The Atheism Plus "movement" -- good, bad, ugly?

[DaveDodo007]

Seriously I'm calling Rebecca Watson a liar and elevator guy never existed as a skeptic prove me wrong as the claim has been made. You know that before the incident happened the photos existed and I bet the hotel has footage of the lift. So why are we so called skeptics buying into the bullshit. So name names, point the guy out or shut the fuck up you lying piece of shit. Drama whore loves the attention or show us the evidence. I wont hold my breath.

[Pappa]

Jesus Christ.... that's an awful lot of very specific rules. I think they're going to find themselves adding more sections and clauses as soon as things get going and then continuously thereafter to cover all the other specifics they'll likely encounter.

[rainbow]

Seriously I'm calling Rebecca Watson a liar and elevator guy never existed as a skeptic prove me wrong as the claim has been made. You know that before the incident happened the photos existed and I bet the hotel has footage of the lift. So why are we so called skeptics buying into the bullshit. So name names, point the guy out or shut the fuck up you lying piece of shit. Drama whore loves the attention or show us the evidence. I wont hold my breath.

Maybe it was a hypothetical incident.
Maybe the guy just wanted cofee, and she overreacted.
Who knows?

Who really cares?

[Audley Strange]

In case you're wondering, although I feel welcome over there and will only participate constructively. I have no intention of leaving here.

Whatever beef some people here have with some people there, there seem to be a LOT of people who want something like this.

Seem being operative there. I'd imagine all sorts of people have joined for shit and giggles. Some will be more subtle than others.

However. Doesn't this remind anyone of the puritan "clean the smut out of atheism" stuff that led to the RDF debacle? This is just a lifeboat for the paranoid man fearing mind.

Why the hell shouldn't you join? Do you think anyone here would blacklist you for that? Nah Robert that's their thing.

[Clinton Huxley]

I don't think it is Atheist+ forum official policy (yet) but there are some members over there who believe that expressing contrary or critical opinion of atheism+ constitutes hate and that any site where such opinions are expressed is a "hate site", the members of which should not be allowed to sully the atheism+ forum.

Atheism+ is apparently as weak and feeble as Allah. It can withstand, and hence tolerate, no criticism.

[Coito ergo sum]

I was just checking out the forum. Someone posted about how, since that forum is supposed to be a refuge for the good folks, that people from the "slyme pit" shouldn't be able to register.

I think I agree with most of them on the core issues you're referring to there. Still, sounds like they'd rather not have me around. Especially since I'd have to use my slave name, or whatever you want to call it-- I've already been labelled an apologist and worse over at chez PZ.

Guess I'm stuck eating lunch with you losers.

Their proposed rule:

Don't import hostility to the forum: If a user has behaved badly elsewhere, but posts only sensible comments here, these comments should not be greeted with hostility. As with carrying arguments between threads, importing hostility is disruptive, and looks dreadful to outsiders.

I'm actually interested to see how this turns out, so I have an account there.

I wasn't sure if that was really the consensus, given some other posts I've read. I mean, why insist on certain name use, if that's the case? Why follow people outside the forum?

That is quite easy to answer. They want to know who the prominent atheists are, because that is where the control lies. They are like the rudders on ships, and each ship has a a bunch of passengers. Keeping all the ships sailing in the same direction is part of their purpose.

Mr. Carrier said it quite clearly. If you do not advocate and cheer on the Atheism Plus movement, then you are not to be included and they see you as a fit target for ridicule, banishment, banning, and pariah-status.

In other words --- it's implicitly saying "choose your words very carefully....very....carefully...." -- if you choose to adopt a contrary position, you have to approach it in the right way and upon being informed that your position has been refuted, you are to drop it. Failure to do so is trolling, gaslighting and even harassment.

[rainbow]

I don't think it is Atheist+ forum official policy (yet) but there are some members over there who believe that expressing contrary or critical opinion of atheism+ constitutes hate and that any site where such opinions are expressed is a "hate site", the members of which should not be allowed to sully the atheism+ forum.

Atheism+ is apparently as weak and feeble as Allah. It can withstand, and hence tolerate, no criticism.

Would they open up Atheist*) in Islamic countries?

