Via Daz:
Stated very simply, I face reality and admit that not only isn’t there anyone at home upstairs, there isn’t even any upstairs. I have one life and I intend to make the most of it. Therefore it follows naturally that if I firmly believe this, why then I cannot deprive another person of their turn at existence. Only the very self-assured political and religious zealots kill people in order to save them.
It takes a real shallow thinker to claim that atheism has no consequences. It actually says that there is no escaping the consequences — you aren’t going to get a lollipop in heaven if you say the right words on your deathbed. You have one life and you have to live with it, and then you die, and there are no take-backs or resurrections or rewards or punishments.
::waves at dictionary atheists::
Come on guys! Here’s a new thread for you!
::everyone else::
I’m in charge of popcorn.
Yes, the whole “just ask forgiveness” school of Christianity doesn’t really seem like a big inspiration to morality.
Even worse is the “God has already decided if you’ll be saved or not. You can do absolutely nothing to change that” school of Christianity.
U Frood #2
Calvinist preaching has always struck me as illogical. If God’s already decided, then preaching at me to change my ways can have no effect whatsoever on my fate, regardless of whether I do so or not.
But, but, but… I’ll be DEAD FOREVER!!!111
*runs into traffic*
I have fond memories of Bill, the Galactic Hero.
Bill (Harry) @a real Galactic Hero.
Bill (Harry) a real Galactic Hero.
My dictionary doesn’t have any of that stuff.
Of course his desire to give others the same chance at a life is not a direct consequence of atheism alone. It’s his compassion being informed by atheism. In other words, in this case it’s pretty clear what the + in the A+ is. For a complete sociopath, atheism may have entirely different consequences. This is I think the reason why many like to first point at their dictionaries and then out that this is a not a “consequence of atheism” in the sense of a logical deduction without further assumptions. Given that I’m a compassionate human being, …. And there you lost them.
I still do not understand hate. I mean I know what it is , I have read the dictionary, but I don’t see how anyone can keep it up. It is so isolating and painful in practice that compassion and understanding seem such a better alternative.
That does not mean I have to like everyone nor do I but hate is a waste of time and energy.
uncle frogy
Alex @ # 9 says:
I agree that a social conscience is not a consequence of atheism alone — but it depends a lot, I believe, on where you got your atheism. If it is from pure philosophy or skepticism (the three “omni’s” are self-contradictory; or the evidence for God is as bad as that for Nessie), then very little follows from it. But those have never been convincing arguments for atheism for me (God is essentially defined as a self-contradiction, and we’re supposed to go with it ’cause of mysterious ways and all that; and the virtue of faith is supposed to be that it perseveres in the absence of evidence). For me, the bottom line is all the evidence that the universe is much more comprehensible in the absence of the failed God hypothesis (see Victor Stenger, among others). How do we get that evidence and understanding? Through science. What is science? If nothing else, it is a social process designed mainly to help us try to stop lying to ourselves.
If you come to atheism through science, and you recognize that science is a social process and project, then you ought to be able to see the advantage in giving other people “their turn at existence.” Science flourishes when it is pursued by a large and diverse population of minds. Why would you want to limit the chance of other minds to lend a hand (so to speak).
That is just one of many reasons I have always held that science is indeed a source of values, contrary to the popular received wisdom to the contrary. And that is why I am a scientismist.
unclefrogy:
You may be treating the capacity for hate as a logical thing.
Consequences. Repercussions. People touting the dictionary atheist line seem to be desperate to avoid these things.
So much for those death-bed conversions, that great Augustinian get-out-of-hell-free gimmick. Of course, he later disavowed the prayer of his dissolute youth: “Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.”
This is one reason why it makes me really angry when the bigots are so blase about the denial of human rights and dignity of those they would discriminate against. They would sacrifice the potential for a happy and fulfilling life for those they hate, yes hate, on the altar of their empty and idiotic myths.
There IS no sense in limiting ourselves to deductions.
If not granted continence, how then did be become so full of shit?
Seems to be a bit of a Western, post-monotheistic bias here. There are plenty of atheistic world views that encompass such things as post-mortem reward, punishment and return – most strands of Buddhism for instance. Also a lot of new age philosophies, which borrow ideas from Buddhism. There are even atheistic Hindus who see the gods of their tradition as narrative metaphors but still believe in the central concepts of karma and reincarnation.
I suppose if you want to use “atheism” to mean “philosophical materialism” or “non-religious thinking” then fine, that works. But if we are interested chiefly in dissecting the causes and consequences of our beliefs then I think we ought to recognise that this sort of atheism is not universal. It strikes me that one can only really say that atheism leads to a scientific, materialist world view when the gods not believed in are gods that have pretty much cleared their cultural orbits of metaphysical machinery and become the sole locus of magical thinking in their society.
Hey, that’s a legit gripe, cartomancer.
I’d love if the dictionary atheists vanished and were replaced by Buddhists. I’d rather be arguing that not all the noble truths are true, and that not all of the eightfold path is moral. Converting those already atheist Buddhists to reality based thinking, secular allies against American theocrats would be swell.
However:
The atheist movement is not full of atheist Buddhists and atheist Buddhists don’t have powerful, arguably harmful voices in the atheist movement. What you’re calling bias, I’m describing here as context.
Dax @ 3
If the Westboro Baptists are anything to go by, Calvinist’s don’t preach to save you from Hell.
They’re gloating.
One can be active and passionate about social justice without being an atheist. And, in fact, most social justice activists are NOT atheists. Moreover, atheism is poorly regarded by most who are active and passionate about social justice.
It’s also true that many atheists oppose some aspects of what is called the social justice movement.
Combining the two is therefore harmful to both the atheist movement and the social justice movement.
Be active in social justice, if you wish, without touting your atheism. Don’t work to split the social justice movement. Be active in spreading atheism, if you wish, without touting your social justice views. Don’t work to split the atheist movement.
STFU about one while working for the other.
correct.
Maybe in your country. That’s however a matter of demographics.
Wait, you lost me. What does that have to do with how we envision the atheist movement? Also, maybe atheism would become better-regarded by those in the social justice movement if its public faces weren’t anti-feminist libertarian jackasses?
Those atheists can go to metaphorical hell as far as I’m concerned
Why?
What? Where did that come from? What atheist concerned about social justice is even thinking about “splitting the social justice” movement?
Why should I not tout those, o condescending one?
Yes, shut up about this feminism and social equality, it perturbs the anti-feminists which make this movement great! Leave the precious value-free atheist movement intact, it’s a work of art, a candidate for the UNESCO list of world heritage sites!
A great example of logical smart thinking. You forget a tiny little thing in your argument: What if I don’t want to have this beautifully value-free atheist movement which you envision?
@ Alex
If you want to damage both movements, to retard progress in each, it’s your right to try to do so.
@jenny
Look, if people on the level of the amazing atheist are prominent faces of the atheist movement, if Richard Dawkins spends his spare time is put down feminists on the Twitters while (knowingly or not) cheering on harassers, there is not much damage I can do to compete with that.
Progress towards what?
How very parochial jenny6833a is!
In the UK a whole host of progressive movements and campaigning groups take it for granted that a proportion of their activists are atheists. So self-evident is this that they don’t usually bother to ask people for a single-word identifier. I’m pretty sure that’s true of many countries.
It’s also why a given meeting might equally well be held at Conway Hall, home of the South Place Ethical Society and base for humanism, freethought and secularism or at Friends’ Meeting House just down the road. The Meeting House has a bigger hall and for its non-worship activities pretty well the same audience as you might find in Conway Hall. It’s no big deal.
The attempt to drive a wedge between a disbelief in gods and the willingness to progress with the Enlightenment Project set out, albeit imperfectly, in the US Constitution is divisive in its intention.
It also betrays a failure to grasp any of the myriad ideas which swirl around in this millieu where people can choose their activism according to taste without attempting to destroy what their comrades are trying to do on a different issue.
There’s another context where this “consequences of atheism” debate tends to, at the very least, produce some head scratching.
I’m an atheist. But I haven’t come to that from religion or, really, from anywhere; one day I looked at the definition of atheism and thought, “hey, that describes me” – I’ve never believed in religion. I was never in any doubt that god was just a character in a story.
But I don’t derive my personal philosophy (mostly humanist) from atheism. Mostly it derives from innate compassion, general cultural values, and some bad experiences around being bullied for most of my school time.
You can, of course, argue that if I did believe, my personal philosophy would be different, and therefore my atheism has (logical) consequences – but the two have pretty much developed in parallel, with little of the contact that religious belief tends to have. My personal philosophy is a consequence of my atheism only in the same sense that it is a consequence of my not having been run over while crossing the street. I don’t go and think “well, there’s no god, so it follows I should …” – if anything, it’s more like “Your argument for why I shouldn’t relies on a god, so it’s obviously invalid” – that is, the atheism becomes an argument only if someone else tries to sell me a piece of swamp land. About the same as my anorcism. Except so far, nobody has tried to sell me a hobbit.
But you grew up in a society (and I can say this without knowing where you grew up) where god-belief of one sort or another was common, and commonly held to be morally significant. If you really believe this had no effect on you, or on how you came to atheism, I can only marvel at your naivete.
Fascinating. So you are a brain floating through the void, that never interacted with other people or had any opinions about the world or any knowledge of the universe, until the day you mysteriously bumped into a dictionary, also floating in space, and now you have mastered the English language all by yourself, and chosen to come visit us here, via my blog? I am honored.
jenny6833a A 21:
And when it’s pointed out to you that atheists are themselves a group working for social justice against those that wish to shut them up to feel more comfortable about themselves – and who are willing to refuse them public voices based on their atheism to do so – you might find yourself feeling just a mite uncomfy.
So, maybe you should rethink your position before someone makes you look foolish by pointing this out.
…ah, heck.
@28 Nick Gotts
true
Some people clearly thought so. But the moral difference between believers and unbelievers wasn’t a common topic, and neither was asking people about their religious belief. I think only once in my whole life (I’m 54) did a complete stranger walk up to me and tried to interview me about my belief. I was rather shocked.
Of course, I already said it had effects (“general cultural values” typically are influenced by religion) – but not really about how I came to atheism. At the time I first realized that some people actually believe this stuff, I was already firmly in the non-belief camp … it felt fairly obvious to me. At that time, I had no idea how it was even possible to believe religions when growing up in our society. Of course, after growing up a little more I realized how indoctrination from young age works … it’s just I was lucky enough to not have that.
@29 PZ Myers
I’m sitting here, scratching my head, wondering how you can jump to that conclusion from what I wrote, but, I’m sorry to say, I can’t do it. So I’ll just expand some on what I wrote.
I’m pretty sure I didn’t get that term from a dictionary. But I don’t really remember when I learned about it, except it was quite a bit later than the point where I had concluded, without using that still-unknown term, that I was one. That latter point was some time before I was 14, probably years before that but I can’t pinpoint the moment. As I wrote above, my big surprise was that everyone else didn’t see things the same way, and for that I’d have to have been quite a bit younger.
However, as for the contact with other people, in the first five years of my life, I had almost no contact with people outside of my family – we lived in the house of my father’s parents, and his mother didn’t even want to allow me to play with other children in the street before the house. And none of these people were preachy. (Or regular church goers.) I was pretty much left to make up my mind on these things on my own. (Of course, it is possible that may have had to do something with why I was bullied so much in school. I wouldn’t exactly recommend raising children that way.)
My “mastering” English is too long a story for this message, but I do remember I came to this blog (back before FTB) via Bad Astronomy. However, it’s possible (though I don’t remember) that we interacted some time back when I occasionally read sci.sceptic and – what was the name again? alt.atheism? Something like that. I do remember confusing recurring debates about what atheism and agnosticism is. And, on the other hand, the VAX guy.
The early sci.sceptic was interesting, but later it became so filled with pointless flame wars and cross-posts from hell that it was pretty much impossible to find anything of worth in there. What I remember more fondly from my Usenet time is rec.arts.sf.composition and rec.arts.sf.science (and, occasionally, -.written) … but that doesn’t really belong in this topic.
So either throw the social justice movement under the bus so that the assholes in the atheist movement can accomplish…whatever it is they accomplish*, or throw the atheists under the bus to curry favor with the parts of the social justice movement who are prejudiced against atheism. Seems strangely defeatist to me.
* Which seems to me mostly to be ego preening
LOL, too late, Jennynumbers! I’m already involved in social justice activism and everybody I work with knows I’m also an atheist who’s rather evangelical about my dislike of religion.
I guess you can pin the inevitable failure of both movements on me!
*still laughing*
I always knew YOU would be the one to somehow retard both movements SallyStrange! But to see it in broad daylight? Le Gaspzers!
But seriously jenny#, have you got an actual method by which atheism is somehow harmful to social justice? Just stating it like that isn’t good enough, something provided without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
@ #27 KHMS
Exactly. Superb post.
@ #27 Omnicrom
I wouldn’t go door to door saying, “I’m an atheist and I want to enlist your support for feminism.” And I wouldn’t go door to door saying, “I’m a feminist and I want to enlist you in the stheist movement.”
I don’t think you would either.
I make pitches for both atheism and feminism, but I don’t mix the two. You may wish to try it, but your success rate won’t be anywhere near what it would be if you didn’t introduce extraneous and controversial material.
@ #33 StrangeSally
As is usual for you, that’s irrelevant. I’m not talking about those you work with. I’m talking about those you don’t know and set out to convince.
Announcing yourself as an atheist won’t help enlist a Christian for social justice.
Announcing yourself as a radical feminist won’t help persuade very many targets to atheism.
khms:
This seems to imply that whatever society you grew up in lacked the pervasive influence of religious belief.
jenny6833a:
You know this HOW?
@ #30 Anri
Eh?
I’m not willing to try to guess exactly what if anything you’re trying to say there, but it doesn’t appear relevant to anything I’ve ever said.
For those who are so resistant to the idea that there is more to atheism than just the dictionary definition:
Are you familiar with the facile argument against atheists used by theists, wondering why they care about religion?
