Atheism

Thank you.

I'm not blind to the futility of image sculpting for something as broad as a perceived world view. Religious folks tend to have quite a negative view of atheists due in part to a misunderstanding what what the position means. It benefits nobody within their echo chambers to correct the record, even if they know better. In fact if anything it's advantageous to the power structure for would-be clerics to allow their followers to persist in any opinion that gives strength to their own positions, even if the opinion is based on a faulty premise.

It doesn't help that antitheism and atheism tend to be commingled and convoluted in most peoples' minds, particularly those of the superstitious, and their experiences aren't always curated to prevent that from happening. My position is that those who malign atheists - as if our rejection of a premise equates to an agenda somehow - need to be shown that atheism doesn't care what anyone thinks. It doesn't have the capacity to care about anything.

While membership builds up and conversations are slow to start, I've been aggregating links to news that I imagine is highly relevant to anyone for whom atheism is more than a passing reality. For some of us, we dread out children building a future based on superstition and deceit, and for that foundation to be built by those who would derive profit and power through the ignorance of the governed. That's why a considerable amount, if not a majority of the links I post seem to have a political flavor to them.

My posts aren't intentionally political any more than a subreddit based on backyard lawn grass varieties can be said to overwhelmingly prefer the color green. Cult superstition is used to shape our modern zeitgeist and is particularly relevant to any conversation around dominant world religions, what they're based on, and the harm they cause. Politics manifest in this, and I can't control that.

I know this is a lot of text in response to a simple sentiment but I feel as if I'm getting somewhere and needed a little prodding as an excuse to say it.

Respectful discourse, as you put it, begins with the parties involved agreeing on some fundamental premises, and chief among them in this case is that Fediverse communities are unconscious, not self-aware, and incapable of manifesting an agenda. Further, atheism isn't a movement. Nobody can claim to speak for anyone else on the topic beyond what it literally means. This isn't a congregation. As long as religious folks aren't popping up in the comments proselytizing, there's no problem, and I don't want them to come in expecting any of that from us either.

It's unusual for a Roman emperor to be considered a god before death. Caligula tried that and it was a disaster. But even Constantine was deified after his death, despite his conversion.

As for the sincerity of Constantine's conversion, the previous generation of scholars, people like Aldofi, MacMullen, and Barnes, tended to take it pretty seriously. Hal Drake in 2002 (relatively recent in terms of ancient scholarship) thought Constantine took a much more politic view of Christianity and indeed was making political choices rather than choices of religious conviction. His student Digeser, who was my diss advisor, has her own book coming out in which she argues that Constantine is coopting Christian rhetoric as well as the power structure of the Church to secure his own policies and positions. But I don't know when that book will be published.