Robert_S wrote:So, I'm wondering, is that hostility a consciously thought out strategy or is it the result of frustration stemming from being excessively trolled and hated on?

That’s a good point you’ve raised!

Being in the public eye is an automatic guarantee that you’ll be abused. It happens all of the time with Hollywood stars, rock stars etc. I love old films and I’ve seen comments (on YouTube) about wonderful people like Jimmy Durante, Gene Kelly and so on which are crude and totally unfounded. Am I surprised? Not even a tiny bit... it goes with the territory.

Now 1000s of people in the public eye take shit every single day of the week. The problem is, is when RW gets some it’s a battle cry for her to claim misogyny and rape culture. That is a pile of horseshit!

She whines about threats she gets and laughs at the ones Richard Dawkins gets! How fucked up is that? Are her lame-brain followers unable to see that hypocrisy?

RW isn’t “special” in this world. The minute she entered the public arena she should have learned that hate mail comes with the territory. So far (to the best of my knowledge) she hasn’t been stalked. Many Hollywood stars have been with some injured and some killed. Unfortunately for those in the public eye that is always a possibility. It’s wrong, but there’s little anyone can do about it.

Those that are in the public eye try to maintain a balance. They must still deal with all types of people and can’t just lash out with a bunch of nonsensical statements. That doesn’t serve anyone’s interests. They simply ignore (totally) the trollish types that write hate mail and understand that the majority of people (their fans) are good honest folk.

RW, PZ, et al. aren’t interested in that approach in my opinion. They want the ability to “grandstand” and to make their names known. They curry favour from the masses and what better way to drum up support than by posting some of their hate mail or seeing it in action on their respective sites. It’s good PR for both of them. Their fans live on it, breathe it in, savour it. The hate mail also serves as justification for the most outlandish and sweeping statements that they make.

However that serves no one’s interests... except their own, which are self-serving.

On that point perhaps, Richard Dawkins created a video where he basically ridiculed all the people who were attacking him. He read out the most vile libels, threats and slanders and laughed, and then moved on to the next one.








Or...he could have whinged.

...or he could have been OUTRAGED!!

Robert_S wrote:

orpheus wrote:

Robert_S wrote:So, I'm wondering, is that hostility a consciously thought out strategy or is it the result of frustration stemming from being excessively trolled and hated on?

Could be one, the other, or a combination. I think in many cases, it's something else entirely: lack of both maturity and of the patience required to think carefully before posting.

Oh, I've done that shit! I posted some truly horrid nonsense venomous crap when I've been pissed off so I can't really judge too hard there.

Yes you can judge, because you're not trying to sell something when you post angrily. When you speak for yourself online, the occasional angry explosion pretty much comes with the territory, even for the most mild-mannered of us. As soon as you claim to speak for a movement or group as a whole, you shouldn't let that emotion rule what you say or post: you're now a representative and have a responsibility to promote whatever agenda your group is offering without recourse to your own personal emotive reactions.

I've been in that position, and when faced with slurs and unwarranted criticism of the group I represented, I had to exercise extreme patience and calmness, and respond coolly and factually to each and every slight thrown our way. I had to try to ensure that the readers of any such exchange would come away from it with a feeling that I'd responded without losing my cool, with facts, and with a thorough knowledge of my position, while only the accusers came across as ranting and ignorant. (And also rein in other folks from "our" side who might wade into a discussion with a little less tact than desirable!)

By comparison, A+ appears at present to have the roles reversed. Many of the criticisms I've seen of it have been well thought out and well presented (while generally acknowledging that the issues the plus stands for are laudable in their own rights and worthy of pursuit); at the same time many of the prominent proponents of A+ seem to be coming across as angry, belligerent, dictatorial, and extremely emotional, throwing insults, threats and bans at the critics without addressing any of the criticisms.

Unfortunately if there are "reasonable" proponents of A+, they're being drowned out by the dramatic ones - and no, I'm not interested in going looking for them: it's A+'s job to present to me the approachable face of their movement, and they're failing to do that in an attractive way at the moment.

Thinking Aloud wrote:By comparison, A+ appears at present to have the roles reversed. Many of the criticisms I've seen of it have been well thought out and well presented (while generally acknowledging that the issues the plus stands for are laudable in their own rights and worthy of pursuit); at the same time many of the prominent proponents of A+ seem to be coming across as angry, belligerent, dictatorial, and extremely emotional, throwing insults, threats and bans at the critics without addressing any of the criticisms.

Unfortunately if there are "reasonable" proponents of A+, they're being drowned out by the dramatic ones - and no, I'm not interested in going looking for them: it's A+'s job to present to me the approachable face of their movement, and they're failing to do that in an attractive way at the moment.