“So you don’t believe in God. Why define yourself by that? Why do you care? I don’t believe in unicorns and I don’t call myself an “a-unicornist”. I don’t go around trying to debunk people who believe in unicorns and spending my life obsessed with how there are no unicorns”
So imagine a society where 95% of people believe in unicorns. Imagine a society where half of the political system is comprised of people who are very, very serious about unicorns. People who insist that unicorns are what make them interested in horseback riding, horse care, hairstyling, drawing rainbows, opposing anything “un-natural”, using horns as weapons, pre-emptive war, vegetarianism, prohibitionism for alcohol and cigarettes but support for marijuana and LSD, and maybe also toss in large and vocal support for furry costumes and fan fiction. Assume there is another political party that also likes unicorns, but are less hardcore fans, and are also less supportive of all of the above, but some of do support bits and pieces of it to varying degrees.
Now imagine that you are in that society and you do not believe in unicorns at all. If you are a dictionary a-unicornist, that has no implications at all, supposedly. You are just as likely to care about all the myriad of things associated with hardcore unicorn enthusiasm, despite rejecting the central premise of unicornism. Entirely possible. But isn’t it more likely that you would tend to deviate? That you would tend to not care about horses as much? That you would not have the same nature fetish?
Often Christians like to point to “good atheists” and say that they have just hijacked Christian morals. They claim such atheists are cultural Christians, rejecting the basic idea of Christianity while still swimming in a culture shaped by it and still adopting premises and ideas that flow from it. A dictionary atheist, an atheist for which their atheism has no implications beyond not believing in a God, would be exactly the example those apologists were looking for.
I tend to think that atheism has implications. It is just not clear what those implications are, as PZ said. Atheists tend to be more left-leaning. If they are right-wing, they tend to libertarian, objectivist, capitalism worshippers and such because they tend not to adopt “social conservatism” ideas. If they are left-wing, it is largely because of how well the left-wing aligns with secularism.
Atheists have more issues socially (and consequently are less “happy” than believers) because they have to deal with stigma and don’t have church as a helpful connection like believers do.
See here: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/scienceonreligion/2012/05/atheism-a-personality-profile/
Atheists tend to be pragmatic, systematic, and individualistic. (Or as I saw phrased in a different study: “logical, skeptical, and non-comformist”. )
And of course, you can’t be ignorant of what came before the atheism. Look at the demographics: http://atheistscholar.org/AtheistPsychologies/AtheistDemographics.aspx
Most atheists are young-ish, white, male, more educated, higher income, and supposedly have less guilt about sex.
If you think that atheism is just atheism and there is nothing more to it, you are ignoring all the evidence to the contrary. Atheism does come with baggage. And that is largely because of what you need to do and need to be in order to become non-religious in a country or even in a world where religion is “normal”. Ignore that or deny that at your own peril.
Oh, look, it’s more “BIG TENT” stupidity.
The atheist movement (such as it is) split itself. The women, LGBT people, and PoC who were complaining about not being represented, or treated like shit by people in the movement must not be very important to people like jenny. They’re expected to put up with being crapped on in the name of the BIG TENT, bc that’s what’s most important.
Fuck that noise.
Tony!: Also also, DEEP RIFTS
@ Maureen Brian
It’s true in the USA too, and in France. But we’re not talking about the people you work with, I at least am talking about the people outside your group whom you’re trying to convince.
Or, maybe I don’t understand what your groups do. Do you only talk to each other without any attempt to enlist the support of people not currently in your group?
khms @ 31:
I think I can relate to your experience of experiencing atheism. I’m 58 and I wasn’t raised with any religious belief by my parents and other than having to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in grade school (not a big deal, really) never had any significant contact with religious teaching. It therefore wasn’t a great moment to realize I didn’t believe in any sort of god. I think that the “mind your own business” part of the upper Midwest culture I was raised in helped make that possible too, as evangelical types were few and far between, other than a few I ran into in college, which I was not impressed by. I wasn’t impressed by the Transcendental Meditation practitioners I met back then either.
Otherwise, I had a very normal, happy childhood and have had a fairly decent life as an adult, and to this day I don’t have to deal with religion if I don’t want to. And I don’t. My wife on the other hand had quite a different experience as a teen where her family was the only non-Mormon one in the small Utah town they lived in. So I know my experience is far from typical.
Basically, the consequences of atheism for me aren’t important philosophically, and amount simply to a rejection of supernatural explanations for anything. I don’t think atheism can serve as a guide to life though. While Harry Harrison’s quip is funny there’s no reason why atheism formally implies that you must treat people nicely. (That certainly wasn’t the case in the former Soviet Union or in today’s People’s Republic of China.) That’s not to say they aren’t *politically* important though, given how religion is used to sway people. I strongly support our secular form of government and want our politics to be informed by reasoned argument, not theistic claptrap. Or Reaganomics, but I repeat myself.
@35 jenny6833a
Wish I could say the same about yours, but I can’t.
@38 Tony! The Queer Shoop
Not quite, but the little corner of it I grew up in was, it seems, somewhat shielded from the rest, as I explained in @31.
But for the pervasive part, let me just mention that a local saying goes that in this city where I live these days, either it rains, or the bells are ringing – or both, then it’s Sunday. The part about the weather turns out to be slightly less than true, as for the bells, it’s hard to find a place to stand on a street where you can’t see at least one church. That was certainly not true of the city I spent my first five years in, though. Not that I saw all that much of that city during that time …
Running with that for a moment (atheists don’t actually go door-knocking), your persuasive atheist would go door to door saying, “I don’t believe in god and neither should you, and this abstract concept has no meaning or relevance to your life.”
Yeah, that’ll appeal to the crowds. Don’t want to scare people off by advancing causes that directly affect people’s lives, after all.
anteprepro @41:
Nice try, and I hope it works to get these nitwits to understand, but I have my doubts.
Convince of what? Atheists don’t proselytize. And most human rights groups want your participation, and don’t care why you are doing it, just that you are doing it.
So, what is your real problem (and it isn’t what you are talking about)?
Thanks Tony! I have little to no hope either, but it is always worth a try. Do it for the lurkers, etc. etc.
@David Wilford:
bolding & italicsmine.
Look, this is a really bizarre (mis)use of the word “must”.
Nothing in our knowledge of biology and its sub-field of evolutionary causes and effects formally implies that you must eat food. Or avoid shooting yourself in the spinal cord. Or have sex.
Nothing at all implies you must do those things.
What our knowledge of biology (including evolution) formally implies is that if you don’t eat food there will be specific, predictable consequences. For certain cephalopods, these are even evolutionarily positive consequences when food-denial occurs in a female organism after egg-laying.
“Must” is simply another way of saying X => Y.
Atheism says that if we don’t treat each other nicely, we won’t get a chance to make up for it after death. Neither will we pay some infinite cost after death. In other words, if we want positive benefits from treating each other nicely, we must do it before death. Likewise, if we want to avoid paying some infinite cost after death, we have no constraints on our behavior at all as that infinite cost will never be incurred, by anyone, for any behavior (or lack thereof) at all. Thus, if we are trying to determine **what nice behavior actually looks like** we must not include inflicting or preventing post-death infinite costs in our reasoning or our outcome measures.
The fact that in your opinion Russians are jerks says not a damn thing about whether this is or isn’t true.
No one here has alleged that atheism in a society takes control of your mind and forces “nice” behavior. Therefore the existence of “not nice” behavior in society S which was, lets assume arguendo, a society whose norms were more profoundly affected by atheism than theism, means fuck-all for the discussion.
