Muckmakers Joins The Out Campaign…Everyone Act Surprised

I’ve been reading some really great atheist blogs recently and I couldn’t help but notice that a lot of them have Richard Dawkins’ “Scarlet A” posted on their menus. I’ve known about The Out Campaign for a while, but for some reason I never joined up. As you can see, I’ve corrected this oversight today and placed it on the bottom of our menu. If you’ve been reading Muckmakers, I think you’ll find it fairly obvious that we’re both atheists, so this wasn’t exactly a matter of “coming out” for us. We spend a lot of time pointing out the enemies of freethought, but sometimes it’s good to know who your friends are, too. I guess that’s one of the main goals of The Out Campaign, and it’s nice to be in such good company.

As Dawkins himself admits in his introduction, this sort of thing should also make any atheist nervous. I mean, after all, most of us are atheists because we want to avoid philosophical organizations, not start our own. He compares us to trying to herd stray cats, and that’s certainly an appropriate metaphor – most atheists are people who tend to stray from the crowd as much as possible because they know that crowd mentality can often turn very smart individuals into extremely irrational followers with just the right set of words. A lot of Christians and Muslims are down-to-earth, sane people when they’re by themselves, but when they get swept up into the herd, they’ll often trample without a second thought. But as Richard argues, atheists must put aside their fears and realize that we must come out and speak out for the greater good of our kind…before we’re forced into hiding or wiped out by those who seek to demonize us.

Just after Obama’s inauguration, Fox News did a segment where they discussed if Obama’s mention of non-believers in his inauguration speech was offensive. Actually, that’s being too kind – they just said that people were offended without actually citing any sources or naming any names. Then they had Mike Huckabee on to back them up, who happens to be one of their regular commentators and hosts his own piece of shit show on Fox – way to keep it fair and balanced, assholes. My point in mentioning this is that no one batted an eye – there was no outrage like there was for those “nappy headed hoes.” Nasty, discriminatory, and inflammatory language towards atheists has always been acceptable in this country, and if we don’t start coming out and promoting our positive traits, the media, religions, and politicians will continue to perpetuate these unfounded stereotypes of us and everyday people will continue to accept them as truth. I will take your criticisms and refute them happily, but I will not stand for these blatant smear campaigns, and no other atheist should either.

Ian and I are proud to be atheists, and always have been, so our site, too, will proudly wear the Scarlet A in harmony with our fellow freethinkers. We can accomplish much more together than we can apart, and while society continues to shun us as they did Hester Prynne, it’s really the truth underneath that they’re afraid of.