Toto

<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/17/national/17BELI.html" target="_blank">A Turf Battle Between Non-Believers</a>

Is it all good publicity as long as they spell your name right? I hope so.

I just wish the story of the Godless March were not part of what appears to be a three part religious nut column: Part I, Secular Humanists fight with American Atheist over how godless Satanists are. Part II, The Unitarian Universalists for Polyamory Awareness, which seems designed to give conniptions to groups like Focus on the Family. Part III, sandals that leave footprints saying Jesus Loves You in the sand, designed by a clinical psychologist who is a member of a gay and lesbian-friendly fundamentalist church. (No explanation.)

I just imagine the urban New York apatheist reading this, chuckling over all those religious nuts, and walking away feeling smugly superior to the whole group of lunatic fringe oddballs.

Krieger

That angers me that the Council would take something like that to the press. Unless they wanted the entire country to know about it.

At least the Satanic Convenire said that they would not arrive in Washington "waving pentagrams and other occult paraphernalia" ...

Sigh.

Can't people just work together for a common cause without all the bickering?!?!

Grr...

Alonzo Fyfe

The people who typically use this cliche typically do "hope so," but of course it is a vain hope.

If you are in the business of offending people -- like shock-jocks on the radio or the creators of South Park, then it might be true.

But for the rest of us, of course, bad publicity is bad. You will suffer for it. And that is just how the real world works.

jayh

I can see the council's point and I'm surprised that AA would support them. I constantly come against Christians who assume we atheists are Satanists, they seem to have no concept of the fact that no god means NO god.

Shall we include (as official members) groups espousing other kinds of unconventional supernatural religious belief systems in the Godless March: native Americans, new agers, Wiccans??

Maybe the country should know about it. I am tired of people confusing "atheist" with "non Judeo Christian".

Now there may be members of these groups who don't consider themselves theists, and they are welcome to join us. But official supporting groups should indeed be 'godless'

Jay

RichardMorey

You can be a Satanist without believing in God, or Satan, for that matter. Satanism (at least, as LaVey described it) is hedonism : do what you like, and don't be a hypocrite about it.

I think it is stupid myself, (after all, who needs all the neopagan stuff?) but if it really is a GODLESS march, why shouldn't they be allowed?

Here we come back to the main issue: It really isn't our fault. It's the stupid fundamentalists who think that atheism is satanism. It isn't the satanist's fault either.

It sucks about the bad press, but they're going to find ways of demonizing (pun not intended) us anyway. We just need to educate, educate, educate.

excreationist

RichardMorey:
You can be a Satanist without believing in God, or Satan, for that matter.

Yeah, but the general public would probably think that "Satanist" means "devil worshipper". I don't think it is worth trying the educate the public about different kinds of Satanism. Anyway, to be a Satanist means to choose to associate yourself with Christianity's enemy figure - the devil. (Since "Satan" is part of the word "Satanist")

[ August 17, 2002: Message edited by: excreationist ]</p>

copernicus

I agree with excreationist. It seems that there is a mixed message in this march. Is it supposed to help secure equal rights for those who lack belief or is it supposed to demonstrate opposition to religion? I can support the former, but not the latter. I would rather march with christians who support secularism than with satanists. I agree that satanists may just be hedonists who believe in promoting their ideas through shock tactics, but they are latching onto the larger nontheist community to publicize their own agenda. And that suits the interests of the press and others who have a pro-religious agenda. It obscures the real message.

Alonzo Fyfe

If one seeks to communicate an idea, it would be irrational -- given an opportunity to speak -- to hook up a sound system that garbled one's words to the point that nobody could understand them or, worse, ran them through a translator that caused the message coming out to be different from the intended message of the speaker.

I am not talking about deceptive "spin" here. I am talking about clear communication.

Complaints of the form, "People are not going to understand that," or "People are going to make a mistake and think you are talking about this instead," are perfectly legitimate reasons for reworking a (form of) speech and altering it in order to make the meaning clearer.

And, yes, we can sit and say that "it is not our fault -- everything we said was true. It is the listener's fault for refusing to understand what we were saying."

But if we select a form of communication that we know in advance is likely to be misunderstood and misinterpreted, then we are not entirely blameless for the misunderstanding and misinterpretation that results.

Just as, if I knew that my brother was a pedophile, but sent my daughter to stay with him for a few weeks, I am not directly responsible for the molestation, but I am not guiltless when it comes to creating a situation that allowed the crime to take place.

If we know that miscommunication is the likely results of our choices, and we go with those choices anyway, we cannot hold ourselves blameless for that communication.

RichardMorey

"Satanic atheists" get their rights trampled on as much as normal atheists. Satanists, I think, had a legitimate reason to be there, and it would be as unfair to exclude them as it would be to exclude gay atheists because we are afraid that fundamentalists would (and they DO) associate atheism with "immorality."

I won't be there, so I won't know what attitude was taken by those that will be there, but I don't think that one should assume that the satanists will take the latter attitude just because they're satanists. Normal Atheists can be just as obnoxious when they want to.

[ August 17, 2002: Message edited by: RichardMorey ]</p>

jayh

I'm not sure what a Satanic atheist is. How can someone who believes in 'Satan' be an atheist (since Satan is a Christian concept, it seems dependent on Christianity in a sense for it's existence).
<strong> This is a bit different. There is no incompatibility between being gay and being atheist. My objection has nothing to do with any perception of 'immorality'. To believe in Satan is to believe in supernatural, it is a religion.

Now if certain individuals who are Satanists do consider themselves atheists as well, that's fine and they're welcome,

jay