Atheism Plus/Free Thought Blogs (FTB)

Status
Not open for further replies.
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
It seems to me that the biggest goal any organised group of sceptics and/or atheists should have is to get critical thinking taught in school from a young age. Sure, that wouldn't directly deal with the other issues that they seem to concern themselves with but, in a generation or two, it could well wipe them out entirely.

Yet this is not something I've ever even seen proposed by anyone, let alone campaigned for.
Click to expand...

Might I suggest the National Center for Science Education? The Texas Freedom Network also does a far amount of education advocacy. For an organization that's directly focused on teaching critical thinking, I'd recommend Camp Quest.
 
Stout said:
Oh my.....

We appear to have a skepticism and critical thinking prohibition over at A+. The OP in this thread demands that nobody play "devil's advocate" and instead accept the blog postings linked to in the post as being the absolute truth.

This is backed up by a moderator reinforcing the demand.

What is the OP afraid of ? Somebody punching the name of the activist into Google, discovering controversy over the activist and questioning whether this activist's accounts of the way things are going down might just be an embellishment ? OBEY ME OR I'LL HATE YOU !! Like that OP doesn't hate enough people as it is.

Moving on.

Here we have atheism fail

We have a self described gnu atheist railing on about white people deriding the brown people's religion because it's more important to call people racists than examine the ridiculousness of some religious customs.

I understand it is confusing, all these conflicting social justice values. Just where is a SJW supposed to make a stand ? Do they go with the religion is oppressive or the standard white people suck meme ? Decisions, decisions. One would think that simply reading the label on the tin, Atheism+ the decision would be an easy one but sometimes good ole' white guilt takes over and the path that feels more righteous draws the critic to where they feel they can do the most damage.

Confusing you say ??? An example you ask ? OK

Here we have a Muslim going after the FEMEN activists because they're too hot for her liking, yet dumps this paragraph in the middle of her essay.



So...burqua bad

On the other hand we have this.

Which not only kicks the concept of colour blind racism right in the gonads ( first paragraph ) but says burqua good as well.

It's time for an A+ rebrand, time for them to drop the pretenses of skepticism, critical thinking and atheism and go with what they really are, Victims+
Click to expand...

Couple of things: Everything I can find about Amanda Baggs and her gastroparensis seems to be on neurodiversity blogs so it's hard to actually confirm her situation.

Then you have the insistence that criticising Islam is the same as racism because it's a "brown peoples' religion". But the people who are most vocal about Islam are strikingly silent about, say, Hinduism which is far more a "brown person's religion" than Islam, Hinduism being almost exclusively contained in the Indian subcontinent.

Then there's the Men's Rights Movement thread. Somebody alluded to oppression faced by men, so one party (username: quizzical) subtly changed the issue to be about "white men" and declared that they are not discriminated against in any way at all.

"i've yet to notice discrimination against white men in society...could ya give us an example?"

Yes, in family and divorce courts. Men are routinely and institutionally discriminated against on the question of divorce and custody of their children.

Does that actually count as discrimination, or does it have to be more subtle and insidious than discriminatory policy? Like beer commercials or something?
 
squealpiggy said:
Couple of things: Everything I can find about Amanda Baggs and her gastroparensis seems to be on neurodiversity blogs so it's hard to actually confirm her situation.

Then you have the insistence that criticising Islam is the same as racism because it's a "brown peoples' religion". But the people who are most vocal about Islam are strikingly silent about, say, Hinduism which is far more a "brown person's religion" than Islam, Hinduism being almost exclusively contained in the Indian subcontinent.

Then there's the Men's Rights Movement thread. Somebody alluded to oppression faced by men, so one party (username: quizzical) subtly changed the issue to be about "white men" and declared that they are not discriminated against in any way at all.

"i've yet to notice discrimination against white men in society...could ya give us an example?"

Yes, in family and divorce courts. Men are routinely and institutionally discriminated against on the question of divorce and custody of their children.

Does that actually count as discrimination, or does it have to be more subtle and insidious than discriminatory policy? Like beer commercials or something?
Click to expand...

I found a few articles about Amanda Baggs, it seems she developed low functioning autism in her early 20s. She appears to have a reputation for extreme diagnosis, try googling Amanda Baggs hoax.

