have to show you any stinking logos!!
It needed saying.
Ï
Logos, you mean, as in “In the beginning was the Word?” LOL.
The sigma still looks like a rotated 6, 9, p, q, d, or b.
Oh wow I really love manxome’s “natural galaxy” symbol! I wish that had been there earlier! It’s clean, unique, looks great, represents a naturalistic view of the universe more directly than the others, and so easy to draw!
Is it too late to put it in the running??
I think, it is impossible to comprehend all languages and count all used symbols. But in most languages A used for ‘atheism’.
Half the people in this world do not speak a language that uses a Latin alphabet. It doesn’t matter how many languages use a Latin alphabet; there are still 1.5 billion Mandarin Chinese and Hindi native speakers out there who really wouldn’t appreciate the affinity thing.
Mattias, not only is that a cross… but when you take it as a lucky four leaf clover it’s about as stupid. We must be a superstitious lot. I suggested capital omega in the previous thread and turned against it when I realized it looked too much like a horseshoe.
That thing doesn’t suggest atheist. It suggests either you’re a Christian or you are superstitious.
Or, it could represent The Real Word of God: ”
I like it because of the irony.
Besides, there are a lot of godless folks out there who are still superstitious, some facetiously so.
Another comment on any symbol that might be used: It isn’t so much for the meaning that you get out of it, but the meaning that you, individually, put into it that’s important, IMV. And that would definitely be a distinguishing feature that is opposed to religious iconography/symbolism/texts, etc. What’s the meaning of life (Besides 42)? It’s our own purpose that we give it, not some grander purpose imposed on us.
So any symbol that “we” choose to adopt should have that openness available to it.
Time for some Ambien…
Xeno (dna) has not gotten the support I had hoped for, but maybe in an instant runoff vote it could split the naturals and the affinities and make a play for broadest support?
My ploy of enticing PZ with a cell in the very (very, very) early pharyngula stage of development seems to have failed.
(x)
I figured that someone would make this objection. However, I think this perception is simply due to the fact that the christian symbolism is so deeply rooted in our minds. Why should christianity have the exclusive right to nice symmetrical symbols like this one?
Half the people in this world do not speak a language that uses a Latin alphabet. It doesn’t matter how many languages use a Latin alphabet; there are still 1.5 billion Mandarin Chinese and Hindi native speakers out there who really wouldn’t appreciate the affinity thing.
So we should adopt a Chinese or Hindi character, and alienate everyone else? Again, the Lambda as a symbol, and even the A as a symbol, have their basis as much in the languages of science, mathematics, and philosophy, as in the alphabets of the western world. Do Hindi and Chinese speakers use a wholly different alphanumeric system for Math and Science from the Western World?
None of the symbols here are truly universal, and the more broadly known and used these symbols are, the more chance there is that they already have other connotations attached to them. We have to strike a balance. Somehow, I doubt that every one of the 1.5 billion Chinese and Hindi speakers will be upset over the use of a Greek/Roman character as a symbol.
I like the affinity symbol
I would point out that asterisk can be drawn in may varient forms, and although none are as distinct as the Affinity, that’s not really the point. We’re not talking about a coporate logo here. We don’t need a symbol that has a rigid set of associations, because we don’t. Who among us would agree to bound, symbolically, to others that use this symbol? This is a very loose community — if that’s even the right word to use — so the glyph (if we even need one) should be vague by design. It’s more of an underground recognition code than a trademark.
I can draw an asterisk in many different ways. It can be as simple as five lines coming out from a central point at 72-degree angles, which anyone could draw in the sand. It can be a slightly rounded five-pointed star. It can be a flower with five petals. It can be a stick-figure man. It could be a perpective rendering of a dodecahedron.
The symbol, whatever it is, should reflect the extreme diversity of the people it represents. Something too designed is just going to be a focal point for attack. I would take, for good or ill, the circle-A symbol of the anarchists as a model. It’s hard to see that as corporate.
(601! That’s my favorite error number; I use it in every program I write. Andromeda Strain fan? “Too much information coming in too fast!”)
The period eats puppies. You don’t want atheism associated with puppy consumption do you? Who would? The galaxy is missing a few arms, and eats puppies. The natural is a puppy eater too.
This message is supported by Affinity, the symbol that cares.
I decided to do my own take on manxome’s “natural galaxy” symbol just for fun, featuring Trogdor the Freethinkinator. =p
jack*
That’s it! It’s all over my code as well.
And didn’t the deadly alien virus look a lot like the “Affinity” symbol?
(x)
I think I like the asterisk best. It evokes a lot of things; for instance, it strongly suggests other religious symbols (cross, pentagram, star of David) but is instantly recognisable as neither, and when you draw it by hand it looks like a child’s drawing of a pansy (or generic flower) — which, I think, conveys the right impression, that it’s something intuitive, simple and natural.
The a period is probably my second favourite, but it’s a bit too typographically fixed and doesn’t have much room for handwriting weirdness. I don’t like the Affinity at all, actually — looks way too much like some sort of fraternity or lodge symbol.
I quite like the “a period” as a sideways (lateral!) questioning. However, I think the natural sign probably wins for me. Although I would put it back in the circle (as I think it was shown earlier). Firstly, to distinguish it from just being the musical symbol. Secondly, to emphasise that the music of the spheres is entirely natural. So as a graphic rather than a line drawing I’d also try to make that look more spherical or button-like with shading and shine.
A doubly-sharp person knows to B natural and C flat reality for how superb it already is without having to make up fantasies about it.
PS The natural sign (with or without surrounding circle) is pretty easy for most people to draw too. Whereas, various of the others are rather difficult for many people to draw. Eg affinity, asterisk and the logarithmic spiral (so the wrong spiral went on Bernoulli’s grave stone!).
One slight drawback for that particular rendering is that it’s rather close to a hand-drawn version of an existing rune for J or jera (as a separated off-shoot of I) meaning “year” or “harvest”. It also doesn’t work in 3D since it isn’t connected.
Yanno… if you added 3 more thingies to the asterisk it would be an octopus.
I haven’t read any of the other comments yet, but my vote would be for the DNA symbol. It’s more a case of rejecting all the others for various reasons rather than actively selecting that one (which is pretty appropriate for an atheist symbol, when you think about it), although I think it is actually quite a ‘pretty’ shape in its own right.
I will list my reasons for rejecting the others.
Very unclear as a symbol – applies to a.period and asterisk.
Difficult to reproduce clearly, particularly by hand – applies to affinity, galaxy and pi, also a.period and asterisk.
Far too general – circle.
Too many existing associations – empty set, infinity (maths), natural (music), spiral (has pagan associations), proably phi (although I am not sure what these would be).
None of the above.
I get the idea but theres really nothing there that jumps out at me.
I agree with one of the previous comments that the DNA one, if done properly – i.e. so it didnt look like an X – might be OK, but then again I’m a molecular biologist so have to admit by bias.
How about just the letters “ACGT” ?
