There’s been a fair bit of discussion of Edwin Kagin’s post on atheism+ yesterday. I haven’t read most of it though, just seen it in passing. I want to comment on a couple of things.
We are now experiencing a most divisive phenomenon where some atheists are viciously excoriating other atheists for not embracing loudly enough certain of a list of worthy causes to which they are joined.
That seems a very back-to-front way of putting it. The vicious excoriation has been coming from a coalition of haters of feminism and of feminists and, arguably, of women in general. It’s been coming from them for more than a year. It comes with (at the extremes, and there are lots of those) rape threats, ugly caricatures, sexist epithets, obsessive cyberstalking, and endless other forms of frothing raging retaliation.
The idea of atheism plus is not vicious excoriation, it’s escape and resistance. What atheism+ wants to escape and resist is not a failure to embrace causes loudly enough – that’s a grotesquely off-base way to describe it. Atheism+ is about escaping and resisting active energetic organized hatred of feminism and women. Active energetic organized hatred of feminism and women is not the same thing as not embracing loudly enough a certain list of worthy causes. It seems very obtuse (if not worse) not to see that.
(Is that me viciously excoriating? I don’t think so. I think it falls well short of that.)
One can be an atheist and like chocolate chip ice cream. This does not mean that it is a good idea to form a club that excludes, and sees as enemies, anyone who does not like chocolate chip ice cream, or who actually prefer some other flavors.
How many bloggers, laid end to end, would it take to bridge the gap between science and religion?
Lord dog, the Religious Right certainly need have no worry over us. We will self-destruct without their help.
A population that eats its own young will probably not long survive.
Sigh. Really? Liking or not liking an ice cream flavor? As an analogy for hating and dumping endless crap on feminists and (at the extreme) women? Really, Mr Kagin? That’s how much you think women matter?
He’s done lots of important work, and hats off to him, but that’s just embarrassing.
I was still wondering how Edwin K can see dictionary atheism + equal protection of the law can be, firstly, a non-political position and, secondly, find no need even think about whether equal protection of the law might (or might not, who knows?) include atheist women.
After a while I decided not to worry about him at all. Ever.
So has he produced any evidence of this yet? He’s been asked. did he cower away from backing up his bullshit?
Back when I was about 7 or 8 years old, my friends and I used to build these crude little clubhouses and hang “No Girls Allowed” signs on them. Along about 10 or 11 years old, we outgrew that mentality. Some of these feminism-haters appear to be stuck in this mentality. The Big Boy version of the “No Girls Allowed” sign is the attitude that woman bloggers are okay as long as they blog about children and kittens and puppies and lace curtains, but we can’t permit them to make intellectual contributions. “No Girls Allowed” in the intellectual corner, by golly! Guys with this attitude need to be called out for the state of arrested development they’re exhibiting.
That is pretty much exactly what I was thinking about that post of Edwin’s. I like how you describe his post as “a very back-to-front way of putting it”. I have been waiting for him (and one of his bean counters) to admit they are leaving out the things these “vicious excoriations” are pushing back against. So far, nothing.
He’s ill-informed, delusional, or a liar. It is actually pretty pathetic, especially considering that he HAS done some good things.
And for all his insincere concern about divisions, he’s awfully eager to choose sides with the harassers rather than their victims. There’s three ways to deal with a division, either stay out, or pick one side, or pick the other. Kagin has decided that he’d rather have sexists, misogynists, and their enablers/defenders in the atheist movement than stand with their victims, and that makes him part of the problem.
I read Edwin’s piece yesterday and thought, “So you say something’s bad, give almost no reasons, certainly no good ones, and entirely no evidence. This was a waste of my time. Unsubscribe. Thanks for adding nothing to the conversation.”
so… harassing women ~ liking chocolate chip ice cream.
Making a space for women to avoid harassment ~ eating their own young, with bonus destroying the movement.
Pass.
He’s done a few posts now. None of them persuasive, well argued or well supported (least to me).
michaeld – that and bulldozer would knock me down. He’s a lying coward. Shocker.
OrneryPest, yes, many if not most men outgrow the “Girls have cooties” phase.
The problem is that many, many more simply evolve into a “Well, okay, he said girls have cooties, but do you have to be so angry and loud and militant and unfeminine about it?” phase. A phase that lasts the rest of their lives.
Josh said the other night, and I agree, that Kagin wants to lecture, not to converse. People disagreeing with him are stifling his words of wisdom. His is one of those blogs I only ever visit when someone sends me a link for trainwreck purposes.
