framing atheism challenge - part 2

Before starting with the second post, let me recap (for new readers, or old readers with short memory) what the main points of the previous post related to this challenge were:

• I am an atheist - not an insignificant particular, given the topic
• There are many common misunderstandings about atheists and atheism: successfully framing atheism means being able to explain and justify the atheists' position, and advocate for atheism, making sure that such advocacy can reach out to people who might have misunderstood atheism, come from a strongly religious culture, etc. - basically, the message of atheism should be conveyed in ways that are appropriate for the target audience
• Advocating for a positve view of atheism, and improvement of the atheist' stand, especially in strongly religious societies, needs to take into account that atheists are very divided. Probably, successful advocacy might involve dropping, or simply undertaking later on, some "fights" that we are however free to take on as indivuduals. Before starting to do advocacy (which involves a lot of framing), we must have a clear idea of what to take on, and what to leave for later.
• I looked at a small association, and how they dealt with some of these issues: in brief, they emphasized that atheism is absence of belief in God (absence, not as belief in the absence of God, which is different), they stressed the importance of rationalism, freethinking, and diversity. They also provided a few answers to common questions and misunderstandings for both atheists and non-atheists/believers.

This said, the aim of this second post is to examine how some associations of atheists, humanists, naturalists, rationalists and freethinkers (these are not all the same, but often atheists are found in more than just one of these groups) present themselves to the public, and therefore how they deal with issues of diversity, framing their ideas to actively reach out to the public. At the end of the post, I shall list some more posts that are basically replies to either the challenge, or the "atheist activists like the suffragists" idea raised by Moran and PZ (some fine example of framing, by the way).

Naturalists: Trinifar made an excellent job already - therefore I suggest you go and read more about that over at his blog.

Humanists: though most atheists are probably humanists, that might not always be true. So I will not consider humanists in this post.

Rationalists: for this, I headed over to Rationalist International. First of all, let me give you the definition of rationalism, as reported on their website:

Rationalism is an attitude that accepts the primacy of reason and aims at establishing a system of philosophy and ethics verifiable by experience, independent of all arbitrary assumptions of authority. Rationalists argue for a rational approach to human problems, suggest reasoned alternatives to religious dogmas, defend freedom of thought and civil liberties and strive for the secularization of politics, society and educational system. Rationalists counter superstition, aim to promote an open and just society, endorse scientific method and also recognize the importance of emotions and imagination.

You can see that rationalism is a liberal ideology, very close to naturalism, and which rejects dogmas. Rationalists can be very much expected to be either atheists or agnostics, though the opposite might not necessarily be true. What are their aims, and how do they plan on achieving them? How are they going to communicate their aims to the public?

First of all, the website is supposed to work as a way to keep in touch, and advocate for rationalism. The first page shows news of people being attacked because of their rationalist views. This already suggests that advocacy for rationalism is needed. How is that going to be done? Let's read what the Founder President of RI has to say:

Moving forward the wheel of human progress has been the task of the rationalist movement from its early beginnings at the dawn of history. Meeting the challenges of nature and improving the conditions of human life, nurturing knowledge and spreading education, lightening the spirit of freedom and self-determination, of growth and development of the individual, encouraging creativity, cultivating responsibility, compassion, fraternity among humankind, guarding the ideals of justice and equality and human rights. [...] To raise to the demands of today's planetary society, this multifaceted, interrelated and interdependent community, a new global agenda for the rationalist movement, if it is to correspond with the complexity of the real world, has to be developed on a broad information base and in a wide frame with careful considerations and balances. [...] Fear of conflict is a crippling weakness. In the known history of humankind every single step forward has been determined by men and women who had the courage and the strength to move against the prevailing tide [...] Resistance came [...] everytime in good company of religion.

We can see what the main ideas the rationalists want people to associate their movement with. They also recognize that different audiences will need to be reached in different ways. The best way to do this is for the association to have a strong stand, but at the same time to have members working in different parts of the world, and therefore able to respond to abuses in the most appropriate way, a way that can keep into account the diversity of our world's cultures and legal systems, as well as local challenges.

The founder also puts some important evidence on the fact that, although rationalism has a vivid history as a movement, it seems to have lost much of its strength in the current days, where

Fear of conflict took its toll, force of habit and lure of comfort and the little advantages which use to reward the obedient: corruption. Here and there symptoms of degeneration became visible and spread like an ailment. Armchair humanism developed in some parts of the movement, satisfying itself on Sunday afternoon with sweeping statements or just enjoying the tickling of playing cards on Sabbath. Feel-good humanism established hermitages in the wonderful world of the happy humans club (for members only).