A couple of things:
Not that this would influence anyone’s thinking, but I wouldn’t use the Affinity (or the a.) as a self-identifier, primarily because it’s arrogantly western-centric; this lack of inclusiveness or international thinking in this day and age is offensive to me. Also, it’s a logo rather than a symbol and it is not easy to draw. And it doesn’t have a unicode, so you can’t refer to it in a line of text and it won’t render in text-only browsers (or in a blog comment).
About the asterisk– people have commented on the asterisk looking hippy, and it’s true the Times Roman Bold asterisk does look like that. But what about Helvetica, Arial Bold or Courier? Or even Comic Sans? Not a hippy amongst them. Bare in mind that with the asterisk, you’re not considering a logo that must be rendered “as is”, but rather a symbol that can be rendered fancy or plain and still be completely recognizable. An asterisk is nothing more than a cirle of five lines that meet at a point in the middle.
All that said, my vote still goes with the lowercase phi, with the asterisk coming in a close second.
Are Deists who are nonetheless committed to methodological naturalism in Science allowed to use it? I like the phi.. and it is of course a nice riposte to the Christianists’ alpha / fish.
Tatarize: Re pi – It occured to me in the middle of the night that some pendant was going to pick up on that. (A sufficiently obsessive pendant with too much time on their hands might even have determined *which* digits of pi their phone number was)
Peter Barber: Finfinity sounds more like the Darwin fish
Skarn: Trogdor the Freethinkinator is now my sentimental favourite (but alas it’s more complicated to draw, and doesn’t scale well)
Jera is traditionally drawn with the less-than/greater-than symbols isn’t it? I don’t think that is a very strong similarity. In addition, until now I’ve never spoken with anyone else who is familiar with runes, I’m surprised to find someone here who does. However if you really think it is a problem, a simple remedy would be to flip the graphic horizontally.
Or, move them closer together so the ends of each line touch the apexes of the curves. Or even surround it with a circle like in the other suggestions. These last two suggestions would also solve your 3D problem.
Don’t know if anyone here has said it yet, but the US Military has already got something for freethinkers (i.e. atheists)
FYI
Thanks :) But I think he is content to be just a supporting mascot to the symbol. Although with a mascot so charismatic we’d have to be wary of the risk of a “Church of Trogdor” springing up. =p
For me it’s a toss up between the first three, but if I had to rank them in order of how much I like them then I’d say affinity gets the top spot followed by a period and then the asterisk.
I like the affinity, but I think it would be a better symbol if the base “A” were sans serif, and if the infinity symbol were solid and of a consistent thickness. The symbol should, as PZ pointed out, be as simple as possible and embellished from there.
Skip to the last paragraph if you want to cut to the chase.
[quote]and actually, the argument that larger numbers of people will like your symbol will have some weight with me[/quote]
Agreed, but how can we know that without a poll? Won’t you end up reading all of these comments and making a tally as you go along? That’s doing a poll the hard way.
Oh well, here are my thoughts:
I just tried to draw the suggested symbols myself, because the ability to duplicate the symbol — by anyone, anywhere, any time — is one of the most important criteria, IMHO. I’m a good test case, as I have trouble with stick figures!
I nixed the Affinity symbols because they’re too hard to draw and make them look good. Likewise the Spiral, which looks easy but is impossible to get the spacing right.
I like the look of the Natural symbol, and can draw it, but think it should represent “Naturalism” specifically.
These two criteria — drawing and representation — eliminated all but one in my final analysis (f I had to choose a runner-up, it would be the DNA symbol).
My final choice is the Galaxy symbol. Like theism, it points to what’s “up there,” but offers a reality-based description: not a god but a collection of stars and other bodies of the cosmos. I like that: it speaks of “Godlessness” directly.
Ramen. Scientific symbols leave out non-scientist Freethinkers. Likewise math symbols – would a freethinking atheist who hasn’t taken a calculus or pre-cal math class know the significance of pi or phi? I might have to argue against musical symbols, too. I haven’t had a formal class in reading music since the 5th grade, and I had no idea what that “natural” sign meant.
The spiral is used widely in wicca, so we should avoid that symbol. I don’t want to mistaken for a theist of any sort.
The asterisk is most inclusive.
I would go with a period or affinity, if for the only reason that neither of those have any other meanings. If people see pi, phi, infinity, galaxy, natural, etc. on a blog they might just assume it was something to do with math, science or music and wouldn’t click on it to find out what it *really* means.
A period and Affinity are unusual and mysterious enough to instill curiosity.
affinity: Looks like an A. Latin letters are boring. Don´t understand what the infinity symbol has to do with atheism or free thought. Looks like the ornamented letter in the beginning of a book of some kind, like the Bible. Too snobby.
infinity: What has this to do with atheism or free thinking? A too open mind and the brain falls out. Too similar to an eight.
galaxy: Too alien geeky, or looks like a paragraph sign.
empty set: Beautiful symbol. Simple, and says it all, but probably looks too much like a no smoking sign for most people. Danish and Norwegian Ã.
circle: Very beautiful, complete, but is too broad.
dna: Unfortunately dna strands feels outdated, like atom symbols, and has nothing to do with atheism or free thought.
phi: Greek letters are boring. Says nothing. Looks like something for American scientific teenager geeks.
natural: I like the idea, but unfortunately it looks too much like a nazi symbol.
pi in a circle: Beautiful, but too much math.
spiral: I do not understand what this has to do with atheism or free thought.
asterisk: I like this one the most. Beautiful. Simple. For me it hasn´t any direct previous meaning. Would invite to be clicked on if it is placed on a web site. It is difficult to draw by hand, but how often would that happen? And for all guerilla atheists out there, use cut outs to spray through!
I vote for asterisk. It is intriguing. Symmetric. Naturally looking. Is open for different designs and can be found in several naturally occuring shapes.
At the same time I must admit that the whole thing about having a symbol for atheism is silly. I am interested in it mainly because I like graphic design and symbols as well as naturalism.
Ok, a day–several days?–late, and at least a buck-three-ninety-five short, but when I saw tha asterisk, the word “askterisk” popped into my head, and, and…
http://thumbsnap.com/v/HQau9jWP.jpg
Ask questions, expect answers.
As you were…
Missed to post this one:
a.: I like the idea with a question mark, and a circle and an a. Cool, but probably too corporate like. Too western-centric with an a (for atheism). Mainly for atheism or agnosticism and not for free thought.
As Carlie pointed out, the asterisk is too close to the Cingular icon to be useful.
“Affinity” is nice.
I like the circle, but that’s a bias because it’s so close to the Zen anshou, and Zen is more about outlook than worship (though it still has a lot of silly religious trappings associated with it).
In a choice between Affinity and the circle, I’d tend toward the Affinity only because the circle is already taken and has its own set of meanings.
A period just doesn’t do it for me. The rest look too much like typographical marks.
To really come up with a logo you need to start with something that doesn’t have intimations of meaning already. Many of the proposed designs have that disadvantage.
