Good post, thanks.
I agree, there has been discrimination of atheists - which I don't condone, nor do my beliefs condone it. The concept of wielding our legislatures to mandate our morals or beliefs on others is a rather reprehensible one, imo. And both theists and atheists and others in between have done it. That's not the purpose of law in general and I'm as much dismayed when theists do it as I am when anyone else does.
I also agree that we're in a particularly divisive and adversarial political climate right now - perhaps as divisive as we've ever experienced, which is constructive to no good end at all. Given that and your other comments, I want to reiterate that my issue in all this is NOT atheists. It's how a particular faction (frankly could've been anyone) is intimidating innocent people with the threat of lawsuit if they don't comply with their particular interpretation of the Constitution. That's my issue in all this - not atheists, not atheism, but what just happens to be an activist faction of atheists in general who would use the threat of legal action to get their way.
Yeah, I guess my point is just that there are some very necessary atheist activists too. However, in what I've seen, this is usually happening outside of the actual atheist organizations -- through avenues like the ACLU, for example.
And I think perhaps there's a relatively straightforward explanation for that.
Atheism is mostly invisible. Being a woman, or black, or gender queer, is readily obvious. Even being gay can be visible, if you are having relationships with people of the same sex.
Therefore, atheism is something that doesn't have to define your life much, if at all. There is no "practice" of atheism, and it is largely invisible.
So, for people who don't let atheism define their life, they only go into advocacy when something specific happens -- when they run into one of these codified or socially aggressive forms of discrimination. They don't belong to any atheist organization, and they don't think to create one or join one when this happens. They go through some other avenue in order to address the issue, because they think of it as a
discrimination issue, not an atheist issue per se.
Someone who belongs to an atheist organization is revolving their life around atheism a lot more than they have to. And, usually, they aren't JUST an atheist. They have some other belief system attached to their atheism -- often anti-theism. The exception to this might be secular humanist organizations, which are inherently atheist, but don't define themselves as an atheist organization. It's a social issues organization more broadly. Most of their work has nothing to do with atheism.
So you really have two kinds of atheist activists. You have people who are defined by atheism, and you have people who want to end discrimination.
This is why I have little time for atheist organizations. For the most part, they aren't working on serious or relevant atheist advocacy. They're bickering and knit-picking and indulging in the us versus them mentality.
I remember a case a year or two ago where one of these organizations was fighting over a street sign in New York called "Angel's Way" or something like that. The street was near the WTC site, and renamed in honor of those who died. While I don't believe in angels, I do have an appreciation for metaphor. Hell, I've used metaphors that borrow from the Abrahamic religions in my writing. If I had simply seen this street sign at random, it wouldn't have occurred to me to even think about it.
But for some reason, this was a big friggin' deal to some atheist organization. And all I could think was, "Really? There's several states in the union that won't even let atheists serve in office, and THIS is what you want to fight about? A street sign?"
And then there's just the fact that I rarely think about the fact that I'm an atheist, and it doesn't affect my life very much. Nothing about my personal ethics system is directly tied to being an atheist. I have no reason to sit in a circle with a bunch of atheists and talk about how I don't believe in deities.
