And even at that, would anyone describe the Christians she battled with “militant”?
god damn right there are.
I don’t think I have heard that term before. The more I look at it, the more I think maybe I’ve heard the term somewhere, but on reading the article, it’s not something I’m familiar with. I live in the land of the Southern Baptist, and am not very interested in theology, save in a historic context up until maybe 200 CE (and even in that, I’m far more interested in Old Testament theological differences in regards changes over time in prescribed practices and prescribed practices v. actual practices derived from the archaeological record) .
Please elaborate.
Since this is In My Humble Opinion how about you give us yours? It might be better for communication than what appears to be a bunch of gotcha questions.
I personally see “militant atheist” used as a counterpart to “fundamentalist Christian.” I’d say “dogmatic” would be the more accurate term for what most people call “militant atheists.”
As for O’Hair, she was an atheist activist. As far as I know, she was never militant. She fought in a perfectly legal manner. She was dogmatic, seeing atheism as a religion (as evidenced by shunning her son when he converted), but I am not aware of her being militant. Those who fought against her often were, however. I just wouldn’t call them “militant Christians” because their actions go against everything I believe Christianity stands for.
I would define a militant atheist as one that makes a big show out of their atheism. Whether religious or atheist, when people get extreme enough you see a lot of parallels in both groups in that smarmy smug attitude. For being so different in their beliefs they have a lot of similarities:
-Neither can relate to the other
-Each attributes their belief as superior
-Both are convinced their beliefs are under attack by others and they are oppressed.
-Both engage in countless strawman arguements over the internet.
Some time ago I asked the SDMB if atheists really get harassed as much as people like to complain online. Aside from people deep in the bible belt, most supported my theory that it’s not a common issue. Where I live, it is very diverse, and while there are plenty of atheists here, there’s also plenty of Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, and so on.
After the posts I’ve made in this thread you’re actually confused as to what my position is on supposedly “militant” atheists?
As in making personal attacks against people of faith, getting into trouble at work or in social situations for insulting people who disagree with them, or like the guy I knew who had been banned from every library and bookstore in the region for trying to move religion books of all stripes to the fiction section, and also tore the “In God We Trust” out of his paper money and ground it off his coins?
Some people really do get their panties in a wad regarding their disdain for something they don’t even believe exists in the first place.
This. I guess I must be an incredibly mellow atheist in contrast. I got married in a church and recently went to my nephew’s fist communion. The way I see it is since I don’t believe in god, going to an event featuring guys dressed up as wizards feeding people crackers doesn’t faze me. It’s culturally important to my wife’s family, and to them the fact that I’m present at their families’ weddings/funerals/etc means a lot to them.
While a lot of atheists probably wouldn’t admit it, sometimes it seems easier to be a ‘blank slate’ that has no emotional or cultural investment in churchy things vs following the ‘wrong’ religion/sect/church etc. I hear about couples that do two whole weddings (like a Baptist wedding and a Hindi one) because each was so important they couldn’t compromise enough to combine their cultures’ celebration into one event. For me, it meant more to my wife and her family to have a Catholic wedding than it did for me to have a Not Catholic wedding. I suppose if I was a militant Atheist this would have been a huge dealbreaker for me and my wife and I might have broken off the engagement over it so I could go find some militant atheist woman to have a civic wedding and we could spend all damn day agreeing with each other on our disbelief in god.
This again? “Why do you hate God if you don’t believe He exists?” God may not his exist but his followers do, and they can be a very real pain in the ass sometimes.
I can see how that makes things easier, but why would you be a militant atheist for not wanting a church wedding? It seems to me that it’s falling into the false dichotomy of either giving in and being part of a religious observance or being labelled ‘militant’.
Bolding mine. Now that’s some militant Christianity!
As to the OP: Yes, I do think there are militant atheists. However, after reading this thread, I think I must reevaluate my idea of “militant.” I am a Christian, FTR. I have my beliefs and I don’t mind atheists as long as they’re not hassling me for being a Christian (this has never happened to me personally). I also don’t let my religious beliefs guide my voting, and I don’t agree with Christians that do.
