Bah Humbug! Or have yourself an atheist holiday season

It's probably impossible to be an atheist at all without criticising religion, and vice versa, but there are ways of doing both without gratuitously offending people.

The major problem with all these things is that there are just some people who've never looked in the mirror and thought "Actually, am I completely full of shit?" Self-doubt is a good thing for anyone to have, but neither fundamentalist Christians nor militant atheists tend to have it.

I tend to subscribe to the "jerkfight" theory of conflict. That states in most circumstances, the level of jerkdom of the second or smaller party will rise to the level of jerkdom of the first or larger party.

The reason for this is that generally the first party has set the boundaries of what they find to be socially acceptable, and as such the rest of us generally fall in line with that.

So in cases like this, for years religious folks have done an act of jerkdom by putting up pro-religious messages where they really don't belong. This is seen as being socially acceptable. So, as the second group increases in size, and they look to communicate out, they do it in similar ways to the first group, as they see that their message should be socially acceptable as well. It's probably not, but that's a matter of privilege (which should be torn down).

Now, if you want to ratchet down the jerkdom, which quite frankly is something I support, you do NOT go after the second party. You go after the first party. You get religious groups to take down their billboards, take the snarky signs down, stop putting up public displays, etc. Once that is done, you'll see much less in terms of anti-religious signage as well, as it'll be seen as something that's not socially acceptable.

Anyway, in this case, what happened is that the local religious groups got lost in their own privilege and assumed that all the slots would be just handed to them because that's the way it's always worked int he past. Nothing more, nothing less. That's the type of privilege that needs to go die in a fire.

I dunno about that. For one thing, I see it as less "Atheism vs. religion" and more "one set of beliefs versus everyone else." It's the same basis for conflicts between different religions—including groups like Deism. Yet it's not impossible for people of differing belief systems to accept one another; just check out the concept of interfaith dialogues. "Cooperative, constructive and positive interaction between people of different religious traditions (i.e., "faiths") and/or spiritual or humanistic beliefs, at both the individual and institutional levels."

Sure, you're going to disagree on metaphysical, supernatural, and divine matters, but I've met chill people from all stripes who don't criticize people for not sharing their beliefs, whether politely or not. (For the record, though, I don't necessarily see (healthy) debate or discussion about two or more belief systems as being critical of them.)

"It's probably impossible to be an atheist at all without criticising religion, and vice versa"

Gotta disagree with this. I'm an atheist, but I don't criticise religion. Never felt the need to, honestly.

First off either noone should be able to put religion related displays on public land or everyone including atheists should be able to. I see this as Christians throwing a snit fit over someone else shoving crap down their throats instead of their doing it for once. Well, now you know how we pagans have felt ever since you stole Saturnalia/Yule away from us.

And again with the intolerant aggression ...

No it isn't. Just because someone is an atheist does not make them automatically a criticism of religion, no more than following any other religious beliefs would.

edited 17th Dec '11 8:53:01 AM by TrevMUN

The thing is, to a lot of people, the mere existence of atheists, or at least making ourselves visible at all, is criticism of religion. Because..well..it is.

Let me rephrase that. It shouldn't be, but for a lot of people it is. And yes, it's the same thing with other religions (or even different sects of the same religion, to be honest), but in this day and age, with how much a significant portion of the population has doubled-down on theism over every other spiritual point, this is to be expected.

How that I know that it is? Because simple signs of non-belief community building ("Don't believe in God? You are not alone" is the text), result in tons of controversy and people saying they're offended because of it. Enough that getting those signs up is a hell of a fight.

Just as an aside, this is one of the reasons why I've come to the conclusion that there's a significant portion (I don't really know the %, just that it's enough to be annoying/dangerous) of the North American Christian population who have put the concept of "God" ahead of the concept of "Jesus". Which of course, as a lot of people here would explain, is dead wrong. Doesn't make it untrue, that people are looking at things that way, however.

edited 17th Dec '11 9:07:53 AM by Karmakin

Not for me. I dunno if it's just good luck, but whenever I tell a Christian I'm an atheist, all I get is an "Oh." How you tell someone makes all the difference, too; instead of "I don't believe in God because..." you just tell them you don't believe, and parry attempts to turn things into a debate. It's not that hard.

I have a respect for all religion, and I can understand why people would try to convert you. They belive that they're right, so they try to 'save' you by converting you. Honestly, I take people trying to convert me as a compliment: 'at least they're worried for me', you know?

I'll admit that I've been attacked by fundies before, but the things they say are meaningless to me; I don't care if they tell me that I'm going to burn in Hell, because I don't believe in it.

Atheist dispays dont have to be offensive or inflamatory.

I myself would go for the a Flaying Spaghetti Monster display.

But I agree in the sense that we dont want to end up being dicks like most Evangelicals christians.

edited 17th Dec '11 11:32:31 AM by Baff

I don't get why "atheist display" has to equal "let's piss off as many people as possible".

Seriously just like, put up some snowflakes or a tree or something.

