From: Hermit (hidden@lucifer.com)
Date: Sun Jun 22 2003 - 12:31:40 MDT
Interesting idea. There are a two rather large, but not insurmountable, difficulties and one small one that I see with it.
Cats are positively herdable compared to atheists - who simply don't believe (put faith in) gods, possibly because atheism (including all the finer shadings) is not a positive attribute, but a negative one. Just as many people who are not pugalists (boxers), don't identify themselves as "not-boxers", few atheists identify themselves as "not-theists". It simply isn't important enough to "not-boxers" or indeed atheists for this to form part of their definition of themselves. This means that quite understandably, for most atheists, the attribute is not important to them unless it is challenged, and even then, as Dawkins observes, they might label themselves with something less socially frowned upon.
Even though blatantly fallacious, an underlying premis held by most Americans is that "Morals come from God", which means that atheists are regarded as immoral, untrustworthy and dangerous (and given that atheists insist upon thinking out their own ethics, the last may not be particularly incorrect). This may go a long way towards explaining why atheists used to be, and listening to Dubya's rhetoric, possibly still are, the most disliked and least trusted group in the USA. This social pressure goes a long way to explaining why atheists, even while vastly outnumbering homosexuals, have remained lurking in their closets while homosexuals have emerged from theirs. Given the current resurgence of McCarthyism in the USA (including attempts by some Neocons to vindicate McCarthy himself, refer e.g. http://www.thbookservice.com/BookPage.asp?prod_cd=c6174), perhaps this is not entirely a bad thing.
The small difficulty is that I cannot completely forgive the homosexual community for expropriating a word, "gay", for which there is no complete equivalent in the English language, and thus am somewhat reluctant to attempt the same trick myself.
Nevertheless, the initiative appears a worthwhile one, and I will be interested to see how much support it obtains. Certainly if it catches on, it will provide a post hoc explanation for #radiance.
Kind Regards
Hermit
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