The World's Largest Coalition of Nontheists and Nontheist Communities!

Do we need an Universal Atheist Symbol?

Hello everybody,

I am an atheist from Spain 56 years old and atheist since 1968.

Currently I am a spokesperson for the Cyberateos ~ Inicativa Atea Association (http://cyberateos.org), legally registered in Spain with over 3.000 participants and 80 registered paying members.

I am responsible to organise the campaigns for the spreading of what we consider to be a possible Universal Atheist Symbol.

As you can see here: http://zi.ma/UNIVERSAL-ATHEIST-SYMBOL

The symbol is well spread in Europe and Latin America.

The design goes back to the year 2000 (ages in cyberspace) it came out of a series of democratic virtual assemblies held by the the LIST cyberateos.

Now a days is being used by many groups and individuals to express their affinity with atheism (mainly in Latin cultures).

So what I am proposing is that, in the English-speaking cultures open their minds to a symbol that by far transmits globally the message of atheism.

The ATOM and the scarlet A are very limited to pass the message of atheism, they are condemned to refrain to minority groups where they only understand that the symbol is related to atheism.

This symbol we are proposing is a literal and geometrical anagram where you can read in more than 80 languages the root letters for ATheism. We nick named this symbol A/T.

http://zi.ma/multilingual-universal-atheist-symbol-slide-show-34-la...

A = negation of T = theism O = horizontal equality.

Here you can see several videos of different designs of A/T:

http://zi.ma/universal-atheist-symbol-2010-design

http://zi.ma/universal-atheist-symbol-2009-design

http://zi.ma/OJO-ATEO-2010-ATHEIST-EYE-DRAWING-DESIGN

http://zi.ma/Celebrate-Atheism-drawing-contest-2010

Well enough for today I hope you understood the message and enjoyed de relaxing music.

More to come your way :-).

Atheistically yours

Aberingi

0 members like this

Attachments:

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Dean Jones on May 25, 2010 at 2:25am

Well, *I* don't need a universal atheist symbol.

Permalink Reply by Constance Ward on May 25, 2010 at 6:37am

Well it looks like a good symbol, but good luck trying to get everyone to use it. Organizing atheists is like "herding cats" remember?

Permalink Reply by Aberingi on May 26, 2010 at 6:20am

Well, I tend to disagree, I have many atheist friends that behave properly, with respect.
The cats you refer to are adolescents atheist, despite their age, they egotistic and selfish and mainly ignorant of true atheism.

I am a strong atheist and activist, this why I want to spread this symbol that by far surpasses the aims of the ATOM and scarlet A. Those symbols are for those "that knows". The A/T symbol can be read in more than 80 languages plus dialects. Is geometrical also, so the non latin scripts can recognise it as as symbol like they recognise MacDonals or Google. Can very easily be draw anywhere. How about that for a chance to this simple and wonderful Universal Atheist Symbol?.

Aberingi

Permalink Reply by Aiden on May 26, 2010 at 8:27am

True atheism?! Now there's a laugh... The only "true atheism" is in its most basic definition, without theism, a lack of belief in religion. This is what makes organizing atheists like herding cats, not immaturity or ego, but the broad differences in what we do believe in (contrary to what you may think, not all atheists are liberals, conservatives, rationalists, humanists, secularists, or even advocates of science), rather than what we don't.

As for non-Latin scripts, how could you use McDonald's and Google as examples for recognition on this basis considering McDonald's uses a big-ass M as their logo and Google uses the letters G-O-O-G-L-E as theirs?

While I have nothing against the "Universal Atheist Symbol" (except for its claim to be universal), I still prefer the scarlet letter A, especially because of the Nathaniel Hawthorne-esque connotation, yet we display the symbol proudly instead shamefully.

Permalink Reply by Constance Ward on May 26, 2010 at 9:03am

I'm inclined to agree on Aiden on this. By definition everyone that doesn't believe in a deity is an atheist. The many qualities that people tack onto the atheist label (both based in experience with the community or based on slurs/rumors) could be there for a majority of "us" (lol, I even hate using the term "us" when referring to atheists) but that doesn't mean all of "us" do and all of "us" still have the right to use the atheist label. Aberingi may be making a "No True Scotsman" fallacy here which is interesting because the only other time I've saw people using the fallacy is christians saying that "we" former-christians were never "true" christians when we did in fact once believed all the things one must to be considered a christian by definition. Sorry Aberingi, I know sometimes being compared to theists can be a horrible slur here (which is kinda funny) but I mean no offense by my comment.

I'm still liking the symbol though, it looks pretty bad-ass and if that one is Latin rather than English that is at least a bit of a plus too. I'm torn though, I'm really like other symbols as well. And of course other people will bring other symbols from their pocket of the community and we won't be able to decide which one (because we're cats, not sheep). Lol, and to make this even more confusing I'm going to propose that maybe we should scrap the whole letter part of the symbols and try for objects/animals/etc. since this would have a better chance of being recognized in other languages that do not base their alphabet in Latin letters.

Permalink Reply by Aberingi on May 26, 2010 at 11:50am

No worries Constance not offended at all :-)

I like your comments and time to time to see.

Aberingi

Permalink Reply by Aiden on May 25, 2010 at 7:34am

From a marketing standpoint, I guess it's cool as it can be easily made into shirts and jewelry (as stephenb pointed out its similarity to the peace {Nuclear Disarmament, actually} symbol. Personally, I prefer the scarlet letter as Dawkins proposed.

Permalink Reply by Aberingi on May 26, 2010 at 6:37am

Well ther is a problem with the scarlet A and the Atom symbols. They are mainly used by English speaking people, and unless you its meaning you wouldn't have a clue that they refer to atheism, they look like symbols for the closet. The A/T symbol can be read by over 80 languages as the two letters are the root letters for the word atheism. At the moment is the most popular atheist symbol in Latin cultures (http://zi.ma/Universal-Atheist-Symbol) and it is starting to be used by other languages like English for example.

It is easy to be draw...

Cheers

Aberingi

Permalink Reply by Dejah Thoris on May 25, 2010 at 8:22am

It doesn't seem like a bad symbol, although I'm not sure how it is better than the ATOM other than it is easier to draw. I do think that it is better than the scarlet A which seems to vague. But as Constance said--good luck getting everyone to use it.

Now, I just have to ask. What's with all the women on crosses in the first video?

Permalink Reply by Aberingi on May 26, 2010 at 6:49am

Thanks for your reply.

Well the ATOM symbol is very limited to science understanding (out of date) and only the persons that get in touch with atheism knows the meaning, on the other hand the A/T symbol is readable in over 80 languages and as you said very easy to draw or tattooing, etc.

In regards to the women in the cross is anti-religious art. The artist suffered the persecution of OPUS DEI and is from Spain. Where we lived a catholic dictatorship for 40 years and the atheist in Spain a more anti Christian than anything else. It is not an individualistic choice for them atheism is a social phenomena in Spain.

The contradiction of a man killed on a cross and the millions of women being killed and raped under Christianity is what the artists wanted to express.

Sorry for my poor English and I hope that you understand my opinions.

Aberingi

Attachments:

Permalink Reply by Aiden on May 26, 2010 at 8:34am

Scientific literacy is out of date? Try telling that to those of in the US currently fighting against the Texas-driven rewrites of our nation's textbooks, or the atheist conservatives that hang their head in shame because their party has been taken over by bible-literalists who insist that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old and that evolution couldn't possibly be true.

Permalink Reply by Soulf2 on May 25, 2010 at 8:24am