[Coito ergo sum]

I think I agree with most of them on the core issues you're referring to there.

Well, of course. Everyone agrees with the general statements of principles -- well just about everyone. I agree with justice, equality, equal rights, an end to violence (against women, men, children, dogs, cats, plants...), and I'm against harassment and discrimination, homophobia -- pro gay marriage and equal rights/benefits for gays -- all that sort of thing.

However, the Devil is in the details. They use those general principles to also advance the creepy and whacked out notion that Ms. Hall cannot wear this t-shirt:



I was told in no uncertain terms on Greta Christina's blog that if I think it is "whining" for Surly Amy to complain about that, then I am among those not welcome -- I'm a disgusting jerk who needs to "fuck off" -- if I think Ms. Hall did not do anything "wrong" in wearing that t-shirt.

I think that is the point that needs to be rammed home. I think that implicitly you are expressing this same distinction, and that to me is evident from your puzzlement with agreeing with their "platform" but being unable to "join" them. It's because they are taking those very agreeable terms and applying them to situations to which they are inapplicable. It just is not "harassment" for Ms. Hall to wear that t-shirt. It is not harassment. It is not hate. It is not discrimination. it is not misogyny. It is not even "against" women in any way, shape or form. it is a wholly proper, appropriate and acceptable "parody" -- and the appropriate response from Surly Amy and the Skepchicks would be to sit down with Ms. Hall and discuss why she is making that joke and come to some meeting of the minds.

It is a wholly inappropriate tactic to try to use "hatred against women" (something almost everyone opposes, except psychopaths and sociopaths) to bootstrap a claim that Ms. Hall ought to be prohibited as a matter of convention policy from wearing that t-shirt.

And, the apologists here who say "what they're talking about is hatred against women, and you can't use minor complaints about nothing to discount the import of hatred against women..." --- I respond that nobody is discounting violence against women. We're discounting t-shirt wearing, business card handing, jewelry parodying and elevator coffee-ing. Those things AREN'T hatred or violence against women. And saying so is not discounting or minimizing the real problems.

[hadespussercats]

Jesus Christ.... that's an awful lot of very specific rules. I think they're going to find themselves adding more sections and clauses as soon as things get going and then continuously thereafter to cover all the other specifics they'll likely encounter.

Yeah.

Wait. I think the word "awful" is in violation of section 32.b, clause 7...

[Coito ergo sum]

Elevator Guy is most likely a figment of RW's inebriated imagination.

I don't think so.

I bet he's a real guy. I think that Watson, though, learned to be offended by the coffee request. Up until some months before Elevatorgate, she was party-girl Skepchick, posing nude for calendars, and every picture was posed with sexual overtones and the whole librarian looking over her glasses thing....

She underwent some transition, I think, where she was no longer about partying with the smart folks, and adding a hip, young, party-girl factor to the otherwise drab and boring, nerd dominated field of skepticism.

Odds are, she read an intro to feminism book of some kind -- Feminism for Dummies or something -- and learned words like patriarchy and realized that what wasn't bothering her before, should have been bothering her. When guys made passes at her, that was not just guys being interested in her sexually, she should have known that was sexual harassment.

She's even said as much -- she said that she spent most of her 20s not even realizing that what was going on was sexism, misogyny and harassment. Something changed, of course, and now everyone who doesn't realize what she didn't realize for 3 decades is a jerk, a hater, a misogynist and all that...

This is a pattern with folks like her. It's like folks who find atheism at 30 years old and suddenly anyone who still follows a religion is an "idiot." It's the same with this Elevatorgate nonsense. She actively participated for most of her life in the pick-up and party scene, which involves men and women coming on to each other uninvited, and then she realized in 2011 at the age of 30-something that she should have been offended by it. Now, everyone who also isn't offended by it is an idiot and/or a misogynist.

EDIT: I find it quite humorous that, I bet, if a new 20-something chickie came out of college somewhere, with a fresh face, social attitude and a desire to party like the "chicks" back in the day, and started interacting with the skepnerds like Watson and the Skepchicks used to do, say 3+ years ago, that new "chick" would be denounced as an enabler, creating an atmosphere of harassment and such.

[orpheus]

I think I agree with most of them on the core issues you're referring to there.

