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Be a good little atheist...

Gawdzilla Sama

121.92-meter mutant fire-breathing lizard-thingy
Gawdzilla Sama
Joined
Nov 25, 2009
Messages
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Location
Northern St. Louis County, Missouri.
...and shut up. Really?

The Good Atheist

Category: Godlessness

S.E. Cupp is a peculiar creature: she insists that she is an atheist, but I've never actually seen her defend or promote or even accept the idea of atheism. Instead, all she ever does is carp at atheists for being arrogant or smug or militant or whatever the current term of opprobrium might be. I don't really understand her game, but then, I also don't really care — she never says anything interesting, either.

But reading her latest column, I suddenly realized what she is: she's the Good Atheist the believers want us all to be like. Good Atheists don't criticize religion; they praise it and make excuses for it and pine away, wishin' they had the faith themselves. Good Atheists do criticize atheism and atheists. They work hard to tell the Bad Atheists to shut up and stop making it hard for believers to be comfortable with their superstitions. Good Atheists love C.S. Lewis, and read theologians in their spare time, and marvel at their wonderful insights. Good Atheists follow right-wing politics diligently, and think theocracy might not be so bad, after all; at least the trains would all run on time, and the criminals and foreigners wouldn't get so much slack, and church-goers are such good and upstanding members of society anyway — we should be encouraging them.
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Balance of article at URL above.
 
S.E. Cupp is being absurd if this is true. Believers raise cane at atheists all the time. Atheists are bullied in school, fired from jobs, kicked out of their apartments and sometimes treated like pariahs. If we appear a bit arrogant at times well maybe its just payback on our parts.
 
Cainkane1 said:
S.E. Cupp is being absurd if this is true. Believers raise cane at atheists all the time. Atheists are bullied in school, fired from jobs, kicked out of their apartments and sometimes treated like pariahs. If we appear a bit arrogant at times well maybe its just payback on our parts.
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Most atheists are "arrogant" if they say anything at all. I've been called "aggressive atheist" because I asked a guy to prove his god existed. He went into carpet-chewing mode immediately. The über-defensiveness of the believers says volumes about their belief in their own propaganda.
 
It is just another of the recent spout of " we should be second class citizens " atheists.

I see this attitude more and more all the time. People that will spend the majority of their time attempting to seem like the most open minded kid on the playground, as opposed to doing any good for what they claim is their cause.

And that is the one thing that the woo promoters have on us. ( well on a lot of us.) They actually act like they believe what they are saying. And actions do truly speak louder than words. How can we expect someone to take our side as seriously when what they see is a good portion of us acting like we don't really believe in what we say. When a good portion of us feel it is better to shut up and be nice versus attempt to do any good for the world.

Maybe we are right, maybe we are wrong, but if a good portion of us keep acting like we think we are wrong we are going to continue to be a relatively ineffective bunch. If you don't feel it is right to fight for your cause, tooth and nail, you should find a cause you are willing to fight for. Because as we can see this " sit back and let people come to reason. " is not working out all that well for us, and no amount of sitting back and hoping is going to replace actual activism.

It can be summed up in the fact that it is perfectly socially acceptable to say " jesus christ is the son of god." but unacceptable to reply " there is absolutely no evidence for that. ". And moreso in the fact that a decent number of people on our side would support that notion. Or rather the notion behind it, to let everyone live in their own reality, which as we can see is working out awesomely.
 
Gawdzilla said:
Most atheists are "arrogant" if they say anything at all. I've been called "aggressive atheist" because I asked a guy to prove his god existed. He went into carpet-chewing mode immediately. The über-defensiveness of the believers says volumes about their belief in their own propaganda.
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I was on break at work once and there was a discussion concerning Oral Roberts hospital where a guy at my table said there was a miraculous healing there. I said I don't believe in that (expletive deleted) and I though another guy at the same table was going to jump me. he didn't and i was able to tell them why I felt the way I did.
 
Cainkane1 said:
I was on break at work once and there was a discussion concerning Oral Roberts hospital where a guy at my table said there was a miraculous healing there. I said I don't believe in that (expletive deleted) and I though another guy at the same table was going to jump me. he didn't and i was able to tell them why I felt the way I did.
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Remember the fat trucker in "Religulous"?

"You start saying you don't believe in my god and you have a problem." (He then realized he'd just said that on camera and evacuated.) I bet the guy has an American flag tattooed somewhere on his flabby body.
 
From PZ
Good Atheists do criticize atheism and atheists. They work hard to tell the Bad Atheists to shut up and stop making it hard for believers to be comfortable with their superstitions.
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There are plenty of "good atheists" in the JREF (Randi is not one of them). Take the latest of many threads that we should not equate atheism with skepticism. It usually boils down to, you must follow special rules when discussing unsupportable god beliefs, rules you need not follow discussing other unsupportable beliefs.

Having seen the most incredibly mild Dawkins in person, it boggles my mind how many people lump him in with Hitchens as some kind of agressive anti-theist. Dawkins' books are well formulated arguments that gods don't exist. But that offends some theists who view it as an attack on their beliefs.