Atheism certainly implies things that are relevant for determining what “nice” behavior looks like. The fact that some people choose not to be nice, even while embracing atheism, says nothing other than that some people looked at Atheism => Consequence for determining the ethics of certain behaviors and said to themselves, “I don’t give a damn about whether this behavior is ethical or not, since it has benefits other than ethical that I would prefer not to forego.”
I’m perfectly happy to entertain an actual argument from you that atheism doesn’t entail consequences, but the implication of your argument is that atheism doesn’t exert mind-control over our behaviors.
To which everyone here would say, “Duh. And do you have anything to actually contribute?”
cartomancer:
You come up with a coherent way of having an intentional force (or many of them) that does supernatural shit like an afterlife or karma or reincarnation, yet doesn’t amount to a god (or many gods). Really, try doing that. Playing pretend that it doesn’t amount to that, simply by not using a particular English word (like “god”) or not visualizing some old guy with a beard living in the sky — or at least that it’s somehow *waves hands* not the same thing — is not helping in the least to avoid a “Western” bias like you’re talking about.
Exactly what sort do you mean? The kind that’s internally consistent?
And why would it matter that it isn’t “universal”? People (like atheists) aren’t consistent, certainly, but don’t concepts (like atheism) have to be, if they’re going to be even remotely useful to us?
This also doesn’t help make what you’re saying any clearer. Whatever it’s supposed to mean, if somebody does believe in any gods of whatever type, that’s certainly not helping me come to the conclusion that they’re an atheist.
David Wilford #45
Huh? It’s not a quip, it’s not meant to be in any way funny, and oddly enough—coming as it does from a professional author who knows how to use words in such a way as to not be funny when he doesn’t want to be funny—it’s not funny.
If you think the statement that life is precious and altruism a good thing is funny or amusing, you really need to spend more time in introspection.
ROTFLM6833AO! Good grief. Tell that to Dawkins, Hitchens, Stengor, Myers, that Christina person, and all the others who are/were at it day after day after day. Do they write all that stuff and make all those speeches solely for the money?
Hmmm.
So you just sit around talking to each other? You don’t try to spread your ideas? You don’t try to enlist others to your group and/or your cause?
I’m talking about the outreach part of your efforts, although you and others are persuading me that there aren’t any.
I’d agree, however, that mixing atheism and human rights is just fine if all you do is preach to each other while you sit around engaging in mutual masturbation or whatever else you do.
The groups I’m in are actually trying to advance their cause by persuading/enlisting others.
Sorry, but you fail the proselytizing bit. They were giving speeches when invited to do so, and writing books, not knocking on peoples doors or standing on street corner haranguing passerbys. If you make that type of fuckwitted mistake, you bring everything you say into questions.
Only that if you are an atheist (by your own doing), you aren’t alone. You are one inattentive idjit.
Since you seem to want lecture: What are you doing for outreach and enlisting, jenny? How are you going about with your super magically effective way of herding cats? How are you finding the Pitch Perfect resonance frequency that is the only way that Outsiders will listen to you? Please, share with us your detailed research.
@anteprepro, #41:
Are these really at all the same list?
…
but past that, I’m with Tony! I think you did a valiant job, but I don’t know if it will get through at all.
There is no word “unicornist”, so being “a-unicornist” is ridiculous.
instead of getting them to try and imagine that alternate universe where unicornism is dominant, I think there’s a very good chance (and remember this is not empirical at all, merely my best insight/guess) that a much more productive way to go about this is to follow your opening statement:
with a version of your conclusion uncluttered by the metaphor. (It’s also, IMO, much more likely to be effective with theists to avoid the unicorn metaphor and proceed straight to:)
So theists believe in a god. Why do they define themselves by that? Why do they care? I believe in lunch and I don’t call myself a “lunchist”.* I don’t go around trying to convince people that eat a large meal in the morning, nibble through the day, and have a moderate meal in the early evening that they are going to suffer grievous consequences and should immediately convert to lunchism.
So, great, some people believe that tonguing a nearly insubstantial spot of dried wheat-paste and washing it down with cheap booze actually constitutes a profoundly important and thoroughly, literally cannibalistic meal. I don’t give a cracker. I’m not going to identify as lunchist in opposition to these weirdos who think their most important meal is human flesh washed down with human blood and consumed only once a week (or less). Nor, one might assume, will they identify as alunchist in opposition to my insistence that our most important meals are largish ones most healthfully consumed after your circadian rhythms spin up your metabolism for the day but while a large portion of active time remains for you to use the nutrition in the meal before your circadian rhythms spin down toward sleep (and are so without regard to any human-flesh quota).
But in fact those folk do come up with a word to describe themselves. More, they come up with several. They call themselves Christian. They call themselves religious. They call themselves theist. Atheists didn’t coin those words or institute their widespread use – certainly modern atheists didn’t. It’s the Christians, the religious, and the theists that did that.**
Then they promulgate the idea that being Christian/religious/theist is not only the RightThingToDo™, it’s actually the only possible mode of existence (c.f. “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no god.’ “)
Others promulgate laws that apply differentially with respect to religion and religious belief (e.g. the death penalty for apostasy frequently used in Christian history which, by definition, cannot apply if one was never a Christian).
All that gives one, in many contexts, a reason to make clear that one is non-Christian, irreligious, atheist and/or lunchist. If I skip the dried wheat paste and cheap booze*** to use that time getting some real nutrition into my body, that may be meaningless to me, but the dedicated alunchist may see it as very meaningful and demand an explanation (if not behaviors of “atonement”).
So in this context it is understandable why I might identify myself publicly as lunchist.
But even insisting on that explanation is wrong headed.
The real question we should be asking is why the pathetically-underfed-cannibals felt the need to identify themselves as Christian, religious, theist, alunchist. You want to know if atheism carries with it any social or behavior implications?
Ask the alunchists if alunchism carries with it any social or behavioral implications. Why, for fuck’s sake, did they take their very simple belief in ritualized cannibalism and turn it into some sort of identity? I guarantee that identifying as non-Christian, irreligious, atheist and/or lunchist will disappear as a social phenomenon when the words “Christian,” “religious,” and “theism” disappear into an irretrievable past so completely that those grapheme/phoneme combinations carry less meaning to literally anyone than Ouagadougou carries to the median**** white, US-citizen barrista and proud owner of a newly minted GED still living in their one city of residence since birth: Sacramento.
Some people have asked straight folks, “When did you first become [aware that you are] heterosexual?” This turning of the queer question on its head had certain educational uses, but really is at least theoretically applicable, mutatis mutandis, to both straight and queer folk.
The question about “why is this so important that you actually bother to make it an identity” is really only applicable to one group: the theists…in each society notably including and emphasizing the most influential theist group. For the societies of residence for the vast majority of Horde members, that’s the alunchists.
So I refuse to answer the question, “why do I make being an atheist a thing?” When the alunchists adequately explain why their belief that the most important meal is a nutrition-free bit of human-flesh gnoshing I can – only then – begin to explain why it matters that I’m a lunchist.
Until that day, ask not for whom the steeple’s call-to-gnosh-bell tolls: it sure as hell doesn’t toll for me.
========================================
*Despite the fact that there’s only one thing girls all like a bunch: girls, they want to have lunch. Girls just want to have lunch. That’s all they really want.