What I am concerned about is that A+ seems to be a movement with a party line set by its self-appointed leaders. I have, quite simply, zero interest in joining such a group or even being associated with it.

Richard Carrier - a writer whose articles I have enjoyed for several years now - epitomises this clannish, authoritarian approach in this blog post.

In the meantime, I call everyone now to pick sides (not in comments here, but publicly, via Facebook or other social media): are you with us, or with them; are you now a part of the Atheism+ movement, or at least cheer and approve it’s values and aims (since you don’t have to label yourself), or are you going to stick with Atheism Less and its sexism and cruelty and irrationality?

Then at least we’ll know who to work with. And who to avoid.

As has already been pointed out, if this is the approach they intend to take, they're going to make enemies out of their potential allies and be utterly inefective at pursuing their stated objectives*. And the thing that really pisses me off is, they are good objectives. They're just not going to achieve them by exclusion, silencing and creating an "echo chamber"**.

If you just want to talk smack on teh Interwebs, you can be as abrasive and abusive as you like. If you want to start a movement, then it's time to grow up.





*Just look at how quickly the comments section of Carrier's article degenerates into a complete shitfight over whether or not he is an "ableist".

**Because we all know just how effective that is at preserving rationality, compassion and integrity.

Couldn't they just drop the "A" and adopt the + as a symbol? They seem about as fanatical as some of that lot...

This reminds me of the leftist groups in the 1970's, at least here in Sweden. When one group had grown to a certain size, some members didn't think it was radical enough and split off. Then that group grew, and split off, etc, etc. They were called "letter sects" after the acronyms used, like kpml(r). They displayed sectlike behaviour, with purges and so on. You can have a political movement with atheism as one of the features, but I'm not so sure about having a political movement tacked on to atheism. It will be interesting to see when the inevitable infighting breaks out, and we get "Atheism extraplus", "A+++", and so on.

Yes, how long until the splinter splinters. A movement (that term seems particularly apt) can only take so many princesses.

The more splintering the better IMO, until we reach a degree of splinteringness where we're all individuals who are atheists. With opinions on other things.

Just like now then...

Nicko wrote:

Thinking Aloud wrote:By comparison, A+ appears at present to have the roles reversed. Many of the criticisms I've seen of it have been well thought out and well presented (while generally acknowledging that the issues the plus stands for are laudable in their own rights and worthy of pursuit); at the same time many of the prominent proponents of A+ seem to be coming across as angry, belligerent, dictatorial, and extremely emotional, throwing insults, threats and bans at the critics without addressing any of the criticisms.

Unfortunately if there are "reasonable" proponents of A+, they're being drowned out by the dramatic ones - and no, I'm not interested in going looking for them: it's A+'s job to present to me the approachable face of their movement, and they're failing to do that in an attractive way at the moment.

What I am concerned about is that A+ seems to be a movement with a party line set by its self-appointed leaders. I have, quite simply, zero interest in joining such a group or even being associated with it.

Richard Carrier - a writer whose articles I have enjoyed for several years now - epitomises this clannish, authoritarian approach in this blog post.

In the meantime, I call everyone now to pick sides (not in comments here, but publicly, via Facebook or other social media): are you with us, or with them; are you now a part of the Atheism+ movement, or at least cheer and approve it’s values and aims (since you don’t have to label yourself), or are you going to stick with Atheism Less and its sexism and cruelty and irrationality?

Then at least we’ll know who to work with. And who to avoid.

As has already been pointed out, if this is the approach they intend to take, they're going to make enemies out of their potential allies and be utterly inefective at pursuing their stated objectives*. And the thing that really pisses me off is, they are good objectives. They're just not going to achieve them by exclusion, silencing and creating an "echo chamber"**.

If you just want to talk smack on teh Interwebs, you can be as abrasive and abusive as you like. If you want to start a movement, then it's time to grow up.





*Just look at how quickly the comments section of Carrier's article degenerates into a complete shitfight over whether or not he is an "ableist".

**Because we all know just how effective that is at preserving rationality, compassion and integrity.

He makes some good points, and I'll look forward to reading what he writes further on the subject.

See highlighted - that didn't happen on Greta's or Jen's blogs about Atheism+ either, did it.

In general: (not specific to this post of yours Nicko)

It's a nascent movement. Why the need to define it as what it isn't? Criticism is good, but to suggest that they are saying 'all people who don't join are sexist, misogynist bigots' is a little far fetched too.

Skinny Puppy said something in regards to RW about this. Has she commented on Atheism+? Just curious.

