The sort of people who talk of things like, for example, trying to ban Christian thought and speech from the “public square” (making it okay to be a Christian, as long as you are “in the closet” about it).

Citations of people actually saying that? Haven’t run into that attitude. It’s at least as rare as the attitude that atheists have no right to promote atheist thought in the “public square”.

Yes, as I’ve already pointed out, pointing out what is genuinely evil plays an important role in human progress.

So if Christianity in America is inherently evil the way slaveholding in America was inherently evil, then people will eventually forgive Richard Dawkins for being unpleasant just as they have forgiven some of the more “negative” abolitionists for being unpleasant.

BTW, what’s the definition of ‘militant’ you’re using in the phrase ‘militant atheist’? Is it the ‘passionate advocate’ sense or the ‘take up arms in enforcing’ sense? There’s kind of a big practical gap there.

I prefer the phrase “militant materialist”, actually.

I personally define “militant” as anyone who can’t live with “live and let live”, but feels the need to ‘wage war’ on those with rival beliefs.

The sort of people who talk of things like, for example, trying to ban Christian thought and speech from the “public square” (making it okay to be a Christian, as long as you are “in the closet” about it).

When you are obsessed with what’s wrong with those who disagree with you – instead of examining what you yourself are for, instead of only against – you become a “negative” person.

Being pro-liberty required becoming intensely – even ‘militantly’ – anti-slavery. Were the abolitionists – secular as well as religious – ‘negative people’?

(BTW, what’s the definition of ‘militant’ you’re using in the phrase ‘militant atheist’? Is it the ‘passionate advocate’ sense or the ‘take up arms in enforcing’ sense? There’s kind of a big practical gap there.)

When you are obsessed with what’s wrong with those who disagree with you – instead of examining what you yourself are for, instead of only against – you become a “negative” person.

Which is why the term “negative” has such “negative” connotations, even though negativity has its place – and is every bit as important as its counterpart.

And also why Fred Phelps and militant atheists are oddly more alike than different.

No, Fred Phelps is wrong. The for/against categorization is not helpful. To pick the most obvious example, if to be against something is somehow negative or tow the dark side, then we can presume all of “Protestantism” is defective as well as those who opposed slavery or who oppose abortion today.

Right.

They are united by what they reject.

If you look at what they accept, they are humanists. But they choose not to identify by what they accept (by what they do believe). They choose to be identified by what they don’t accept (by what they don’t believe). The difference between humanists and atheists is that humanists are people who define themselves by what they embrace/pursue/want while atheists are people who define themselves by what they reject or don’t want.

In that, they are to humanists what Fred Phelps is to Christianity: they are all about what they hate, to the point where their entire identity is about what they reject, rather than about what they love.

The question is whether it’s possible to do that and still be capable of loving anything that isn’t as negative as the hatred that one accepts as an identity. I don’t think it is. I think the difference between atheists and humanists is sort of like the “light side/dark side” scale in the Star Wars mmo: the more you go to negative side, the further away you are from the positive side.

Blake,

No, I didn’t say that. Mark Misulia said, “It’s at least hard to see how one could be very enthusiastic about a movement whose highest aspiration is the demise of many others.” And I posed a rhetorical questions, asking if that was not the goal of Catholicism or Christianity in general.

I don’t think it is fair-minded to consider atheism a “negative belief” any more than it is for Muslims to consider non-Muslims “infidels.” If you posit that your own beliefs are correct, then I suppose you can describe anyone else’s beliefs as “negative beliefs.” Jews have “negative beliefs” because they don’t believe Jesus was the Messiah. To an astrologer, you (presumably) and I (definitely) would be considered to have “negative beliefs” because we don’t believe in astrology. It is only that theists are in the majority that allows one to get away with trying to characterize atheism as a “negative belief.”

There is a difference between someone who is passionate for the Pirates vs. someone who is moved by a passionate hatred against the White Sox.

This is not a helpful analogy, since the White Sox actually exist. :P

It’s actually not a helpful analogy for a number of reasons. Some atheists may have contempt for religion, but what defines atheists is not how they feel about religion but rather whether they believe in God (gods, the supernatural, etc.). It is quite possible to be an atheist and not hate religion, just as it is possible to be a Jew and not hate Christianity and all other religions or a Christian and not hate Judaism and all other religions. Not believing something and hating it are two quite different things.

There is a difference between someone who is passionate for the Pirates vs. someone who is moved by a passionate hatred against the White Sox.

What about someone who’d like to reduce baseball attendance because they’d rather everyone share their passion for soccer?

Saying my ideas are ridiculous and contemptible logically entails that I am the kind of person who holds ridiculous and contemptible ideas. What kind of person is that?

A human being?

Seriously, can you name any human in history who hasn’t held ideas that we now find ridiculous and contemptible? For a thousand or so years in the West, educated people (to take a non-random example, Aquinas, who was a devotee of Aristotle) believed that cognition happened in the heart and the brain was just a cooling system for it. Or, likewise from Aquinas: “As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active power of the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of a woman comes from defect in the active power.”

Humans have wrong ideas, even ridiculously wrong ideas, as part of being human. I’m positive that I have beliefs that will eventually turn out to be hilariously incorrect.

But I’d like to minimize that, so I… discuss ideas. Even put them to the test against other ideas. And when I find out one’s wrong… I try really hard to revise my ideas.

And assuming, arguendo, that Christian ideas are, in fact, ridiculous and contemptible, pointing that out, especially in the snide and superior manner in which atheists tend to do so, will not endear you to believers.

Daniel Dennett isn’t rude, or snide. The word that often crops up describing him is ‘avuncular’. He’s supposed to be one of the “four horsemen” of the New Atheist movement, which is supposed to be so terribly rude and snide… yet nobody quotes him. Is it possible that people cherry-pick passages from ‘New Atheist’ works and look for the worst possible interpretations? (I provided a Dawkins example above…)

The ‘offensive’ label really is overblown. Consider the billboard message “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone.” All it boils down to is, “atheists exist”. Yet in Cincinnati one had to be moved because the owner of the building it was on got death threats. Or there’s the case of the one-word bus ad, “Atheists”, that was rejected for being ‘offensive’. (From the same bus system that ran “God Bless America” on its scrolling tickers…)

So you’ll forgive me if I think that the idea of the ‘offensive atheist’ is rather overblown and stereotyped.