Contentious issues in the atheist community

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Permalink Reply by Joan Denoo on February 7, 2012 at 5:32pm

I don't think that religion is inferior to rationality. None of these fit for me. They address a different domain. 

1. and 2. Station and Place implies hierarchy of knowledge or power but has no distinction of task: general of the army or doctor on the battle field have different skills and different sources of authority. A general cannot tell a doctor how to perform procedures, even as the general has power over policy. A general of a battle ready army has different skills than a mother of a family. A skilled general and mother have very different skills; a general with leadership skills and a mother with mothering skills have different tasks; an army is to be aggressive and do whatever is necessary to achieve a victory, a mother is to be a developer of character. A despotic general and mother create problems even as they are in different domains. 

3. comparatively low grade implies all tasks require equivalent talents. A person may have low grades in leadership qualities and high grades in performing tasks. A symphony conductor has different skills than a timpanist and their combined skills require cooperation. The factor of skill is not the issue, shared goals are. 
 

4. less important puts all human activity on a hierarchy. Does The CEO who earns $1 million more than the teacher who taught him/her skills have more value to society? 

5. performing to a poor or mediocre level implies that those who are incapable of reaching higher levels of performance have no value to society. The easiest example is the Down's Syndrome person who has intrinsic value to a culture and is worthy of respect in spite of poor performance when measured against a norm. The task is to fit an individual to a job that fits one's attributes. 

Permalink Reply by Alice on February 7, 2012 at 6:47pm

it's not a value judgement - it's a comparative judgement.

Permalink Reply by Jonel Burge on January 24, 2012 at 2:08am

I actually left my 'local atheist group' after a huge row for just this thing.

It was decided among these men with privilege(all young, able, cisgender, white, heteronormative, males who were well-to-do), that allowing a minority group to decide what word they want to be used to refer to them(such as black or african-american--I've met people cool with one, but not the other, and vice-versa), was impinging upon their freedom of speech(so...they'd keep using the word "cripple" if a disabled person asked that they not say that BECAUSE FREEDOM OF SPEECH).

They also had a habit of verbally attacking agnostics and they called me a feminazi(because talking about equal rights is totally the same as the wholesale slaughter of a cultural group), and then told me that as an atheist woman, my job wasn't to speak up or talk about issues I faced, it was to have lots of precious atheist children for an atheist man who could "put up with my ugliness", and raise his atheist kids well.

Nevermind that I hate kids and have no plans for kids, ever--apparently my only purpose in their group would be for one of them to choose me as a wife.

Annnd that's one of the reasons why I left, and will be choosing my next group VERY carefully. I have no wish to fall in with such a misogynistic group of men ever again.

 

Humanism is important if we don't want Atheism to just become another partiarchal, misogynistic, ableist, homophobic, xenophobic, racist following for people. We cannot tackle all these issues at once--I hold no visions of magical fix everything utopias--instead I know that we have to go one person at a time, a little bit at a time. Kind of like getting people to question their fundamentalist ideas about how every word in the bible is true--I have to slowly make people realize that attaching worth to someone based on with whom and how many people they've had sex with is wrong. I have to make people slowly realize that racist words or sexist words(bitch, cunt, slut, whore) are all words that you cannot use due to the cultural attachments to them. I'll compare them to this--you know those people who are decent, but still part of the catholic church and give their money to it every Sunday, but they just sort of blink and look past all the molestation scandals and the AIDS problems in Africa if you ask them? That's the type of people who use those words. They never look past the use of the word on whatever random girl(I once heard a guy call a girl a slut because she was wearing high heels to dance in...), and instead, continue to use them. They fail to realize that the use of such things are promoting a culture of value based on things that we should have moved past. Does anyone seriously think that any sexual partner they have needs to be a virgin? If you're here, and you think so, maybe you need to re-look at your values and see which ones you're getting from yourself--by looking at what actually matters, and which ones you're clinging to from a bronze-age misogynistic book that was concerned with patrilineage.

 

Atheism unforunately tends to be people with privilege--it's young, male, cisgender, hetero, able, white, and relatively well-off. The Atheism club I left was nothing but that--I'd see female faces sometimes, but they'd never stay longer than one meeting. At first I wondered why, then the big row that caused me to leave answered my question.

If you want to start helping atheist groups become more diverse(instead of the bag of privilege that I mentioned above) we need to be aware of what privilege we do have, and we need to reach out to other people who are missing it. By being atheist--outwardly atheist, we are giving up privilege. being Christian grants one certain types of privilege in this country. Mostly it grants an unquestioning privilege, that you're trustworthy, that people can trust you to do good things. When you become atheist, you're giving that up. It's part of the reason minority groups are less likely to become nonreligious--because they're already at a loss when it comes to equality--what person in their right mind is going to step back and take another nibble off what little privilege they enjoy?

