Ocassional Thoughts of an Independent Progressive Atheistic Humanist
Normally I frown on creating new freethought groups because we tend to see new ones pop-up for no real reason but Secular Woman is a group our community needs to have. It will serve a group of non-religious people that tend to be under served or marginalize even within the freethought movement. I like their mission and value statements and the fact that even as a man I can join if I want to support their goals.
Continue reading “New Secular Woman Group Debuts”
Another conference and another bad experience by women at the conference followed by a backlash from men toward the women complaining. I am getting SICK OF IT! Knock the shit off now guys and show some respect for women. Right now some atheist men are no better than those on the religious right who want to return women back to the days when they were all barefoot and pregnant.
The atheist and freethought communities have gotten a black eye lately from a couple of highly publicized incidents where women attended some conferences and were harassed or treated unfairly by some men also attending the conferences or demeaned or outright dismissed in panel discussions.
Thursday May 3rd is the National Day of Reason in the United States. The day is a secular celebration for humanists, atheists, and other secularists and freethinkers in response to the National Day of Prayer, that is unfortunately a legal holiday in the United States. This country has many issues from high unemployment to religious conservatives attacks on women’s rights. The government shouldn’t be holding national days of prayer, we need reason to help solve human problems.
In the decades I’ve been involved in the atheist and Humanist movements, I’ve seen many “inner-party” battles over policy, plans, and actions. Many atheists I know are very vocal to the point they piss off many of my Humanist friends. So-called strident atheists never bothered me because of simple points I keep in mind that lowers my threshold of annoyance. I wish more in the freethought community would keep these hints in mind.
An example of the infighting I’ve seen inside the freethought community can read in an essay by American Humanist Association President David Niose:
Humanism is a strange collection of individuals in a stew of rationality, all of us looking for the truth for our world view. We, as Humanists, know we must work with believers and other theists to find common ground with the goal of bettering the human condition. Andy Norman, writing for the Humanist Network News, an e-zine of the American Humanist Association, tries to offer tips for dialogue on Humanism to non-humanists but does so by giving up honesty in the process.
Norman, in his essay “Framing Humanism, or How to Win the Culture War”, starts out great by explaining how we as Humanists could do a better job of bringing in new people or at least getting our message out by the use of Framing (where we control the meaning of our message), but then my alarm bells start going off when I read this: