Athiesm + ( Non progressive athiests need not apply)

I’m look­ing at this arti­cle (via hotair head­lines) and I’m try­ing really hard to look at this with Chris­t­ian Char­ity…

The founders of Athe­ism+ say clearly that “divi­sive­ness” is not their aim, but look­ing through the blogs and volu­mi­nous com­ments in the two weeks since A+ was mooted, trenches have been dug, beliefs stated, posi­tions staked out and abuse thrown. A dis­sent­ing tweeter is “full of shit”, while, accord­ing to one sup­porter, dar­ing to dis­agree with Atheism+‘s def­i­n­i­tion of pro­gres­sive issues and not pick­ing their side makes you an “ass­hole and a douchebag”.

but the humor of this is really hard to suppress.

The ques­tion here isn’t, is Athe­ism+ sig­nal­ing a split in their move­ment but what exactly IS it? Now as per dic​tio​nary​.com the the Word “Athi­est” has a sim­ple meaning

a·the·ism
 [ey-​thee-​iz-​uhm] Show IPA
noun
1.
the doc­trine or belief that there is no God.
2.
dis­be­lief in the exis­tence of a supreme being or beings.

Now lets look at a piece quoted in the arti­cle by everyone’s favorite pro­fes­sor PZ “let’s drive nails through the Eucharist” Myers on What Athiesm+ is. I think it sounds really familiar:

If you’re resent­ful that many athe­ists think that fem­i­nism is impor­tant, that we should be fight­ing for racial equal­ity, that we think rea­son and evi­dence dic­tate that exces­sive income inequity does harm to the nation, that the gun mad­ness needs to stop, or what­ever social and polit­i­cal issue pushes your but­tons, then tough. I’m not mak­ing you write leg­is­la­tion to increase spend­ing for schools in poor neigh­bor­hoods. I’m not form­ing you up into squads going door to door to take away people’s guns. I’m argu­ing for the impor­tance of those issues, and I’m find­ing allies who agree with me.

It seems to me that the New “Athe­ist+ group is sim­ply Athe­ism + Lib­er­al­ism. As he puts it in this rather incred­i­ble paragraph:

Yes. I’m a white male middle-​class pro­fes­sional. I profit from dis­par­ity, and it simul­ta­ne­ously gives me guilt and worry that some­one might take my priv­i­leges away from me. But I can’t in good con­science live in the illu­sion that I some­how deserve more than a poor black woman mak­ing ends meet with menial labor; I don’t. I’m just the recip­i­ent of the bless­ings of chance and history.

Think about that para­graph for a sec­ond. What­ever I think of Pro­fes­sor Myers, he IS in fact a col­lege pro­fes­sor, who has earned a PhD. This is not achieved with­out effort, ded­i­ca­tion brains and hard work, a lot of hard work. Yet by his own set of stan­dards it is an illu­sion. These years of effort and study is of no more value than any menial labor that he could have done if he decided to bag col­lege altogether.

This is beyond Obama & For­mer Obama Admin­is­tra­tion Offi­cial Eliz­a­beth Warren’s “You didn’t build this” this is “I didn’t build this”!

Athe­ism ought to be a pro­gres­sive social move­ment in addi­tion to being a philo­soph­i­cal and sci­en­tific posi­tion, because liv­ing in a god­less uni­verse means some­thing to humanity.

And that’s what our new Athi­est+ (lib­er­al­ism) club means and if you don’t buy into it…well:

And if you don’t agree with any of that — and this is the only ‘divi­sive’ part — then you’re an ass­hole. I sug­gest you form your own label, “Ass­hole Athe­ists” and own it, proudly.

Read that one more time. If he had just stopped with this sentence…

…isn’t it really silly to com­plain about not belong­ing to a group with ideals you don’t agree with?”

…he would have a valid argu­ment, but what is says is this: If you don’t believe what we believe, if you are a Bill Quick or an SE Cupp an Allah­pun­dit or a Doug Mat­a­co­nis and you don’t buy his brand of Athiesm your an Ass.

Peter McGrath, The author of the arti­cle, used the clip from Life of Brian about the Judean’s People’s Front vs the People’s front of Judea, but I think the bet­ter clip might be this one. (Lan­guage warning)

Maybe he won’t call for you to be killed but at the very least he will take your juniper bushes and give them away and if you don’t agree, then you’re unworthy.

Update: Here is an athe­ist per­spec­tive on this (HT Doug Matacoins)

Look, it’s fine to say that you’re cre­at­ing your own social move­ment of god­less peo­ple who believe in some­thing. Fine. But the impli­ca­tion of many of these folks – par­tic­u­larly those like PZ, who auto­mat­i­cally lumps lib­er­tar­i­ans in with “jerks” – is that you can­not be an athe­ist and yet not be of this mind on pol­i­tics at the same time. That’s just bonkers, and absurd. And I thought athe­ism was all about rea­son and logic, because we don’t believe in superstition?