In an earlier post I mentioned the atheistic attempt to eliminate the word "agnostic," and recategorize them as "atheists," was in part an attempt to improve it's public relations and otherwise promote it's agenda (such as the goal of "developing and supporting a healthy, thriving, and respected atheist community in the United States" enunciated by the American Atheists).
That is not the only attempt they've to "invent" words which are designed to portray them in a favorable light. Improved public relations are definitely required, as Nathan Alexander, a co-director of The International Society for Historians of Atheism, Secularism, and Humanism notes below:
Quote:A 2012 Gallup poll, meanwhile, found that only 54 percent of United States citizens would vote for an atheist candidate for president, coming below a Muslim candidate (58 percent), or a gay or lesbian candidate (68 percent).
...into the nineteenth century, negative judgments about atheists, not to mention legal penalties, persisted, so a variety of new terms were introduced with varying success...[One] Another term invented in the nineteenth century ostensibly to avoid the taint of “atheism” was “secularism...During the 1920s and 1930s, another term emerged: “humanism.”...A contemporary example of this kind of rebranding is the term “bright,” coined in 2002 by Paul Geisert, an educator in the United States. Leading atheists Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett quickly championed the term.
As Dawkins explained, a new word to describe atheists should “[l]ike gay,…be positive, warm, cheerful, bright.” (A similar appropriation of language from the LGBT movement is the idea that atheists should “come out of the closet” and declare their views publicly.)
The Atheist Alliance International began a self-reporting global census of atheists and non-religious people in late 2012 and asked, among other things, for individuals’ preferred labels. Of over 250,000 respondents, 63.6 percent said they preferred the term atheist. “Non religious,” “agnostic,” “freethinker,” and “humanist” received about 7 percent each, while “secularist” had less than 2 percent. “Bright” did not even register in the poll.
All of this gets to a broader issue of strategy. Should atheists be struggling to rehabilitate their chosen label or should they be inventing new words, without the negative baggage of “atheist,” to describe their beliefs?
http://opencuny.org/theadvocate/2015/02/25/the-terms-of-unbelief-atheist-by-any-other-name/
When your popularity rating in the U.S. is below that of gays and muslims, you know you've got an "acceptance" problem. Strategic planning is required. "Hey, let's call ourselves Brights!" "I like "freethinkers!" Whatever makes you sound "smart," I guess, eh?
What the atheist lobby may need is just more and more invented words. That will surely put them in power, right?