**At the very least in relationship to instituting widespread use. While we can gather evidence, we can never actually prove that Thomas Aquinas wasn’t an atheist in Christian clothing, and as we don’t even have a way of reliably knowing which person first put those phonemes together in those orders while attaching the modern meanings, we’re impossibly distant from actually proving what was in the head of that person…though we can know that the vast majority of the people living during the times when those words were coined were religious and, in some senses, theists.
***And for those who object to my description of certain items as “dried wheat paste” and/or “cheap booze”, I remind you that I’ve eaten matzoh and drunk Manischewitz: I know my dried fucking wheat paste and cheap fucking booze, thank you very much.
****For extremely large values of “median”.
Crip Dyke @ 51:
I was strictly speaking to anything that an atheist stance per se morally implies. So if we want to dismiss the notion of divine justice in favor of a sociological approach to right behavior, I’m fine with that.
Daz @ 53:
Well, I thought it humorous, but then I met Harry Harrison back in 2001 and let’s just say that irony was his metier. So much that when read that quote I heard it with his voice through a darkly humored glass, or maybe two. I certainly could be wrong, but you may rest assured that I don’t think that peace, love, and understanding is actually funny.
@Crip Dyke
So you agnoshtick or what.
jenny6833a:
On the one hand I agree with you that these people have attempted to sway others, but are they actively going out into the world attempting to sway others to their worldview? It seems like they’re often discussing church/state separation issues in public, or the harms of religious belief, not so much “hey leave religion and become an atheist”. The times they have are often in response to theists (on their blogs, or vlogs, etc). Perhaps my understanding of proselytization is not correct.
BTW, her name is Greta Christina. “That Christina person” sounds degrading.
David Wilford @59:
Oh, very much so. The passage comes from a conversation in which the narrator is explaining why he risked his own safety to avoid killing someone, IIRC. Serious, definitely, but always laced with a grim humour. The two are not mutually exclusive.
@ nerd # 55
You’re funny and way overconfident. If you’d bothered to check a dictionary you’d have learned the word I used that got your panties into such a tightly wound wad means only ‘to convert or try to convert.’ All the people I mentioned, and many more, meet the definition.
Who’s the fuckwit now?
@52 consciousness razor
So … astronomy fine, planetology not so much?
AntePeePoo says,
That’s a reasonable question posed in a snotty way. You can’t help the snotty part, I guess.
Ten or so years ago, I started a dictionary-variety feminist group at work and served as chairperson for the first several years. I’m still a member. It’s composed of both men and women. We identify young women who are just getting started who are good technically and have good interpersonal skills. We mentor/groom them for promotion to management and/or to higher individual contributor slots. They aren’t all engineers. One of our current charges is a writer with a talent for good sounding but precise, unambiguous prose. If she acquires more of a financial background, I’m betting she’ll be writing the company’s annual report and the CEO’s speeches before she’s done. The current chairperson was one of our first few finds. She’s very good technically and a managerial superstar who married and has had a couple kids along the way.
I’m also a member of an organization that tries to identify outstanding black and brown kids in middle school and early high school. We mentor and provide dollars when necessary to try to get them to go wherever they want to go in life. We let them know what’s possible and they decide what they want. It doesn’t have to be engineering or even college. I’m usually communicating with two such kids by email and phone. I meet with them several times per year, more often if they hit a rough spot.
My views on religion and similar matters aren’t relevant to either of these ’causes’ so I don’t talk about them. I/we don’t care what the kids or each other believe. Our goals are narrowly secular so our groups are focused on those narrow secular goals.
I might add that the intra-company group was a bit slow getting started and even slower gaining widespread support. We had to emphasize that we were not disciples of Greta Christina et al, that feminism to us meant political, economic, and social equality of the sexes, and that in the company context it meant finding and mentoring female talent that would otherwise be overlooked. Once that message was absorbed, it was smooth sailing.
Me and hub are members of a local humanist group that meets a couple times per month. They discuss atheism and humanism, preach to each other — the already converted — and consume large quantities of donuts and coffee. Beyond that, they don’t do much. I suspect that we’ll gently phase out by the end of the year. Hub is terminally bored; I have problems staying awake.
Oh yeah, we are both active nudists and nudist activists. But that’s not relevant to this discussion so I’ll not say more.
@jenny6833a:
Damn, I saw the whole “proselytize merely means…” thing coming a mile away, and was about to make a post gently chiding Nerd for putting connotation far ahead of denotation, when you come out with this incredible load of putrid crap.
Really? I’m far from someone who refrains from language that can be and/or is intended to be insulting. But when I do actually intend to use language that I know will communicate insult and do so because of that insulting connotation, I bloody well do it because the insult is earned based on the obvious evidence before us.
How, precisely, has anteprepro demonstrated a scatological preoccupation? Insult anteprepro’s ability to argue, the positions that anteprepro takes and the reasons given for justifying those positions. Hell, insult anteprepro’s general capacity to form arguments or positions (e.g. “you are too stupid to understand the implications of your own words…”) if you feel it’s warranted.
But the only person associated with scatology by your puerile insult is Jenny6833a.
Beyond that:
What, precisely, does Greta Christina advocate under the name of feminism beyond “political, economic, and social equality of the sexes”?
Be specific. If you have any ability to do so.
Nope fuckwitted idjit, not trying to convert, like morons or JW’s. But then it requires one to understand the difference between explaining a position, and getting into peoples faces at every opportunity to force them to convert to your way of thinking. You are proselytizing here, full of sound and fury, but no logic, cogency, and real thinking. Nice sloganeering. Your real objection is still in the wind….
And Jenny, is your real objection that you don’t like feminism, and don’t want to be associated with it even under the same big tent?
She’s loud, see, and that makes poor jenny squeamish.
No, Nerd. I think Jenny6833a – if that’s Jenny6833a’s real name! – is entirely encapsulated by her comment at #21, and most succinctly (and nearly completely) expressed in the portions that received my bolding:
Of course, Alex immediately (@22) provided a response, but I just wanted to chime in here on Jenny6833a’s side.
It’s exactly this philosophy that leads me to tell The Mellow Monkey, among others, to shut the fuck up about race when doing feminism and shut the fuck up about doing feminism when opposing racism.
Seriously. TMM and people like TMM keep insisting the goal is a more ethical feminism and a more ethical anti-racist movement – both at the same time.
Clearly, however, the reason for asking white women to stop being racist is just to divide feminism and the reason for asking men of color to stop being sexist is just to divide the anti-racist movement.
So STFU all you people who want an effective and ethical anti-racist feminism and/or an effective and ethical anti-sexist movement to end racism! Whenever some civil rights or feminist group scape-goats or shit-cans a woman of color for being so uppity as to be a woman at the same time as being non-white, YOU create deep rifts from previously level terrain when you actually, y’know, talk. At all.
We now return you to Jenny6833a’s series of Deep Ethical and Religious Profundities.*
========
*For “What a Maroon”: Yes, both the D and the P were intentional, as was their relationship to each other.
jenny6833a:
That title is still yours, don’t worry.
Given your contributions in many a thread, you got what you deserved.
Your accomplishments are noteworthy, and laudable.
What the fuck is your problem with Greta?
Disciples? So far as I can tell, she believes in the same kind of feminism you describe here. Did she shit in your Cheerios one day?
