There’s been a fair bit of discussion of Edwin Kagin’s post on atheism+ yesterday. I haven’t read most of it though, just seen it in passing. I want to comment on a couple of things.
We are now experiencing a most divisive phenomenon where some atheists are viciously excoriating other atheists for not embracing loudly enough certain of a list of worthy causes to which they are joined.
That seems a very back-to-front way of putting it. The vicious excoriation has been coming from a coalition of haters of feminism and of feminists and, arguably, of women in general. It’s been coming from them for more than a year. It comes with (at the extremes, and there are lots of those) rape threats, ugly caricatures, sexist epithets, obsessive cyberstalking, and endless other forms of frothing raging retaliation.
The idea of atheism plus is not vicious excoriation, it’s escape and resistance. What atheism+ wants to escape and resist is not a failure to embrace causes loudly enough – that’s a grotesquely off-base way to describe it. Atheism+ is about escaping and resisting active energetic organized hatred of feminism and women. Active energetic organized hatred of feminism and women is not the same thing as not embracing loudly enough a certain list of worthy causes. It seems very obtuse (if not worse) not to see that.
(Is that me viciously excoriating? I don’t think so. I think it falls well short of that.)
One can be an atheist and like chocolate chip ice cream. This does not mean that it is a good idea to form a club that excludes, and sees as enemies, anyone who does not like chocolate chip ice cream, or who actually prefer some other flavors.
How many bloggers, laid end to end, would it take to bridge the gap between science and religion?
Lord dog, the Religious Right certainly need have no worry over us. We will self-destruct without their help.
A population that eats its own young will probably not long survive.
Sigh. Really? Liking or not liking an ice cream flavor? As an analogy for hating and dumping endless crap on feminists and (at the extreme) women? Really, Mr Kagin? That’s how much you think women matter?
He’s done lots of important work, and hats off to him, but that’s just embarrassing.