 

To educate yourself about privilege:

 http://chewingovertheissues.tumblr.com/post/10469585881/a-primer-on...  -- quick primer, written by someone who is far more eloquent than I on the subject matter

 

 http://microaggressions.com/ --contains examples of every type, submitted by people. Basically, if you see people quoted as doing something here--don't do it. It's not treading on your 'freedom' when you don't do it--you're treading on their freedoms by doing such things. And really, is it so hard to be a decent human being?

 

Size is an up-and-coming social equality issue. A lot of people don't recognize thin privilege, so I didn't include it--but it is a privilege, just a lesser-known one.

 

Myself? I'm white, fat, atheist, asexual, able, young(relatively) and female. The dice rolled in my favor in that atheist, asexual parts are things I can hide--but not so well on several other parts. 

Permalink Reply by Alice on January 24, 2012 at 2:45am

really interesting - thanks for sharing and the links :)

Permalink Reply by Sam in WV on January 24, 2012 at 1:01pm

I have never encountered this kind of arrogance among atheists except in cyberspace, and that is bad enough.  I have been to forums where I perceive grinding resentment among participants that Christians and other theists have established all the rules for civil conduct.  No longer associating in that domain, it would seem that they now assume a freedom to selectively single out others for incivility on their own terms, to cultivate their own prejudices without recrimination.  Many assume a a sense of Neitzschean ubermensch, and others are fair game if they do not meet their high standards.  It makes my skin crawl.    

In being so quick to be defamatory of others, one could find himself scorned and denounced for his own unremarkable foibles, even to the point of being victim to violence.  Being atheist allows us the freedom to formulate grounds for civility and compassion for ourselves, based on criteria that embraces reason and evidence in a variety of social circumstance ~ not to avoid civility altogether.  Sometimes we have to be stern when someone else is not responding to our social activity rationally (look at my avatar), but that is different from being deliberately uncivil.    

Permalink Reply by Alice on January 24, 2012 at 3:24pm

Sam - I like your way of looking at this.

Permalink Reply by Ruth Anthony-Gardner on January 24, 2012 at 10:52pm

No wonder you left. I would have too. Thanks for the great discussion and personal sharing.

Permalink Reply by Jon T on February 4, 2012 at 12:44am

Good Points, since joining the atheist community, I find human compassion to be something Spock can not find the rational logic in possessing. But unlike Spock, Self-gratification and self-exaltation seems to be the order of their thinking rather than acting for the benefit of the group. Could they be priests without a god selling the same patriarchal system of cultural prejudices?

Permalink Reply by Alice on February 4, 2012 at 8:33am

I agree there is a glitch in the system here.

I wonder what we can do about it?

Permalink Reply by Joan Denoo on February 7, 2012 at 6:13pm

Jonel, the group as you describe it, is one that requires discernment. Is the group giving you what you need? If yes, then stay with them. If no, run, don’t walk to the nearest door. I have a philosophy that just about everyone dislikes but it is: there are more than 7 billion human beings on this planet and I don’t have to spend one minute with those who do not respect me.

 

Language matters! The choice of words, how one uses them, whether they disrespect instead of respect human rights is important.

When it comes to beliefs, not all beliefs are worthy of respect. Believing that priests should get away with sexual abuse of others, or when they deny safe sex in the case of AIDS and STD, or when they deny women the right to control their own bodies is outrageous and should not be tolerated, period. It requires strong language to confront them even if they claim they have a right to their beliefs and opinion. They don’t have a right to their morals and ethics that violate others and not all opinions are equal, i.e. the earth is flat vs. round.

 

Christian privilege is an attitude, not an empirical fact. That attitude can – must - be challenged whenever it comes up. If one has to be Christian in order to be a public officer that is the height of hubris.

 

Being “correct” religiously is like being “correct” politically. Write about alternatives in either subject and just expect threatening phone calls. If we don’t develop a tough skin able to slough off the insults, we have no business speaking our truths. By silencing ourselves we will silence us. By thinking clearly, discussing widely, reading from many excellent sources we can become confident in what we think and then can stand tall, proudly, competently and powerfully.

Thanks for the links. They raise issues I hadn't thought of, especially micro-privilege. 

Permalink Reply by Madhukar Kulkarni on February 11, 2012 at 10:54pm

Jonel Burge

If you want to start helping atheist groups become more diverse(instead of the bag of privilege that I mentioned above)

Yes, it is unfortunate that a "bag of priviledge" is formed whenever people of any sorts, including atheists, come together. Leaving such a group does not appear to be a right solution. Everybody has to fight to get equality.

Permalink Reply by Erin James Carney on January 24, 2012 at 2:27am

Ok, first of all, I am not racist, a bigot, or prejudicial. However I know some people that fit all three definitions. And you know what? I agree wholeheartedly with my Racist friend, why? Because he was beaten senseless by a pack of animals that happened to have a dark skin color. Now when I say Beaten senseless I don't mean they punched him and kicked him, la di dah. No They started with a brick to his head, and then each took turns kicking him in the mouth. He has no teeth now, at least not in the front. So if someone wants to be racist. I am right behind them.

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