This is driving me fucking batshit: "I'm an Atheist, but..."

[MindPilot]

That phrase hits me in about the same place as "...why, some of my best friends are colored!"

It invariably crops up with any report of any Atheist outreach message or anytime any Atheist group or individual criticizes religion. There is usually a lot of semantic pretzel-twisting regarding whether or not non-belief is a "belief-system", moving on to how Atheism is then just another religion, or more simply anti-religion. In order to do this, they have to establish a distinction between not believing in god and believing there is not a god.

Case in point is the current discussion in R/T about the FFRF signs.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=7334975&mesg_id=7334975

[immoderate]

1. It's my experience that we outlast them.

Disclaimer: most arguments are about what words mean.

Atheism is not a belief system; it is a result of a belief system. Usually that is some form of rationalism, materialism, or humanism, or a combination.

The people we encounter here have their vocabulary defined by theists, and they are not used to being corrected on the "outside." Here, they can encounter atheists on a level plane. So they get educated.

The "believing not in" vs "believing in not" controversy is something they need to do.

--imm

[MindPilot]

2. I'm amused by the qualification

"I'm a lifelong Atheist, BUT..."

Usually that sort of thing falls under Mindpilot's Basic Rule of Advertising which states that whenever they have to make a big deal about telling you what something is, it probably isn't.

So when someone leads their dissertation on "Fundie Atheists and Parsing Illogical Conclusions" by opening with "I myself am in fact an Atheist non-believer freethinking Humanist and have been for several minutes..." they just lose credibility with me.

Then they just piss me off.

[DavidDvorkin]

3. Sometimes it's followed by

"I think those billboards are offensive, too!"

It reminds me of e-mails I get from people attacking the leftist essays on my Web site. They sometimes start by saying that they're longtime members of the "Democrat" Party, but ...

[laconicsax]

4. The appropriate term is "faitheist."

http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2009/07/17/we-have-a-winner/

[trotsky]

5. You and me both.

The kind of "atheist" that thinks religion is precious and us big bad MILITANT atheists need to just bend over and let them have their way with us.