Rieux,

Notice how most of your pertinent response to the bullshit and lies have been ignored.

Oh, I noticed. I noticed.

It’s a common experience for despised minorities of many kinds. When bigotry–whether it’s racist, homophobic, sexist, atheophobic or whatever–is widely accepted in society, plenty of members of the marginalized minority themselves incorporate elements of that bigotry. And so, here, we see people who are themselves atheists reacting with horror (or snotty, superior distaste) at the fact that a fellow nonbeliever has violated our society’s suffocating religious privilege by publicly saying unkind things about religion. In a bigoted culture there are, obviously, significant incentives for minority individuals to side with the bigoted majority at the expense of the fellow members of their own minority.

In feminist circles, this kind of tendency is occasionally called “falling in love with your own oppression.” In civil-rights history, the name for the general phenomenon is Uncle Tom, or sometimes collaborationism.

Regardless, the notion that the FFRF is in the wrong for publishing that ad, or that the skeptics quoted in the ad were wrong to say the things they did, can be based on nothing but thoroughgoing atheophobic bigotry. That some of the people carrying that bigotry are themselves atheists is supremely sad, but to anyone who’s studied the history of marginalized minorities, it’s not all that surprising.

A small number when compared to the Egyptian infants already massacred by god in order for things to have proceeded even this far, but it helps to make the case for “antitheism.” By this I mean the view that we ought to be glad that none of the religious myths has any truth to it, or in it. The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic leansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human mammals.

One quote from Richard Dawkins calling the God of the Old Testament unpleasant can be considered anti-theist in the sense Hitchens means it. A quote might I add that was not complained about, probably because there would be very very few members of the UUA that would defend the God of the Old Testament. So this isn’t about anti-theism as Hitchens means it at all.

As my ancestors are free from slavery, I am free from the slavery of religion.

Not belief in God, gods. Not theism, deism. Religion. So cut the shit, anyone with a modicum of sense knows what Butterfly McQueen is talking about, and it’s not what the complainers keep saying it is. Stop the lies. Stop the lies. Stop the lies. Read a fucking history book, the woman knew her own religious experience for fucks sake. Grow a brain.

Rieux,

Notice how most of your pertinent response to the bullshit and lies have been ignored. After false accusations and clear misrepresentation you will not get an apology. There is no point conversing with people who ignore what you mean, deliberately misrepresent the words of everyone they disagree with, and are not interested in an honest discussion, just another chance to backhandedly insult you and atheists they don’t like.

llewelly,

I sent an email to Annie Laurie Gaylor about this remark. She replied quickly, and said she viewed bloggers such as Hemant, PZ as professionals, and when she wrote “nonbonafide” she was thinking of blogs that were “pretty silly on this issue”. I think it’s clear from her email that she did not intend to imply that all non-mainstream media bloggers were “nonbonafide”.

I read it as such. It was good of you to clarify this from the source and honestly clear up the misunderstanding.

You clearly don’t know much about UUism, and you’ve bought into some very ugly forms of prejudice against atheists (and religious dissenters) yourself. Sorry, but a silly smear like “anti-theist” just isn’t going to do the work of scaring your enemies that you think it will.

How am I a bigot to atheists? I’m an atheist myself and how is anti-theist a smear? It’s a word the Four Horsemen have proudly adopted themselves. Hitchens himself says in God Is Not Great that he isn’t even so much as an atheist as he is an anti-theist. Perhaps you should learn more about anti-theism before you claim the word is a smear or that I’m being a bigot. And I fail to see how I’m a bigot for disagreeing with the view point that anyone who believes in a supernatural god is automatically delusional or enslaving others. But I don’t see the point in continuing a discussion with someone who apparently thinks anyone who disagrees with them and doesn’t treat all famous atheists as demigods is a bigot. This only reinforces what I brought up earlier that apparently only true atheists are anti-theists or else you’re a bigot.

Although I think most of Annie Laurie Gaylor’s letter is well-said, this parenthetical remark:

(At FFRF we pay no attention to the nonbonafide blogosphere–I mean personal bloggers who so often engage in personal polemics, as opposed to bonafide news and opinion bloggers, such as Salon.com).

is ignorant, provincial, and, as Siamang said, tone-deaf. Atheist bloggers such as PZ, Greta Christina, Larry Moran, that Indian guy whose name I can’t recall, and many others, have been very successful in raising awareness and spreading the positive message of atheism. It seems likely to me that the FFRF owes as much of its recent growth to these bloggers as it does to its own advertising efforts. (I discovered the FFRF through PZ’s blog, and I know other atheists who did as well.)

I sent an email to Annie Laurie Gaylor about this remark. She replied quickly, and said she viewed bloggers such as Hemant, PZ as professionals, and when she wrote “nonbonafide” she was thinking of blogs that were “pretty silly on this issue”. I think it’s clear from her email that she did not intend to imply that all non-mainstream media bloggers were “nonbonafide”.

This is a double standard.

No, it’s just your confusion. (Which is of course amply aided by religious liberals’ constant equivocation about what “religion” means.)

Rieux, you say that the UUs are refusing to accept criticism of religion….