I’m still amazed by the confused reaction to the A+ idea; on the one hand it’s a totalitarian dictatorial effort to force all atheists to conform to a preconceived model of atheism and on the other hand it’s “doing atheism wrong”…in other words not conforming to the someone else’s idea of atheist orthodoxy.
I wish they’d make up their minds…I can’t decide if I’m supposed to be a conformist or an iconoclast here…
What’s never answered to my satisfaction is the question about what’s so terrible if a group of atheists who love chocolate-chip ice cream decides to get together and promote it? Even if part of their reason for forming a group is that they can no longer stand to be around people who don’t love chocolate-chip ice cream?
What’s the big deal about atheists proclaiming their interests as atheists? We hear over and over again how there’s no movement, agenda, mission statement anyway. Unless perhaps there is, but one people don’t want to admit to, which is something far more important to talk about than ice cream, or women’s rights, or whatever.
If a group of atheists got together and formed a group to promote the idea that “chocolate ice cream is bad,” then the logical response for the rest of the atheist community would be to tell them “please present your evidence as to why chocolate ice cream is bad.”
If their evidence isn’t convincing, then ignore them. If the evidence is convincing, join them. In neither case is there much to be gained by hopping around outside their group whining about the way they’re creating schisms.
As it happens, though, the group isn’t complaining about ice cream, but rather about rape threats, the badness of which would really seem to be a no-brainer. I just don’t see how people of good will can possibly be of two minds about this. Write him off.
But what about when the people who don’t like chocolate chip ice cream start blockading and protesting and slandering all the stores that sell it, Edwin? What if chocolate chip ice cream lovers were stalked, harassed, and even had their personal details revealed by the haters?
Or, to put it in more familiar terms…
We don’t have clubs for non-golf players. But what if, every Sunday, golf players came to the houses of non-golf players and started shooting golf balls through their windows, demanding that they repent and see the light that is playing golf?
Ophelia hits the nail on the head as always. First, as I have written coutless times before, I don’t really mind if someone prefers to focus exclusively on empirical claims and not get bogged down in politics. However, there’s a major difference between staying out of a discussion altogether and actively opposing any attempt to improve the status of women and minorities.
Second, at the risk of becoming annoyingly repetitive and monotonous, when our opponents bitch about “keeping politics and ideology out of atheism/skepticism”, we should not let get away with passing off the most conservative and downright reactionary position imaginable as the “unpolitical”, “non-ideological” position.
Third, as Greta and others have pointed out, it is not as if the atheist/skeptical movements were not divided before atheism + came along. There hasn’t been a “community” or “movement” that included both the pro-harassment crowd and me for a long time. That particular movement is dead, and no amount of vitriol against atheimsm + can ever bring it back.
Fourth, there’s a major difference between saying “You have to go” and saying “You can stay but I’m leaving”. All that Jen McCreight has done, as I see it, is to give a name to those of us who don’t belong in the established movement (the one that includes the haters and hyperskeptics and false-equivalence-spouting “bothsiders”) anyway and want to establish a new movement that might actually be worth supporting.
@6 raethfall:
Yeah, I had the same response.
“What the crap is this? Is he arguing from ‘atheists shouldn’t have morals’, seriously, while entirely misjudging which side actually HAS morals?”
*unsubscribe*
Where in his analogy is the part where the people who don’t like chocolate chip ice cream threaten to rape the ice cream lovers for daring to talk about it in public and restricting their right to eat other food?
Ms. Daisy Cutter @ 10 pretty much summed up my feelings about Kagin’s blog in general. This particular issue doesn’t surprise me. Privilege is an ugly thing.
Edwin Kagan dismissing the concerns of women being targeted? Comparing it to a dispute over ice cream flavors? Imagine that – and I thought the reason he always acted like such a shit was that he thought he was intellectually superior to me (without ever talking to me enough to know if I have any intellect – like, refusing to acknowledge a simple hello while he was utilizing my book table for his own purposes, thus effectively blocking any potential customers, and not even bother to acknowledge my existence). Surely it couldn’t have been because I’m a woman, right? No, he couldn’t be sexist. He just prefers Strawberry ice cream.
Oy…he did that?
Jeez…
Perchance he was using extreme understatement for comic effect? As in, the person who sent RW a message repeating that she should kill herself but only after being raped was “not embracing loudly enough a list of certain worthy causes” And choosing not to support the extension of equal rights to all human beings is like choosing not to eat ice cream.
Ah, anyone opposed to the redefinition of atheism for political purposes, the crude dismissal of atheists as “old white guys” and blah blah blah, whatever Jen McCreight and Natalie Reed wrote on their blog, are all done by haters of feminism and feminists — because that has everything to do with atheism — with rape threats, ugly caricatures, sexist epithets, obsessive cyberstalking and other forms of raging, frothing retaliation.
Or I’m sorry, were you saying that the viscious excoriation comes from fake proponents of Atheism Plus to tarnish it? That’s an even worse appropriation of facts.
If Atheism Plus is simply to escape (to that forum you made?), then so be it. But then if it’s simply escapism, why insult the previous wave — if we’re going to talk in terms of waves — as simply “old white guys”, the stereotypical privileged sort that condones misogyny, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and racism? I mean, that is why Jennifer McCreight called for a “third wave of atheism” in the first place, is it not?
Seriously, Ophelia. Atheism has nothing to do with feminism. Feminism has nothing to do with atheism. To appropriate atheism with feminism — your type of feminism, as we can agree there are several different types, and you’re not all a monolith — for political purposes, to appropriate atheism with dogma and rules, is setting up an ingroup/outgroup clique, precisely the church-like environments Jen McCreight wanted to get away from (although I guess if your own group is doing it, it’s fine), and to conclude that anyone that objects to it is doing it for the precise reason that they don’t wish for a safe space for women to be free of “endless crap” is just childish.
—
I rest my case.
You’re kidding, right? Please tell me you’re kidding. Because I could’ve sworn you just referred to the definition of atheism as ‘someone else’s idea of atheist orthodoxy.’ Atheist orthodoxy? Orthodoxy? Atheism has an orthodoxy now? I thought it was merely a definition of lacking belief in a god or gods. Orthodoxy. This has to be up there with someone on Greta Christina’s thread saying something to the effect of … let me look it up …
Here it is:
Brilliant.
iknklast @ 19:
Is that what he was doing? I read and re-read his post and I can’t see anywhere where he ‘dismissed the concerns of women’ or where he compared it to a dispute over ice-cream flavour. I see where he’s comparing building an ingroup/outgroup and excluding people based on how they feel to a dispute over ice-cream flavour. But maybe that’s because I’m not a selective reader.
And now you’re using anecdotal evidence in an attempt to poison the well. Well done.
Petty accusations next. Pathetic.
Some guys are really allergic to feminism, aren’t they?
Most of us think of feminism as a matter of basic human decency, but the attitude that it’s a weird fringe group is not all that rare. Of course, there are plenty of people who look the same way at environmentalism.
The 2007 Pew Forum survey on the American Religious Landscape shows that atheists and agnostics describe themselves as liberal to moderate and overwhelmingly support abortion, gay rights, and environmental protection. If we were somehow able to purge the movement of its illiberal members we’d only be trimming off the fringe.
Yeah, equal rights is a matter of basic human decency. But what does that have to do with atheism? (By which I mean the trait of being an atheist.) They added feminism to atheism, but if all the rhetoric for criticising Atheism Plus (the name, conflating atheism with other concerns, etc, etc) is going to be about the struggles of feminists, then it’s clear the issue that’s at stake for Atheism Plus is feminism, not atheism. Because they happen to be atheists?
I knit from time to time, does that mean I should conflate knitting with social justice issues? Or is that I care about social justice issues and I knit?
And you wonder why Kagin wrote this?
Atheism is an intellectual position generally associated with a naturalistic attitude to reality; nearly all atheists embrace science, including its practice and ethos as well as its results, which compel us to reject sexism and racism as not only unfounded but counterproductive.
If we consider ourselves members of the reality-based community, we have to admit that actions that harm other humans and even other living beings can quite often harm us as well, that our personal welfare is intricately entangled with that of others. One can choose to remain ignorant of social and biological ecology, but only at the cost of finding the world a more bewildering and threatening place.
In other words, no, not like knitting or ice cream, more like evolution or cosmology.
“They added feminism to atheism, but if all the rhetoric for criticising Atheism Plus (the name, conflating atheism with other concerns, etc, etc) is going to be about the struggles of feminists, then it’s clear the issue that’s at stake for Atheism Plus is feminism, not atheism.”
@PG
Why do atheists criticize religion over their treatment of women’s rights issues? Why point out misogyny and homophobia in religion at all if it has nothing to do with atheism? It’s a bit hypocritical to claim the higher ground when pointing out how horribly women are treated by religion, while treating the women who are on their side horribly. And then telling those women to shut up if they dare complain.
Feminism has something to do with atheism because as a woman I don’t like being treated like a second-class citizen in the atheist movement. I left religion for that reason, why should I put up with it in the atheist movement?
You do know there’s an atheist knitting group right?
Divisive elitist atheist knitters!
Are you going to start scolding them, pointing out that atheism has nothing to do with knitting?
Are you going to make a big deal out of the fact that although you knit, you and some other atheist knitters aren’t part of that group so they shouldn’t have started the group?
@bastionofsass
I hate to think that people believe treating women as equals in the atheist movement is just some personal preference, like knitting or liking certain ice cream flavors.
callistacat wrote:
Just like it’s a personal preference in treating, say black people or gays, as equals. It’s not as though there’s anything immoral or unethical or socially unjust if you prefer not to treat them as equals. *snort*
But it’s dogmatic to treat women and minorities as equals, at least that’s what people are telling me on Twitter. Atheism + is forcing a belief system on people. It’s like leaving the Catholic Church and becoming a Scientologist!
It’s like: if you allow gays to marry, you’re forcing me to violate my religious beliefs.
One word: entitlement
People like Kagin and PG think they’re entitled to our voices, our support, our time and money to promote what they think is most important.
Because I can’t see why else anybody would oppose atheists promoting social justice (and for the dumbheads: it ain’t only about feminism) if they didn’t think they should be doing something else in the meantime.
Which is simply a lie. Nobody who said “Yeah, sure, not my cup of tea but go ahead” has been atacked or exoriated (and no, Richard Carrier is not a spokesperson for A+ and he didn’t say that either).
As soon as A+ was thought of people like Kagin came round attacking us for being so damn devisive.
PG
A) It’s not just feminism
B) Do you understand the concept of a safe space?
C) What big Jim said: Some people don’t just pat themselves on the back for getting the god-question right but then go on thinking “duh, if that‘s wrong, I’m wondering what else is.
So, since by the puristic definition atheism is just a lack of believe in god nothing else has anything to do with it.
Secularism?
Seperation of church and state?
Science?
All have zero to do with atheism yet I can’t see that massive pushback against Dawkins for bringing science into the discourse.
May I present you with the “Worst reading comprehension in the universe while still able to write coherent sentences award”?
Because what else was he doing when he compared A+ to chocolate ice cream?
Oh, and for all the “stop getting politics in my pure atheism” folks: Stop being so awefully ignorant.
From the moment atheism became a thing in the 18th and 19th century (mostly) it was always tied to politics. Because if you think that god doesn’t exist some dude needs a better reason to be your king than “by god’s grace”. And if you don’t think that there’s a god who made the world like that then there’s no reason to be satisfied with the order in which the world is running. And if there was no Eve created to serve Adam, then there’s no fucking reason why Mary should serve John.
There never was an atheist movement and organisation that was built around (Beavis and Butthead voice) Don’t believe in god? Me neither huhu- haha, same time next week.
callistacat @ 28:
Because you can care about social justice issues and be an atheist at same time? Atheism comes about from doubt in a god or gods that doesn’t add up to the evidence presented. For example, a loving god that treats everyone equally would not allow the mistreatment of women or for women to be deemed as second-class citizens. If that is ultimately how your atheism manifested, that means a) you doubt the existence of a loving deity and b) you care about the treatment of women and for them to be treated equally, however point a and point b is not relevant to eachother. Get it?
Let me try that again. If a religion treated women good and equally as they do men, but nevertheless presented inconsistencies with its dogma, like for example stating the sun revolves around the earth, and an astronomer finds out it’s the other way around, would you hold astronomy to be closely linked to atheism? Or would you hold astronomy and atheism to be seperate, and your atheism simply a consequence of the inconsistency?
-sigh- You can still be a feminist and an atheist. You can still be an atheist and a feminist. The two are not mutually exclusive. But they don’t mean the same thing. Feminism is the concern of equal rights for women to men. Atheism is the lack of belief in a god or gods. There is no reason to conflate the two.
However, let’s not obfuscate the real reason why Atheism Plus is being criticised. It’s for its loose rhetoric of simply wishing to create a safe space, but in the same vein dismiss the previous “wave” of atheists (Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett) as ‘old white guys’ and a bunch of stereotypes that condone this and that, and much of its criticism (which isn’t about creating a safe space, mind you, nor the mistreatment of women) is met by anger and this ridiculous accusation of dismissing concerns of women. It’s a complete non-sequitur and it makes no sense.
It’s also this double-think of saying ‘we simply wish to create a safe space’, which by the opening post by Jennifer McCreight denotes was simply not true. She concluded the current “second wave” to be obsolete and wished for a “third wave” and, actually, I’ll just quote what she said:
Bolded mine. The first bolded part dismissing the so-called “second wave” (if we’re going with waves still) as a bunch of privileged stereotypes and the second bolded part implying that the “second wave” did none of that. As I said, it’s pretty insulting and suggests this “third wave” is more than just creating a safe space.
I’ll link to it, too, so I won’t get accused of quote-mining.
What makes the word “Feminist” a perjorative? All people should be treated the same. If there’s an argument against it, these so-called Free Thinkers should present it. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
This whole tantrum being thrown about A+ by people who DON’T WANT TO BE PART OF IT is very puzzling. Reminds me of the Republican convention.
It makes me glad I come to Atheism via Buddhism and not just because it’s cool not to believe in gods. At least I start out believing people are worth something.
bastionsofass @ 29:
No, I’m not going to make a big deal out of it, because the group is called Atheist Knitters. That makes one major distinction: they’re seperate. They’re atheists who knit. They’re knitters who are atheists. They are not conflating atheism with their knitting, or their knitting with their atheism.
Why do you think the group American Atheists is called American Atheists and not American+? Because they are seperate. They’re atheists who are American, Americans who are atheist. They are not conflated into one word to mean, or imply, both.
—
@ 31:
This is a nonsensical argument. Once again, the ice-cream preference argument was not about the mistreatment of women. The ice-cream preference was not about the mistreatment of gays or black people. It was a principled argument about excluding people for not comforming to a set of ideas. I mean, since when has atheism had an ‘orthodox’ view? What does that even mean in the context of atheism? Is there an unorthodox view in the absence of belief in deities?
This idea that you don’t care for women because you criticise the name (and its associated practices) is just building up this massive strawman.
PG – in your comment @ 23 you were quoting a commenter called A Hermit @ 11 but it looked as if you were quoting me (since you’d been talking to me).
On your broader claim – you seem to think Kagin was talking directly to or about Jen McCreight. He wasn’t. Notice the bit I quoted – “some atheists.”
Also, you said “If Atheism Plus is simply to escape (to that forum you made?)” – but I didn’t make that forum.
You’re doing a lot of wild lumping people together here. I’m not Jen McCreight, and you can’t derive what I think from reading Jen McCreight.
Giliell, Approved Straight Chorus @ 34:
What?
No, seriously, what? No one has been arguing that atheists shouldn’t promote social justice issues. What they have said (which you have chosen to selectively omit, apparently) is that the definition of atheism is being redefined to suit your needs, when the label doesn’t mean anything other than denoting a trait: the absence of belief in deities. That’s it!
Entitlement? I don’t remember demanding anything, nor did Kagin if his post is anything to go by. What I have said is that the rhetoric that’s been espoused has been divisive, where the tiniest criticism has been met with anger and petty presumptuous accusations (mostly that you hate feminists and women), and of course the opening post describing this move as building a “third wave of atheism” while at the same time dismissing the old one.
You don’t think language like saying the previous “wave” didn’t care about social justice issues, racism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism or misogyny, describing them (the Dawkins’, the Hitchens’, the Dennetts’) as ‘old white guys’ and a bunch of ‘middle-class, white, heterosexual, cisgendered, able-bodied men’, is divisive, or will create a schism between the “old” and the “new”?
That is simply not true either, is it? That’s not how I remember it, at least. I remember it having a lot of support at first, the main criticism for it being the name which they purported was redefining the word for political purposes. The name, not its ideals. Then enter Richard Carrier with his “us vs them” campaign, enter Greta Christina with her “you don’t have to join, but” reasoning. And so on and so on. People didn’t just come out guns blazing.
-long sigh- A) Then why is criticism of A+ compacted to that general area? Note how Kagin didn’t reference the plights of women anywhere in his post as a reason to criticise A+, nor have I for that matter, yet there is where it was concentrated. By Ophelia, by you. Why, specifically, feminism?
B) Yes, I do. Your point?
C) Hehe, “the puristic definition.” Love it. To answer bit by bit, the seperation of church and state? It’s a political issue of whether or not allowing the church to have a say in state matters, and the state have a say in church matters, and the urge for them to be seperate. At its core, nothing to do with atheism. Since secularism is the principle of seperating religious and government institutions, it applies here too. As for science, I dare to say not all science, but simply the one that promotes rational thought and a critical mind. Because if atheism is a consequence of anything, it’s rationality and critical thinking.
However, it’s funny you should bring up Dawkins, because I don’t think Dawkins equates his atheism with evolutionary biology. At least, not strictly.
I wrote:
Why is his argument specifically targeting feminism and concerns of women? Because, again, I’m not a selective reader.
Ophelia @ 39:
Right. Sorry about that.
—
@ 40:
I meant it in the sense that Jennifer McCreight started the Atheism Plus concept, the reasoning that she offered and why she felt she wanted a “third wave” of atheism. Which is, I believe, what Kagin is objecting to. The ice-cream preference argument notwithstanding (and don’t you think you’re interpreting his argument to mean feminism and concerns of women too quickly?)
Also, it’s a little unclear, but to whom are you referring to when you mention the coalition of haters of feminism, feminists and (arguably) women? Because in the context, the way you phrase it, it sounds like the viscious excoriation is coming from within the A+ group? It doesn’t really make sense.
PG – this post isn’t about Atheism+. It’s about Kagin’s post on Atheism+. I don’t want you dumping all your reasons for hating Atheism+ on this post, because it’s a derail. Stick to Kagin’s post (and that means what he actually wrote, not what you think he meant).
PG (#41)
No one’s saying they’re equated. You don’t get the arguments being made if you think anyone needs to say atheism and some other things are somehow the same. (You might have noticed it’s called Atheism+, not Atheism=.) The point is that holding a certain belief has consequences—consequences that affect how we choose other beliefs and how we act on them. Beliefs are interconnected. Dawkins, for instance, likes to point out how evolution gives humans a god-free explanation for biological diversity, allowing us to be more fulfilled as atheists. Similar interconnections exist between atheism and issues of social justice, feminism, etc.
Am I to understand that you think:
1. A+ has somehow kidnapped the A, so that no one can claim to be just A anymore?
and/or
2. Definitions can never be modified over time?
Where have I seen that argument before?:
“The definition of ‘marriage’ can never be changed to include same-sex marriage.”
“The definition of ‘skeptic’ can never be changed to allow skepticism of social policies and issues.”
Who gets control of a definition anyway?
OK. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that A+ is a new, third-wave atheism? Who does that hurt and why?
Who did the “new” atheists of the second-wave hurt and why?
There are plenty of atheists who disagree with the “new” atheism’s tactics and philosophy which seem to go beyond dictionary atheism’s “not-believing in a god.”
And if the “new” atheists stole the term “atheist” from the dictionary atheists, do they now have to cede the term “atheism” back to…um…whomever they stole it from?
So, if American Atheists called themselves something, I dunno, really radical like “AmericanAtheists,” that would somehow change the meaning of “American” and “Atheists” so they were then some kind of schismatic offshoot of “atheism”?
(Deep Rifts!)
Aren’t the “American” Atheists elitists and exclusionary because they focus on something that’s important to them in the US and not so much on the rest of the world? Doesn’t the very name “American Atheist” implies both that it is both “American” and “Atheist.”
Explain how that’s different from adding a “+” to an A implies both.
The “+” symbol keeps making me think of a similar situation in the programming world. C is a popular coding language that’s been around for ages. But some people (particularly a cool guy named Bjarne) about 20 years ago decided that C alone wasn’t sufficient to do certain types of coding. So they made a new one, called C++. It’s named that because it is literally just C plus some other stuff. It took off like a rocket, and pretty soon lots and lots of people were using it.
Yet, the C community continues to exist and flourish despite C++’s popularity! There are plenty of people who favor one or the other, sometimes to a level of righteous fervor normally reserved for Yankees fans, but generally everybody understands that both are useful and cool in different situations. And when a cool new thing is developed by or for one of them, it generally is also usable by the other after a relatively small amount of adaptation work.
Atheism and Atheism+ seem analogous to me. Creating a new derivative movement doesn’t weaken the existing one, it strengthens it. By creating a link social justice to atheism, those who come from either background can be introduced to the other, if they like; and if they prefer to stick to familiar territory, no loss! Because the communities have a significant overlap of people and values already, the advances of one generally benefit both.
So I don’t think Kagin has anything to worry about. He doesn’t want to join A+, why is that a problem? Heck, he’ll even still benefit from any positive image and intellectual inflow it generates.