While browsing the outer reaches of the interweb, I stumbled across something called “Atheist +.” Has anyone heard of this? What are your thoughts and opinions? I looked into it and discovered an interesting blog post on the subject worth a read http://atheistethicist.blogspot.com/2012/08/atheism-plus-arguments-...
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Yeah, I'd call that knee-jerk reaction.
Wow. Well, like I said I agree in principle, but in practice...
Wonderful, next thing you know they'll condemn us to hell. ;)
I'm wondering if they're atheist Poes. I can see the irony of the whole thing, and it's really kind of funny.
I'm not sure if this (Alonzo Fyle's comment) was directed at me or not; it's directly below my top level comment but not nested under it, and it sounds like he could be addressing me. I'll toss a coin and assume it is, if not, please pretend I made it a top level comment.
My complaint is not with atheists that apply judgment of other people; it's with atheists who assume that being atheist logically entails left-liberal politics in other areas.
For instance I have no gripe with the Humanists--they say they are humanists and part of that is being atheist. There's no inference that non-humanist atheists are necessarily being inconsistent even though they disagree with them on many issues.
On the other hand, there is a new "Atheist Party" that is trying to rope all atheists, regardless of their politics on other issues, into being their constituency for some very left-wing platform planks. Personally I am sick and tired of the presumption by non-atheists that atheists are way out in left field on anything other than church/state issues and people like this Atheist Party only help to perpetuate it. I frankly hope they fail. If you want to push progressive or socialist politics, call yourself the socialist or progressive party--it is a more accurate label for where your emphasis would necessarily lie once you got into office (you can't spend all your time on church/state issues). Hell you may even get a bunch of religious folks to join that party (since it doesn't have that dreaded A word in the name) and boost your membership. (You'd be amazed at how many leftists are not atheists... sure they won't be fundie evangelicals, but they aren't atheists either, and probably have some of the same stupid misconceptions of us that the fundies have and push.)
Atheism Plus (A+) is, I think trying to straddle the line between these two situations; they are a political advocacy group on a bunch of issues unrelated to atheism per se, that is wearing their atheism on their sleeve. I think it's very easy to get the message that they think, not that I am wrong for not agreeing with them (of course I expect them to think that) but that I am somehow less worthy of the label "atheist" because I don't agree with them on these other issues.
"There is an important difference between the Atheism Party and the Atheism Plus. The latter is trying to reform the Atheist community itself"
I was not aware that the atheist community was in need of "reform" at all. This particular attempt seem especially poorly thought out and to be a product of the echo chamber FTB is increasingly seeming to become.
"Yet, does merely asking somebody for sex itself constitute an act of sexual violence? Perhaps not."
Perhaps?! Seriously, what is the world coming to when words can be construed as violence? The correct answer is: Of course it's not! It is this type of juvenile and silly argumentation which completely obliterates any claim to credibility this "movement" claim to have.
A person places three people in a room.
He asks the first, "Will you have sex with me?" She says no. He kills her.
He asks the second, "Will you have sex with me?" She says no. He kills her.
He asks the thrid, "Will you have sex with me?"
Would this not an instance of rape?
Now, let's remove the context.
Two people are alone in a room. One asks the other for sex. Is this an act of sexual violence?
It's the same situation. We are simply choosing to turn a blind eye to the two bodies on the floor and how they got there.
context matters.
When you answer "Of course not!" you are ASSUMING a context in which your answer is correct. However, to determine whether any specific instance is an instance of sexual violence or not, we must examine it in its actual context - and not remove it from that context.
Thus, my answer, "perhaps not" is the more accurate answer. I could also phrase it as, "It depends". Clearly, it depends on the context.
Huh?
1. This doesn't really make sense on any level I can quite relate to. Is the murder of women denying guys sex a common occurrence at atheist gatherings in the US?
2. What the hell does any of this have to do with atheism in the first place?
The purpose of my example was to defend the proposition that "Context matters" is true - and that an answer of "It depends on context" is a more accurate response than "Of course not!"
Now that we have established that context matters, let us look at the context.
Rape, murder, and other forms of assault against women are a common enough occurance that the rational woman has reason to ask herself, "What type of situation am I an now?" A woman and a stranger in an isolate spot with no witnesses . . . "Yes" does not always imply consent.
Furthermore, we would be fools to deny that there men using their positions of power to grant favors to those who provide them with sex - who use implicit promises and threats as a means to obtain sex. (And women, too, to be honest.)
Finally, even those who have no intention of engaging in this type of exploitation should be aware of the fact that, "She has no way of being certain that I am not that type of person. Therefore, she may be agreeing to sex out of fear even though I know she has nothing to be afraid of."
These are all a part of the real world in which decisions are made. These are all a part of the context.
They make things complicated.
We would like things to be simple. Unfortunately, what we would like does not dictate what is true. (A lot of theists have not grasped that simple concept.) Turning the universe that exists into the universe we want it to be usually takes more effort than a wish or a prayer.
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