My new obsession during the COVID-19 crisis is wish.com. Do you shop on Wish? If not, don’t ever start. It’s pretty addictive and I’m pretty sure I’m nickel and diming myself to death. My husband is not amused.
Anyway, my latest find was a ring with an atheist “A” symbol on it. I have seen the symbol before but I don’t really know its origin.
Is there a symbol that represents atheism? There are logos for different organizations, but is there some sort of universal symbol? If not, should there be?
I think one objection would be that having a symbol would make atheism seem organized — like religion.
Either way, I can’t wait for that cheap ring to arrive in the mail. I’m going to wear it with pride.
I think the atheism A was chosen by Dawkins or his foundation about 10-15 years ago, so relatively recently.
Madelyn Murray OHare chose a version of the atomic symbol, I believe in the 1960s. But it was only ever used by her group, American Atheists.
I think rather older is the stylistic logo of the “Happy Human” used by the American Humanist Association. That group is much older than any symbols.
In short, the answer is “no”. Atheism was never just one club with one symbol. No symbol has ever been agreed upon by any majority of atheists.
After all, some people prefer to think of atheism as just the condition of not being persuaded by theism. Just like “not collecting stamps” may be a reaction to a hobby, but it is not a hobby itself. So there’s no one group, and so no one symbol.
Of course, others say that the validity of atheism inherently carries with it certain further implications, such as the responsibility for defining our own understanding of morality and ethics, as it would be immature to expect a sky-daddy to define and clarify all moral dilemmas. Thus, humanism and or social justice can be invoked. But none of that involves logos or symbols.
There are <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=atheism+symbol&newwindow=1&client=safari&rls=en&sxsrf=ALeKk02vX1odMneMjOFYICQ19AkunQqyRg:1586612489155&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiTtL-OwODoAhUPXKwKHfgsAFkQ_AUoAXoECBoQAw&biw=1209&bih=654"?a number of symbols which have been proposed for atheism. Any one of them is just as good (or otherwise) a symbol as any other.
Is there a symbol for herding cats?
The Darwin Fish is nice.
Bruce @ # 1: Madelyn Murray OHare chose a version of the atomic symbol, I believe in the 1960s. But it was only ever used by her group, American Atheists.
I gather the US military uses (used?) it on gravestones for servicemembers who declared themselves atheists.
How ’bout a t-shirt that says, “There is no God. Get over it”.
The Rutherford Atom with an A in the middle is used by Arlington National Cemetery for atheist graves. The A is not as stylized as the Dawkins symbol.
I would be tempted to use the lowercase letter phi (φ). In mathematics it symbolizes the golden mean, and in nature it appears everywhere, in both living things and the inanimate.
Interesting thing I just read: In philosophy, uppercase phi is used to symbolize “generic acts”, things that humans just do. “We exist, that’s it” sorta fits too.