Anyway, for those of you who are atheist: do you agree there's a racist subtext to a lot of atheist discussion? Sam Harris (a moderately well known author) is certainly quite annoyingly bigoted against muslims.
Can I ask what the first sentence has to do with the second?
If you mean (using your example as a clue) that a lot of atheist discussion shows intolerance towards religious groups, I would say "Yes" and probably also "Duh", since atheism obviously opposes all religions.
If you mean that atheist discussion tends to show racism, i.e. a belief in the inherent superiority or inferiority of groups of people with certain similar genetic characteristics, then I would say "Not in what I've read; they tend to focus on cultural differences and ignore superficial biological differences."
If you mean that atheist discussion tends to betray a sense of cultural superiority, I would agree, but I don't really have a problem with that. The actions of an individual can be judged according to a code of ethics, and by extension, a society can be judged on the basis of whether it promotes cultural practices that are considered ethically wrong. This only becomes a problem when it is presented as an objective truth rather than a subjective judgement.
However, there are huge mental links between race, culture and religion. "Arabic" is not the same as "Islamic", nor is it the same as "of middle-Eastern descent", but people often use the terms interchangeably. Race as a concept is firmly entrenched in the human psyche, and the tendency to bundle race, culture and religion into a single package (along with a whole bunch of negative traits to create a stereotype) or at least to confuse the three by using limited terminology, is a major problem when discussing these issues. Of course, it's also a very natural tendency, promoted over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution... but overriding instinctual behaviour in situations where it isn't useful is what intelligence is for.
no subject
Can I ask what the first sentence has to do with the second?
If you mean (using your example as a clue) that a lot of atheist discussion shows intolerance towards religious groups, I would say "Yes" and probably also "Duh", since atheism obviously opposes all religions.
If you mean that atheist discussion tends to show racism, i.e. a belief in the inherent superiority or inferiority of groups of people with certain similar genetic characteristics, then I would say "Not in what I've read; they tend to focus on cultural differences and ignore superficial biological differences."
If you mean that atheist discussion tends to betray a sense of cultural superiority, I would agree, but I don't really have a problem with that. The actions of an individual can be judged according to a code of ethics, and by extension, a society can be judged on the basis of whether it promotes cultural practices that are considered ethically wrong. This only becomes a problem when it is presented as an objective truth rather than a subjective judgement.
However, there are huge mental links between race, culture and religion. "Arabic" is not the same as "Islamic", nor is it the same as "of middle-Eastern descent", but people often use the terms interchangeably. Race as a concept is firmly entrenched in the human psyche, and the tendency to bundle race, culture and religion into a single package (along with a whole bunch of negative traits to create a stereotype) or at least to confuse the three by using limited terminology, is a major problem when discussing these issues. Of course, it's also a very natural tendency, promoted over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution... but overriding instinctual behaviour in situations where it isn't useful is what intelligence is for.