As far as I can tell, those people are silent about those other brown peoples religions because we in the west don't come into contact with them frequently. I'm sure if I went onto A+ and started going on about Hinduism I'd get called a racist. As an aside, somebody started a thread on north Korea on A+ last week, Ceepolk said NO! then hours later the thread disappeared. Criticizing an Asian culture a no no ? Criticizing a leadership style that hits too close to home ? We'll never know.

quizzical is one of those posters who comes on solely to drop anti white male one liners. I suspect she is a formerly prolific poster who left in a huff as many are wont to do on that site and returned in the persona of her daughter. That's just my speculation though but there's too many similarities in posting style to discount it out of hand.

That divorce court example would never fly over there. The site used to be exactly the same as A+ is now but they got over their growing pains ( it took years ) and they seemed to have settled down to a core group who mainly focus on Canadian Politics. They have a few token contrarians on hand, just to keep things interesting, so it's not too echo chambery.

To those guys, the babblers, the notion of men being discriminated against is simply poo pooed especially in their feminism forum which functions as a sort of extra sacred space where even too many men posting on a topic can be cause for moderator intervention.
 
@SB: Never got around to thanking you for your second correction wrt what had been covered itt on RB's face recognition problem. It brought home to me the folly of my trying to keep up with this discussion, and confirmed my own confirmation bias! Or is this a recursive loop? I believe I suffer from CB and this is just another example of seeing only what I already believed? :boggled:

It would be extremely helpful to me..and perhaps others..if you could post here the process you used in searching for the links you posted. Do you use Google or the site search? What words did you include? After much effort and many searches I still suck at it. And thanks again for bringing my mistakes to my attention. I mean well, but as they say at A+ intention ain't magic.

ETA-when I looked in earlier, in prime time, A+ had 2 members and 7 guests, and they are starting to fall behind in keeping the index headers updated with short replies. But the bad feelings within the A/S communities will still be around long after A+ and it's misguided attention whores are forgotten, imo. :(
 
recursive prophet said:
...But the bad feelings within the A/S communities will still be around long after A+ and it's misguided attention whores are forgotten, imo. :(
Click to expand...

So I'm not important as an individual with respect to atheistic activism but I had just started poking my head around to see what was out there as I'd started reading PZ based on actual biology posts. I guess the timing was just very bad as one of the first things I started reading was Boobquake fallout then Elevatorgate.

At my very first glance I thought "Wow, sounds like these folks, JM and RW have been mistreated/maligned." As you might guess it didn't take long to reject that initial hypothesis. For now I'm staying the heck away, you know, being a white male.
 
recursive prophet said:
It would be extremely helpful to me..and perhaps others..if you could post here the process you used in searching for the links you posted.
Click to expand...

I googled "prosopagnosia Rebecca Watson" without the quotes, and it's the second link. That's how I know that those accusing her of making it up can't have done a great deal of fact-checking.
 
Stout said:
Yes It's kind of a funny thing. While reading another SJ forum this thread in particular, I clicked on the link in the OP and read an article that had a comments section to end all comments sections when it came to men suffering abuse at the hands of women. eg a guy growing up in a smae sex household where his mother and her partner used to beat the crap out of him just because he was a boy.
.
Click to expand...

I just read your link there again. Directly following a few examples in which mean face discrimination for their sex both institutionally and culturally there is this reply:

"A friendly reminder to the men posting in this thread that this thread is in the feminism forum and is not about men, discrimination against men, or any other male-focused topics. It is about the men's rights movement which is an example of misogyny and anti-feminism--not a misguided approach to a genuine problem facing men in society."

In other words the definition is completely and arbitrarily reframed. It would be like a discussion about US politics and a moderator posts that "We're not talking about the Republican party meaning a right-of-centre party stressing small government, State rights and fiscal responsibility, we're discussing the Republican party which is for racist rednecks who hate women."
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
I googled "prosopagnosia Rebecca Watson" without the quotes, and it's the second link. That's how I know that those accusing her of making it up can't have done a great deal of fact-checking.
Click to expand...

Did she ever actually claim to have prosopagnosia, or was that claim just attributed to her based on something like "I always have a hard time remembering faces". Prosopagnosia is NOT the same thing as having a bad memory for faces, it is a disorder in even perceiving faces. I have a feeling she has not been medically diagnosed with prosopagnosia based on the Skepchick article you reference. If she did recently claim she had prosopagnosia, there is no reason to assume deception, she could very well just be mistaken about what prosopagnosia is.

