Atheism Plus/Free Thought Blogs (FTB)

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d4m10n said:
Make sense to me, I don't think you can make sense of A+ without knowing from whence it arose and how it was initially promoted and populated.

Wish there was a handy catchall term for everyone who aims to subjugate the skeptical movement to the authoritarian callout culture endemic to brave keyboard warriors for great social justice. How about Atheists Against Social Injustice, or AtheistASI (rhymes with 'Stasi') for the sake of meaningful brevity?
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Atheists Against Skepticism?

AAS?
 
Mr. Scott said:
Hope I'm not stating the obvious, but Free Speech has always been for me at the foundation of Social Justice, and their hateful use of "freeze peach" to refer to it makes it obvious "social justice" is a fake posture. You can only speak freely there if you agree with the power elite, and FSM help you if you are accused of a thought crime.
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My wife used to run a clinic for underpriviledged women. She has done more for social justice in a single weekend than the entire A+ movement throughout its entire existence.
 
brodski said:
His blog, which used to be focused on Evolution (his field), then by extension on attacking/ ridiculing/ disproving creationists then on attacking religion in general (his stunt with desecrating some communion wafers then destroying a Quran got him some further attention).
His blog (long before the move to FTB) built up a large, loyal and quite rabbid fan-base.
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Which he is quickly losing.
 
squealpiggy said:
I don't know, you read about scientific advancements in neuro-robotics that allow a quadriplegic woman to use mechanical hands using her thoughts and give her true independence from her disability and while the rest of the world stands in awe of the truly great things that science and technology have achieved the A-Plus crowd will worry about the negative effect this will have on the quadriplegic community.
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Sorry, but any quadriplegic refusing such treatment on political grounds just won't have a leg to stand on.
 
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kellyb said:
It became pretty obvious pretty quickly that these people didn't actually give a **** about the "health and happiness of babies." That was just a cover for being an a****** and demonstrating to others in the groups how "honest" and "unwilling to sugarcoat the truth" (and thus get high fives, back pats, cheers, and progress up the social ladder) they were.

I see the exact same thing at A+. They don't give two ****s about social justice. It's really just some toxic social game.


eta:
Come to think of it, I actually first encountered this in Jr High youthgroup prayer circle, where "prayer requests" were primarily used to gossip about the non-attendants in the name of "asking God to help them with their temptations." Heh.
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Excellent. I could not have said it better.

Just as some people wrap themselves in the flag or the Bible to excuse their bad behavior, others wrap themselves in "social justice". I think that anyone who actually cares about social justice would get very annoyed with A+ very quickly.
 
I have to admit there is one ray of hope at the A+ forums.

I had thought to myself, "surely a such a community will not have a 'humor' subforum."

But it turns out they do!

http://atheismplus.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=27&sid=d64838cd18bf3b2b8d5c5edcc55283bc

So then I thought, "surely such a forum would be almost empty."

But it's not.

So then I thought, "surely the threads in such a forum will be quite short, bogging down almost immediately in willfully wrong-headed deconstruction of the joke along SJW lines, and often resulting in a ban for the joker."

But so far, this doesn't seem to be the case. Indeed, it seems like aplussers do have a sense of humor, and they can successfully detach it from the horrible attitude they bring to every other part of the forum.

Their jokes, however, are awful.
 
theprestige said:
I have to admit there is one ray of hope at the A+ forums.

I had thought to myself, "surely a such a community will not have a 'humor' subforum."

But it turns out they do!

http://atheismplus.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=27&sid=d64838cd18bf3b2b8d5c5edcc55283bc

So then I thought, "surely such a forum would be almost empty."

But it's not.

So then I thought, "surely the threads in such a forum will be quite short, bogging down almost immediately in willfully wrong-headed deconstruction of the joke along SJW lines, and often resulting in a ban for the joker."

But so far, this doesn't seem to be the case. Indeed, it seems like aplussers do have a sense of humor, and they can successfully detach it from the horrible attitude they bring to every other part of the forum.

Their jokes, however, are awful.
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I note they have a Mornington Crescent thread, which makes sense. Loads of pointless arguing and pedantic nit-picking over made-up rules that nobody actually understands (but that everyone insists they understand perfectly) and spouting an endless stream of meaningless, made up terms, in an attempt to win at some obscure game that nobody cares about can get tiring very quickly, so why not relax with a nice game of MC?
 
Doctor Plop said:
Sorry, but any quadriplegic refusing such treatment on political grounds just won't have a leg to stand on.
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Indeed, you would think they would leap at the opportunity! I can see the quadriplegic community embracing this technology when it becomes available to everyone.

