Remember that Atheism+ thing I blogged about, like, five days ago?
I used to scoff at the notion that atheists could challenge hard-core religious folk in level of smugness. I now see that there may be no limit to the doucherocketry of some who identify as “atheist.” In fact, it is going on and on on the interwebz. Most people arrived at atheism after being raised in one religion or another. Once getting there, it can be tempting to feel a certain smugness, a certain enjoyment of discovering rational thought, and an associated joy in feeling right. But here’s the thing: you might still be wrong. In fact, nearly everyone still has some unexamined privilege that makes them wrong about something (yes, even me, pretty much every day.) As the saying roughly goes, though, you cannot reason someone out of a position they did not reason themselves into.
My point being, I believe the Atheism+ concept is a good thing, but some people can’t seem to help being trollish douchecanoes about it.
Richard Carrier wrote a couple of posts on the topic last week that are worth checking out, but I particularly liked Jason Thibeault’s summary of what the whole Atheism+ concept is supposed to represent. It might just be because he used pretty Venn diagrams, though.
In essence, Thibeault says that Atheism+ is the overlap of “atheists,” “humanists,” and “social justice advocates.” He points out that people who could fairly be described as humanists and social justice advocates could overlap with the category he labels “religious.” Overlapping both the “atheist” and the “religious” labels are two separate circles of what he describes as “scumbags, privilege-deniers, misogynists, anti-feminists, anti-gay bigots, people who hate social justice causes, and other miscreants.” He goes into some detail about what he means by those phrases, so you should go read what he wrote. He specifically notes that this category does not overlap with Atheism+. Finally, he adds a category that overlaps everything, including Atheism+, “loudmouthed jackholes who enjoy giving offense for its own sake – trolls.”
If you don’t like the causes that the Atheism+ people are trying to support, at least don’t be a loudmouthed jackhole.
Photo credit: Atheism+ logo, via FreeThoughtBlogs.