*checks history, in school during the civil rights era, the radical and feminists movements on campus late ’60s early ’70s.*
Somehow I remember quite well the activists addressing multiple issues at the same time without being hypocritical.
That is all….
Crip Dyke says, among other stuff,
jenny6833a
I’m struggling to see what your problem is. You appear to be quite happy to promote equal and ethical treatment outside the atheist community. Why are you so appalled at the idea of people pushing for equal and ethical treatment within the community.
Do atheist women not deserve the same protection from harassment at conferences that non-atheist women do? Are rape-threats to atheist women not as serious, for some reason, as rape-threats to non-atheist women?
What makes atheist women so less-deserving of these things?
jenny6833a:
So you don’t have a coherent criticism of her that’s borne of actually reading what she has said. You dismiss her bc “reasons”.
You’re a goddamned piece of work jennyfuckface.
@Jenny6833a
How do you know they were feminists of her type if you don’t know what type of feminist she is? To distinguish yourself and your group, you say you advocated
but you have no idea if this makes you disciples of GC or not. Moreover, you explain:
without any idea of whether GC would be against or for mentoring female talent that would otherwise be overlooked.
Yet somehow you insist:
Oh. It was “dependent” was it? Dependent in the sense of the word “dependent” as used commonly by English speakers all over the surface of planet Earth? And even sometimes below or above the surface?
Or did you mean “dependent” in the sense that it didn’t matter at all if you were or were not acting consonant with GC’s goals, but instead it was important for your effectiveness that unlike GC, you, personally, were not hated by the people whose opinions you wished to change?
Because that’s not what “dependent on NOT being like that” means in English, for any value of “that” at all related to “political, economic, and social equality of the sexes” or even corporate mentoring.
I am forced to conclude, then, that you are lying when you insist that the difference of opinion, if any, between you & GC on “political, economic, and social equality of the sexes” and/or corporate mentoring had any fucking thing at all to do with your group’s effectiveness.
Worse, you are also talking completely out your ass when you describe ‘feminists’ “of [Greta Christina’s] type”. Yet still worse, your scare quotes must then be taken as a deliberate effort to paint yourself as a “good feminist” who doesn’t deserve scorn, hatred, dislike, contempt or derision in contrast to Greta Christina, who must, logically, then deserve such scorn, hatred, dislike, contempt and derision.
And you do this without any fucking clue whatsoever what GC actually does or advocates that is different from what you do or advocate.
Exactly how you decide who deserves scorn and who doesn’t, if it is anything other than that you don’t and people who get scorn do if joining in the scorn furthers your purposes, is something for which I have no evidence whatsoever.
Even your belated attempt at labeling GC “loud” is not only contradictory to your earlier assertions that GC and her “type” of feminist differed from you in conceptions of feminism and not personal style, therefore revealing you to be either 1) writing here without any idea what your are saying or 2) writing here and in the process lying at least once, but also just as self-serving, hypocritical and unethical.
As you have never engaged in a conversation about feminism with GC in person, you have no idea whether she is “loud” or not.
To the extent that she can be characterized as “loud”, it is merely in a metaphorical sense of “loud” justified because she puts words out on the internet which, without apology, advocate answers to questions and/or recommendations for actions which others find objectionable.
I think you differentiate yourself from that quite significantly in your comment #21 on this thread in which you say, and I quote,
Oh. Wait. What I meant was that you do exactly the thing which you agree is most likely to be the actual, if disguised, reason GC gets targeted for scorn.
The only remaining conclusion available to any rational person reading you on this thread is that you believe that you are superior to GC because you are you and GC is not, which distinction justifies throwing GC under the bus and participating in a campaign of public scorn if it happens to have some practical benefit to you. I mean, aren’t you the good feminist who doesn’t deserve to have her ideology demeaned with scare quotes, after all?
It is a theory which is, apparently, yours. And yet it paints you in the most profoundly unethical light. So let me be perfectly clear. In a moment, when I make it clear that I believe you are a moral blot on this thread, it will not be because that serves any practical purpose for me at all. I will say it only because your actual contributions to this thread paint a deeply immoral portrait of how to advocate for a cause which one deems worthy of support. It is because your history of activism, as testified to in your words on this page, leave me perfectly comfortable with every single connotation communicated in describing you and any who would defend your behaviors not as feminists or even ‘feminists’ but merely “An ilk.”
You are a moral blot on this thread.
Wow. Jenny doesn’t like Greta Christina because other people didn’t like Greta Christina, and the bus just was BEGGING for someone to get thrown under it or something.
Because Accommodation. Tactics. Outreach.
Why is it that the people who always stress making allies always seem to think it is fine to stab OTHER people in the back to do so? It is almost like they are insincere! And don’t really care about getting people on their side as much as they care about having an excuse to stop a conversation that they don’t like.
Ooh, ooh, I have :D
Oh for fuck’s fucking sake, Jenny thinks Greta Christina is “loud” or shrill or whatever?
Greta’s a good third of the reason I came around to genuine social justice advocacy (privilege, etc.) so to speak – her and Jen McCreight and a few other people, who were saying a lot of things, that other people were saying in ways that weren’t easily distinguishable from the bullying and gaslighting-about-bullying-by-authority-figures I’d dealt with most of my life, in ways that were in fact distinguishable without any loss of assertiveness.
Jenny, immoral liar and bullshitter:
But you keep on expressing it time and time again in a passive-aggressive bullying fashion. You are what you preach against. Typical hypocrisy of those who oppose things like true feminism and A+.
Ok, jenny6833a, since apparently I threw you with trying to let you think your way to a conclusion, I’ll be more explicit:
Attempting to silence atheists in the name of social justice is a social injustice.
Atheists, in many places (such as the US) are a despised, mistrusted, vilified minority. Telling them to sit down, shut up, and be happy with their place in the back of the bus isn’t actually moving social justice forward.
There ya go, that clear enough for you?
Anri #80 says
Good, Anri, good. I’m pleased to see that you’ve figured that out. That’s why I don’t mention atheism when I’m selling, say, women’s rights. Doing so would usually be hugely counterproductive.
Hey, hot damn, we agree again. I’ve certainly never said — anywhere — anything different.
Successful sales tactics require separating what you’re selling at the moment from other products you also sell that you’re pretty darn sure your potential customer will react to with high negativity.
If you’re peddling cereal to someone who absolutely won’t eat meat, you don’t include the wonders of T-bones in your pitch for cereal. To do so would be a) irrelevant and b) counterproductive.
If you’re selling laptop computers to a likely prospect, you don’t muddle your laptop pitch by including anti-religion, pro-atheism material — especially if your laptop prospect is a Southern Baptist preacher.
An hour later, when you’re selling atheism to someone else, you don’t muddle your pitch for atheism by extolling the wonders of your laptop computer line. To do so would be a) irrelevant and b) counterproductive.
Now, think generally for a moment. Apply the idea of “focus on the goal of the moment” to selling, say, stronger anit-rape laws while prattling on about the evils of Christianity and the virtues of atheism. In the vast majority of cases, your chances of persuading someone to support anti-rape laws will be reduced.
Assuming you actually want to be successful, you focus your sales pitch only on what you’re trying to sell at the moment. And you don’t dilute your sales pitch by trying to sell a whole bunch of stuff at the same time, because that usually results in selling nothing.