On topic: I still have nothing on topic to say about A+.
 
I've noticed a posting demographic change over there (A+) over the past week. A bunch of people who joined in the very beginning (probably members of the FTB backchannel who predate A+) of the forum's creation, but pretty quickly disappeared off the forums, are back (although already starting to disappear again.)

I'm not sure exactly how many backchannels this little group has outside of the secret/private forum and the secret/private chatroom, but there has to be at least one.

I wonder if a help signal was put out in one (or more) of them to combat this:

http://www.google.com/trends/explor...ethoughtblogs, slymepit&date=7/2012 8m&cmpt=q

...or if a backchannel was actually closed down to force people to post on the boards, or what.

But something happened in private to get a lot of the oldtimers to start posting again.

(Umm...and yes, I do accept unsolicited PMs, if there are any lurking defectors. And I can stay silent indefinitely, both publicly and privately if requested, or only refer to an anonymous source if specifically allowed, etc. I'm cool like that. Just saying'. Oh, and I'm good about giving good backchannel in return when possible, too! lol. )
 
kellyb said:
A+ doesn't have an actual value system. All it has is a social hierarchy mostly worked out in various invisible backchannels.

I first encountered this phenomenon when my oldest kid (now almost 10 years old) was a newborn and I needed breastfeeding advice. I fell in with a group (both online and IRL) of so-called "lactivists" who would just shame, gossip about, harass, and verbally and emotionally abuse bottle feeding mothers under the banner of just "really caring about the health and happiness of babies!"

Woman not breastfeeding because she was on meds incompatible with nursing? IF YOU ARE UNWILLING OR UNABLE TO PROPERLY MOTHER, YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE HAD A BABY!

Wanting to switch to formula because you were sexually abused? IF YOU ARE UNWILLING OR UNABLE TO PROPERLY MOTHER, YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE HAD A BABY!

It became pretty obvious pretty quickly that these people didn't actually give a **** about the "health and happiness of babies." That was just a cover for being an a****** and demonstrating to others in the groups how "honest" and "unwilling to sugarcoat the truth" (and thus get high fives, back pats, cheers, and progress up the social ladder) they were.

I see the exact same thing at A+. They don't give two ****s about social justice. It's really just some toxic social game.
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I've encountered breast-feeding lunatics myself actually. They're quite amazing. I mean I would have thought it would be a bit dangerous to breastfeed and pat yourself on the back at the same time!
 
kellyb said:
...

(Umm...and yes, I do accept unsolicited PMs, if there are any lurking defectors. And I can stay silent indefinitely, both publicly and privately if requested, or only refer to an anonymous source if specifically allowed, etc. I'm cool like that. Just saying'. Oh, and I'm good about giving good backchannel in return when possible, too! lol. )
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Does being drunk or high make this easier than when sober?

ps. Sorry, jk. :eek: :jaw-dropp :D

[/derail]
 
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RandFan said:
Would you folks be ameniable to changing the name of this thread to Atheism Plus and Free Thought Blogs (FTB)? There seems to be some degree of overlap and hence a degree of confusion. Or should we start a new thread? In any event, here is the PZ Myers Noel Plum kerfuffle.
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Probably a good idea to change the thread name, especially since A+ likely has a limited life span.

RandFan said:
In this video Noel Asks the Professor a question (only 2.5 mins long):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goA5KK...

PZ Myers blog response:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngul...

Noel's follow up to Myers' question.
http://noelplum99.blogspot.co.uk/2013...

Also, here is a screen capture of a comments by Myers and Natalie Reed regarding her leaving FTB. There seems to be a bit of confusion on the part of Myers.
http://i.imgur.com/d4Sqlzj.png
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I wonder what it's like to try and dig a hole with a blindfold on? Poor PeeZee.
 
jhunter1163 said:
i'm so confused. Should i assert my status as a member of the in-crowd or publicly acknowledge my shame in being a white hetero male? This newfangled social justice is hard....
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STOP RIGHT THERE

You need to admit that you're wrong, and stop excusesplaining your confusion. If you think social justice is difficult, it's because you're difficult.
 
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AlBell said:
Does being drunk or high make this easier than when sober?

ps. Sorry, jk. :eek: :jaw-dropp :D

[/derail]
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I'd say the giving of backchannel should only be embarked upon while 100% sober.

Reading/listening to/taking backchannel can, in contrast, be embraced in any psychological state convenient at the time, so long as the interpretation of said backchannel is re-evaluated upon sobriety.

JMO (just my opinion.)

:)
 
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