BTW, what about the IDIC? It’s at least as sensible as any other suggestion… ;)
I’d vote for Affinity. Besides beeing nice (my personal opinion) it offers this advantage:
Most of the other symbols suffer from beeing too general, or are usualy used to demark some different concept. If we want to introduce a new mark/symbol, lets use affinity. It is rarely used, hence has not so much legacy baggage.
I’t is also easily recognizable and drawable.
I for one like affinity. I agree tj, affinity is rarely used, and it would be nice to shed off that baggage. I think of all the symbols, it was the one that jumped out at me right away and left a positive impression.
SYNOD! SYNOD!
Funny,
Am I the only only one who thinks of foot-notes when the asterisk symbol shows up? I see it, and I immediately think, ‘look at the bottom of the page.’ I care for the asterisk because there are already plenty of things it’s used for. A wildcard symbol is not exactly what I think of as a symbol for freethought.
Affinity is nice, I’m not as concerned with ensuring all cultures can easily reproduce this symbol as others here on the thread. It strikes me that it won’t get that many questions. An ‘A’ or Lamda with an infinity sign over it is not going to immediately strike the eye. But this is not a bad thing, a symbol which is too agressive may well attract too much notice before it becomes ubiquitous. After all, you want the curious ask questions but you don’t want to offend a segment of the population which will attack the symbol before it is established.
As an aside, my first impression of affinity was that it was an illustrated beginning letter from a William Morris book illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley. But I think that was just me.
I really like the natural sign, although the fermata is pleasing too. (Am I the only one to think of Fermat when this one was proposed?) Pi is good too.
The argument against using Greek letters because they are pretentious is interesting, but I don’t think it holds much weight. Unlike ‘Bright’ where the rest of the world is automatically classified as ‘Dim’, most people who recognize the symbol as being Greek will understand the relevance, and those who don’t recognize the Greek letter won’t feel demeaned, they will simply recognize it as a symbol.
Finally, while it would be nice to have a single symbol for freethinkers, we don’t really need one. If the same church can have crosses and fishes as major symbols, we could have affinity and natural. Or a splinter group could use the empty set or a spiral. Sure, this ‘dilutes’ the brand marketing, but let’s be reasonable for a moment. The symbol(s) have a couple of functions. First, they identify a person as a member of a group. Second, they should attract enough attention to enable members of the group to find each other.
It’s not like the symbols will be used to identify acceptable or prohibited items for the group, e.g. freethinkers will only buy from grocer’s who display an affinity symbol. Nor will the symbols be used to identify secret meeting places, e.g. freethinkers will meet at midnight on Elm street just North of Main under the sign of the asterisk.
So agreeing on a single symbol is not required.
As usual, your opinion may vary from my own.
Cheers,
-Flex
I vote for the pi symbol. It is artistic with flowing lines, easy to draw freehand and would make a very atractive pin.
The pi symbol is used not only in mathematics but also in physics (Einstein for example) and probability theory as well as other sciences. See the following Wikipedia URL.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi
Dave
Doozer, the image on ThumbSnap (Alternating ! ? in a circular pattern) is definitely usable, and can be tailored to an individual’s style.
I vote for the pi symbol. It is artistic with flowing lines, easy to draw freehand and would make a very atractive pin.
The pi symbol is used not only in mathematics but also in physics (Einstein field equation of general relativity for example) and probability theory as well as other sciences. See the following Wikipedia URL.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi
Dave
Affinity for me with pi a moderate second. Phi does not work because when you have two, you almost have the double tree hotel logo, and I am pretty sure that is already trademarked (or copyrighted?)
I vote for the spiral: it’s beautifully simple, easy to draw, and conveys part of the point of atheism/agnosticism to me (the lack of an easily defined start/end).
Pi is overused (it’s also a symbol for some gang or something around here: I see it in graffiti everywhere), as is the infinity symbol. I don’t like the affinity because of the letter A, though it is striking. A-period is ok, but a bit blah. It’s also difficult to speak, unlike “the fish” symbol.
I could definitely see the spiral on a bumper.
Natural for me. I’m out of my element once I stray from straight lines. :)
I like phi, because I already have the tattoo.
The fermata is pretty, but I suspect it’s too unfamiliar, and that dot is even more likely to “come loose” than the a-dot’s. For a necklace, you’d need some kind of background plaque.
Good point. Speaking for myself, that never even occurred to me. Okay, screw the fermata idea. I do wish Mr. Dawkins would weigh in on this, though. Come on, we know you read this blog, mister. Richard Dawkins: the greatest human being to have ever walked the face of the planet, ever.
I know you said “no new symbols,” but I say a simple diagram of a Hydrogen atom.
Circle with semi-small dot in the center, smaller dot somewhere around the circle.
I say this because the straight-up “A” symbols are sort of strident, and lend themselves to a kind of dogmatism that is more a religion of anti-religion than it is “free-thinking.”
Free-thinking encompasses the attempt to actually, truly, understand the universe we occupy. The hydrogen atom is the most basic, “1st step” of that universe, and it is the wellspring of the source of our planet’s power, thanks to good ol’ Sol.
It also contains within it a kind of diagram of earthly matters, in that it functions as a simple schematic for the earth and moon; comprising the part of the universe we are currently in.
Like One of those “YOU ARE..HERE” maps in a mall.
It is the 1st symbol on the periodic table, and the beginning of the unlocking of the rest, of all the matter that is in Universe; as such, it stands as a “positive” sign, a positive alternative, rather than the “gainsay” that a “A” symbol has.
I think that adopting something with an “a” is akin, on some emotional level, to the way catholics will ascribe dark meaning to an inverted cross. To put ANY “power” into an an inverted cross, you must begin with the notion that the upturned cross is a symbol of “power.”
So too with “A”-flavored symbols. They have the word “theism” implied. And you’re trying to get away from that, no?
So I say move to a more reasoned, logical *alternative*, rather than a spiteful gainsay.
Sorry, was out of town and missed this post. I like the first two even though I’m not thrilled by “a” symbols. Mostly, I just really want something I can use, a lot.
I’ve been breaking my posts with asterisks lately, and I could certainly live with that as well.
: )
Empty set is the preferable symbol for atheism, hands down. I wouldn’t recommend it as a symbol for freethought or humanism, though.
The empty set, more than any of the other candidates, has the most symbolic relevance to atheism. It is by far the most meaningful symbol, that is for sure. Atheism, simply defined, is disbelief in theism. An empty set conveys the image that unites all atheists (and a null set is the only thing that unites atheists, because atheists share no common positive beliefs, really). It can also be used to symbolize the vacuity of theism. The hypothesis of God, as untestable and incomprehensible as it is, can be used as a solution for any problem, and yet this is what makes it lack depth. Just as the empty set is a member of all sets, yet consists of nothing, so does the God hypothesis. There are so many relevant and wonderful interpretations of the empty set that match accordingly with atheist views. This alone should make it the clear winner.
However, the empty set is also a very simple, elegant, and easily drawn design. I like its subtle break of symmetry as well.
If you’re going to create a symbol for atheism, at least create one that has some sort of meaning behind it that is relevant to atheism. I do not see how the infinity symbol, the affinity symbol, the pi symbol, or any of the other symbols accord as well with atheistic beliefs in their meanings.
I’ve been a bit conflicted over my choice of that name for the symbol (for the reason you quoted). A-infinty was both obvious and positive when combined. The problem bring that it discards any obvious hint to lambda.
However in pondering it I found that there was something that united (loosely) the atheists, agnostics and other freethinkers. A passion for examination, debate, and dialogue coupled with a disdain for easy answers. And it seemed to me that freethinkers do have an affinity that can be expressed.
My hope is that Affinity is open enough to form meaningful attachments for those who use it, and concrete enough to signify a mass of unherded cats with something important in common.
The affinity is very pretty, but it seems too centered on ‘atheism’ and ‘agnosticism’ as opposed to free thought in general. Also, I dislike the western centricness(?) of the ‘A’ or lambda, however you view it. The west does not have a monopoly on free thought or scientific discovery regardless of the conventions used in notation. (Freethought also applies to more then strictly scientific matters)
My number one choice then is the natural symbol. To make it more distinguishable, we could turn it 45 degrees and maybe circle it. Music is in itself a more universal language than most scripts in that it speaks to our emotions, the commonalities of human experience even as it invites and challenges our creativity. And at least in the US music and art education is going downhill so fast we might have an essentially unknown symbol to work with in a little while. (I’d love to claim the last sentence as hyperbole or satire, but at this point I’m half afraid I’m right {O_O} )
josh dobbin:
“I know you said “no new symbols,” but I say a simple diagram of a Hydrogen atom.
Circle with semi-small dot in the center, smaller dot somewhere around the circle.”
I kind of like that idea, though atomic symbols may feel a bit outdated. Made a sketch that can be seen here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/29723969@N00/290951073/
I’ll cast my non-vote for the asterisk inside a circle. Putting the two together gets around all the “where’s the footnote” gripes, and reduces the “hippy” factor (although a different font like Courier would do the same). Simple to draw too, IMO. As for the Cingular gripe, well, not all atheists/freethinkers live in the USA, friends, And besides, the circle (again) deflects that criticism.
My least favorite is the natural, again because it reminds me too much of the Nazi SS symbol.
I’ve already expressed my “vote” above, but now feel the need to express myself about the only symbol that is completely unacceptable to me.
It’s the “empty-set” symbol. To me, atheism is not about believing in “nothing,” and that’s why I can’t support any “empty set” symbol. I’m an Athiest, not a nihilist.
I have a positive set of beliefs, and one of them is this “There are no gods.” This is a positive statement, in the sense that it is a proposition with its own truth value.
The empty-set symbol would better represent those who identify with a different proposition: “I don’t believe in anything,” or perhaps “There is nothing to believe in.”
This may be a valid point of view, but it’s not the point of view of Atheism, per se, and thus is not truly representative.
Either the asterisk, or a more rounded natual sign.
NYAS uses the galaxy/69 in their logo (from ad on this blog)
http://www.nyas.org/index.asp
Festival della Scienza uses the five lobed asterisk (from previous comment).
http://www.festivalscienza.it/it/festival/index.php
Affinity. I would be more than happy to put it on my website, and it is sufficiently unique that it would be difficult to confuse with something else. (I could see someone viewing a natural sign on my site believing I was a music major or something).
I hope once this is all said and done, we could get a hard copy to stick on the back of our autos, sort of an anti jesus-fish.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned this, but “Affinity” bears a passing resemblance to the Starfleet insignia. :)
Lots of positive connotations there, humankind moving forward, science and reason driving us to boldly go etc..
I also thought Tatarize’s notion of the rise and fall of life/civilization against the backgdrop of infinity was quite a beautiful metaphor.
Late to the party, but…
a period: I wish I had a space helmet so I could put this on it to make it more spacey and futuristic. Or maybe I’ll put it on my futuristic hover-racer. Decisions, decisions.
affinity: This is great. We could have a secret handshake, and we could get it put on a signet ring, and we could all wear hoods and call ourselves something like the Eternally Vigilant keepers of Flame of Freedom of Thought. The only problem is that I think something like this can already be found doodled all over the margins of Dan Brown’s forth grade exercise book.
asterisk: I quite like this one. I like the connotation of reading the fine print, so to speak. In advertising, the asterisk usually leads you to the truth of the matter. Or at least closer to the truth. I also like the wild-card aspect of it. I notice that some folks here have rejected it as being too much like a flower, too girly even. I’m not so sure if that’s a bad thing, but nonetheless I sought the advice of a renowned Professor of Fontology over this matter, and he assured me that asterisks don’t actually have to look like flowers. Or not girly flowers, anyway. He said that can easily be made more rugged by simply decreasing the curviness of the design. I was pretty amazed, I can tell you.
circle: Too plain. Apart from symbolising emptiness, it looks like an unfinished graphic. Or maybe it’s just the classic smiley face, seen from behind.
dna: Strangely sinister. We could get this put on a ring as well, and whenever one of us punched a creationist on the jaw it would leave a mark that would never fade, forever reminding that unfortunate individual to think freely.
empty: Oh yay. Life without religion is empty. Null. Void. Somewhere the desiger of this symbol is probably snarling and muttering that I’ve missed the point, but still… no entry, no smoking, ghostbusters!
galaxy: I might stencil this onto my hover-racer to go with my helmet. All I need is some atomic symbols and a few ringed planets and I’ll be the spaciest kid in town!
infinity: And beyond! I don’t know. Infinity just doesn’t seem that applicable to atheism to me. Sure, time is infinite, but then you have the whole thing of how religious folks believe in life everlasting. For me, being an atheist means I accept my mortality.
natural: I have a friend who wants to be a fascist dictator when he grows up, and he likes this one a lot. I’m not so keen on it myself, but then I don’t harbour a burning desire to unleash havoc and suffering on all humankind.
phi: Yeah! All right! Let’s have a toga party! … Look, the sad fact is that college frats have ruined most, if not all, of the Greek alphabet for good.
pi: Not bad at all, assuming if you’re looking for a symbol for your new We Love Maths club. Also, I passed a pie shop the other day that went by the name of ‘The Pi Shop’, and it used this exact symbol in its logo. So before you use this one you will need to wrest it from the flour encrusted fingers of one tough looking pastry chef with a love for pointless puns.
spiral: I quite like the clean simplicity meets inherent complexity thing going on in this one, but I don’t think it quite works as a general symbol to represent free thinking or atheism. It looks like it should be in the banner of a web site for your local aquarium. I can see it now in pleasing hues of aqua and blue. Throw in a bit of whalesong. So peaceful.
Overall, I’d have to say I prefer the asterisk. If offers a simple, easily recognised design together with a strong degree of flexibility. Think of the christian cross. Whether it is presented in a simple or an ornate fashion, it’s always recognisable. So too with the asterisk, and I think that’s important as a good symbol should represent a certain group while still offering the freedom to express ones individuality within that context.