Or she could simply have it, but once again, a bad memory for faces is not the same thing as prosopagnosia. Prosopagnosia is a pretty serious condition, and it seems unlikely it would go undiagnosed.
 
The entire contents of the second google link:

Help out some researchers at Harvard by taking this 5-minute test on short-term visual memory!

I scored a 3, which is slightly above the supposed average of 2. It’s interesting because I’ve always had a problem with one specific kind of visual memory — faces. I can’t remember a face (short-term or long-term) to save my life, but apparently if all the people I meet every day had faces composed for an Atari game, I’d be okay.
Click to expand...
 
Fizil said:
Did she ever actually claim to have prosopagnosia, or was that claim just attributed to her based on something like "I always have a hard time remembering faces".
Click to expand...

I can't find any examples of her actually using that word, or claiming to be diagnosed with any condition, no. But I've not done an exhaustive search. I just saw that it had become an accepted truth that she had never made reference to this before Elebatorgate and thought that, as a sceptic, I ought to check whether that were actually true.
 
squealpiggy said:
I just read your link there again. Directly following a few examples in which mean face discrimination for their sex both institutionally and culturally there is this reply:

"A friendly reminder to the men posting in this thread that this thread is in the feminism forum and is not about men, discrimination against men, or any other male-focused topics. It is about the men's rights movement which is an example of misogyny and anti-feminism--not a misguided approach to a genuine problem facing men in society."

In other words the definition is completely and arbitrarily reframed. It would be like a discussion about US politics and a moderator posts that "We're not talking about the Republican party meaning a right-of-centre party stressing small government, State rights and fiscal responsibility, we're discussing the Republican party which is for racist rednecks who hate women."
Click to expand...

Yes, that sort of reminder is typical within the sacred space. The only conversation permitted in there boils down to man=bad, woman=good.

other things that may happen there...

A conversation might be going on and a woman may burst in claiming that there are too many men posting on the thread, discussing women's issues and maybe they should shut up and let women speak. Note: there's only a handful of female feminists active on that site, more lurk and appear only to issue these edicts

A topic may be being discussed outside the feminist forum and somebody may not like what is being said and demand the topic be moved to the feminist forum so there's greater control over the conversation.

There's even a thread floating around that site discussing whether men should actually be allowed to post in the feminism forum. The idea was shot down when they no doubt realized that their meager population of active female posters would spell the kiss of death for that section.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
I googled "prosopagnosia Rebecca Watson" without the quotes, and it's the second link. That's how I know that those accusing her of making it up can't have done a great deal of fact-checking.
Click to expand...

When you're waving pitchforks and torches while storming the castle it's hard to remember facts.
 
Humes fork said:
There is now an atheism plus wiki. Make what you will of it:

http://atheismplus.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
Click to expand...

There were no results matching the query.

Create the page "Safe space" on this wiki!
Click to expand...

Misogyny is hatred of and/or prejudice against women. Contrast misandry, hatred of and/or prejudice against men, 'misanthropy', hatred of people in general, and sexism.
Click to expand...

Misandry is the hatred or dislike of men or boys. The word did not appear in most dictionaries until the second half of the 20th century. [1]

"...to say that women are misandrists is to completely ignore the clear gender divides in society, ignore thousands of years of marginalisation, and ignore social and cultural traditions that seek to dominate women, sometimes in the most subtle of ways." [2]

"I have come to see the word “misandry” as a euphemism for feminism, and “misandrist” as a euphemism for feminist, rather than anything that actually exists in real life, to any troubling degree, or in any meaningful way. While anti-feminists and misogynists bandy the terms about with glee, in reality, it's just another flaccid jab at feminism, and feminists, by privileged men whose perverse denial of reality leads them to believe (or pretend to believe) that they are on the receiving end of institutional sexism as much as they benefit from it. And that they suffer relational abuse just as frequently as they dish it out. [3]
Click to expand...

That's interesting.
 
Let's see how long it takes for them to grow larger than the wiki that's been created for one single xkcd comic.

Meanwhile, this webcomic page reminds me a bit of this forum, but reminds me a lot of the A+ forum. (NSFW warning: F word in normal size comic word balloon text.)

(For those not following the comic, the context is: in a parody of a Hogwarts-like school, two students from the nerdy house are confronting some of the guardians of the snake-themed house.)

Respectfully,
Myriad
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom