(Lawrence Hyde) wrote in message news:<f925918f.0403252028.738403d4@posting.google.com>...
The biggest problem that non-religious people face is the lack of a
unifying self image that would empower us to support each other the
way theists can. For example, "christian" is an independant label that
soley ficilitates the positive image that "christians" can unite in
support of.
Honestly, I'm not sure that this is a problem that needs a solution.
Atheism is a very broad term for the specific reason that it includes
everyone who isn't a theist. There isn't anything that intrinsically
unifies us beyond that point nor do I see that we should strive to
achieve some sort of artificial unity.
In order to bring nonreligious people together under a similar
umbrella, we need to dump the subjective "atheist" label.
There's nothing subjective about it. It's a very precise description
with perfectly clear criteria.
"Atheist" is
strictly dependant on an initially theistic point of view and is
specificaly negative towards that view.
Certain theists have been pushing that line for a long time and it
just doesn't hold up. Atheism is a default condition that does not
require an "intitially theistic point of view" and which certainly
doesn't require a specifically negative perspective against theism.
In my own case, I have again and again decrief the assumption that
atheists must be hostile towards all religion in all forms. I think
that there is such a thing as pathological religion, but I don't think
that it's proper to characterize all religion as pathological and I
refuse to accept anyone's attempt to portray me as a hater of theism
by the simple default of my atheism.
"Humanist" seems to be a good independant label for nonreligious
people.
Humanism is a particular philosophy that incorporates an atheistic
viewpoint. There is no reason to assume that any given atheist will
also be a humanist anymore than it would be valid to assume that we'd
all want to be Communists. If the humanist label fits you, all to the
good. It's not a shoe that everyone is interested in wearing.
--
Andrew Lias
http://andrewlias.blogspot.com
.