A-period: question, agnosticism, anti-something, toilet paper (in ‘questioning’ design)
Affinity: atheism, sharp belief, dogma, anti-something, math symbol, lambda (liberation), kabbala, secret society, a form of pentagram, kabbalizm, church of scientology
Asterisk: thinking, human environment, design, attention
circle: completeness, God, idealism, isolation, personalty
dna(xeno): dna (?), X-chromosome, X-Man, eXclusive (in many cultures), eX*** (eXecution, eXcel, etc.)
empty: forbidden, not perfect (broken circle), null, nothing, non-existent, goddess, empty, bi-composite
galaxy: sci-fi, scientism, futurology, SF & comics, aliens, hurricanes
infinity: God, deity, infinity, sum of goals
Natural: sharp sign, Latin N, Nazi’s double sig rune, Natural and any word with beginning N, naturalism, in non-wesern world symbol can point to own ‘natural’ culture that often opposed western.
phi: philosophy, thinking, math, harmony
pi: circle, pithagorus, math, irrational
spiral: math, logarithm, harmony, expansiveness, growth
Kabbala?
Are these associations you’ve noticed in discussion, or do you know about similar symbols we haven’t discussed?
I think I stand against almost all of you when I say I’d go for the empty set or the natural. There’s little implied by either of them, other than extremely general statements.
I also like galaxy, but to me, natural defines what virtually everyone relies upon – natural law and exploration. We don’t simply make decisions at random, but based upon our own experiences and conceptions. I find it far more unifying than the empty set.
The empty set (fittingly enough) is unassuming. I like that. However, it does remind one of negativity (the exclusion of all else). At the same time, even if such exclusion were to be taken personally by a limited group of people, it’s not like that doesn’t happen with everything else anyway. I also find that the empty set embodies the discipline of science better, which I tend to associate with freethought. Empty agrees with my idea of my life, too – empty. Fill it up with good things.
Galaxy seems like a more direct sorta thing – our universe is made up of a whole lot of spiral. Which, if you looked at it, and you’d done research and blah blah blah (okay, well if you’d had any formal education) – but I’m not necessarily out to communicate with just an educated crowd. I imagine many freethinkers are educators, themselves.
Maybe it’s because I’m a former band geek, but the more I think about it, the more I like the â®. First and foremost, I like it because I can make it in text. No graphics needed. Just & # 9838 ; and I’ve got myself a â®. Granted, this doesn’t separate it from the â or ø, but it’s still an important consideration.
I also like the “hey, freethinkers can appreciate art too!” connotations.
I still don’t like Affinity and A-period for the reasons I stated above – this is supposed to be a freethought symbol, not an atheist / agnostic symbol. I don’t really buy the capital lambda bit for Affinity, either. It was originally an A, and the infinity-as-crossbar reinforces that.
That said, I’m shifting from phi to the null set; although I’m still partial to rendering it as {} rather than Ghostbusters-style. I think the brackets can be joined at the tips if necessary without any loss to aesthetics. But that’s just me.
I absolutely hate the affinity. We need a symbol, not an altered letter. Plus, the curviness of the infinity part makes it look weak. A good symbol has to be something that any 5 year old could recognizably draw. Small intracate lines, as in the infinity part, are a severe drawback.
The null set and the natural are the best choices, as they are boldly shaped and also have pre-existing meaning.
I really don’t understand why the symbol must be easy to draw. Easily recognizable, yes of course. But does anyone seriously intend to actually draw it? Why would anybody want to do that when you can just copy, paste and print?
My problem with the Affinity is that it looks too much like something the Freemasons might design. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Square_compasses.svg
Let me bop in a little late on this discussion. As a symbol, I would like to suggest the analemma, which is the visual illustration of the equation of time, the difference between the time as measured by a sundial, and time as measured by the clock, (and the effect of the axial of the earth)
It is the position of the sun photographed at the same time every day for a year.
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=analemma&btnG=Search+Images
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analemma
Some various reasons:
It’s absolutely beautiful.
It looks kind of like an infinity sign, (which is very cool in its own way) but it isn’t one.
Geeks will have fun explaining what it is.
It’s related to space and time and astronomy and humankind’s physical place (earth) in the universe.
It is a symbol that has not been created by anyone, but in a way, it has been written by the universe.
It is linked to the early history of science.
For me contemplating this figure gives a sense of awe and cosmic wonder; the tilted earth spins on its elliptical path around the sun, and the solar system goes around the galaxy, as I stand on the earth and look up at the sky, thinking about time.
and last, but not least, this figure, is just the representation of a fact – an empirical, scientific fact.
Along those lines, the natural symbol looks like an alien probe which downloaded into Picard in ST-NG. :-D
Having arrived relatively late to this continued discussion, I hadn’t quite realised before that there are (at least two!) factions who disagree even on the purpose of the symbol, eg atheism or naturalism. So it’s hardly surprising there’s then significant disagreement on the actual choice.
For the atheism meaning, the Affinity symbol might well have it (though the infinity association is dodgy). For the naturalism meaning, I still think the natural symbol is best (but in a circle) – the music and accidental associations are positive things to me and I don’t see the Nazi association myself. Curly pi is lovely but it does carry far too many geeky associations for some people (not me), as well as the accusation of irrationality. Freethought could well incline towards the footnote asterisk. :-D
Overall though, I probably wouldn’t wear any such symbols anyway – for much the same reasons as I already don’t do that. So perhaps I don’t count in this not-a-poll.
I renew my vote on the natural:
– It is positive, simple, edgy and on the usual HTML set, while the added meaning would not confuse.
– It means ‘going back to the baseline’ in music, and there is no such symbol I know of in science or technology.
– It is also great if anyone wants to call him/herself natural freethinker or natural atheist.
As a trained musician and one-time music teacher, it’s sad to me to see that the first reaction you expect people to have to the “natural sign” is “atheism” or “freethought,” rather than the wholly expected “musical symbol meaning not sharp or flat anymore.”
2 GodfreyTemple
The central idea of researches of the Georg Cantor was Infinity. It considered that its mathematics will allow to come nearer to understanding of the God and often consulted to leading cabbalists. He also considered the world of mathematics as the world of ideal laws through which it is possible to be in touch with the God.
But the association can arise only at those who is well familiar with both: mathematics and a cabbala.
I think, Affinity most precisely symbolizes atheism. But the question of symbolics of freethought remains opened.
We are need more wide discussion in “infidels” forum.
/*sorry for my bad English*/
See about infinity in cabbala also http://www.kosmic-kabbalah.com/latest_works/latest-works-posters-infinite-eight.htm
I don’t think it’s a good idea to link atheism with a symbol meaning “not sharp”.
I all for the affinity symbol. I’d proudly put a sticker of it on my car.
From above: “I really don’t understand why the symbol must be easy to draw.”
Being able to draw it well is important to me so that I can chalk it on sidewalks, blackboards, and just about anywhere I can think of. If we do come up with a symbol, I plan on putting it everywhere I can, so people will start asking each other “Have you seen it? What is it?”
Caledonian wrote, ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea to link atheism with a symbol meaning “not sharp”‘.
But is it so bad to link it to a symbol which means “not flat”?
I personally agree that the symbol should be easy to draw, distinctive and should represent freethinking or rationalism over atheism. But objections to affinity as expressing an atheist idea are, IMHO, silly. Just because it looks like an ‘A’ it stands for ‘atheism’? Does the cross stand for ‘theist’? No. You’re over-analyzing the symbol. The ‘A’, or Lambda if you prefer, used in the affinity proposal doesn’t have to stand for anything. Or, if you like, it could stand for ‘agnostic’, ‘acrisia’ or ‘areola’.
I still don’t know why a consensus is necessary though. Pick two or three symbols, and use the one you like or cycle through them. The hardest part is getting the meaning generally attached to the symbol, not arguing about minutia associated with it’s design.
Cheers,
-Flex
Why is the affinity symbol so called? Also has anyone read Peter Hamilton’s Reality Dysfunction novels? Affinity is his name for a form of telepathy between humans and between humans and genetically engineered (geneered) organisms. It’s a useful prop in the stories but would a freethinker want to be associated with it in this way. By the way, the books include a lot of religion and even an afterlife but that doesn’t mean the author is of the same opinion.
I like the affinity symbol: it combines two recognizable symbols in a new way (though the I see the angled part more as an inverted V or peak —thus, a height of understanding to be reached—than as an A, whereas the other popular choices such as plain infinity or natural already have strong associations with math or music, from which many people (myself, ferex) strongly *dis* associate themselves.
I think the association with A would decrease with time—how many people know today that ampersands are a combination of E and T, for the latin et? And to answer the complaints that it’s too hard to draw, just like the ampersand, I expect it will become stylized and simpler with time.
Second choice would be the asterisk, but only in a circle, again to differentiate it—the copyright and @ signs now have distinct meanings from the letters c and a, after all. All the others are too ambiguous with other, current meanings, or just plain ugly. Or both.
I wish to make a suggestion that is partly novel, but practically speaking simply a refinement of one of the existing options (the Affinity symbol). I hope this doesn’t violate your ban on new suggestions, but I only heard about this discussion today and this idea came to me before I even read this page. So I was excited that it fit so well with one of the proposals already here.
Knowing how the idea came to me will, I believe, enable people to appreciate it more. So please pardon a slight digression.
This morning I simultaneously received two e-mails. One was from an atheist friend who informed me that this discussion was underway. The other was from a conservative Christian objecting to the content of my letter to the editor that had just appeared, in response to his own call for all Christians to leave the public schools for religous ones.
This Christian said to me:
I think it would have been instructive to the readers of your
letter if you had made known your own ideology, atheism, before
lambasting mine (and that of millions of others). Knowing that
you are a purveyor of atheism puts an entirely different slant
on your response.
As I went out to vote and run some errands, I considered how to respond to him. I thought: Geeze! Does he want me to go around wearing a scarlet A on my chest?
Then my mind made the connection: Of course! An elaborate scarlet A! A can stand for Atheism! It’s perfect! We can take the A and elaborate it with some scrollery, maybe edge it in gold, and the resulting allusion is absolutely priceless!!!
I certainly hope everybody here is familiar with The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, but just in case anybody isn’t, it is one of the great works of American literature, and it is a tragedy that examines the consequences of allowing religion to run society. In the novel, Hester Prynne is a woman long separated from her husband who bears a child. She is convicted of adultery and sentenced to wear a scarlet letter on her chest the rest of her life as a mark of her shame. Hester stoutly refuses to reveal the name of the child’s father, but eventually we discover he is none but the Puritan preacher, who rises to fame in his profession but is secretly tormented by guilt, and dies in the end.
There is much more, but particularly relevant for us is that rather than conceal the mark, Hester makes it a point of pride. She is a master embroiderer, and elaborately decorates the letter so that it becomes the most beautiful part of her attire.
Also relevant is that Hawthorne was motivated to write the book partly as a way of undoing the sins of his ancestors, who served as judges in Puritan New England and handed out many similarly outrageous sentences, and some far worse. One of them was a judge during the Salem witch trials, and refused to express any remorse later, even when the other judges had recanted.
So, but taking the Affinity symbol, making the A a bit more elaborate and working the infinity symbol into something more like embroidery–perhaps adding a graceful tail–and coloring the letter scarlet, we make a deep and meaningful allusion, one with special reference to American experience. [Personally I’d like to see the whole thing edged in gold, like those elaborate manuscripts done by monks: imagine it as an enamelled pin! Beautiful!]
Moreover, in doing this, we would be doing what homosexuals did when they took over the word gay: reclaiming an epithet and turning it into a proud mark of identity. It’s a way of saying: We will not be shamed by you. We are proud of what we believe. It is beautiful.
And at the same time we would be saying: We have not forgotten history.
Is there a graphic artist out there who can create this image so that everybody can better see what I’m talking about? Surely the creator of the Affinity symbol should have first crack at it.
Affinity by FAR. Many of the other symbols have meanings outside of atheism. For example, if I saw someone with the “Natural” symbol on a t-shirt, I’d think they were a musician, not an atheist/rationalist/etc. I hate to reject the null… symbol (man, it was hard to avoid “hypothesis” there), but I have to for the same reason.
At a studio I worked in recently, I was much entertained by listening in on the studio manager trying to persuade an account handler to say the word asterisk instead of Asterix.
I don’t think Asterix would make a good atheist symbol, considering how often he swears by Toutatis.
Well, I haven’t read all of the above, but I guess I’ll add my 2 cents as a graphic designer.
I like the a period. It has so many connotations, which are all positive (atheist. period., question, turn things on its side, change perspective), and it’s very simple, and possible for anyone to make their own version of (simply putting a question mark on its side would work). And can you imagine just putting a bunch of questions marks everywhere? Question. Doubt. Think.*
I’m not a fan of the affinity. I can see A being atheist, but don’t see a strong connection between freethought and infinity.
I kinda like the asterisk. I like the idea of an asterisk possibly butting up against a cross, like ‘hey, think again’. Not the easiest to hand draw, and could possibly be seen as a secondary type of mark, not on the same level as a cross or others.
Circle…nothing much there. Definitely no on that one.
Chromosome , not terribly recognizable. Why a circle around it? Looks like an X.
Empty, too much like someone writing a zero by hand, too negative.
Galaxy, looks like hurricane, not a direct connection to freethought.
Infinity (looks more like a sideways 8 here), what’s the connection to freethought? (i’m willing to learn)
Natural, to me, too much musical connotations, also, I can see ways where people could possibly turn it into a swastika or something like that.
Phi and pi, too obscure, already have their own meanings
Spiral, looks a bit too decorative to me. Not sure of the meaning.
So, my vote goes to a period. Also think it’s well rendered here and I’d love to put it on my own website.
I wasn’t aware of that association, and hadn’t seen the Affinity as having any direct mathematical connotations let alone kabbalistic ones. But that’s the great thing about discussion, as I’ve learned something.
I would welcome futher discussion about Freethought on IIDB as it seems that many of us are approaching the symbol question from very different starting points which will make jurying a decision of what works best for what problematic.
Tangentially, I’m wondering how we got into equating naturalism with freethought.
I answered this question in a previous comment. A-infinity > “Affinity” was an easy and propitious name that stuck in my head. The associations grew on me later.
And I don’t believe I’ve ever read anything by Peter Hamilton.
speedwell:
I don’t think that is the point. But by using the natural in connection with freethinking, it will symbolise that there. Hopefully notated music wont be discussed in that context too often, and if so with note lines.
Symbols in general have often several uses, such as @ that was originally for economics, I believe. Especially athematical and physical symbols are often overloaded by several contextual meanings.
Caledonian:
Yes, I believe the same objection was raised in the original thread. It depends on the context of course, I have always thought of it as establishing (return to) the default, ie the baseline. At the same time it also means “not flat”.
Several of these symbols have unfortunate connotations, or can be twisted graphically. It comes down to if that is important or not.
Re: Lambda in Affinity.
Large lambda stands for several things, amongst them the cosmological constant. Current cosmology is Lambda-CDM, which means that the cosmological constant is an important part.
It is also “logical and”.
Small lambda, which it may remind of, has many more heroic uses such as empty string (!) and eigenvalue (!!).
Well, this morning it occurred to me that we are way overthinking (overfreethinking? lol) this whole thing. I was thinking about what other symbols I like. And while I’m not a Buddhist or anything like that, I realized I’ve always really liked the symbol OM… useful link here: http://www.ayurveda-shop.com/images/medium/om_messing.jpg
Now, the thing about the OM symbol is that it has most of the characteristics that I said above that I don’t like in the symbols under discussion. It’s overcomplicated and fancy. It’s a word in an alphabet with which few are familiar. It looks like a number 30 with an inverted fermata over it. It’s extremely difficult to render in 3D (the above link is a particularly good example of totally losing the beauty of the symbol when the atempt is made). It’s hippiefied. It’s a garble when seen in any other orientation. It has a precise meaning that is totally lost on most people who see it.
Eh, I think any of the symbols we have on tap will really do, some better than others, and some need to be in circles or something to set them off from their usual meanings (asterisk, natural, galaxy, even spiral), but I am going to really be OK with whatever is selected. My personal feeling is toward the pi symbol for the reasons I described before, but I’m getting pretty bored with the inherent mediocrity of decision-by-democracy, folks. :)
Time for PZ to get benevolently-dictatorial, hm? ;)
I think that in the end people will adopt what they like and we’ll see over time what catches on (if anything).
I’ve been tinkering with a sans-serif Affinity that would reporduce well at small sizes, and FWIW am completely willing to supply any version of Affinity (even seriously ornate ones if need be) including in scalable vector format. Also if anyone’s interested in getting something from cafepress with the Affinity on it I can set something up. In either case please contact me directly rather than using PZ’s comments.
Ummm… GodfreyTemple, how shall we contact you? :) I definitely wanna sign up for a t-shirt!
I think that in the end people will adopt what they like and we’ll see over time what catches on (if anything).
The more we all talk about it, the more true this becomes. Can we ever really look at the asterisk anymore in quite the same way as we did before we started?
I know this breaks the “no new suggestions” rule, but it amused me that people were concerned about the A of affinity possibly alienating non-western-alphabet users, eg the Chinese, and then going on to talk about an Indian “Om” without apparently (since I did miss the previous discussion) considering whether there was already a compatible symbol/word in use in any of those non-alphabet syllabaries and hieroglyphs.
Starting by looking at wu-shen-lun (= atheism), I thought the wu (= nothing / starting from scratch) was quite nice. So now I wonder if the ancient Egyptians had any atheists (ie who survived long enough to be labelled as such!). But it might turn out to be something like vulture dung-beetle rather than a nice wol! Ra-less without-Ra are the sorts of things I suppose I should be looking up in my stuff here. But, then again, had the concept of free-thought been much considered by those groups either.
Interesting.
Egypt-wise I think an empty cartouche (traditionally the containers for names of kings and nobles) would be nicely eloquent.
I’m going to toy with this idea a bit.
My apologies. Somehow I’d gotten the impression that entering my e-mail each time was hotlinking my name at the bottom of the comments. *slaps self*
For speed and conveneince I’ve added a url-link to my name, it links directly to the Cafepress shop I’ve set up. Thank you for your interest, Spex. :)
It’s likely that any other experiments in godless imagery I start feeling hubristic about will also wind-up there among the rest of my dreck.
Hmm… An empty cartouche… Perhaps that would look a little too much like the toilet graphic of a simple architectural room-plan.
My apologies. Somehow I’d gotten the impression that entering my e-mail each time was hotlinking my name at the bottom of the comments. *slaps self*
For speed and conveneince I’ve added a url-link to my name, it links directly to the Cafepress shop I’ve set up. Thank you for your interest, Spex. :)
It’s likely that any other experiments in godless imagery I start feeling hubristic about will also wind-up there among the rest of my dreck.
It could, yes.
But it depends on how tall the cartouche is.
Just purchased two shirts today, GT!
Please contact me (minusRusty comcast net; fill in the blanks…).
“WHY A SYMBOL?” -MYOB -I returned to this query just because of a concern over growing CHristian fundamentalist numbers. Saw an article in Wired on the new atheism and it made me think that we should be more *assertive & declarative*. So this is the ‘why a symbol’ that your post asks. I have an FSM t-shirt, & while certainly a symbol of atheism it is also motivated in jest. Perhaps an FSM symbol is OK but humor weakens the point.
We must use symbols to assert our right to declare ourselves ‘moderns’ and the silent educated majority.
Needs in a symbol: 1.simplicity, 2.Pertinence, and 3. the ability to elicit a response[e.g. “what’s that for?” or “so you’re one of them[ or us]”
The natural [or even a sharp-aren’t we a little ahead, smarter], fermata, spiral, or galaxy have simplicity.
DNA pertinent but perhaps too complicated.
Affinity: too complicated.
Greek or other script letters,circles, and infinity:overused.
‘A’ centered symbols: too language/english specific.
.. afterthought:
the ANALEMMA has connection to the idea of repeatable scientific observation, as passed down from ancient scientists who who looked to the “heavens”[an ironic metaphor] for regularity in the cosmos, that was bigger than themselves. Seems perfect.
Does anyone have a history of the symbol? Its good whether relatively new or ancient, as it evokes the quest for knowledge and order passed down from all ancient cultures literate& preliterate[despite their theism]. Its the quest that matters.
Too complicated? It’s two lines and a lazy 8! I’d suggest not confusing the symbol with the font it happens to be in (although I think the font is cool and represents it well).
Oh, and GodfreyTemple: Did you know that on the long-sleeve shirt the symbol on the back has the thin-line loops, rather than the calligraphic ones? Pft!