There ya go, that clear enough for you?
jenny6833a @ 81:
Let’s go to the videotape!
There you have it, folks, someone who would never actually tell atheists to Shut The Fuck Up about atheism.
Except when they do.
So, tell me, if I am seeking social justice for atheists, how I should separate my work for social justice from mentioning atheism?
And if I find someone telling atheists that they should Shut The Fuck Up about being atheists, what would be the best way to point out that they were stepping on social justice for atheists without mentioning atheism?
If a fellow feminist is unwilling to listen to me because I am an atheist, they are not actually in favor of social justice and they are not my ally.
In exactly the same way that a feminist being unwilling to listen to me if they find out I’m gay, or Jewish, or black, means that they aren’t actually interested in social justice and aren’t my ally.
If I’m hiding parts of myself – especially parts of myself that I am proud and happy about – to be capable of winning your favor, that’s not social justice. I don’t doubt it ‘plays well in Peoria’, but that doesn’t make it right, or fair, or just. I’m not looking for useful idiots I can fool long enough to get them to wave a flag with me before I come out of the closet. I’m looking for actual allies who are willing to accept difference between us in the name of social justice.
Because accepting differences between us is, y’know, the basic point of social justice.
By the way, see the difference in the way we’re approaching things in this discussion?
I’m telling you what I’m planning on doing, and why, and you’re telling me what I should be doing and why. Just sayin’.
I note that jenny6833a has opted not to respond to Crip Dyke’s well thought out and extremely well reasoned argument against hir points.
Nor has jenny6833a responded to my queries of why xe would criticize Greta Christina without being able to describe her position on feminism.
Jenny6833a appears to want to interact with people here, but does not want to argue hir points honestly. The dishonesty in jenny6833a’s comments is awful.
Because, ladies and gentlemen, there is only *one* way to accomplish a goal.
for #84 Tony
Tony says, “Because, ladies and gentlemen, there is only *one* way to accomplish a goal.”
Tony is woefully incorrect. There are always a thousand ways that don’t work very well, but that might occasionally succeed..
I’ve been talking about the way that works best. You’re welcome to maximize your failure rate by using sales techmiques that don’t work well at all.
And, I suspect that you will.
Sales really. Fucking sales. What’s the fucking POINT of selling atheism? Especially if all it does is make more people willing to throw every other cause out for the sake of atheism? It’s just fucking evangelism.
Seriously someone explain to me how this atheism for atheism’s sake isn’t just proselytizing?
Oh and incidentally since we’re not mixing SJ and atheism Dawkins and Harris can shut the fuck up about Islam’s misogyny and how teaching hell is child abuse because guess what? Social issues. Stick to philosophical arguments and don’t bring in SJ just to score cheap points in your “sales pitch”
No more bitching about Vaccines, no more bitching about creationism because education is a SJ issue and not one of atheism. Either stick to pure logical syllogisms or shut the fuck up about dilution you hypocritical slime
Had another point that the site decided to eat-ed
Seriously someone explain to me how this atheism for atheism’s sake isn’t just proselytizing?
Oh and incidentally since we’re not mixing SJ and atheism Dawkins and Harris can shut the fuck up about Islam’s misogyny and how teaching hell is child abuse because guess what? Social issues. Stick to philosophical arguments and don’t bring in SJ just to score cheap points in your “sales pitch”
No more bitching about Vaccines, no more bitching about creationism because education is a SJ issue and not one of atheism. Either stick to pure logical syllogisms or shut the fuck up about dilution you hypocritical slime
All of Anri’s #82 QFT.
And noting Jennynumbers convenient ignoring of Anri’s post as well. Don’t see much point in continuing the argument when you’re going to pull the two year old “naaaaah I can’t hear you” routine.
#86 Ing
Right? Like instead of money for a product all “selling” atheism or feminism is convincing someone. But if they’re going to be an anti-feminist atheist or a pro-life Christian feminist, what the ever loving fuck is the point? Now you’re still an asshole but I argue with you for different reasons…I’ll save my breath for people that can actually go the distance, thank you very much. Those, you know, whaddya call ’em…allies!
jenny6833a:
This *is* telling people there’s only one way to accomplish a goal. Yes, I’m assuming that goal is selling a “product”, since I’m working with parameters you’ve established.
You argue that your way is best.
And you still refuse to acknowledge the points against you. You still refuse to address the fact that you don’t even understand what Greta Christina’s position on feminism is, yet you dismiss and deride her.
Jenny is tone trolling. Jenny doesn’t like the tone of atheists. Jenny doesn’t like the tone of loud feminists. They upset her Kumbuya.
Funny how all effective social change groups, like civil rights, women’s rights, LGBT rights, have loud and vocal section to get peoples attention, and a softer, quieter group to make them actually do change and show there is nothing to fear. But the quieter group needs the loud group to make people sit up and listen.
Another tone troll to be hushfiled, until they present actual third party evidence not just opinion, to back up their claims.
#89 Nerd says
I agree with that, and have said nothng to the contrary.
I said my company didn’t want — using your words — a loud and vocal (and thus inevitably divisive) group operating on company time, and the people I needed for my endeavor didn’t want to join a loud and vocal (and thus inevitably divisive) group. And, since I didn’t want that kind of group either, because I wanted accomplishments not noise, I/we assured everyone that we weren’t and wouldn’t become one.
jenny6833a:
And you used Greta Christina as an example of the kind person your company didn’t need or want, despite not know what her beliefs were.
#88 Tony says
Your last sentence conflicts with your first sentence. Your last sentence is correct.
The difference between selling an idea and selling a product is not worth discussing until y’all have grasped the basics of selling.
I did not dismiss or deride her. However, to use Nerd’s words, she does fall in the ‘loud and vocal’ category.
Yawn, still not iota of third party evidence to back Jenny’s tone trolling fuckwittery. Typical. Nothing but Kumbuya opinion.
#82 Anri says
You shouldn’t sell social justice for atheists alone. You should sell social justice as a concept that applies to everyone. It’s an umbrella term.
You make your case for social justice, hopefully after describing what YOU mean by it. Then, when you’re done, you say, “Of course social justice applies to everyone: Christians, Jews, Muslims, Atheists, Agnostics, men, women, white collar, blue collar, employed, unemployed, black, brown, white, ….
Are you beginning to get it now?
What’s all this “selling” crap? I want discussion, not a fucking sales conference.
jenny6833a:
Good point. My bad.
Really?
This is dismissive of multiple people (those who advocate for atheism plus social justice, a group in which Greta Christina belongs). You haven’t even made an effort to determine what it is these people do. But you claim it’s mutual masturbation. You’re being very dismissive.
This is dismissive of Greta Christina.
Referring to her as “that Christina person” reads as dismissive to me.
This is dismissive of her and it’s where you’re deriding her. You’re criticizing her in an insulting way i.e. “feminists of her type”.
It’s also where I have a big problem bc you still haven’t explained what problems you have with her, why you’re dismissing her, nor what’s wrong with “feminists of her type”. You just write her off.
Of course all of this was already addressed, in depth by Crip Dyke @76. As I’ve pointed out, you continue to refuse to address this.
