As long as we put up with clueless clowns like the “Amazing Atheist” we are, that is. Martin Hughes, a black atheist, watched one of the “Amazing Atheist”‘s ranty little videos in which he made a whole series of ignorant, racist comments and tore it apart. Just a small sample:
When asked, “What are you going to do about systematic racism?”
He says:
[Racism against black people] is not my problem in the first place. What are [the people in the video I’m responding to] going to do to end discrimination against atheists? Right, you ain’t gonna do shit, because it’s not your problem and you don’t give a shit.
Yeah. That’s what I’m seeing. Atheism is a white America thing, and white atheists are increasingly, proudly, not caring about black people.
Like…why am I going to fight for atheists rights when they are made up of so many bigots, over and above the black church that’s fighting for my rights day in, day out? Why would I care about a predominantly white atheist club who cordons off race issues, when that impacts my day-to-day life far, far more than what I do or don’t believe about some nonexistent God?
I don’t believe in God. But frankly, when I hear sentiments like this, I want to turn in my atheist card and go back to church.
But let’s not single out the “Amazing Atheist” here — if he were alone, if he were just the ‘lone wolf’ that seems to be the standard label attached to any white guy with hideous opinions, we could just ignore him. But he and many other youtube atheists have large followings. As Hughes points out…
More atheists have watched The Amazing Atheist in the past few days than atheists who have attended all major atheist organization events in the past year combined.
We are in over our heads in racism here.
526,000 views. Over 35,000 likes, only 4,000 dislikes. He makes over a thousand dollars a month on Patreon with his bigotry.
Yeah, that’s a larger atheist problem.
P.S. The “Amazing Atheist” made a reply. I skimmed through it. It seems to consist mainly of “Nuh-uh, I am not a racist, I have black friends.”
Dig! Dig! We need deeper rifts!!
I might know where there is some dynamite.
Privilege has its ignorance. Or is is “Ignorance has its privilege?” Either way, it sucks.
I try to find what consolation I may in the observation that a lot of this racism is being done anonymously. That amounts to a tacit admission that they know they’re wrong and that they want to shelter themselves from the consequences of their wrongful actions. The vast masses of racist and misogynistic anonymous shitheads on the internet have gone to the internet because they have been successfully marginalized in decent society.
Of course, when I see people like Trump trying to mainstream it and showing the ‘who gives a fuck'(I can’t call it courage) to be openly racist and misogynistic, I know they’re normalizing such behavior and bringing it back into the mainstream. We need deeper rifts and more crowded margins. It’s bad if you’ve got crowded margins but it’s worse when they start pushing back into the mainstream.
Folks like Phil Mason and The Amazing Atheist are sort of like the “four jackassess of the dictionary atheist backlash.”
I assume you meant, “I’m not a racist,” in that last sentence. Unless TAA *really* fucked up and claimed he’s not actually an atheist…
YouTube Dictionary Atheist doesn’t realize that he’s acting like a dictionary bigot. You could knock me over with a feather with this news.
In better news: I finally got YouTube to stop recommending the videos of these dingleberries. It replaced them with “Seven Things You Didn’t Know About Beyonce” which is okay because I get to learn about the latest dance moves.
I don’t get it.
if you watch even the first minute of the video, even the VERY FIRST QUESTION he responds to… it is extremely clear he IS a blatant racist.
that he himself cannot see that does not make it so, no more than a creationist can say they are not a science denier.
it’s not even subtle.
Dunning Kruger rules.
Just “The Amazing Atheist’s” video titles are off-putting. Anyone who uses “SJW” non-ironically (which seems to be everyone now) goes in my “Don’t Even Bother” list. Heck, just his user name is off-putting.
To be fair, though, the earliest feminists didn’t want to help blacks either.(source) This sort of thinking isn’t unique to atheism. Still horribly wrong, but not unique. In basest strategic terms, you can’t expect help with your issue if you don’t address your allies’ issues. Unfortunately, white cis het males (of which I am one) mistake their issues for “universal” issues, and anything that doesn’t impact them is some fringe concern.
T.J. you ignorant slob:
While being an atheist of any color in the U.S.A. is hardly a barrel of laughs, we white non-believers have it is far, far better than most non-whites regardless of their individual beliefs. As annoying as being called a “godless commie” and having to endure the odd religious invocation at a government meeting may be, it’s small beer when you compare it to what blacks still have to go through on a daily basis. When you’re arrested, beaten, or just plain murdered by lynch mobs or bigoted cops for being a public atheist, then you can compare your discrimination with that of People of Color.
In the meantime, kindly shut the fuck up!
When replying to accusations of misogyny, the Amazing Atheist said, “I’m not a misogynist! I fuck bitches! “
When replying to accusations of misogyny, the Amazing Atheist said, “I’m not a misogynist! I fuck bitches! “
This guy is part of the reason why I roll my eyes at those that use superlatives in their moniker.
You’re talking about a dingleberry who started a campaign to raise money for women and girls in third world countries to prove that first world feminists are ball-busting bitches who have it too good already and don’t actually care about real women’s issues.
The bar is pretty low for what I expect from him and his cohorts.
And religious institutions that are bigoted get tax breaks making them powerful bigots. So even narrow dictionary atheism brings that problem into scope.
DanDare:
What? No. Dictionary atheism refers to the stance that there are no implications to the brute fact that atheists don’t ascribe to goddism; that you imagine that there are narrow (and, by implication, non-narrow) forms of it indicates you fundamentally misunderstand the concept.
(Tax breaks have nothing to do with belief or disbelief in deities, they have to do with social policy)
I think you missed Dan’s point. He understands what dictionary atheism is. he’s saying that dictionary atheists don’t understand that there are real world implications to even THEIR restricted definition that they are not accounting for.
Ichthyic, I think you misunderstand my point.
Part of the concept of being a dictionary atheist is that they don’t understand that there are real world implications to even THEIR restricted definition that they are not accounting for. For them, it is not the case that even narrow dictionary atheism brings that problem into scope.
(They’re not perverse, they’re oblivious)
Uh oh, more disagreement about what “dictionary atheism” means! Always happens. Here’s my last attempt to help everyone understand the term (with evidence!). No one replied to me though, so I don’t know how well it was received.
Ah, I remember that guy. I remember not liking his stuff even way back when I still thought Thunderf00t was good. I’m surprised he’s so successful, he was always one of the rantiest and more repetitive YouTubers around and that always annoyed me at least. But I guess there’s an audience for that.
His name is more properly should be “Amazingly Asshole Atheist”. So now the superlative is just fine.
Because the “dictionary atheism” is a clickbait term and it cooks up silly disagreements instead of creating meaningful and useful discussions. If by “dictionary atheism” you mean “people who think no atheist organization should engage in social issues etc.” then say it so and engage it directly instead of cooking up an extremely vague phrase that just begs to be misunderstood. By “you” here I mean a generic you, and it includes anyone, like PZ, who thinks the term “dictionary atheist” is a clever term.
I don’t get why people have trouble with dictionary atheist. The key to it is that a person citing the dictionary definition is doing so as a means to rhetorically sever a connection between atheism and something else, often social justice issues. It’s textual slight of hand that attempts to force hyper-focusing on a definition instead of how the word is functionally used in reality, hence the point about combating creationism not being covered either. I’ll try to dig up the original exchange between PZ and the that person that he used it on (whose name escapes me atm).
“dig it up tomorrow” I mean.
Also, “clickbait”? Really?
Underfoot is underfoot again.
@Saganite, a haunter of demons (#16)
Yeah, same here. He kind of struck me as a wannabe Lewis Black except without the wit to pull it off.
Once more.
Dictionary Atheists limit themselves to the definition of being non believers. However they tend to show concern about theists getting away with shit because they are privileged. So theistic bigotry falls into view simply because it is subsidized bigotry.
Atheist means more than “godless”.
It means “racist godless asshole”.
Oh wow. So now we’re discussing the dictionary definition of dictionary atheism?
On topic: Hughes described it extremely well. Anyone of TAA and his allies who wishes to refute Hughes’ post, needs some very convincing arguments. So far they are failing.
Jesus, the comments on that article are a dumpster fire. Lots of hyper-skepticism about TJ’s racism, demanding evidence that he is being racist even though it is obvious to anyone who uses their brain for more than 2 seconds. The most infuriating thing about these SJW “debates” is that even though SJWs are caricatured as these irrational, hypersensitive zealots that you have to walk on eggshells around, the slightest mention that someone is a bigot will lead to much crying and “Nuh-uh You’re the REAL RACIST!!”! To these arseholes, calling someone a racist is far, far more offensive than racism itself. You want actual political correctness, then just accuse a famous person of being a bigot and watch as their defenders spew out the apologetics. For reactionaries, Bigotry is A-OK but acknowledging it’s existence is highly Un-PC.
TAA, thunderf00t and Pat Condell are the Donald Trumps of atheism. They’re not afraid to say what a lot of atheists think.
There are SJW excesses, as there are cases of Social Security fraud, and as
there are excesses of every kind on social media, itself being an excess,
but how does any of it merit so much attention? Nobody is forcing him to
answer these questions. Nobody is forcing him to visit the haunts of SJWs.
Nobody is compelled to use social media. He could pass his entire day
without ever being exposed to any of these things.
Much of this is the kind of contrived outrage that leftists are accused of.
First, yes, dictionary atheist debates are often meaningless and full of strawman arguments and ultimately “clickbaity”: since it is a vague notion that somehow everyone has a strong opinion on it, it generates massive amount of vague discussions where people are talking about different things all the time. Even in this thread it is obvious that people don’t have the same idea of what is a “dictionary atheist”.
Also, from my experience, holding a position that “atheist” only means “lack of belief in gods” is useful in some contexts while in some other contexts it is useful to point out that “there is more to atheists than just lack of belief in gods”. And you have absolutely no right to tell me that my first set of experiences are invalid.
Second, the discussion of “dictionary atheism” on this particular topic is really a red herring. Amazingly asshole atheist’s problem is not that some atheist organizations also do social justice work or feminism. His problem is that there are some people who are doing social justice work and feminism. In other words, he is completely against feminism, whether done in an atheist organization or otherwise.
Exactly. Although, if I were to rank them, I would say Pat Condell > TAA > thunderf00t in terms of rigid bigotry, stupidity, and cluelessness. I visited Pat Condell’s youtube channel the other day since I was curious to see what he thinks of the Brexit and it was no surprise to find out that he supports UKIP, he supports Brexit and both of them for every obviously racist reasons. And on top of that as a bonus, he thinks anyone who disagrees with him is a racist themselves!
I don’t understand people who seem to think that the best way to improve their situation is to dump on people with a similar situation. They don’t really care about victimization as long as they’re not in the crosshairs.
I sometimes wonder if they suffer under the delusion that each of them has uniquely discovered how to be a selfish jackass. They seem to think all they have to do is claim common cause with a little in-group and then dump on everyone else. Once they get started on this path the only thing that distinguishes them from the assholes causing problems for everyone is the number of yes-men they can whistle up.
I feel like PZ would attack this line of reasoning as Islamophobic if someone used similar evidence and called it a “larger Muslim problem.”
Isn’t this the same idiot who claimed that, since there are starving kids in Africa, we shouldn’t pay any attention about a Canadian teenager who was stalked and harassed until she took her own life?
100% of misogynistic wife-beating husbands are married to women. Just sayin’
@lotharloo
It’s hard coming to a consensus on a pejorative in a social conflict? Really? And they get lots of attention for attention and not because of an underlying issue? And anything anyone might have to say about the issue in here is right out because of lots of other people? Even though the phenomena in question is mentioned in the post PZ links?
I guess it’s not important then since my take on it and other perspectives is necessarily like everyone else’s and I’m just commenting for attention.
/s
Yep! When people are bringing up the definition of atheism in a specific context that seeks to prevent others from including social justice concerns in atheist communities and politics it’s all about ruling your experiences invalid.
/s
And preventing feminism or social justice work from being done in atheism is not at all a part of preventing people from addressing it at all.
/S
It’s my understanding that the exchange between PZ and Michael Luciano was involved in the coining of “dictionary atheist”. I realize that language evolves, but since it’s only been about a year and seven months this probably has some strength.
http://thedailybanter.com/2014/10/atheists-dont-owe-your-social-justice-agenda-a-damn-thing/
Response by PZ
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/10/12/sunday-sacrilege-the-responsible-atheist/
I defined it in terms of what the person using the definition of atheist functionally does regardless of intent, attempt to sever a social concern from real-world social atheism. It’s a legitimate problem.
Except it would be stupid to say something like that, therefore your feelings are simply self-serving affirmations of your perception. Cognitive bias, precisely.
The real kicker here is that it’s atheists saying this about atheists. The proper analogy would be a Muslim saying this about Muslims. So, analogy-fail to boot.
Above was directed to wwints @31.
@22 Dan
That’s what I limit “atheism” to in and of itself, because yes, definitions matter. I think the fact that people like this “Amazing atheist” guy out there demonstrates that there’s no direct correlation between being an atheist and supporting equality. You can be a bigoted, racist POS as a theist or an atheist, you can support equalities as a theist or an atheist. I’ve been told I’m too hung up on definitions. Probably, but I am who I am. To be being (or not being) an atheist and how you treat others are and should be considered two different things.
I find those who overly worry about dictionary definition of atheism are atheists without any heart. Those who use their atheism to embrace social justice and the tenets of humanism are atheists with a heart, or Atheism♥︎.
Oh god the comments on the patheos article are awful!
@38 Nerd
What about atheists that separate their atheism from their humanism? Why can’t someone recognize their humanistic tendencies to embrace social justices and recognize that their atheism is separate from that?
@40 numerobis
Wow. I regret reading them now. It just reinforces my disappointment in far too many members of our species.
@parrothead 41
It’s not about atheists that merely choose to separate their atheism from their humanism/social justice. That is a passive act. It’s about how some of those humanist atheists act on that. In this case those that actively apply social pressure on others to keep them separate because they want other people to do what they do. The ones that do so via appeal to the dictionary definition get the pejorative.
Jesus, just based on the quotes Martin includes in his article, I don’t think I could watch the whole video. I’d end up punching my monitor. The bit about gentrification made my blood boil just reading it. I’d probably explode if I actually heard someone actually talking like that.
@43 Brony
So you can be a “dictionary atheist” while being a humanist and supporting social justice issues? I think that’s how I’m reading it. I know I prefer to keep them separate, maybe because I’ve been programming some 25 years and just logically keep data separated as a habit by now. OK, fine. I’ll be a “dictionary atheist humanist”. I can live with that. It’s just a label after all.
Fixed. In the application of the dictionary definition one is not supporting social justice. One can advocate for social justice and fail miserably in specific instances.
Then you should be able to recognize that the meaning of symbols is not just in the abstract that a dictionary definition represents. It is the use of symbols that makes them real and that use implicitly requires the addition of more information. Given your statement I assume you keep your data forever separated and never combine it with other things when the data is used.
Labels have use and meaning. Form and function. This is pathetic.
The dictionary definition doesn’t mention social justices at all. That falls under the humanist label.
On the contrary. You can combine the data from tables that represent different aspects of the whole. If I had a database storing the data for “human”, there could be a table containing religion (which would not be null suppressed :) ) and a separate table for social philosophies or whatever which would have a row for humanist. Separate tables in the database “human”. When accessing the data to determine social philosophies there’s no reason to access other tables that aren’t applicable.
Sometimes. Sometimes they can also be meaningless. They can be non-descriptive.
There we go again. People are quarreling about a meaningless term. Nobody here is disagreeing with a need for social justice. Nobody here is disagreeing with feminism. Nobody here is advocating inaction. Nobody here is a fan of TAA or even has a remote liking of the asshole. And yet there is plenty of debate, but it is all about nothing. That is what a meaningless and vague term does: it creates pointless discussions without having any impact. Are people going to work more towards common good, and against prejudice? No, it will not change anything because there was no disagreement about any of these core issues anyways.
@fmitchell
Your source offers a brief overview and does not delve into the history. And even brief as it is, it doesn’t support your assertion.
Many of the earliest feminists were abolitionists (and vice versa.) They weren’t perfect, and there were tensions, but your claim is false.
If the net result is that you are both and atheist and for social justice, it doesn’t matter how you got there. You are an atheist♥︎. Why pretend they are separate?
People like the self-styled “Amazing” Atheist make up in arrogance what they lack in rationality.
There is a small mountain of research on implicit bias and stereotype threat. The history of systemic racism in the U.S. is there for anyone to read. Hell, even if there were no other problems for them to deal with, redlining, which was practiced until very recently, was enough to keep black families all over the country from accruing wealth at the same rates as white people.
The statistics on sentencing disparities, the way poc are treated by the “justice” system–I know Martin discussed this in his piece–you’d have to be blind to be unaware of these things.
But TJ ignores all that. We have a black president! So stop whining, black people.
TAA should be both ashamed and embarrassed–but he isn’t, because he’s shameless, and too fucking ignorant to realize he’s made an Amazing Ass of himself.
With me it’s for clarity. If I’m making arguments against religion it’s from the perspective of an atheist. If I’m making arguments against bigots et.al. it’s from the point of a humanist.
Grumpy Santa @52:
But you make use of arguments which preclude the existence of a Supreme Moral Arbiter, therefore you are still arguing from your atheism, even in the latter case.
Sounds like an artificial separation. It doesn’t seem clearer to me, just a way of solid compartmentalizing of that which is fluid and overlapping.
If you really want a wall between atheism and social justice, then you also have to be prepared to put a wall between atheism and secularism, atheism and science, and atheism and rejection of tradition because none of those are inherent in “there are no gods” either. There’s no community without shared values, and if you want to separate out the values, you also separate out the community. What you’re left with is nothing.