Third Wave Atheism or The New Skepticism?
August 20, 2012
By: Shaun McGonigal
couple of days ago (I've been moving and such), Jen wrote this post on her blog about how the atheist community has been a "boy's club" and how we need to help progress towards a "third wave" of atheism. The key part is this:
I dont want good causes like secularism and skepticism to die because theyre infested with people who see issues of equality as mission drift. I want Deep Rifts. I want to be able to truthfully say that I feel safe in this movement. I want the misogynists, racists, homophobes, transphobes, and downright trolls out of the movement for the same reason I wouldnt invite them over for dinner or to play Mario Kart: because theyre not good people. We throw up billboards claiming were Good Without God, but how are we proving that as a movement? Litter clean-ups and blood drives can only say so much when youre simultaneously threatening your fellow activists with rape and death.
Its time for a new wave of atheism, just like there were different waves of feminism. Id argue that its already happened before. The first wave of atheism were the traditional philosophers, freethinkers, and academics. Then came the second wave of New Atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens, whose trademark was their unabashed public criticism of religion. Now its time for a third wave a wave that isnt just a bunch of middle-class, white, cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied men patting themselves on the back for debunking homeopathy for the 983258th time or thinking up yet another great zinger to use against Young Earth Creationists. Its time for a wave that cares about how religion affects everyone and that applies skepticism to everything, including social issues like sexism, racism, politics, poverty, and crime. We can criticize religion and irrational thinking just as unabashedly and just as publicly, but we need to stop exempting ourselves from that criticism.
Yes, I agree. Also, see Jen's follow-up post. We, in the blogosphere have been talking a lot about "new" (or "gnu"
atheism, but in the same way that a Jr. leads to a III, we can have the future of the skeptic/atheist movement be a third wave where we include all of the various effects that religion, theological thinking, and non-skepticism generally affects our lives.
https://www.examiner.com/article/third-wave-atheism-or-the-new-skepticism?cid=rss