General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Community Wants Atheist Santa Billboard Taken Down [View all]JackRiddler
(24,979 posts)Being one myself, at least with regard to sentient single-entity planner-creators of everything, and knowing a great many otherwise.
I have developed a particular set of observations about the counterproductive, narrow New Atheist schtick, however, mostly from first-hand experience of going to a bunch of NA-inflected atheist meetings some years ago in New York. Mostly likable people (unlike, say their matinee idols, Harris, Hitchens and Maar) and not bad as drinking partners. Tend to be on the autistic-libertarian-idealist side of things, not that I mind too much. Their PR sense is certainly terrible, as with the series of Santa ads, and they're willing to pander to nationalism, as with the campaign to get "under God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance. (The only credible and consistent position with regard to Pledges of Allegiance is that the entire text should be struck and forgotten as a quasi-totalitarian relic.) The worldview is too narrow. It's not enough to make a drama out of rejecting non-natural gods and pretend this is the first solution to the ills of the world.