I'm not saying that there are no organizations that have an interest in atheism. I'm saying that there are no organizations that have an influence over atheists in general.
"Atheism has a Richard Dawkins problem"
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Slartibartfast
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"gods don't exist" owns what?
Why?
Is there something about being an atheist that makes them irrevocably anti-establishment?
If even iconoclastics and anarchists are subject to organizational influence, what is that atheists have going for them that enables them to transgress the rigid politic of sociology?
By the same token, groups, monolithic or otherwise, are especially important to individuals.
With the advent of the digital age, you would be hard pressed to isolate a monolithic anything.
I, for one, am not a member of any organization. So no, you're wrong.
Digital age or not, that's what I'm saying: groups are not an important part of atheism. Have you run out of denial?
That's the point. There is nothing "about" atheists in general.
Atheists are as social as anybody. But as I keep telling you, atheism is a lack of belief.
Men with a lack of hair may form a bald men's association but most of them don't. They join a variety of other organizations that have nothing to do with baldness.
Basically if and when you criticize atheists (as opposed to atheism), you have to specify who or what group you mean.
Nothing, if we are invested in some atheist institution.
I appreciate this sleight of hand you feel is successful, but the presence or absence of formal organizational bodies says absolutely nothing about the formalization of values that identify an "ist" with an "ism"
And if, by default, the "ist" has no group (but by some magical fairy dusted lexical/sociological bastardry, still has an "ism" that defies logic), how do you propose the criticism gets extended to anything greater than the individual?
That's what I keep telling you. Have you forgotten which side you're on?
The ridiculously defensive misframing and misrepresentation of Dawkins's arguments and rhetoric - visible in the OP and link, ubiquitous in US media - is much more of a problem for the larger society than Dawkins's character flaws or whatever.
So is the illiteracy and incoherence of much of the reactionary public criticism of him, such as that OP link displays.
And it's not much of a problem for "atheism", whatever that means in this context. It may be a problem for "theism", to the extent it is organized into religions and represented by this stuff in these public discussions. It's definitely and seriously a problem for Western liberal government.
So is the illiteracy and incoherence of much of the reactionary public criticism of him, such as that OP link displays.
And it's not much of a problem for "atheism", whatever that means in this context. It may be a problem for "theism", to the extent it is organized into religions and represented by this stuff in these public discussions. It's definitely and seriously a problem for Western liberal government.
Yet we constantly find you pointing to the apparent absence of organizational structure within atheism like a derranged vagrant convinced of something profound.
Until you can answer that, best not to attempt the extension.
It's not that it's profound. It's that you have trouble grasping the concept, and need reminding. And rhetorical cleanup - there is no "within" to atheism in general.
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And we constantly find you responding with nothing but juvenile insults.
Do you understand yet that atheism is just an individual lack of belief?
If there's no group, how do you criticize the group? You can only criticize all atheists as they relate to the single core idea of atheism, disbelief in God. Otherwise you have to get more specific.
"Fairy dusted bastardry" offers a better suggestion as to why the attempt is futile.
