Ah, militant atheism. How I miss my days in the Young Secularist League, and the street battles we'd have with the splitters in the Rationalist Youth -- but how we'd all unite against the Anglican/Catholic Temporarily United Faction, the Baptist Brigade, and the Sikh/Muslim/Jewish Alliance of Convenience (Ravinder, Ali, and Ruth, until she decided the whole thing was too silly).
Kate, if you're trying seriously to work through all this stuff, perhaps you should consider that the concept of "militant atheism" is right wing Christian propaganda. Yes, Dawkins, Hitchens, and a few others have finally turned on the religious the kind of scorn the religious have aimed at atheists for a good long time. But it's not a movement. Atheism itself is not a movement, nor is it, for most atheists, a belief system. It's the refusal to take part in a belief system. The so-called militant atheist books of the last few years are an attempt to clear some space for the freedom to refuse following the aggressive resurgence of militant Christianity and Islam, in particular, in the post-9/11 world.
Talking unironically about militant atheism is like talking unironically about political correctness.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2009-01-21 12:34 pm (UTC)Kate, if you're trying seriously to work through all this stuff, perhaps you should consider that the concept of "militant atheism" is right wing Christian propaganda. Yes, Dawkins, Hitchens, and a few others have finally turned on the religious the kind of scorn the religious have aimed at atheists for a good long time. But it's not a movement. Atheism itself is not a movement, nor is it, for most atheists, a belief system. It's the refusal to take part in a belief system. The so-called militant atheist books of the last few years are an attempt to clear some space for the freedom to refuse following the aggressive resurgence of militant Christianity and Islam, in particular, in the post-9/11 world.
Talking unironically about militant atheism is like talking unironically about political correctness.