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A Friendly Place?

Stone Island

Graduate Poster
Stone Island
Joined
Nov 28, 2007
Messages
1,003
The James Randi Educational Foundation forum presents itself as "a place to discuss skepticism, critical thinking, the paranormal and science in a friendly and lively way." This statement reminded me of something that Michael Martin wrote called "Friendly Atheism".

In his essay, so thoughtfully preserved at Infidels.org, Martin writes,

As Rowe conceives of a friendly atheist he or she is a person that believes that some theists are rationally justified in believing a theistic God exists. It seems that this definition has little to do with the ordinary meaning of 'friendly'. According to the dictionary 'friendly' is defined as having the disposition of being open, warm, and social. In the ordinary sense of 'friendly' one can be friendly toward people who one believes holds rationally unjustified beliefs and one can be unfriendly toward people that one believes holds justified beliefs. Furthermore, despite this a friendly or unfriendly attitude may be justified. For example, one can be friendly towards a person in mental institutions who one believe holds a completely wrong view of the world, e.g, he thinks he is Jesus Christ and who has no rational justification for his beliefs. One may be friendly towards this person because he is likeable or has been kind or good to you. The irrationality of his beliefs does not enter into your motivation of your friendly behavior.

Perhaps, then, one should consider friendly atheism in a way that is more in accord with the ordinary use of the term 'friendly'. To advocate friendly atheism in this sense of the term 'friendly' would be to advocate that atheists be friendly people, that is, that they should be open, warm and sociable. This would include being friendly to theists, their traditional enemies. Is such a position plausible?
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And, regarding the usefulness of being friendly, he writes,
It is possible such friendly behavior would help to eliminate a commonly held stereotype of the atheist as an embittered, suspicious loner snarling against the theistic culture he or she is forced to live in. (Whether there is any evidence that supports such a stereotype I do not know.) So more friendly atheists may be a good thing as a way of improving the social image of atheism.

Furthermore, in so far as atheists want theists to 'convert' to atheism, a friendly attitude is no doubt desirable. Just as religious missionaries may improve their success rate by a more friendly and less judgmental attitude to potential converts, so atheists 'missionaries' would possibly have a higher success rate if they adopted a less confrontational and more friendly attitude.
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Well, yes, and what exactly is your point? That this place is hostile? That theists are always friendly?

Your thread received quite a number of views, yet nobody replied. You might want to clarify the purpose of this.

Besides, I personally disagree with this "atheists want theists to 'convert' to atheism" thing, even when written in inverted commas. So far, it has been the other way round, the theists were the missionaries.
 
wahrheit said:
Besides, I personally disagree with this "atheists want theists to 'convert' to atheism" thing, even when written in inverted commas. So far, it has been the other way round, the theists were the missionaries.
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First, he wrote "in so far as".

Second, Sam Harris.

What did you think of the rest of the article?
 
It is possible such friendly behavior would help to eliminate a commonly held stereotype of the atheist as an embittered, suspicious loner snarling against the theistic culture he or she is forced to live in.
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No, it is not. The people who hold this stereotype do not do so because of any actual experience with atheists. They hold it because atheists are demonized in their social group. Atheists are not demonized for any actions they have taken, but because the mere existence of people who don't believe and yet live perfectly fulfilled lives is a threat.

Being friendly to these people in their meaning of the word requires that atheists shut-up and remain in the closet. This allows them to continue to demonize us at their leisure because they never have to confront those stereotypes. The only way to put an end to the stereotype is to be so militant and rude and absolutely inconsiderate of their feelings as to not hide the fact that we're atheists, and maybe even be such evil fundamentalists as to mention that we have good reasons for our lack of belief. Of course, it helps to be friendly in the more sane sense of the word, but that's not the sense of the word that's being tossed about.
 
I'm NOT an atheist. Many of us are NOT atheists. I rather imagine that my dear Quaker friend that posts her is far more religious and has stronger and better faith than YOU do. Let's see, you think God is telling you to post on this site as some sort of brownie point system.

Ummm, tell me what else you do to earn Brownie points with Jesus. Really.
 
kittynh said:
I'm NOT an atheist. Many of us are NOT atheists. I rather imagine that my dear Quaker friend that posts her is far more religious and has stronger and better faith than YOU do. Let's see, you think God is telling you to post on this site as some sort of brownie point system.

Ummm, tell me what else you do to earn Brownie points with Jesus. Really.
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:eek:

:confused:

What?
 
