You won't find the works of Bertrand Russell packaged like the latest issue of Self or Cosmo, as the publishing company Thomas Nelson does with the Bible.Bertrand Russell is actually one of the most readable writers currently available to speakers of contemporary English. Carl Sagan's prose is also beautiful. So, seriously, why not have a periodical that publishes that kind of stuff? Not something with ATHEIST across the cover, but something focused around scientists and philosophers vaguely aligned with rationalism and humanism and with interesting things to say on all kinds of subjects. You'd have to have people putting it together who really knew their stuff. It's easy to botch the aesthetic for a project like this in a way that gives people an uncomfortable tingling under their skin. With the right people, it could work, though.
Okay, so what does "doing it right" mean? Sadly, I have to single out Center for Inquiry here--not everything they do is horrible, but some of the literature they put out comes off as vaguely outdated in style and vaguely fake. A lot of atheist groups succumb to this. The formula seems to be "trying to put on a polished presentation" + "having no relevant experience" = disaster. If you don't know how to put out a quality product, you're better off putting out something that looks like it was made in a basement/dorm room/etc. Actually, some of the best stuff out there is or at least was originally made in a basement/dorm room/etc. Think Internet Infidels. Think Rational Response Squad. And if you want to know how to actually put good production values to good use, think Daily Show.
I'm randomly throwing down thoughts here, somewhat surprised by the fact that I suddenly managed to fill up a second paragraph for this post. The one other thing that comes to mind: to appeal to teenagers,* be funny. And not "hey, look at me!" funny, but wit funny, humour funny, not taking yourself too seriously funny. When I was a pre-teen/early teen, it was the editorial cartoons that got me started reading op-eds, and the cover cartoon that got me to read Philosophy for Dummies. But then, I was the weird kid at my school. Oh, and take the kids seriously. You can't assume too much starting out, but don't insist on hiding the really cool stuff from them because they're kids. Kids like cool stuff.
That's all I've got for now. But I hope to see the comments threads filled up, hopefully by people who weren't necessarily the weird kids at their school. Sapient, are you reading this? Got any general principles you've derived from your RRS experience?
*I speak from authority, as I was a teenager not too long ago. Oh, sweet reason, was I really a teenager not too long ago? At least I've gotten beyond the "crap, I'm 20" stage of my life.
3 comments:
You do have a cool blog name, sooooooooooo.....
A great many of The Old Testament’s stories come from earlier tales (e.g., Gilgamesh, etc) and the style is, mostly, a direct rip-off of The Egyptian Book Of The Dead.
To learn more of TOT times, view this YouTube film
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7iQRFP_e90
The New Testament, well . . . . . to learn more than enough of TNT’s creation, view this two part YouTube film.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzY2bVsZK5s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sckuqPulRGk
And, as a special Humbug surprise, the hit parody song
“The Little Bummer Boy”
http://www.soundlift.com/band/music.php?song_id=82930
AND, if that ain’t enough, you may join moi’s YGroup
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Tor_Hershman/
May you all have a delightful ‘Someone’s Been Embezzling Oil And Selling It On The Side’ Eightdays, a wonderful Solstice, the happiest possible Humbug and may your Hollowdays be filled with the most joyous of pleasures.
Stay on groovin’ safari,
Tor
"not everything they do is horrible"
You are far too generous. CFI break your rule of taking themselves far too seriously. They are the Church of the Latter Day Humanists, trying to convert everyone to their faith and disparaging us mere Atheists for not joining the singalong.
It depresses me how pompous some Atheists and many Humanists can be. If we are free thinkers we should lighten up.
I would recommend reading New Humanist, the British magazine, which has top writers who are smart enough not to preach.
Good post.
Sweet reason (you seem to use the term a load), you're... apparently a mere twenty-and-a-half and you've already gotten past that?
As I close in on twenty, personally (... I've got seven months), I find the mere idea that I'm going to be Officially Not A Teenager And Over The Hill Of Really Young Adulthood and into the thick of more middling young adulthood exciting, but shit, it's never happened to me before! That's some lollery.
And go former weird kids. I was the epitome of weird. Unfortunately, since you are looking for those who were non-weird, you will simply have to put up with one who was weird. But I've got to weigh in on this.
The problem I find with how we market our beliefs is that we frankly disregard what religions seem to have grasped are basic tenets of utilizing psychological facts to advertise. They have holidays. They have big charity organizations. They have rituals. About the best thing we've got is unofficial Humanist celebrants, secular charities, and that big tacky thing called HumanLight which is admittedly a poor match, popularity-wise among the general population, for the behemoth-ish Christmas, and if I recall well I remember there are generally three principles behind holidays: symbolism, marking of events, and therapeutic help - especially for the winter solstice, everyone's favorite dark day of the year (it helps ward off things such as SAD). This is an instance where Marx's quote about religion being a drug has truth.
We can talk a good storm, but atheism is unfortunately not as ingrained in culture in general. Our beliefs are, actually, widely reflected in more modern times in the sense that, most of the time, many people keep to a secular demeanor because of the plurality and diversity of religions, though their motivation for acting secular is different than ours. It's like how my fellow liberals and social democrats market their ideas - we're the thinking man's set of beliefs, but we talk about this in such a way that our discourse with the religious world turns the non-thinking types off and doesn't incite them to wonder about nonreligiosity. Most people, outside the academic setting and those few wonderful folk outside academia who are also atheists, just plain don't think. This is why people follow folks such as Bush and Huckabee, two people who scare the flying shit out of me (did you hear what Huckabee's son did to that dog? Know the MacDonald triad? Know sociopathy is genetic?).
By the way, I have a big crop of books to foist on you this semester, if you so choose. I think you've read most of these, but here's the books I got:
- The Atheist's Bible
- The Atheist Manifesto
- The Quotable Atheist
- The Portable Atheist
- The Ancestor's Tale
- and our favorite, The God Delusion
I'm curious - what's in your library?
Happy winter solstice, Chris.
-Katharine
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