Freethoughtblogs goes free-of-thought

[tangaroa]

How did I miss this? Several atheist bloggers who I used to highly respect have formed a closed-minded clique called Atheism Plus, which means Atheism Plus Stalinism. Their goal is to kick out all free thinkers from atheist social networks, online and offline, until everyone who is left obediently follows orders. Mix in some vague talk about social justice and feminism, but actual adherence to these values does not matter as much as never dissenting. Disagree, and out you go.

This all stems from an incident when a guy at an atheist convention was chatting up a girl and asked her to bed, she said no, and that was the end of it. The clique agreed that this means that the average atheist hates women, that anybody criticising this line of reasoning also hates women, that the atheist threat to women needs to be highlighted, that anybody asking what the hell threat they're talking about hates women, and that anybody blaming this fearmongering on the 50% drop in female attendance at the next convention also hates women. Freethought Kampala provides a long and rather critical runthrough (and addendum). The process reached a point of absurdity when a feminist wearing a T-shirt with an actual feminist message was denounced as hateful to women for being off-script.

For what little it's worth, The Atheism Plus clique defends their actions as necessary to "bring more gender diversity to our communities" and to stand against the "terrible harassment" and "attempts to shout down, bully and intimidate" -- people disagreeing with them -- by assigning awful motives to these people and pressuring "the leaders of the top atheist/secular organizations" to expel them from atheist organizations.

As an interesting side note, thunderf00t alleges pressure from the Atheism Plus clique to avoid condemning Islam. I have observed that it is quite common for atheists to be openly bigoted against all religions and religious people in general. Why the special protection for Muslims?

Somebody with way too much time on their hands created a Freethoughtblogs parody site, parts of which actually are offensive to women, probably intentionally.

Atheists who still have brains can be found at Skeptic Ink.