So, what is in the future of the movement? What approach to take after such weakening?

To develop a rationalist world movement, strong and decisive enough to lead the fight against the multinational religious and social monsters has to be our agenda for the time to come. It has to overcome fear of conflict, force of habit and the tendency to corruption. It has to beware the apologists, who insult the victims of religion by praising its "ethical qualities". [...] We need a world movement of equal partners in East and West, committed and sincere, each of them facing up to the situation and the needs of their own society [...] This world rationalist movement has to identify fearless and uncompromising leaders, considerate and responsible and with wisdom and vision. Under their guidance and watchful eyes, it has to cut-off its degeneration and cure its illnesses and overcome its weakness and put-off its childish ways and grow to become the avant-garde of human progress, the guardian of the wheel.

Well, there is not much practical advise here. Rationalists are encouraged to be unapologetic, to act within their own society, wherever they are, and to "get off the armchair" and be active in advocating for human rights, individualism, compassion...and freedom from religious oppression.

The Brights: when Trinifar suggest active atheists define themselves as naturalists, he probably hit on target. He must not be the only one thinking that, as the word "atheist" has such a strong (often negative, though erroneously) connotation, that others had the birlliant idea of using the LGBT strategy, and adopt a descriptor with a positive value. From the "gays" to the "brights". This offers several positive aspects:

• it is a word which is empowering, it has an assertive tone, but is not meant to be exclusive
• though the brights belong to the naturalistic/rationalistic historical movement, they come out fortified by the modernization of their identity
• "the brights" is a catchy word! In advocacy, as in advertizing, the first thing you want is for people to remember you. "The Brights" are way ahead of naturalists, rationalists and humanist for what regards social marketing
• the Brights see themselves as individuals, first and foremost - this makes justice to the strong individuality and diversity among atheists
• the Brights clearly state that, for them to be a positive force, they have to get involved socially and politically, as individuals belonging to the movement:

The constituency of persons who have naturalistic worldviews needs to acquire social and political clout in proportion to its numbers. As participants in this Internet constituency, we will work to craft a social awareness of this fact. Brights in the Internet constituency resist being ignored, marginalized and discriminated against in our societies. We will work toward all brights being accepted as citizens on a level playing field with persons who hold other worldviews. We want to create societal recognition that large numbers of Brights exist, and that they will no longer accept being ignored as a constituency. Neither will they be receptive to being typecast as a marginalized identity group defined by condescending terminology.

The Brights are rationalists and naturalists: but those terminologies do not make them justice. Which is understandable, as humanists and rationalists have already recognized as their movements have been stagnant over the past (at least) 50 years. Although Brights will be, by definition, agnostics or atheists, the opposite might not be the case - an atheist with a believe in anything supernatural (no matter how unlikely this sounds) would not be a Bright. The Brights support the Secular Coalition for America. So they are the ones I will talk about next.

The Secularists (as in the Secular Coalition of America): they define themselves as humanists and atheists. They can be easily distinguished from the rationalists (who loath all religion) as they welcome, for advocacy purposes, the collaboration of religious like-minded people, who are willing to help in creating a society more accepting of nontheistic views, and in which religion and state matters are firmly separated: "Freedom of conscience is best guaranteed by protecting and strengthening the secular character of our government. Religious tolerance, a necessary product of this freedom, must be extended to people of all religions and to those without religious beliefs". However, they do promote "reason and science as the most reliable methods for understanding the universe and improving the human condition". They are also the most politically involved group, having a lobbyst working on the causes they support. Also, being a coalition, they bring together many different groups (including Humanists) that, though different in some way in their ideology, are all interested in lobbying for the same causes.

As you can see, there are many different denominations and subtle differences among all the groups atheists might identify themselves with. Chances are, if you are an atheist you will be identifying with at least two of the groups described above.

And that takes us to the third and last post of the challenge: once we know more about the divisions, and both the strategies and the ideology of the different groups, how do we pull it all together, still respecting individual identity, to mount a significant, active response to the attack to atheists? How do we transorm this into an occasion to emancipate the atheists from public mistrust, and move atheism firmly into the sphere of public debate?

News Links
Preaching the words of atheism - The Tyee
Non-believers raising voice in capital - USA Today
Atheist attacked publicizing talk about "God: the failed hypothesis" - Skeptic News