Talk:Militant atheism

Discussions on this page may escalate into heated debate. Please try to keep a cool head when commenting here. See also: Wikipedia:Etiquette.

Redirect to New Atheism

This page should not have redirected to the League of Militant Atheists, a specific organization in a specific country. Militant atheism is far more widely applicable than to this single entity. Further, associating modern militant atheism, which is nothing more than New Atheism, with the Soviet Union can send the wrong message to believers or others who oppose atheists. I suggest keeping this redirect or making Militant Atheism a disambiguation page, offering New Atheism, Antitheism, the League of Militant Atheists. and perhaps other pages as links.

Requested Redirect

Militant atheism → New Atheism – Inappropriate redirect. Lagoy (talk) 09:51, 2 June 2013 (UTC) I'm not sure if I filed this right. I'm new at this. But I believe it is inappropriate and biased to redirect the page "Militant Atheism," a page with a title about a general concept, to a specific organization in Soviet Russia (i.e., the League of Militant Atheists). That has the potential to put militant atheists in a bad light, given the crimes of the Soviet Union. The Soviet League of Militant Atheists is fundamentally irrelevant to modern militant atheists. A more appropriate redirect is to the page New Atheism, since that's what militant atheism actually is. Lagoy (talk) 09:51, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

• Probably not a good idea.This page was previously an essay about "militant atheism" which criticised "new atheism" through extensive misuse of sources, synthesis, original research, sockpuppetry &c. The community finally prevailed and got rid of it. Militant atheism and new atheism are not the same thing; although readers of conservapedia may be forgiven for thinking otherwise as a copy of the essay is still there. Redirecting this page to that target is restoring the original problem, in part. We already discussed this redirect. bobrayner (talk) 13:32, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose for the same reasons this redirect was done away with in the first place. bd2412 T 14:14, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
  • So it's best to keep a biased and inappropriate redirect? Why not just delete the page? Or, create a disambiguation page linking to antitheism, new atheism, and this Soviet organization? Not understanding the "logic" here. As a militant atheist, from my perspective and everyone I've ever met, "militant atheism" when used by atheists is new atheism. Richard Dawkins also uses "militant atheism" in this regard. (Lagoy (talk) 16:50, 2 June 2013 (UTC))
    • Color me doubtful that you are in fact a militant atheist, or even a Dawkinsian New Atheist, which is what you are apparently discussing. You might be surprised to find that Dawkins does not use the term "militant atheism" in the manner you suggest in his New Encyclopedia of Unbelief. It has three instances of the term "militant atheism"—pages 484, 485 and 623—but in each case he is discussing Soviet practices, especially Leninism. In this book, Dawkins sometimes discusses avowed atheists such as Jean Meslier and Baron d'Holbach (these guys are from the 18th century, not at all "new" atheists), and in these cases he sometimes chooses to use the word "militant" as an adjective, meaning "strongly atheistic" or "vocally atheistic." So basically, Dawkins uses the term "militant atheist" to refer to a deadly dangerous form of Soviet atheism, or as mild emphasis for an avowed atheist. We are not going to host an article about atheists who are more firmly in command of their stance. If we were, we might as well call it Firm atheists or Avowed atheists. Binksternet (talk) 00:27, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
      • Funny, then, that he uses "militant atheism" in exactly the same sense I am using it in his February 2002 TED talk, encouraging the audience to pursue "militant atheism." I don't think he's encouraging the people at TED to become Stalinists, but maybe I have Dawkins all wrong. Maybe you're right, and maybe Dawkins is really a Russian spy. *sarcasm* I should probably also tell you that the "New Encyclopedia of Unbelief" was edited by Tom Flynn, with the foreward by Dawkins. It is not listed in the Richard Dawkins bibliography as such. In any case, I'll concede this point. I'm done with this childish site and its ignorant editors. There's a reason so few academics still take Wikipedia seriously. (Lagoy (talk) 04:42, 3 June 2013 (UTC))
• Strongly oppose: Consensus was pretty clear in the AfD. It's just an invitation to POV pushing, coatracking and endless bickering. Our time and peace of mind is worth more than that. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 17:03, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
• Strong oppose. "New Atheism" is not the same as militant atheism. Binksternet (talk) 17:18, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose for the reasons indicated on my talk page to the proposer, and the concerns brought up in the last discussion. The two terms are distinct, and where they overlap it is at best a disparaging label, and at worst intended to mislead. This page used to fall into the latter category, and I think we need to steer very clear of that going forward.   — Jess· Δ♥ 18:47, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose. I agree with all of the reasons to oppose this, given above, and I cannot think of further reasons to add. It's a real bad idea. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:10, 2 June 2013 (UTC)