Atheism changing in the collective unconscious?

This post is slightly less formal and serious as I intended for this blog when I started it, but as I know of no better place to put it, here it is.

For a while now I've had this theory that something big is up with atheism and the atheist community. As in archetypically - or whatever you want to call it. Stirrings in the collective unconscious which are moving this particular reality tunnel in a certain direction.

That direction, I believe, is the realization that being atheist or part of some sort of atheist community does not guarantee that people agree on certain fundamentals, and that in fact these communities are no more immune to schisms and ideological disagreement than any other.

The first big stirring was the furore over the issue of sexism and sexual harrassment within the atheist/skeptical community which started with the so-called 'Elevatorgate' incident. It was innocuous enough at first; Rebecca Watson/Skepchick posted a video where she described an incident in an elevator that she was uncomfortable with and asked guys not to repeat the behaviour she described. I'm not going to go over the details of what followed, but suffice it to say the reaction of many within the community (most notably Richard Dawkins) were less than sympathetic.

The schism that followed, further driven by a similarly heated debate over calls for sexual harrasment policies at atheist/skeptic conventions, eventually led to the establishment of Atheism+, an organization of atheists who are interested in incorporating social justice into their atheist ideology and activism. So, this is definitely a schism of sorts which has even been made offical via the establishment of a formal organization. What's interesting is the reasons that opponents of the whole Atheism+ movement cite for their opposition. Among those is the idea that atheism is being made more like a formal religion than these people can stomach via efforts such as these. The Atheism+ crowd is called cult-like, they are compared with dictators, etc. A distaste of feminism ideology often plays into this, as the critics feel that feminism is much too religious-ish for their taste. Mostly though, they feel that atheism should just be atheism and that any calls for mixing other ideologies into that are steps in the wrong direction.

So, this is what I've been following pretty closely and so therefore today I was not really that surprised over the chaos that's reigning right now in the /r/atheism subreddit on Reddit over some policy changes that were made over there. More specifically it's rule #1 that's upsetting many of the the regular users. The mods' rationale is that they want to '[cut] down on what are essentially karma whoring and cheap content posts'. Now, I can fully understand that this pretty radical change would make people upset, but again what's most interesting here is the nature of the reaction. Again, the rules are sometimes compared to religious dogma, and users feel that /r/atheism should be a free-for-all and essentially have as few rules as possible. Another common accusation is that /r/atheism will unavoidably become 'softer' as a result of the policies and that all the sting will go out of it. Users feel that the meme images they were directly accessible from the front page, which often mock religion quite harshly, had been successful in converting people to atheism and that conventional debate tactics are much less effective in achieving this. The main point of contention (which is hardly a new one; this policy debate is only bringing it out quite explicitly) therefore seems to be whether /r/atheism should be a platform for mocking religon, where anything goes, or whether it should be more civil. Some users even go as far as to accuse the mods of pandering to religion by attempting to downplay the quite vocal criticism of religion that the /r/atheist crowd has gotten used to seeing in the subreddit.

I am of course simplifying both issues somewhat here in the service of getting a big-picture view of what they represent archetypically, but both of these debates largely boil down to morals. Should atheists explicitly incorporate social justice into their atheism? Should they encourage other atheists to do so? Should atheists mock religion openly and be as disrespectful as possible towards it or should they 'tone it down'? Should they even be openly anti-religious at all? These and other issues are all big questions that really cannot be ignored indefinitely by any atheist, and it's quite reasonable that they are being debated. It's also quite reasonable that there should be schisms over them. What's a bit surprising though is how fast this is happening. I expect to see more of this in the near future and I predict further official schisms.

The thing is that being an atheist is not simply just a matter of rejecting all religious claims and then be done with it. The line between religion and ideology is not as sharp as many atheists seem to believe, and every one of us sooner or later has to take a stance on moral and social issues; that's simply a part of being human. I think the world is therefore ready to move a bit away from New Atheism, which is basically nothing more than some highly vocal reactionism against religion, and into a phase where atheism finds it own voice. As a celebrant of human diversity I look forward to hearing that voice and have every reason to believe that it will be a productive addition to the human dialogue.