Well, d'uh, their beliefs are no different from other woo we attack on a regular basis.
 
Wow, another fact-free rant from PZ Myers. How thoughtful. What refreshing insights.

For the record, S.E. Cupp has written plenty which is critical of religion, so when PZ opines "She's the Good Atheist ... Good Atheists don't criticize religion" he's just marching with his mouth, as he frequently does.

Sorry he gets his feelings hurt when an honest atheist admits that religion is not simply unalloyed evil, that it contains elements which improve modern life as well as elements which diminish it. In that respect, he's no different than any other ideologue.
 
Hm. I've always found Cupp to be a vapid Fox sycophant, and I'm not even a liberal. She is what theists dream of when they challenge atheists: validation. The first two pages that come up when I google 'Cupp critical of religion' don't have any examples of her being critical of religion (your post was number 8 in my search, bokonon, btw).

I don't doubt she's said some things critical of religion, but they seem to be lost among all of her writings praising it. If you can link an example that you think exemplifies her critical thought on religion I would be happy to follow it. At this point I think she is the 'Good Atheist' PZ refers to, and I think she will make a lot of money in that role.
 
Cainkane1 said:
S.E. Cupp is being absurd if this is true. Believers raise cane at atheists all the time. Atheists are bullied in school, fired from jobs, kicked out of their apartments and sometimes treated like pariahs. If we appear a bit arrogant at times well maybe its just payback on our parts.
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Link?
 
bokonon said:
Wow, another fact-free rant from PZ Myers. How thoughtful. What refreshing insights.

For the record, S.E. Cupp has written plenty which is critical of religion, so when PZ opines "She's the Good Atheist ... Good Atheists don't criticize religion" he's just marching with his mouth, as he frequently does.

Sorry he gets his feelings hurt when an honest atheist admits that religion is not simply unalloyed evil, that it contains elements which improve modern life as well as elements which diminish it. In that respect, he's no different than any other ideologue.
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You are complaining an opinion blog doesn't have enough facts for you?

Which facts are missing you think should be there?
 
Cainkane1 said:
S.E. Cupp is being absurd if this is true. Believers raise cane at atheists all the time. Atheists People with unpopular beliefs are bullied in school, fired from jobs, kicked out of their apartments and sometimes treated like pariahs. If we appear a bit arrogant at times well maybe its just payback on our parts.
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NAMBLA members can totally sympathize with this rant.

You have an unpopular belief. If you want to share it with people, be prepared for some negative reactions.

I brought this up before, when a thread like this started a few months ago: what would the reaction be if a Christian working at a predominately atheist business started talking about Christ's resrurrection at lunch? I'm sure they'd get that promotion they were gunning for! :rolleyes:
 
I've not encountered Cupp myself, but I do think that the quotation in the OP does seem to conflate a few things which are a bit silly to conflate. On the most basic level, I've never had any religious beliefs whatsoever, but I still enjoy religious fiction such as C.S. Lewis on occasion (whether that fiction is written from the pen of a believer, a non-believer, or someone who is very opposed to the religion in question). This doesn't make me anything other than someone who finds the subject interesting - the same reason, in fact, that I clicked on this thread.

It's desperately silly to say that atheists who are not critical of religion are xenophobic and/or racist, or even right-wing. Surely, if anything, the stereotype of the person who goes out of their way not to offend others and their beliefs is that of the politically-correct liberal?
 
Mister Agenda said:
Hm. I've always found Cupp to be a vapid Fox sycophant, and I'm not even a liberal. She is what theists dream of when they challenge atheists: validation. The first two pages that come up when I google 'Cupp critical of religion' don't have any examples of her being critical of religion (your post was number 8 in my search, bokonon, btw).

I don't doubt she's said some things critical of religion, but they seem to be lost among all of her writings praising it. If you can link an example that you think exemplifies her critical thought on religion I would be happy to follow it. At this point I think she is the 'Good Atheist' PZ refers to, and I think she will make a lot of money in that role.
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She's definitely a Fox sycophant, which means the religion she's critical of is mostly Islam -- seems to be opposed to the Ground Zero Mosque, for instance. I'm not completely convinced she's an atheist -- it may be a cynical marketing ploy. I agree, she'll probably make a lot of money at Fox, though she may need to go blond to really maximize her earnings.

But as an example of a "critical of religion" link, here's one -- and she even says something negative about Christianity, though admittedly it's that "Old Time Religion" from hundreds of years ago:
Over centuries of Islamic marauding, the goal of holy war wasn't to conquer land or exterminate nonbelievers; it was to swell Islamic numbers.

Yes, Christians did it, too - converted people at the point of a sword, or killed them. That's just the way it was done then. Maybe if the Shakers hadn't been so peaceful, they'd still be around today.

But now, Islamic extremism can no longer hide behind spiritual fortification. The goal of barbarians like Osama Bin Laden isn't all that lofty. Forget money, land and power, and definitely forget conversion. They just want us dead.
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http://www.redsecupp.com/columns/columns.php?date=2010-01-01
 
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