David Silverman, Amanda Knief, and Dave Muscato are going to be at an American Atheists booth at CPAC, that radical Conservative Political Action Committee meeting all the wingnuts attend.
It’s a cunning trick. If they survive, they know we’re all going to have another reason to attend the convention in Salt Lake City — so that we can take them to a bar and ply them with beverages and get them to tell us all the stories.
From the CNN article:
My question: “How bad do we really, really want them???” How am I going to be able to paint conservatives with the broad brush of religious lunacy if atheists start coming out? …Oh, OK. That last question is a joke. I’m more worried about the atheist movement having enough jerks in it as it is. I’m going to be blunt and say I can’t see adding more conservatives helping with that at all.
No live blogging?
I am disappoint.
Pretty soon we will see this headline.
I know I certainly don’t want them. Turning them liberal is more important than turning them atheist, in my opinion. And if they are too immune to reason for the former, I don’t think the latter is going to turn out to well either. Turning a hardcore, logic-immune conservative into an atheist is just a route to increasing the Randroid population. Not wise, in my opinion!
It won’t help with the atheist jerks, but there are a number of ways that even atheist MRAs and conspiracy nutbags are better than religious jerks.
I know I certainly don’t want them. Turning them liberal is more important than turning them atheist, in my opinion.
I’d much rather be allied with progressive believers like Fred Clark and Stephanie Drury than with an atheist version of Rand Paul or Dick Cheney.
And I don’t know how to make quotes in comments, anymore. *sigh*
Saint Ayn Rand was an open atheist.
True believers in her cult still are.
Of course, most Libertarians are cafeteria Libertarians and have forgotten that.
What’s the priority? I’m interested in atheism being normalized instead of stigmatized (but that’s just called secularism). And I’m happy to criticize religion qua religion, even if only on the general principle of promoting an accurate, as opposed to erroneous, view of reality. But recruiting atheists just for the sake of recruiting atheists? With whom I have nothing in common except what we don’t believe? (Because Dictionary Atheism probably is all I have in common with some of these people).
IslandBrewer
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<blockquote>And I don’t know how to make quotes in comments, anymore.</blockquote>
The American far-right is increasingly defining itself by its Christian-supremacist policies. There’s very little room for atheism at CPAC… which is exactly why I support AA setting up a booth there. Get the message out to the people who need to see it most.
Wait, are they seriously doing outreach or just some good old-fashioned meatspace trolling? I’m a fan of either, really.
And almost as quickly as it takes for the news to sink in, they’re gone.
Somewhat unsurprising, but a shame nonetheless.
Yes, they’ve been booted, but apparently Silverman gave them an excuse with some assertive talk, specifically “”I am not worried about making the Christian right angry. The Christian right should be angry that we are going in to enlighten conservatives. The Christian right should be threatened by us.” CPAC says, “He pledged that he will attack the very idea that Christianity is an important element of conservatism. People of any faith tradition should not be attacked for their beliefs, especially at our conference. He has left us with no choice but to return his money.”
No, he didn’t “attack people for their beliefs” but as we know, Christian wingnuts have incredibly sensitive fee fees. Probably would have been wise to lie low if he really wanted to have the table.
Maybe if he’d couched it within a general denunciation of education and healthcare…
. . . and math with letters.
I was a conservative and a christian.
It was the death of my conservatism that chipped away at my goddism.
Just as an anecdote about how important turning them liberal is.
Heartless Randroid atheist? Plutocratic 1%er atheist?
vs
Catholic Worker union organizer who goes to Mass? Racial Justice activist rabbi?
I’d like to see the second two question their religion. But I’d rather have them as neighbors than the first pair.
CPAC invited Ann Coulter to their conference so their “People of any faith tradition should not be attacked for their beliefs, especially at our conference” excuse is false.
With conservatives the phrase “should not be attacked” is understood to mean “should not be attacked by non-conservatives”. That full statement is truncated because it is also understood that when a conservative attacks it is not really an ‘attack’ because he or she is “just bravely telling the truth” and “is saying this because they mean well”. They also claim that only liberals experience cognitive dissonance.
It took me a while to process this (to be fair, it’s almost 2 am over here).
From one sentence to the next, they’ve jumped from the concept of attacking an idea to the concept of attacking people.
Such cluelessness.