Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
Atheist Whackjobs Of The World Unite!
Well, good-golly-gee! I'm sure glad we have Melinda Barton around to remind us what a bunch of powerless, evil, wanna-be dictatorial extremists us atheists are! I mean, the fact that we don't believe in any gods is pretty extreme. Terrorism, really. Our non-belief in her god makes us dangerous. Just listen to her. She'll tell you.
[link] Why face off with the atheist whackjobs? Because extremism is extremism is extremism. No rational movement dedicated to intellectual courage and honesty should maintain a relationship with those for whom intellectual laziness, dishonesty, and cowardice are a way of life. Doing what must be done to insure the integrity of the left will require identifying our extremists, countering their mythologies, and acknowledging the dangers they pose to a truly liberal society.Why face off with the atheist whackjobs? Because extremism is extremism is extremism. No rational movement dedicated to intellectual courage and honesty should maintain a relationship with those for whom intellectual laziness, dishonesty, and cowardice are a way of life. Doing what must be done to insure the integrity of the left will require identifying our extremists, countering their mythologies, and acknowledging the dangers they pose to a truly liberal society.
The fact that the "atheist whackjobs" she describes in her articles, as well as the "outrageous claims" list she writes about, then clumsily knocks down, don't actually exist anywhere in the real world doesn't seem to faze her or her editors at The Raw Story.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Atheists are the last minority in the country where it is acceptable - even encouraged - to denigrate, attack, oppress, and make shit up about them.
We are the new boogey-men, just like "communists" and "jews" have been the boogey-men in the past.
I just hope that it doesn't end in some sort of McCarthy-esque round-up and detention.
The Neural Gourmet, Austin Cline, and PZ all have great comments about this.
You can comment directly on Barton's original post on her blog here.
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Extremists?
How are atheists any more extremist than religious folk? Isn't believing in a higher being without proof at least equivalently extreme as not believing in a higher being (and arguably more so; if I tell you little green men are sleeping under your bed, I would hope the default position would be disbelief). And at least I'm not aware of atheism kicking off an inquisition (although certainly no one would expect the Atheist Inquisition) or encouraging other atheists to blow themselves up while standing in a crowd of believers. I guess extremist is just another one of those words that people are going to overuse into uselessness.
Boogey men
I don't know if atheists are the last boogeymen. Us fatties have been quite demonized in past years too though it is much less a social stigma to be fat than atheist. Anyhow, I think the thing about this whole affair that bugged me the most is the anger by Raw Story that we should feel hurt and outraged by Melinda Barton's article and the denial of responsibility by Raw Story quickly followed by Avery Walker's bizarre accusations that we were all lying and changing their words.
That was very weird.
That was weird, wasn't it? That Avery character seemed to basically melt down there at the bitter end. "I'm not apologizing!", he screamed. I could almost hear the "... you dirty lying atheists!" on the end of that one.
It was ironic that Avery the Editor demonstrated so well the exact thing that we were all outraged about - the marginalization and dismissal of atheists in this society. And he did not even seem to realize what he was doing.
The pragmatism excuse
Because the Bush administration is throwing the activist left into disarray and self-introspection, a lot of leftists use the increasing emphasis on pragmatism on bashing every movement they don't like for ostensibly practical reason.
Obviously, you could make a coherent argument why separation of church and state, or abortion, or unionism, or gay rights, or affirmative action, is such a losing issue that the gain in the electability of liberalism will outweigh the loss to the liberal agenda. But that's not the argument most people who try making it; instead, they blow off steam based not on pragmatism, but on their own personal opposition to the movements they're trying to jettison. When Kos rams NARAL and says abortion isn't a core Democratic value, he's not being pragmatic; he's clothing an anti-choice position in pragmatism.
Atheists make a convenient target for this sort of pseudo-utilitarianism, simply because they're the weakest interest group. On the blogosphere they're unusually strong, in large part thanks to PZ, but in the real world (as much as professional politics can be called the real world...), not enough people care. The ACLU and PFAW the mainstream left considers an embarrassment anyway, and groups like Americans United are way too weak to raise the steam that NOW or the AFL-CIO or even HRC can raise.