I’m sure jenny6833a has proof that this way is the best way and that proof is forthcoming.
Adding that second line in there, the “of course” is a TERRIBLE idea. Without the list, the implication IS everyone. Add the list and you’re GUARANTEED to leave some group out, and then your message gets lost in the distraction and becomes vulnerable to nitpicking.
When it comes to sales pitches, often less is more.
And if jenny manifestly doesn’t understand this simple principle, she has no business whatsoever trying to lecture anyone else on the topic.
jenny6833a @ 94:
So, you’re saying I can advocate social justice for atheists, just so long as I make certain not to let the listener in on the fact that I’m one of those filthy gays.
I mean Jews.
Atheists, I mean atheists, of course – sorry ’bout that.
You’re perfectly fine on atheists advocating for social justice so long as they can pass for
whitetheists. Gotcha.Thank you for your valuable lessons on how social justice works.
Yes, she certainly does say words with her mouth.
Two words: weak sauce.
How many different flavors of the Accomodationism debate do we really need to have? I mean, really?
jenny viewing this as “selling” pretty much just sets the game up so that she automatically wins. Jenny wants to “prove” that we should be nice or whatever the fuck. So she tells us to look at marketing and the relationship between a buyer and seller and says “look, those sellers have to make nicey-nice, so you are wrong!”.
To which we respond: politics, jenny. Politics isn’t about advertising a new flavor of Corn O’s or getting gramma to buy a certain brand of foot cream. Politics is about ideas and principles. It is fundamentally about ARGUMENT. And insofar as you ignore that and conflate persuasion with marketing, you will be viewed as dishonest or clueless by us. Not that it will stop your bleating.
So bizarre, it’s hilarious. I wonder what JennyNumberstring thinks people do as political and social activists.
*Knock knock*
“Hello?”
“Hi, my name is Sally. I’m a radical feminist and an atheist, and I’d like to tell you why you should vote for these candidates for school board.”
You mean to tell me–that’s not a good idea?! Surely you jest, JennyNumberstring! My, this is a crushing blow, and certainly explains all the defeats of the campaigns I’ve worked on. Though, it doesn’t explain the successes either… oh well. Thank you so much for that valuable insight, though.
90
jenny6833a
Except, if you really meant that you wouldn’t be here tone trolling a loud and vocal group to shut up and saying we’re just making noise and not accomplishments. Walk the talk, jenny, walk the talk.
Anteprepro says
::snip putrid piles of pure unadulterated bullshit from the asshole of a fuckwitted asshole twerp::
ROTFLM6833AO!
Have a nice day
:-)
Jenny
(who is getting the hang of the langage here)
Jenny:
fuck off back to the Slymepit dipshit.
JAL:
Sadly, that’s not gonna happen. Jenny thinks xe has our number and is all holier than thou, yet still cannot fucking explain why xe is so dismissive of Greta Christina. How does an organization oppose someone when they can’t even describe the opinions of the very person they oppose?
104
jenny6833a
THAT’S how you read anteprepro? Yet claim we’re the ones:
Fuck off Jenny, I’m there’s some anti-feminists and fundamentalists you can talk nice to elsewhere. Since you’re such a pro at selling, go be productive. We’re not buying your bullshit here.
Yeah, IIRC Jenny is a “chill girl” from the ‘pit. begone troll!
Wow.
For some reason, the lyrics from Weird Al’s new song “Tacky” spring to mind:
Bring me shame
Can’t nothing
Bring me shame
I never knew why
Bring me shame
Can’t nothing
Bring me shame
It’s useless to try
Dunno why.
Jenny obviously wants women not to have the vote, as the suffragettes were loud and vocal.
Jenny obviously wants PoC to be subservient second class citizens, as the Black Panthers were loud and vocal.
Jenny obviously wants the LGBT community to back in the deep closet and not marrying openly, as groups like ACT-UP were load and vocal.
Having a loud and vocal contingent works for political groups. Jenny has provided no third party evidence showing it doesn’t work, and therefore her evidenceless views are dismissed without evidence. Either provide evidence Jenny, or shut the fuck up.
jennynumbers, you place great emphasis on the importance of selling your product to potential new customers but say nothing about the importance of how atheists treat each other (let alone the potential new “customers”. Unless the only “customers” you want are white men).
# 111, opposablethumbs, is to be congratulated on a comment that made me laugh for a good ten minutes. My husband told me to ignore Mr/Ms Thumbs, so I consulted my 15-yo daughter who opined, “But Mom, that has nothing to do with the topic or with anything you’ve posted and it’s followd by a baseless, off the wall accusation. Get off the computer. Let’s go to the beach. Maybe that cute guy I met last week will be there.”
Dau, at 15, didn’t say it quite that way, of course, since she speaks a language that sounds like English, but has a substantial sprinkling of words that aren’t in the dictionary and that she can’t define.
Kinda like FtB.
Not MY PRODUCT, but OUR IDEAS AND GOALS. That is, I assume they’re yours too and the ideas/goals of the others who post here, although I do have some doubts. I’ve come to suspect that most of you are only into blasting atheists and social justice activists online, but don’t try to actually do anything to advance those goals in the real world. I was asked, for example, what I’d accomplished and responded at length. IIRC, no one else has mentioned actually accomplishing anything … or even trying to do so.
Actually, I have, but only briefly and in passing. Note that I’ve said nothing at all about the importancce of regular oil changes or the need for taste-enhancing spices in cooking. All three of those topics are unrelated to the topic at hand.
I refer you to the recent statement by Benson/Dawkins about how we atheists should treat each other. It’s not much of a statement, but I hope it will lead to a much broader and stronger set of recommendations.
That’s one of the faults in the Dawkins/Benson statement, a fault I pointed out in the Benson/Dawkins thread. It wasn’t the topic here.
That’s what my 15-yo dau identified as “a baseless, off the wall accusation.” She says she hears stuff like that at school constantly, although much more from the 12 yo and 13 yo kids than from her own age group. She associates it with the onset of adolescence.
Cupcake, we aren’t selling. People sell themselves before they come here. We confirm we have the same ideas/goals. Stop with the stupid selling bullshit.
What is your real problem cupcake? Why can’t you realize you have nothing cogent to say, since you don’t understand the issue, and are an evidenceless fool?
jennynumbers, I’m delighted to have brightened your day and it was sweet of you to pop back just to let us know. But why did you write at some length in this very thread in terms of selling your product to customers if you didn’t want to consider the matter in terms of selling your product to customers? Maybe you should have expressed yourself differently if you don’t care for the terms you yourself introduced?
I’m afraid, though, that you (and even Dau, since she’s interested in logic) need to reconsider whether the way atheists treat each other – particularly those who are the most prominent features on the public face of the movement – is really just as irrelevant as oil-changes and seasonings to the issue of encouraging more people to espouse the ideals of/become involved in/want to have anything at all to do with movement atheism. When some of the highest profile atheists are notorious libertarians, for example, or high-hits youtube atheists rave about raping people – and the movement as a whole says nothing about it – this just might be a tad off-putting for those demographics who are threatened by those ideologies and behaviours. Unless, of course, you just don’t care about addressing members of those demographics.
Have a lovely day at the beach, jennynumbers, husband and Dau.
jenny numbers:
Do let us know when you’re finished with adolescence.