There's a difference between simply hating religion and actually making a concerted effort to be an activist. Every single time anybody talks about "the atheist movement" (in this case, Greta Christina talking about how atheist activists need to make a special effort to be inclusive of women and people of color (http://gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_christinas_weblog/2009/09/race-sex-atheism.html), a situation which is clearly and unambiguously about "the movement" to advocate for atheists), someone thinks it's so fucking clever to accuse atheists of "evangelizing."
There is literally no way for atheists to organize around their atheism without somebody (generally a theist, but sometimes just somebody sufficiently clueless) coming in and calling it "evangelism." There's no way for atheists to get together or work with each other or talk to each other that wouldn't get classified as "preaching" or "evangelizing." To people who don't see atheist activism as important, they reframe it so that it's all about them and how badly we want to recruit them and not about how badly atheists need to support each other.
There are some cases where atheists are literally setting out to tell as many theists as possible that there's no Santa Claus. I'm a redditor and I've seen them, though they're pretty goddamn rare even on /r/atheism and /r/debateanatheist/ (though they do show up at /r/debateachristian with fair frequency). However, at the risk of pulling a No True Scotsman, I don't think most of them would call themselves "activists" the way that Greta Christina is an activist or I'm an activist or the Center for Inquiry is full of activists.
As an aside: What the hell is all the animosity toward Dawkins? He's probably the most scrupulously-polite and delicately British gentleman I've ever seen talk about these issues. Forthright, sure, but he's not rude. I mean, I get that he's insufficiently appeasing and calls a spade a spade, but it's curious that he's the one that people have latched onto as the symbol of All That Is Asshole Atheism.
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chiming
Re: I wish this was true, because it's very well stated.
Date: 2011-03-15 03:40 am (UTC)From:There is literally no way for atheists to organize around their atheism without somebody (generally a theist, but sometimes just somebody sufficiently clueless) coming in and calling it "evangelism." There's no way for atheists to get together or work with each other or talk to each other that wouldn't get classified as "preaching" or "evangelizing." To people who don't see atheist activism as important, they reframe it so that it's all about them and how badly we want to recruit them and not about how badly atheists need to support each other.
There are some cases where atheists are literally setting out to tell as many theists as possible that there's no Santa Claus. I'm a redditor and I've seen them, though they're pretty goddamn rare even on /r/atheism and /r/debateanatheist/ (though they do show up at /r/debateachristian with fair frequency). However, at the risk of pulling a No True Scotsman, I don't think most of them would call themselves "activists" the way that Greta Christina is an activist or I'm an activist or the Center for Inquiry is full of activists.
As an aside: What the hell is all the animosity toward Dawkins? He's probably the most scrupulously-polite and delicately British gentleman I've ever seen talk about these issues. Forthright, sure, but he's not rude. I mean, I get that he's insufficiently appeasing and calls a spade a spade, but it's curious that he's the one that people have latched onto as the symbol of All That Is Asshole Atheism.