Atheism Plus

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“”It’s time for a new wave of atheism ... that cares about how religion affects everyone and that applies skepticism to everything, including social issues like sexism, racism, politics, poverty, and crime.

—Jey McCreight

Atheism Plus (also rendered Atheism+) was a movement proposed in 2012 by blogger Jey McCreight. Its original definition encouraged progressive atheists to move beyond the question of (non-)belief and to address additional issues, including critical thinking, skepticism, social justice, feminism, anti-racism, and combatting homophobia and transphobia.

The idea originated as a reaction to the nastiness flung about during a controversy over (sexual) harassment policies at atheist/skeptical conferences, which in turn was a re-ignition of the controversy over sexism in those two movements that had been smoldering since Elevatorgate.

Central tenets

According to McCreight's original "Atheism+" blog post:

“” We are... Atheists plus we care about social justice, Atheists plus we support women’s rights, Atheists plus we protest racism, Atheists plus we fight homophobia and transphobia, Atheists plus we use critical thinking and skepticism.

Origin

The concept originated in August of 2012 from a blog post by Jey McCreight. McCreight, who is an atheist plus a feminist, had previously spearheaded a protest known as "Boobquake", in which women dressed in revealing clothing on a specific day to lampoon the claim of Kazem Seddiqi (Iran's answer to Jerry Falwell) that earthquakes were caused by women dressing in revealing clothing. (Islamic leaders were noticeably quiet when no remarkable seismic events happened on that day.)

Many atheists, particularly the creepy sexist men, assumed that McCreight would only dress revealingly or call attention to their breasts if they were a slut. McCreight was swamped with invitations from simple-minded greasy creeps, not to talk about atheism or anything of that sort, but to have sex; and on the occasions when they were invited to give a talk, appalling online comments by other mouth-breathers centered around their appearance and their breasts.

This is sexual harassment, and McCreight asked people to stop, but Internet cranks, creeps, and such types are notoriously bad at doing what they are told, and things continued much as before. Furthermore, McCreight recounts being told that they could not credibly object to all this attention being paid to their breasts because they had drawn attention to them themselves during Boobquake; according to these adversaries, "a joke about my boobs was eternal 'consent'."

The misogynistic backlash they experienced caused McCreight to become more political on their blog. However, each post they made about feminism attracted an assault of vile comments by sexist assholes describing them in highly gendered and less-than-flattering terms. This caused them to realize that many atheists were also misogynists, a realization that crystallized in the wake of the Elevatorgate controversy and the more egregious antics of that eminent YouTube jerk, TheAmazingAtheist, after which they felt less safe in the atheist movement than they did "walking down the fucking sidewalk" (emphasis theirs).

This caused them to conclude that the atheist movement needed to re-brand itself in order to shut these unruly and vain talkers up. Drawing an analogy with the successive waves of feminism, they called this proposed re-branding a new "wave" of atheism. The first wave they identified as being "the traditional philosophers, freethinkers, and academics". The second wave were those who broke bold new ground by publicly criticizing religion - generally identified as Richard Dawkins and the other New Atheists. The latest wave, then, would be the new wave McCreight was proposing, a wave that focuses more on sociopolitical issues and "applies skepticism to everything".

Very surprisingly, the deluge of disgusting comments that had slimed their similar articles on these topics abruptly ceased, and 95% of the comments on this post were positive. Their hand strengthened by this show of support, they officially kicked off their proposed third wave of atheism, calling it "Atheism+".

After these two posts, however, vicious comments resumed, reaching such a fever pitch that it caused them to step back from blogging regularly for an indeterminate amount of time. It didn't stop the hatestorm.

Reaction

Atheism Plus vs. humanism

Some people acting in bad faith questioned how Atheism Plus would differ from secular humanism.

Those bad-faith actors were answered by PZ Myers: Atheism Plus represents an attempt at a new variant of secular humanism that does not appropriate the religious trappings of many secular humanist groups. Alternatively, Atheism Plus represents a wedding of the New Atheist's in-your-face attitude about religion with social justice concerns. Either way, the bad faith of those who questioned A+ is refuted: Atheism Plus is secular humanism that explicitly takes a skeptical approach to common social prejudices such as misogyny and racism; the specific reference to atheism acknowledges that atheism itself is only part of a skeptical take on the world.

