The Amish and Free Thought: trying to think this through

I cannot help but note a burgeoning and vaguely similar outline today with the free thought movement of rationalist, skeptical, humanist, and atheist. Now within organized atheism there is a movement to split away from the humanist and old order atheist (my term) and form a third wave of atheism. I do not follow the modern atheist movement all that closely. Yes, I know it exists, and I admire more of a few of the active atheist such as Kylie Sturgess. I am not big into the humanism, although I admire some who are active humanist such as Hayley Stevens. Both Sturgess and Steven also happen to be quite accomplished skeptics too as if I have to remind the reader. I agree with the general thought process of both noted groups, and I do not begrudge those who wish to be active in such activities. Neither one is for me.
I see myself as a skeptic. Perhaps not a shining example of skepticism, or a mover and shaker, but scientific skepticism is something that I can get behind. I stipulate there is a large overlap between skeptics, atheist, humanist, feminist, progressive, libertarians and probably other groups too. There are also those who wish to see themselves as just one of the many free thought/rationalist categories that are bandied about these days. I do think good fences do make good neighbors between the above groups, and although a person can belong to more than one of the above groups, it is imperative to know which hat one is wearing at any given time.
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A Happy Kylie Sturgess |
Yet, I also think especially as active atheism might be splitting into a new subcategory, which is a more politically aware variant, to ponder what someone looking in at all this might think. Does it look rational? Does it appear to make sense? Is it welcoming or off putting? The landscape is clearly getting more complex. The line is over used that "free thought folks are like herding cats," but if cats appear too unruly then dogs sure might look like a better bet. I am not advocating that there ought to be maximum leader in charge of the atheist or skeptics to impose order. To be honest, I am not sure what is the solution, but it does bother me that breaking down to smaller and smaller subsets might appear a bit loony to the outside world. I suppose free thought people are just has human as the Anabaptist, and liable to do the same things even thought the world views are at near complete odds . Sure good fences make sense, but when the neighborhood keeps getting subdivided it starts looking weird to outsiders.
Back to the regular material:
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Not Amish |
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