Randomnity
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This kinda sounds like more of an argument against closed-minded/thoughtless/tactless people rather than atheists. Surely the association of these traits with atheists is as problematic as the association of negative traits with religious people? I mean, sure, the words used will be different, but there are lots of people who are hostile to "behaviour X" and express it in a way that is not very tactful. Why talk specifically about "militant atheists" being problematic rather than the specific behaviour? Why do we have a need for every atheist to be compassionate and non-confrontational about their atheism at all times, but not for other groups of people? Sure, compassion is great (non-confrontational is a bit more subjective), but I'm not sure why atheists would (or should) have more or less than any other human.Dismissive comments that convey a sense of superiority and unwillingness to consider other perspectives. Obviously, behavior that isn't exclusive to "militant"/"new" atheists. To be more specific, any comments along the lines of "Religion is a crutch," "Religion was only used to explain phenomena that science now fully accounts for," and "Religion is inherently bad," which reflect simplistic and extremely half-hearted attempts at understanding either a. religion as a cultural phenomena, as others have mentioned and b. agnostic/ignostic arguments.
*Edit: I'm not opposed to all of those comments themselves, but the atheists I've known have generally been terrible at backing them up or presenting them in a compassionate, non-confrontational way.
People in general are pretty terrible at truly understanding the perspective of others. They are OK at putting themselves in others' shoes, but not so OK at putting themselves in others' experiences and personality in addition to the shoes. Atheists certainly don't have a monopoly on this weakness, nor are we immune to it.
I think most people are like this to various degrees, although barely anyone believes it of themselves. I do think that as a (very general) culture, atheists tend to promote the ideal of being open to new ideas, if not always the practice (many exceptions in both directions, obviously).I find it disturbing that people ever come to a point in their life where they think they've figured it all out and put a guard up to new ideas. But I'm willing to accept that even this will change for me as I encounter new theories and people.
I'm still coming to grips with the fact that, on this subject, I'm in agreement with the dude who wrote "Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus," but this line always comes back to me: "It is a funny sort of humanism that condemns an impulse that is peculiarly human. Yet that is what evangelical atheists do when they demonise religion." The article it comes from is really good.
Hmm, this is a bit of an odd thing to say. Many impulses are "human" but not particularly "good" - murder, greed, cruelty, self-interest, laziness, etc etc. I don't think that criticizing any particular human tendency implies that you can't support the positive traits of humanity.