Over the weekend dprjones came out with a new video that quite honestly got on my nerves. While it was created to promote a cause that I 100% support and am contributing to, I found it entirely unneccessary in its presentation.
Well, I was going to show it here, but he seems to have taken it down as I cannot find it anywhere on his channel. Well, the title of the video was "Atheism +?? Atheism -?? I don't care!" I suppose I can't totally bash it now that there is no objective proof of its existence or way to objectively decide whether or not I'm exaggerated in my reaction or misinterpreted it, but I still want to bring this up because I had found it to be a perfect example of an argument that I encounter quite often.
The basic sense that I got out of it was "I don't get this Atheism+ movement, but who cares about stupid semantics! I have more important things to worry about like suffering! Look at all the pictures of the poor sick African children!" Well pat yourself on the goddamned back dpr. It was a video promoting the MSF charity event, which as I said before I think is great and I am contributing to it, but it was also an unnecessary dig at a movement whose values, ironically, line up very well with the MSF charity event, not to mention that some of the participants of the event listed in his video are part of Atheism+.
Shitting on something that you haven't bothered to look into or research aside, this argument is one that really gets under my skin and one that I have been confronted with often. Suffering animals in sub-par shelters and puppy farms? Who cares! Don't you know there are people who suffer? Drunk college girls getting raped? Who cares! I'm much more interested in stopping child rape! Innocent people put to death by the death penalty? Who cares! I only care about really important things, like genocide!
Well I can't speak for the rest of you, but I can speak for myself, and my question is this: why the fuck do you always insist that I have to pick one issue, just one thing, to care about or to think is important enough to speak out about? I don't know about you, but I retain the (rare?) ability to care about a variety different things, without having to artificially squash them onto one ultimate ladder of importance and picking only the one that occupies the top rung.
This is what I care about: science education and real science as opposed to pseudoscience, equality for all people regardless of race, gender identidy, socioeconomic status or sexual orientation, feminism, gay marriage and other LGBTQ issues. Oh, all of those things are included under Atheism+? Well sign me the fuck up, it seems as though it's values are also mine.
I also care about democracy and freedom to choose your government, free speech, free elections, animal rights, human rights, war and persecution, bringing affordable health care, food and clean water and education to everyone regardless of what circumstances they happen to be born in, literacy, slavery, child abuse, oppression and freedom from as well as of religion.
I understand that some of those things may not be "as" important as others, and if I really had to choose one there are some that I would more easily discard. But ultimately the question is, why should I have to?
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