Well, of course. Everyone agrees with the general statements of principles -- well just about everyone. I agree with justice, equality, equal rights, an end to violence (against women, men, children, dogs, cats, plants...), and I'm against harassment and discrimination, homophobia -- pro gay marriage and equal rights/benefits for gays -- all that sort of thing.

However, the Devil is in the details. They use those general principles to also advance the creepy and whacked out notion that Ms. Hall cannot wear this t-shirt:



I was told in no uncertain terms on Greta Christina's blog that if I think it is "whining" for Surly Amy to complain about that, then I am among those not welcome -- I'm a disgusting jerk who needs to "fuck off" -- if I think Ms. Hall did not do anything "wrong" in wearing that t-shirt.

I think that is the point that needs to be rammed home. I think that implicitly you are expressing this same distinction, and that to me is evident from your puzzlement with agreeing with their "platform" but being unable to "join" them. It's because they are taking those very agreeable terms and applying them to situations to which they are inapplicable.

There's something else as well. Their stance is that if you are not "with" Atheism+, you are necessarily against their values. You can agree with all their principles, but they won't acknowledge that. If, for whatever reason, you don't like them (the Atheism+ folks), or their manner, you must be a bigoted, misogynist asshole. There is no room in their philosophy for someone who doesn't like them but shares their values.

[orpheus]

Elevator Guy is most likely a figment of RW's inebriated imagination.

I don't think so.

I bet he's a real guy. I think that Watson, though, learned to be offended by the coffee request. Up until some months before Elevatorgate, she was party-girl Skepchick, posing nude for calendars, and every picture was posed with sexual overtones and the whole librarian looking over her glasses thing....

She underwent some transition, I think, where she was no longer about partying with the smart folks, and adding a hip, young, party-girl factor to the otherwise drab and boring, nerd dominated field of skepticism.

Odds are, she read an intro to feminism book of some kind -- Feminism for Dummies or something -- and learned words like patriarchy and realized that what wasn't bothering her before, should have been bothering her. When guys made passes at her, that was not just guys being interested in her sexually, she should have known that was sexual harassment.

She's even said as much -- she said that she spent most of her 20s not even realizing that what was going on was sexism, misogyny and harassment. Something changed, of course, and now everyone who doesn't realize what she didn't realize for 3 decades is a jerk, a hater, a misogynist and all that...

This is a pattern with folks like her. It's like folks who find atheism at 30 years old and suddenly anyone who still follows a religion is an "idiot." It's the same with this Elevatorgate nonsense. She actively participated for most of her life in the pick-up and party scene, which involves men and women coming on to each other uninvited, and then she realized in 2011 at the age of 30-something that she should have been offended by it. Now, everyone who also isn't offended by it is an idiot and/or a misogynist.

EDIT: I find it quite humorous that, I bet, if a new 20-something chickie came out of college somewhere, with a fresh face, social attitude and a desire to party like the "chicks" back in the day, and started interacting with the skepnerds like Watson and the Skepchicks used to do, say 3+ years ago, that new "chick" would be denounced as an enabler, creating an atmosphere of harassment and such.

I hadn't considered this, but I think it's a real possibility. Maybe even a probability. The use of buzzwords certainly is notable.

[Clinton Huxley]

CES, have you been on the AtheismPlus web-site? I've been having a look at it and I think it would cause you to have an aneurysm. For the good of your health, stay away....

[Coito ergo sum]

CES, have you been on the AtheismPlus web-site? I've been having a look at it and I think it would cause you to have an aneurysm. For the good of your health, stay away....

No, I haven't gone there.

I actually have a slight concern about signing up without being sure of anonymity. They've sent disconcerting signals in the past about reacting to on-line stuff in "real life." They're a a creepy bunch, as a group.

[Bella Fortuna]

I don't think it is Atheist+ forum official policy (yet) but there are some members over there who believe that expressing contrary or critical opinion of atheism+ constitutes hate and that any site where such opinions are expressed is a "hate site", the members of which should not be allowed to sully the atheism+ forum.

Atheism+ is apparently as weak and feeble as Allah. It can withstand, and hence tolerate, no criticism.

That would be Allah+