This might be a rather unpopular claim in a strongly atheist crowd like this one, but there’s really no reason to feel particularly hostile towards ostensibly religious customs like Christmas.
I’d expect it’s a very popular claim in a crowd like this one.
Yup; count me as one more atheist that’s not particularly hostile towards Christmas.
(But then there’s a lot of religious stuff I’m not hostile to, plenty of good music, good architecture, priests are probably a mostly positive influence on a community … plenty of bad stuff too, but then the same could be said of nationalism and most political ideologies)
My impression has been that most people who bother talking about their atheism online (obviously highly self-selected group) seem to follow Dawkins’ idea that religious moderates somehow enable religious fundamentalists, and are therefore indirectly evil as well. This was always the most dubious aspect of the New Atheism.
Should we make effort to end football just because some people are overly enthusiastic about their favourite team? Nearly everything about modern society can be highly destructive sometimes, but we’ve figured out how to deal with it really well most of the time.
Websites about atheism are a different group of people than websites about rationality. There’s overlap, to be sure, but the people who are “passionate” about being irreligious don’t tend to gravitate here; my view of a typical LWer is that they may go through a phase of thinking lack of religion is worth spending a lot of time discussing, but then they move past it because it’s not a very difficult question. LWers talk about their atheism, but usually only when provoked.
I’d expect it’s a very popular claim in a crowd like this one.
Yup; count me as one more atheist that’s not particularly hostile towards Christmas.
(But then there’s a lot of religious stuff I’m not hostile to, plenty of good music, good architecture, priests are probably a mostly positive influence on a community … plenty of bad stuff too, but then the same could be said of nationalism and most political ideologies)
My impression has been that most people who bother talking about their atheism online (obviously highly self-selected group) seem to follow Dawkins’ idea that religious moderates somehow enable religious fundamentalists, and are therefore indirectly evil as well. This was always the most dubious aspect of the New Atheism.
Should we make effort to end football just because some people are overly enthusiastic about their favourite team? Nearly everything about modern society can be highly destructive sometimes, but we’ve figured out how to deal with it really well most of the time.
Websites about atheism are a different group of people than websites about rationality. There’s overlap, to be sure, but the people who are “passionate” about being irreligious don’t tend to gravitate here; my view of a typical LWer is that they may go through a phase of thinking lack of religion is worth spending a lot of time discussing, but then they move past it because it’s not a very difficult question. LWers talk about their atheism, but usually only when provoked.
Participating in rituals of religious origin isn’t equivalent to practicing religion though, moderate or otherwise.
Football is football, but Christmas is not Christianity.