It is possible such friendly behavior would help to eliminate a commonly held stereotype of the atheist as an embittered, suspicious loner snarling against the theistic culture he or she is forced to live in. (Whether there is any evidence that supports such a stereotype I do not know.) So more friendly atheists may be a good thing as a way of improving the social image of atheism.
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This is a free world. Atheists can simply create their own culture if they want to put some work in and they so choose. They could create the first society anywhere that has atheism as its center.
 
T'ai Chi said:
This is a free world. Atheists can simply create their own culture if they want to put some work in and they so choose. They could create the first society anywhere that has atheism as its center.
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You haven't got around much in your life, have you? Not every society, not every country is based on religious dogma, darling.

And yes, I do officially regret replying to a T'ai Chi post.
 
T'ai Chi said:
This is a free world. Atheists can simply create their own culture if they want to put some work in and they so choose. They could create the first society anywhere that has atheism as its center.
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Or, we could brainwash, steal, rape, and murder our way into dominance of an existing society.
 
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T'ai Chi said:
This is a free world. Atheists can simply create their own culture if they want to put some work in and they so choose. They could create the first society anywhere that has atheism as its center.
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It's interesting to me that some people will claim that certain totalitarian societies were based on atheism in order to imply that atheists are bad people, while on the other hand people like T'ai Chi will claim that no society has ever been based on atheism in order to imply that atheists are bad people.
 
Overall - Online I do fine non-religious folks to be less friendly. But there have been plenty of exceptions to that.


In person this distinction would be much harder to discern. Most people are polite and friendly to me when face to face with me.
 
Irony said:
No, it is not. The people who hold this stereotype do not do so because of any actual experience with atheists. They hold it because atheists are demonized in their social group. Atheists are not demonized for any actions they have taken, but because the mere existence of people who don't believe and yet live perfectly fulfilled lives is a threat.

Being friendly to these people in their meaning of the word requires that atheists shut-up and remain in the closet. This allows them to continue to demonize us at their leisure because they never have to confront those stereotypes. The only way to put an end to the stereotype is to be so militant and rude and absolutely inconsiderate of their feelings as to not hide the fact that we're atheists, and maybe even be such evil fundamentalists as to mention that we have good reasons for our lack of belief. Of course, it helps to be friendly in the more sane sense of the word, but that's not the sense of the word that's being tossed about.
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Seconded.

Presidential candidates are prepared to deny the existence of evolution to pander to fundamentalists. I don't have to listen to talk radio in Texas very much before I hear a caller blame the woes of society on "the atheists who kicked God out of public schools." Yet I seldom hear radio talk show hosts point out that the freedom of religion that is guaranteed by the Bill of Rights requires that the state not endorse any one religion.


National polls show that 45% of the voting public would not vote for an atheist even if he were well-qualified (1). I have a hard time believing that that number would go down if we all were just a bit more friendly.

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(1) Gallup. Other results include people willing to vote for Baptists: 94%, Blacks: 95%, Homosexuals 59%.
 
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When will thse idiots work out that atheism is not a movement, it is just simply knowing that fairy stories are fiction.
I am sure I have some things in common with many people here, and equally many differences, and the last thing I would want to do is to join a group, based on non belief. I don't believe in pixies or unicorns, but I have no intention of joining an anti pixie group.
Get a life.
ps I am quite friendly generally.
 
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The situation should dictate the approach.

Example-
I am the atheist of the office (actually the one who came out of the closet). Yesterday I had a nice talk with a cow-orker who is a Catolic. Education and morals where the subject of the talk. She asked "You are an atheist, right? How are you going to deal with religion when it comes to educationg your son?" Now, this is a very intelligent, nice and gentle young lady. Of course I was polite. I had to be.

My reply was along the "there are no Christian children, only children whose parents are Christians" and the "provide information and let him decide" lines. She was caught completely off ballance and a seed was planted, I think. She said "You are right, I never saw the issue through that angle before."

But against rabid people... Playing nice with some people in some situations is very hard if not impossible. Note, however, that many religious zealots may be defeated in a debate quite easily- just keep your head cool and expose the flaws in their reasonings. It may be enough to make them loose their minds and start the ad homs.
 
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T'ai Chi said:
This is a free world. Atheists can simply create their own culture if they want to put some work in and they so choose. They could create the first society anywhere that has atheism as its center.
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Good idea. I'll start with a complete set of athestic rules.

Article 1

France Rationalvania shall be an indivisible, secular, democratic and social Republic. It shall ensure the equality of all citizens before the law, without distinction of origin, race or religion. It shall respect all beliefs. It shall be organised on a decentralised basis.

Article 2
.....
See article 1.



P.S. Any similarity with another state's constitution dating back to 1789 is purely coincidental. As Tai said; nowhere has ever had atheism at its centre.
 
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