Yes. Mr. Ullrich has made that extremely clear, despite your amusing attempts to change what he wrote.

…yet in the same post you say that the FFRF are meaning something different from religion than what the UU does.

Actually, I said that Butterfly McQueen–who died in 1995–obviously understood the word “religion” differently than most UUs do. Here’s the definition of “religion” stated in A Chosen Faith, the (disgusting) book the UUA calls the “classic introduction to Unitarian Universalism”:

Religion is our human response to the dual reality of being alive and having to die.

That is blatantly not what McQueen meant by “religion”–she was clearly not claiming her parents were enslaved because they “respon[ded] to the dual reality of being alive and having to die.” Instead, she had in mind the far more common and broadly understood conception of “religion”–a belief system that includes supernatural ideas.

But the thoughtless UU atheophobes who complained about the FFRF ad didn’t bother to spend a moment considering the difference between their idiosyncratic notion of “religion” and McQueen’s conception; instead, they just acted on garden-variety atheist-bashing religious privilege and whined that the FFRF was attacking “all religion.” (The fact that the FFRF said no such thing–at best, McQueen did–also escaped their attention.)

It’s perfectly ordinary liberal-religious dishonesty: radically redefine religious terminology and then pretend you get to reevaluate anything anyone has ever said using that terminology in light of your arbitrary redefinition. So even though McQueen never said anything about the propriety of “the human response to the dual reality of being alive and having to die,” a handful of UU liars pretend she did. It’s dishonest, bigoted, and stupid.

It’d be like if I said “All Americans are brainwashed by the extreme right-wingers” and then I tried to excuse myself by saying I meant something different from Americans than what an American not brainwashed by extreme right wingers means by the word.

No, you’re confused. Under the ordinary conception of “religion,” the vast majority of UUs are not religious, because they don’t believe in supernatural anything. The many UUs who consider themselves religious do so only by invoking a tiny-minority conception of the word. Meanwhile, the vast majority of atheists who attack “religion” have no intention of attacking what most UUs think “religion” is–because by that conception, every single human being has a religion.

Furthermore, the UU World magazine did not say they did not want any ads from the FFRF. They specifically said they wanted a different one, so that disproves your claim they do not want any dissent against religion….

The hell it does. Ullrich said he would only accept an FFRF ad that played up the separation of church and state angle, rather than the opposition to religion angle. Earth to Neon: that’s censorship of dissent. “Sure you can write in our magazine, but you’re not allowed to write that you think religion is bad” is not actually acceptance of dissent against religion.

they specifically requested a different ad that was pro-atheist from the FFRF.

That’s a lie. Their “request” had nothing to do with “a different ad that was pro-atheist.” You’re making up nonsense.

This is not about specifically atheists, it is specifically about anti-theists. Since when are anti-theists and atheists the same thing?

And since when did I say they were?

Earth to Neon again: a whole lot of atheists think that religion is a bad thing. (That’s even true for a whole lot of UU atheists–though obviously those folks aren’t within the UU majority that sees the word “religion” in an extremely broad light.) And your evident bigotry aside, there’s not actually anything evil about thinking that religion is a bad thing.

I said (and you ignored) that the UUA refuses to “welcome atheists and our ideas,” despite dishonestly claiming to “affirm and promote a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” And that’s true, regardless of your attempts to garble it.

You clearly don’t know much about UUism, and you’ve bought into some very ugly forms of prejudice against atheists (and religious dissenters) yourself. Sorry, but a silly smear like “anti-theist” just isn’t going to do the work of scaring your enemies that you think it will.

Furthermore, the UU World magazine did not say they did not want any ads from the FFRF. They specifically said they wanted a different one, so that disproves your claim they do not want any dissent against religion, so I don’t know where you get this idea that the UU magazine wants nothing to do with atheists when they specifically requested a different ad that was pro-atheist from the FFRF. This is not about specifically atheists, it is specifically about anti-theists. Since when are anti-theists and atheists the same thing? I wasn’t aware you weren’t a true atheist unless you were an anti-theist and agreed with everything every atheist ever said about religion. And how is it prejudiced for a private magazine to decide they don’t agree with everything every atheist ever said and to not want to run an ad in their private magazine? No one makes you subscribe to it but you’re acting like the UUs should be forced to run ads they don’t like in a magazine that they privately own if they dare disagree with you on anti-theism. What’s the word they use to describe that?

Neon, the FFRF ad did not “accuse anyone … as being militant, stupid, and slaves to” anything. It certainly didn’t accuse UUs of anything (though those who have been offended obviously don’t care enough about what McQueen, Twain, etc., were actually saying to bother considering whether it was actually an attack on them. What most UUs consider “religion” and what McQueen considered “religion” are fundamentally different things, but the eight whiners and those who agree with them can’t see through their atheophobia for long enough to care).

And the reason the ad should have been run is not because UU World “has [atheist] subscribers,” but because UUism is supposedly a welcoming place for atheist people and ideas, even if those people and ideas are critical of religion.

In point of fact, UU World is, like most of UU (and indeed American) society, fundamentally prejudiced against religious dissent and criticism–and that’s what this episode has displayed.