Jey McCreight wrote a blog post in response to the challenges, clarifying their position. McCreight maintained that not all humanists are atheists or skeptical, and that not all skeptics are atheists or humanists. They further argued that general public does not really understand what "humanist" means. Furthermore, the humanist community puts a lot of focus on replicating church-like communities and having chaplaincies, a standard that atheists could be opposed to. In this, they answered the challenge that they raised

In general, atheists are united by one factor: disbelief in deities. While many atheists share similar views (skepticism, humanism), not all of them do; atheists may be superstitious, selfish, fanatical, or bigoted. The fact that atheism is not a framework of values leaves individuals seeking such a framework with few options. While humanism is popular, the term itself has a long history, with attendant baggage, and historically most humanists were not atheists. Atheism Plus, like humanism, presents itself as a set of values not only concerned with the general morality or goodwill but also with more explicit attitudes regarding social equality and justice; but unlike humanism, it includes atheism as an essential component.

Misogynist attacks

In addition to personal attacks against McCreight, Atheism Plus itself provoked fierce opposition from groups that saw it as a feminist incursion on atheism, especially misogynist groups like the Men's Rights movement. Their critiques misrepresented Atheism Plus as a simple repackaging of old-school feminism, or at least a straw-man version thereof, in which feminists are leading a secret and powerful conspiracy to cut men's gonads off and/or spoil their fun, a la Andrea Dworkin or Valerie Solanas. Under this belief, they launched massive broadsides of abuse at Atheism Plus supporters, specifically the women among them, who became the targets of, i.a., sexualized insults and rape threats. Needless to say, they did not do this.

In contrast to this straw-man vision of feminism, Atheism Plus was explicitly not sex-negative, although it emphatically opposed creepiness and sexual harassment. Thus, while those who brought such flak against it probably thought they were arguing for Free Love or something of the kind, in the real world it worked out to arguing for the legitimization of sexual harassment and the defense of creeps and their creepy behavior, which should still never be defended.

Although Atheism Plus began with a strong emphasis on the feminist part of its formal agenda, this was partially due to its roots in a response to sexual harassment and sexually violent language being tossed at women within the atheist community, and partially due to the actions of the misogynists themselves, who have kept the focus on gender issues. For example, there was nowhere near this level of controversy over the anti-racist plank of the Atheism Plus platform (but no doubt there were some Bell Curvers out there waiting to inject some "race realism" into the matter). That they didn't express their racist ideas does not mean that they weren't just as racist as they were sexist, homophobic, and transphobic.

Other objections

There were also been objections from atheists who believed that atheism, as a concept, should not be tied to a specific socio-political agenda, including some humanists who supported the agenda in question. McCreight described how some atheists believed that the concept was needlessly tearing the atheist movement apart, or that the atheist movement should be tackling more relevant issues, such as "debunking homeopathy for the 983258th time or thinking up yet another great zinger to use against Young Earth Creationists," rather than engaging in socio-political advocacy. Others objected to the image that it would create, as it would serve as easy material for conservatives who are desperate to stereotype atheists as a "secular left" equivalent of the religious right. Although that concern can be argued as unfounded because a schism of atheism across political lines would elucidate that there is a significant right-wing atheist contingent, especially when the left-leaning Atheism+ is the smaller breakaway group, indicating that status-quo of the Atheist movement remains right-of-center. In fact, the existence of a left-wing Atheist+ breakaway group arguably artificially magnifies the right-wing component of plain old Atheism. Ultimately, proving that McCreight was right.

Symbolic confusion

Shortly after the introduction of the symbol it came to light that the Atheism Plus symbol is almost identical to a symbol that's been used by Non-Believers Giving Aid for at least four years. This may be intentional plagiarism, cryptomnesia (unintentional plagiarism), or (most likely) coincidental. Adding a + sign to the atheism symbol is fairly obvious and perhaps two groups can think that up independently.

There was additional confusion as the original logo design read as "A + Theism" (ie: Atheism + Theism), which lead to much mocking from slymers who asserted A+ was, indeed, Atheism + Dogma.

In any case, the Atheism Plus website wound up picking a somewhat different symbol resembling an @ sign with a + in it.

Similar viewpoints

Several other bloggers/writers have advocated nearly identical viewpoints, adopting names like Positive Atheism (as distinct from positive atheism) or Ethical Atheism.

See also

• Militant atheism
• New Atheism
• Social justice
• Intersectionality
• Feminism

Further reading

• Seven types of Atheism, John Gray (Macmillan, 2018) ISBN 0374261091

External links

• FTB - Blag Hag: Atheism+
• An article about Atheism Plus on New Statesman
• Official Atheism Plus forums
• Atheism+ Wiki