Impossible. Atheism itself insults people. Which is why I agree it should not be promoted publicly. But since religion is.. then I dont mind pissing off some people so the law changes.

edited 17th Dec '11 11:35:35 AM by Baff

It doesn't insult me.

It doesn't even insult most of the more religious members of my family.

Saying "atheism is insulting" is tantamount to saying "Christianity is insulting", it only is if you internalize your beliefs so thoroughly that you get offended whenever the other thing is mentioned, which is unhealthy.

Are you honestly saying that you could never speak to an atheist of any kind without being insulted?

I am saying that there could be no public display of atheism that wasnt insulting.

This would insult you?

Right. Atheism doesn't insult people, asshole atheists do. Nailing Santa to a cross is insulting; telling people "No God? No problem! Just be good for goodness' sake!" isn't.

You don't need to try to refute religion if you're an atheist, just like you don't need to lynch atheists if you're religious.

Going out of your way to tell people that their beliefs are wrong isn't what we're all about.

edited 17th Dec '11 11:47:01 AM by DisasterGrind

Anytime someone brings up or supports the FSM, that automatically equates them in my mind to members and supporters of the WBC.

It really is sad how a thing used to demonstrate a point in the Open Letter to the Kansas Board of Education has been warped into just another fallacious front on the War On Straw.

Agreed; that's a behavior for Fundies (which I'm using in the general ideological sense, not restricted to Christian or Islamic fundamentalists). No one from any stripe should want to be viewed as mindlessly intolerant of other religious beliefs, but American Atheists and Freedom From Religion Foundation are just going to emphasize that opinion in the minds of non-atheists.

edited 17th Dec '11 12:11:22 PM by TrevMUN

Now who's being overly aggressive and intolerant? The FSM has been warped into a symbol of how religion getting taught in school is a silly thing, not something that says that God hates Christians.

edited 17th Dec '11 12:11:06 PM by DrunkGirlfriend

Sorry, but you've got that the other way around.

It was originally used as a valid point in the "Open Letter to the Kansas Board of Education," demonstrating why trying to teach Intelligent Design as a science is a bad idea, and also fails to accomplish what Creationists were wanting out of such a push.

Atheists hijacked it and, with the eventual approval of the man behind it (who initially stated he had nothing against religion until he saw how popular the FSM had become among militant atheists), created an elaborate insult to religion in general and Christianity in specific as part of the War On Straw.

Who's being the aggressive and intolerant one? Anyone who uses the FSM to sneer and jeer at actual religions.

Why do so many people, on all sides of the argument, spend so much time and energy worrying about how other people do or don't celebrate Christmas? I'll never understand the "if I do, everyone else must too," and "If I don't, you can't either, and I must see no trace of it" mentality.

See, this is exactly why atheism can never get along with religion. Any time someone says that "I think believing in a god is silly", Christians get all butthurt about it and say that we're being a bunch of dicks. Yet they feel like it's their responsibility to shove their religion at us constantly, and don't understand why we get angry about it.

I certainly would feel put-upon if I had to walk past a multi-block display of the nativity story, and listen to religious Christmas songs starting several months prior. Yet when we try to do the same thing and express our lack of faith in the winter, we're the bad guys.

Something's got to give.

edited 17th Dec '11 12:21:40 PM by DrunkGirlfriend

I don't have a problem with Atheists. People like Disaster Grind and (I assume) Blixty Slycat are very reasonable people. They recognize that it's very possible to be both an Atheist and religiously tolerant.

I have a problem with Atheist fundies like you, who think you have a "right" to be continually aggressive and intolerant of all other beliefs while passing off any objections to such fundamentalist behavior as "oppression."

And in response to Gray64:

Like I've been saying, it's a facet of the whole intolerance issue. The very existence of people who don't share their beliefs incenses them, so they feel they must attack the beliefs of others and proselytize them.

That's pretty much the definition of "shoving one's beliefs down the throats of others."

edited 17th Dec '11 12:31:21 PM by TrevMUN

~headdesk~

Yeah, except that "religiously tolerant" in this country equates to "don't be seen, don't be heard". There were tons of people that threw a massive shit-fit about the bus ads saying "You can be good without God", for example.

Heck, most of the ads in this display were benign, but it still drew a lot of ire.

That's why I'm angry. I didn't have a problem with religion until I became an atheist and suddenly got painted as the bad guy by every single person I knew, including my own family.

So, no, I'm not a fundie. I'm just pissed off at inequality in the US.

edited 17th Dec '11 12:30:21 PM by DrunkGirlfriend

@USAF

Be more specific please.

And you two need to calm down. Seriously don't make me put on my imaginary mod hat.

Your posts in this thread have not convinced me of otherwise, such as your sneering that non-atheists "can't take what they dish out." And the other things I've quoted.

It's one thing to speak out against intolerance toward benign community-building messages for people of similar beliefs. It's quite another to go on the attack and mock or ridicule the beliefs of everyone else. By doing so, you become what you hate.

edited 17th Dec '11 12:35:08 PM by TrevMUN