As far as party lines go - there is one that is pretty strong on this forum too, the one that supports RD's "New Atheism".

Just a personal observation.

I was at the SF Atheist meeting last night and there was a bit of discussion about Atheism+, it was enlightening and interesting.

As far as party lines go - there is one that is pretty strong on this forum too, the one that supports RD's "New Atheism".

Got any evidence of this?

Made of Stars wrote:

As far as party lines go - there is one that is pretty strong on this forum too, the one that supports RD's "New Atheism".

Got any evidence of this?

TO REPEAT - JUST MY PERSONAL OBSERVATION.

Considering this is splinter from RD.net, it's perfectly natural that might be the case, no?

"Perfectly natural" isn't evidence of anything.

maiforpeace wrote:

Made of Stars wrote:

As far as party lines go - there is one that is pretty strong on this forum too, the one that supports RD's "New Atheism".

Got any evidence of this?

TO REPEAT - JUST MY PERSONAL OBSERVATION.

Considering this is splinter from RD.net, it's perfectly natural that might be the case, no?

If you by that mean "as opposed to the do-not-rock-the-boat atheists", then you are probably right. People here are vocal about their atheism, and many think that the deference shown to theism and theists by the "old atheists" is a thing of the past. As for political views, this is a pretty diverse lot, even if there's a definite slant towards liberalism/social democracy, HBT rights, gender equality, etc.

Varangian wrote:

maiforpeace wrote:

Made of Stars wrote:

As far as party lines go - there is one that is pretty strong on this forum too, the one that supports RD's "New Atheism".

Got any evidence of this?

TO REPEAT - JUST MY PERSONAL OBSERVATION.

Considering this is splinter from RD.net, it's perfectly natural that might be the case, no?

If you by that mean "as opposed to the do-not-rock-the-boat atheists", then you are probably right. People here are vocal about their atheism, and many think that the deference shown to theism and theists by the "old atheists" is a thing of the past. As for political views, this is a pretty diverse lot, even if there's a definite slant towards liberalism/social democracy, HBT rights, gender equality, etc.

Thank you Varangian, for not reading the worst out of my post.

And I absolutely agree, this is a diverse lot of people.

I don't consider myself a New Atheist, just an atheist. In fact, If you were to ask me where I stood I'd say I'm a humanist, and that as a subset of that I'll happily add that religion and theism are two of the biggest obstacles to humanity's progress. Even though I moderated on RD.net, I never considered myself a RD fanboi. I've only read one of his books IIRC. Now Hitchens on the other hand...

So that prolly paints a picture of why I think Atheism+ (while I agree with much of what people say it's about) is so much arsehattery. It's building on something (New Atheism) which was a nonsense construct to label 'noisy atheism'. Some people probably do buy into New Atheism (good for them), and think that Atheism+ is even niftier, but they shouldn't go around saying that people who don't buy into their glee club are 'douchebags', to quote Richard Carrier.

On splintering:

Here is a video of a lecture by Sherwin Wine, given several years ago at the "New Humanism" conference at Harvard. Wine, the atheist rabbi who founded Humanistic Judaism, was my old friend and mentor. Absolutely brilliant man. The entire video (in several parts) is really worth watching, and is very much apropos this issue.

But check out the last bit in particular - say from 7:15 on. Quite funny and observant.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0pVcEedEJ0[/youtube]

maiforpeace wrote:He makes some good points, and I'll look forward to reading what he writes further on the subject.

He almost always makes good points. And A+ seems well-intentioned and I agree with their stated goals.

I just don't think Freethought blogs is the place to launch this from. Too much "toe the party line" ideological purity bullshit. I think that Varangian's observation about leftist groups in the 70s could prove prescient.

Nicko wrote:

maiforpeace wrote:He makes some good points, and I'll look forward to reading what he writes further on the subject.

He almost always makes good points. And A+ seems well-intentioned and I agree with their stated goals.

I just don't think Freethought blogs is the place to launch this from. Too much "toe the party line" ideological purity bullshit. I think that Varangian's observation about leftist groups in the 70s could prove prescient.

I just had an interesting thought:

Subject: Separation of Church and State: USA

maiforpeace wrote:

trubble76 wrote:I get the feeling that those that are against the separation of church and state are really only against the separation of their church and state, they probably wouldn't be super thrilled about someone else's religion gaining all the extra influence.
How many different versions of christianity in the US?

In the thousands at least.

According to the World Christian Encyclopedia (year 2000 version), global Christianity had 33,820 denominations with 3,445,000 congregations/churches composed of 1,888 million affiliated Christians.

Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_diff ... z24fZ1Q2Be