My first thoughts when reading the thread were “have you *seen *reddit?” There are plenty of folks on reddit and elsewhere who seem (to me) to be sitting around, patting themselves on the back for being so rational and intelligent to reject the concept of a higher power, while simultaneously pointing and laughing at all the stupid clods who believe in one religion or another. Image macros with pro-atheism quotes from famous intellectuals are one of the fast tracks to the front page. Personally, I prefer the amicable exchange of ideas to an echo chamber. There is, of course, more than enough of the same behavior from Christians, including the aforementioned codification of Christian morality into law, which I dislike.
So I originally felt that “militant” atheists were defined as atheists who went out of their way to attack religion. But I’m now realizing that while I find all that annoying and insulting, it shouldn’t meet the definition of “militant atheism” in and of itself, since I don’t think “militant” Christians (et al) are defined with such loose parameters. If I spent any time in any of the (presumably) many Christian echo chambers on the internet, I would probably also find their behavior obnoxious, but I might not have thought it to be militant.
So I guess I don’t know. Evangelism is sort of tied into Christianity, so if an evangelical Christian isn’t considered to be “militant,” then an atheist behaving similarly shouldn’t be either. Or perhaps both should be considered militant. I’m all for parity and the elimination of double standards.
I think context also plays a large part for me. If I’m in a conversation with someone and I mention that I’m a Christian and they start insulting me or trying to convert me to atheism, I would probably consider them militant. However, if I saw a Christian do the same thing to an atheist, I would consider them militant as well. If I saw someone try to convert an atheist and they pushed back, I wouldn’t consider the atheist to be militant, unless they set the Christian on fire or something.
Man, this post of mine has really gone off the rails. I really just wanted to make the joke about the “fist communion.” Bottom line: Are there atheists who are jerks about it? Of course there are. Jerks come in all religions. Don’t be a jerk.
Since no one appears to have linked it yet, here you go: an examination of extremists of various sorts.
IME the freshly converted and males aged 18-25 are the demo for over the top atheism. But then they realize that’s way too much effort and if they wanted to be that dogmatic they could just join an actual religion.
Then again, I haven’t had any atheists knocking on my door telling me about the lack of the good word, so ymmv.
Ever see the Penn and Teller show “Bullshit?” His rationalist attitude covers a lot more things than just religion.
Plus, to a certain extent he is an actor in public appearances and utterances. I’ve seen him during intermission at one of his shows - he was definitely on.
I’ll explore this topic with you by arguing yes, though perhaps this should be its own thread.
Do some imagining with me here, and follow my (weird) logic:
What comes to my mind when I combine the terms Christian and militant? Paladins, knights, most of the Arthurian stuff as well as the Carolingian dynasty and its relationship to the medieval church. There’s a whole section of history dealing with the christian* machine – priests, rulers, politicians, and warriors – trying to expand the population of believers using the best technology available at the time: Crusades, conquering territories, and converting the extant populations to Christianity. Later, as the Age of Exploration dawned and flourished, the game was explore the world, claim places in the name of ____, convert the native heathens to Christianity. The point is that there were Christians focusing a majority of their energy, money, and expertise toward support, maintenance, or expansion of the flock. They were distinct from the flock and fervent followers who may have believed and believed quite earnestly, but their daily lives were focused on activities other than religion – farming, carpentry, tax collecting, etcetera.
Today, the planetary surface has been pretty thoroughly explored and there don’t seem to be any undiscovered populations between the two poles. Furthermore, societies have advanced to the point where grabbing and converting populations by force is not using the best available technology to increase the population of the Faith. The best available technology for the job is mass media – television, radio, etcetera. It’s a different format, but the people who are spending their energy, money, and expertise on support, maintenance, or expansion of the flock are parts of the modern machine of militant Christianity. They are distinct from the flock and fervent followers who may believe quite earnestly, but their daily lives are focused on activities outside of religion – farming, engineering, writing software, etcetera.
