I am not a letter

I’ve been wondering what to do with this Scarlet Letter thing. The Big Red A has been chosen (I’m not entirely sure how) by the Richard Dawkins Foundation as a symbol for the Out campaign. The campaign urges all atheists to come out, reach out, speak out, etc etc. Some bloggers are gung-ho for the symbol; P.Z. Myers (who may have set this particular hare running) is all for marking yourself, and is freely allowing people like me to leech the logo from his site. Larry Moran, on the other hand, says that while he does not believe in god, “it seems a bit silly to form a club based only on what you don’t believe in”. And the Freakonomists, while avoiding the symbol issue, wonder who is buying all those “new atheist” titles. In what seems like a brief nod to the God-botherers, Steve Levitt says he’s “surprised that anti-God books are not received with the same yawn that anti-bird books would be”.

So where do I stand? In general, I’m with Larry Moran on this, at least as far as my blog is concerned. Yes, I’m an atheist. And yes, that colours just about everything I write here. So I’ll give the logo a little love, above, and that’ll do. (Self-serving justification for the fact that it would actually be relatively hard permanently to incorporate the logo, or even my beloved Flying Spaghetti Monster, in this particular “design”. Groucho Marx also applies.)

On the other hand, what really, really, really pisses me off about religion is when it gets special treatment, often sanctioned by the state. Why, in the UK, is it legal for a mullah or rabbi to preside over a slaughter that would land anyone else in jail? Why are some religious organisations tax-exempt? Most galling of all, why do otherwise sane people tiptoe around absurd, dangerous ideas and practices because they are “religious”?

That said, I’ll stick with the FSM, on the grounds that mockery is more fun.

Mind you, the T-shirt looks good in black …

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