Go read "The Problem With 'Atheist Activism'" by Chris Stedman.

The problem with his article, for me, is that he does not acknowledge that religious thinking is magical thinking. It promotes unreason. If someone makes a religious claim that is untrue or inaccurate or unsupported by evidence, then if you do not respond to that claim you are furthering unreason. Private individuals choosing to be outspoken about how crap religions are is not the same as governments suppressing religion, which would be extremely bad.

[edit]For clarity[/edit]

Here is a comment I quite like from the blog of Greta Christina

Ganner says:
December 21, 2011 at 11:35 am

My biggest goals, in order (2a and 2b are a tie, can’t decide):

1: Protect separation of church and state, and promote government based on science, logic, and reason.

2: Eliminate religious fundamentalism (be it evangelical Christians, radical Muslims, ultra-orthodox Jews, or others who hold a strict literal interpretation of their faiths and put this above any reason, human compassion, or anything else). See things like this marginalized to the point that they have little to no influence on society.

3: Improve the public image of atheists and eliminate bias and bigotry toward us. I struggled with where to place this. It affects us personally a lot, but I feel like we have a greater benefit overall from achieving the above 2, and also feel that achieving 2 makes achieving 3 so much easier.

4: As a skeptic more than an atheist, see scientific thinking and skepticism become the norm in society. Some irrationality is just annoying, but some (like anti-vax and alt-medicine) can be objectively harmful.

5: See religion get to a point where even if you have religious faith, it’s something that isn’t talked about publicly and isn’t organized to influence government and society at large. Essentially, make “atheism” as irrelevant as “a-unicornism” is.

DanDare wrote:Here is a comment I quite like from the blog of Greta Christina

Thanks for an interesting post! Here's my take on you quote:-

Ganner says:
December 21, 2011 at 11:35 am

My biggest goals, in order (2a and 2b are a tie, can’t decide):

1: Protect separation of church and state, and promote government based on science, logic, and reason.

Sounds good on paper, but it will be a tricky job finding satisfactory arbiters of the quality of those three. Science, Logic, and Reason cause many of the rows on this forum alone, and I suspect even getting a decent working consensus-agreement on what those words actually mean would be problematical.

2: Eliminate religious fundamentalism (be it evangelical Christians, radical Muslims, ultra-orthodox Jews, or others who hold a strict literal interpretation of their faiths and put this above any reason, human compassion, or anything else). See things like this marginalized to the point that they have little to no influence on society.

Wish it could happen, but it won't. The rewards of fundamentalism are far too attractive, and us humans just love something to fight over.

3: Improve the public image of atheists and eliminate bias and bigotry toward us. I struggled with where to place this. It affects us personally a lot, but I feel like we have a greater benefit overall from achieving the above 2, and also feel that achieving 2 makes achieving 3 so much easier.

The trouble with this is that atheists are a heterogeneous bunch, and it could well be that atheism is the only thing agreed on in an otherwise incredibly diverse group of people. So you have the problem of how such (very desirable) goals could be organised in the first place. Bigotry is also a slippery creature. When it is done with atheism it will find always find something else to exercise its jaws on.

4: As a skeptic more than an atheist, see scientific thinking and skepticism become the norm in society. Some irrationality is just annoying, but some (like anti-vax and alt-medicine) can be objectively harmful.

I think this problem could largly be overcome by good quality education, and teaching the crucial discernment of good argument from bad. Of course we have the problem in how to implement a good eductional strategy among a diverse population, together with not inconsiderable task of making it attractive to the younger generation (who have other distractions) without diluting it. Despite this I truly believe that good education is the pearl beyond price, and a lot of the greatness of human potential would come to fruition if only we could get this done somehow.

5: See religion get to a point where even if you have religious faith, it’s something that isn’t talked about publicly and isn’t organized to influence government and society at large. Essentially, make “atheism” as irrelevant as “a-unicornism” is.

This of course is the ultimate goal. I really don't see how this can be achieved with the problems mentioned above.

Strange, I didn't mean to end up sounding so negative after I started to reply to your post. I've either learned something here, or I'm becoming the Christmas Grinch!