People like Dawkins, Jilette, former congressman Stark, and the late Mr. Hitchens devote a majority of their energy, money, and expertise in opposition to the maintenance and expansion of religious populations. While they could be considered ‘militant anti-theists’ or even ‘militant atheists’ it would not be correct to apply the term “militant atheist” to people who simply don’t believe in the paradigms of religion; they are more equivalent to the medieval and colonial period flocks, who just went about their daily lives and let others get involved in the machines.
–G!
- This is not to say it was exclusive to Christians. Buddhists are considered pacifists today, but had their share of zealously violent evangelism as well. Militancy is not intrinsic to any particular faith.
"Commune with the fist!!" <POW!>
“Have”, not “had”; there is the recent violence against Muslims in Burma as an example. Buddhism like other religions is mainly “peace loving” when and where it is weak and can’t get away with being anything else.
Tangent-going-off-at, a bit, as I tend to do. Meaning no offence to you, Novelty Bobble; but whilst I realise that having one’s children baptised / christened – though one is not a believer in the faith / denomination thereof concerned, nor in any other – is indeed very often done in the UK (your country and mine): it’s a thing which I fail to “get”. (Can perceive with my head, where those who do thus are coming from on the matter; but…) I class my position on religion as agnostic, and I’m the very reverse of a militant about anything. I’ve never had nor wanted kids; but if I had been a parent, there is no way I could or would have had my offspring baptised – absent my (or spouse’s) being a strong Christian believer, serious about bringing them up from babyhood in that faith.
Committing a child too young to have any will or understanding of the matter, to a way of life which will of necessity be difficult and full of constraints and restrictions, and which could conceivably carry the threat of one’s suffering ill-treatment or indeed “termination with extreme prejudice” – that just strikes me as a heck of a thing to do to a kid: only to be done if one is in great earnest about it; and something too weighty and daunting to engage in as picturesque traditional nonsense, a charade which one can go through while rejecting its essential meaning.
I honestly don’t mean to come across as being nasty toward you, NB; am just putting forward my sentiments re me, on this issue – you and very many Britons feel otherwise, and have the right to.
In my perception, the large majority of Brits are basically “don’t know”, about things religious: they make no doctrinaire rejection of religion, they are just not very interested in the matter, and certainly don’t want to give large amounts of time and attention to the practicing of a religious faith. (I’m sure that’s what you are conveying in your post, figure-of-speech-wise, via contrasting the attitudes to religion, of the broad mass respectively of Britons, and Americans.)
On another message board, very many of whose members are atheists with strong and often-proclaimed views re same; a couple of years ago, an especially militantly-atheist participant there, made a post in which he congratulated himself on doing exactly the above every time he patronised a bookshop.
The great majority of responding posts – many of them from keen atheists – were, on assorted ground, highly adversely critical of that initial poster for what he had boasted of doing. The objections made, varied between “messing with stuff which is not your own to mess with, is simply wrong”; “don’t screw up people’s jobs by creating needless extra work for them” (this one particularly from bookshop employees and librarians – and with a little flavour of “books are to be revered, including ones whose content you abhor”); and “use common courtesy even toward your perceived enemies – basically, don’t be a dick.”
To give credit where it’s due: the guy expressed surprise at being rebuked instead of praised; but acknowledged that “the feeling of the meeting” was plainly very much against him on this issue, and that he might do well to re-think, in respect of his bookshop antics.
Not a problem, it doesn’t come across like that. As you say it is very common. to do exactly what we did. It is just cultural and the words mean nothing other than being pretty and the whole thing is just a celebration of birth and excuse for a party. The religious aspect is negligible to most but those that wish to can take solace from it.
Understand that we are not “committing” the child to anything. They know nothing about it and I’ll never push them in any religious direction. It’ll be their choice in their own time. I don’t even consider them to be C of E and in any forms or census their religion is put as “none”. Should they choose otherwise in the future they can put something different.
The one tangible benefit from baptism is that it allows them the option of being married in that (very pretty) church in the future.
Correct, this captures it very neatly.