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What do you expect from an atheist organization?

What sort of benefits would make you join an atheist organization? What issues do you want them to address? Any feedback would be appreciated.

Tags: atheism, feedback, organization

2 members like this

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Permalink Reply by Tracy A. Finney 16 hours ago

I expect people to sound intelligent, unlike sone of the crap I just read on a few of the blogs here. I have been a member for about two days or so and I think I will be moving on. The only difference between what i have been reading here and what I see in churches is that y'all are a god short. So far, I am very unimpressed and pretty sure I am out of here. But, to answer the question:

1) I want open dialogue, but there is no reason to be psycho fundamentalist about the hatred you have for religion. Leave that to the religious.
2) Acceptance would be good. That has nothing to do with my above comment, just thought it would be good to have.
3) People with enough common scenes to keep walking when the people try to get you to help them find Jesus because they lost him again.
4) I don't want to feel like I need to go and bathe after talking to people on a site where they claim to be enlightened and intelligent.
5) Stop arguing about taking god off the money. Just spend the god and STFU! If you cant do that, and must cry about it, ENDLESSLY, then just send me your god money and I will spend him with no thought about it.

I could add more, but it is probably pointless.

Anyway, I am saddened by what I have read from the members on this site. Yes, I know that it is not everyone, but nearly everything I have seen so far is such..... crybaby bullshit. I am an Atheist, and more over, a realist. I call bullshit when I see it, which is why I do not have to go to church with my wife anymore. Not impressed with the Atheist groups I have met yet.

Maybe I will look elsewhere. Forgive any typos, I type fast on my iPad and it will sometimes have a stroke on me.

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Permalink Reply by John J Kelly 7 hours ago

This is a forum. You've stated your point of view, as hoped for. Many of us are asea (crossword answer) about what to do. Imitating religious activities won't work for everything but since we are supposed to be somewhat humanist we should look into concerted charitable and public service activity in the name of our local or national organization.

A couple of years ago an article on the CFI blog decried the fact that only about 2% of all atheists, et. al. belonged to a non-religious organization. That's fertile ground. A marked increase in membership would also help direct our efforts toward standing out in a way that incorporates us into the public fabric.

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Permalink Reply by FXR 1 hour ago

Some atheist organisations are already showing the seeds of the kind of group thinking that marks religious behaviour.

An atheist is simply an individual who does not believe in gods. It does not follow that all atheists profess that disbelief or spend any amount of time thinking about it or discussing it with others. At atheists conferences and in atheist umbrella groups it's appears it is automatically accepted that if an organisation has the term "Atheist" in the title then it fits the image professing atheists are so insistent on portraying to the world. If you're on "our" side, what you do after that is unquestioned. Atheism in the world today does not spend enough time questioning "atheism" as far as I can see.

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Permalink Reply by Brother Eduardo 35 minutes ago

You say you're an atheist. As I understand the word, an atheist is a person who believes there is no god. That is a belief. And, that belief sends you down the road into a religion of sorts. That belief is a sort of narrow mindedness that might indicate you yourself exhibit some of the same "bullshit" that you so strongly deride in other people. And, by the tone of your writing, it appears that you have adopted the self-righteous certainty that your belief is right and all others are wrong.

I have learned over the years that I'm actually an agnostic. I don't know if there's a "god," as such, but I'm determined to stay open minded about it. I'm also a practitioner of Zen, which leads me to discount belief systems established by other people and, instead, seek the built-in knowledge that is part of the deeper human mind. And take note: Zen is not a religion. It is merely a pathway to a different kind of knowledge...from a more trusted source.