It's complicated. Religion has been around for a millenium or two, and is not about to release it's grip on humankind with the attractions it has on offer. The goals are laudable, the detail (as always) is the bugger.

I liked PZ's take on this article. He pointed out some possible conflicts of interest, like this one.

But I think Stedman loses the argument about Dave Silverman here.

As Jon Stewart's commentary on Dave Silverman's comments about the World Trade Center memorial demonstrated, unsophisticated criticisms of religion estrange reasonable people -- both fellow atheists, and potential religious allies.

The best he can do is namecall, and call it 'unsophisticated'. And he does go as far as to call disagreeing believers 'reasonable people' here.

"The WTC cross has become a Christian icon. It has been blessed by so-called holy men and presented as a reminder that their god, who couldn't be bothered to stop the Muslim terrorists or prevent 3,000 people from being killed in his name, cared only enough to bestow upon us some rubble that resembles a cross."

He can't show this to be false, but he can take cheap shots at it, and he's the reasonable one? I don't think so.

jaygray wrote:Strange, I didn't mean to end up sounding so negative after I started to reply to your post. I've either learned something here, or I'm becoming the Christmas Grinch!

It's complicated. Religion has been around for a millenium or two, and is not about to release it's grip on humankind with the attractions it has on offer. The goals are laudable, the detail (as always) is the bugger.

He he he, no worries.

One thing I learnt long ago is that you cannot tailor goals to what you perceive as practical or achievable. The goals are a destination, not a method for getting there or a statement of achievability. The other thing I have discovered is that if you accept goals you don't think you can achieve it sometimes turns out your initial thinking on the matter was wrong.

The important issue isn't any "elimination of religion", it's the removal of stolen discoursive and policy making privileges that supernaturalism has seized for itself, and used to corrupt and pervert both the arena of discourse and the arena of policy making. Supernaturalism has ruled the roost for too long, and that rule has been characterised by manifestly malign effects, not only upon large numbers of human beings under its sway, but upon the whole conduct of human affairs.

What those of us who value a reality-based world view seek, ultimately, is that mythologies be treated as nothing more than the fiction that they are, in the same manner that the works of Tolkien or J. K. Rowling are treated as fiction, the difference of course being that these two authors marketed their works honestly as such. Furthermore, we seek to achieve this via education. In contrast to past supernaturalist practice, which sought to impose mythologies upon people by force. If people still want to believe this nonsense in the privacy of their own homes, we don't regard this as a problem in itself, as far as the everyday lives of most of us are concerned. It only becomes a problem when adherents of mythology-based doctrines seek to skew policy decisions to conform to their mythologies, and insist that the assertions of their mythologies be taught as purportedly constituting established fact, regardless of whether or not reality agrees with this.

Also, sorry I didn't comment on the article (linked to the OP) in my last post. I personally found it like a theist text in the sense that it started off with (to me suspicious) assumptions and generalities, and I have to admit that my brain automatically hits 'bypass' when I encounter such stuff. Probably an age thing.

I also tend to run for cover screaming when I read anything resembling 'group-think'.

I thought it was better to keep silent about the article and have you folks think that I'm an idiot, than type some guff about it and remove all doubt.

Best wishes for the holiday season to all!

The biggest problem with religion in my eyes, is how they target and recruit children before they can think for themselves. It is absolutely disgraceful.

Obviously you can't control how parents bring their children up. So the next best action/s would be, as others have noted already:

1) Keep religion out of public education.
2) Keep religion out of government.
3) Keep atheism (and skepticism in general) in the public sphere, ie: Non-theist and skeptic books have been pretty popular over the last decade.

When the real-world doesn't require conformation to religious dogma, teenagers who are growing up are pretty quickly desensitized to all the bullshit they were brainwashed to believe as kids.

Ihavenofingerprints wrote:Obviously you can't control how parents bring their children up.

Challenge!


You can interfere with how parents bring up their kids, and theocracies do it all the time. The question is when is it rationally acceptable? Assume I start with something that I can only express in emotional terms: "I want society to be more rational because I think we will all have better lives". What follows? Teaching kids that they should not grow up like their parents when their parents believe in and act on utter bullshit. Is this rationally acceptable?

Calilasseia I think I'm going to print that out and put it on the wall in my office.