Thank you for your business! *bows*
I was wondering who’d bought them. I’ve had four purchases of Affinity up to now.
I’ll get in touch.
I’ll look into and fix this, posthaste.
Thanks for spotting the outdated art.
Has the final decision been made, then, for the Affinity symbol?
I’m still into the Galaxy symbol. Can anyone come up with that on a T-shirt?
I could have a bash at it.
Provided I’m allowed to give it my own spin.
…
Apologies.
I couldn’t resist.
Ive completed a stylized galaxy, as part of a t-shirt design.
See it here.
Not bad, Mr. Temple! I think I prefer the simplicity of the one above, however…
BTW: it appears PZ never brought this discussion to an end…?
I’d been wondering about that.
Reinforcing MarkP’s comments regarding the asterisk, there is a HUGE difference between the cheesy one shown at the top of this discussion and the ROBUST one at the bottom of MarkP’s page: http://intepid.com/2005-05-25/00.39/. I am going with the ROBUST asterisk for a pendant I am having made.
Asterikopithicus Robustus?
Throughout this thread, two distinct subjects seem to have been conflated: atheism and free thought. They seem to me to be unrelated.
Atheism: the certainty (faith) that there is no godlike being.
Free thought: the belief that we are free to have thought N+1 following thought N, without any external influences.
As so defined (feel free to question or refute or refine my definitions), both positions are unprovable, so perhaps that is what they have in common.
The agnostic says that it is flatly impossible to know whether there is or is not a God. This begs the question, what is God? Let us assume that it is the force or being or entity that created the first cause (big bang, etc.). This seems convenient but sidesteps the question, Who or what created God?
Regarding the question of free thought, this one is definitely a conundrum. Suppose that I argue that there is no free thought — in that case I have no way of persuading you that I am correct, and even worse, my very thought that there is no free thought must by my own logic be the product of some combination of environment, peer groups, etc. So that position is incoherent at best.
The opposite position (we are free to think anything we wish) ignores some basic truths which I shall call existential. If we are to be authentic in this discussion, then I think that we must admit that we have no control over our next thought, or the one after that, or the one after that. Right in the middle of my attempt to write this, I suddenly and for no apparent reason think about (and regret) something embarrassing that occurred between my first wife and me. There are no obvious connections between my current logical problem and the emergence of this thought about my first wife. I think we all must admit that this sort of thing occurs very often. Recognizing this, it is perhaps more appropriate to describe ourselves as passengers on our thought train, not the engineers and certainly not the folks who laid the tracks.
So. Neither question is readily answered. This is what they have in common. In fact, question 1 presupposes an answer to question 2. If there is a God (omniscient, omnipotent, etc.) then by definition s/he knows what you will think, say and do tomorrow, and also ten years hence.
How can one rationalize the simultaneous existence of God and free thought? I cannot see only one way out of this problem: conceive God as the creator of the first cause, and after that it’s “Hands off”. S/he made the big bang and after that all bets are off, freedom rules. If there is a God who can know what you will do tomorrow, then you are not free to think, you are nothing but a robot. If there is a God who kicked us all out of his/her house, then we are free and God is not omniscient.
I do not see a middle ground here. Either God knows everything, including what I will do tomorrow, or I am free to choose my events for tomorrow, in which case God (assuming there is one) is not omniscient, and must have take the “Hands off” position.
Let’s assume that we have free will, or independent thought, or whatever you want to call it. This is very problematic. I will tell an embarrassing story.
When I was a child, I grew up in a household where a very frequently used verb was “to Jew”, as in “he Jewed me out of a dollar.” I grew up not even knowing that this was a slur against a people. I just thought it was a verb.
When I was 12, I fell in love with a girl named Frances, and one day I used the aforementioned expression. She had as big a crush on me as I had on her, but the moment I issued the offending sentence, she fell out of crush on me quicker than the blink of an eye. I could read it in her eyes, and I have never felt worse in my life.
Where was my freedom of thought then? Admittedly, in my sorrow and remorse I discovered how offensive I was, and I like to think that I have recovered from my early beliefs. But in which case was I free to think independent thoughts? I started out inheriting (using the term loosely) a set of nouns and verbs, then my use of them caused serious damage to a person I loved, and then I revisited my assumptions and then revised them. Is any of these actions free or independent? I don’t know. Maybe God knew that I would speak like a racist until age 12 and then discover something deeper. That’s one explanation. I don’t know. I guess at the end of the day, I am agnostic on both questions. I cannot seriously imagine a God, and I have no way to prove that everything I’m writing at this moment is the result of independent, free thought.
Arthur
Atheism: the certainty (faith) that there is no godlike being.
Wrong. It is the reasonable belief that there is no supernatural being because there is no evidence of said being. Since it is a logical conclusion based on said reason, atheism is not a “faith”. Faith is believing in a god/gods when there is no evidence to support that belief. And “atheist” is not capitalized.
…both positions are unprovable…
Wrong. Atheism is falsifiable: prove god/gods and we’re wrong. If god/gods are unprovable by science, I ask this – does god/gods produce observable effects? If yes, then it can be observed and tested scientifically. If no, then what is the difference between “god” and “nothing”?
Ok. I’d like to make some clarification. It’s true that an atheist who doesn’t believe in any god or deity. A-theist means Without-god. That’s why I don’t like to be defined with that negative word. I prefer to be called rationalist, or whatever reminds me that I use the reason with scientific method. Then I don’t neglect the existance of God. I say I don’t believe in God unless I don’t see any proof of his existance. An Atheist is the one who doesn’t believe in God, period. “A” period.
Science is like an island in the sea of the unknown. The island gets bigger as our knowlwdge grows. We don’t know what there’s off our shores, and we don’t care as our knowledge can’t reeach it yet. We need to take care only about how to make the island keep on growing.
Therefore I’m not an Atheist: I will believe in God the day our science will reach him. Up to now quarrelling about God is like asking about what happened before the Big Bang.
Which symbol do I like? The asterisk: because of the reasons of the post on intepid.com
And to those who say it’s hard to draw, just check this version (http://intepid.com/stuff/symbols/pentathing-outline.svg) and with a little practice you’ll be able to scrawl it out.
Well, I’m coming even later to this debate, but I think I have a contribution to make, so here goes:
http://effingtheineffable.wordpress.com/2007/08/03/its-a-sign/
A late entry, but who knows? :-)
I call my suggestion “only sky”, named after the verse of John Lennon’s “Imagine” that inspired it.
The symbol is presented here:
http://ensjo.wetpaint.com/page/Only+sky+(EN)
It’s a stick-figure styled image (for ease of drawing by hand) of a star, a man and the curvature of the earth. The intention is to convey the idea: “above us, only sky”.
It may be “drawn” in ASCII art, like an emoticon: *o|-<(
http://i41.tinypic.com/nfkyti.jpg
i obviously like this one the best (yes its me). ink’d Oct 2008.
-rob
I dont know how else to post pictures so a link is the best i can do.