Knowing there were many atheist bloggers with far more experience and knowledge made me wonder how I could possibly contribute. I finally realized I can contribute because I am new, am exploring the basics and can relate well to new atheists or those exploring atheism.

With that in mind, today I’m exploring my role in the spread of atheism. What got me thinking about this is the often heated debate that goes on among atheists. We have the “leave religion and religious people alone and live your life” camp versus the “religion must be eradicated because it is hurting people and could lead to the destruction of our world” camp. Each of those camps – and shades of grey atheists between them – have ideas about the activities that should/should not be engaged in to promote atheism.

First, Some Definitions

Atheism is non-belief in gods. Atheists can be divided into strong versus weak atheists (see Richard Dawkins 7 point theism-atheism scale for something more thoughtful)

Anti-theism is opposition to belief in the existence of a God, and belief that theism is destructive.

Militant atheism is anti-theism in action – not only being philosophically opposed to theism, but actively involved to end it.

Evangelical atheism is also anti-theism in action. However, its focus is to spread atheism, rather than to end theism (the militant focus).

Atheist Scales

With the definitions above in mind, I created a few scales to help me decide my level of atheistic advocacy. I’ve labelled the left ends with extreme anti-advocacy statements, and the right ends with extreme pro-advocacy statements. Of course, there are imagined points between the ends – the shades of grey many of us will identify with. I like thinking about these as 10 point scales.

I included a strong versus weak atheist scale because I think the others are all somewhat dependent on one’s placement on that scale. Feel free to challenge me on that one – the scale is based on assumption. At any rate, the scales help me sort things out. Let me know what they do for you (if anything!).

Ok, enough talk. Here are the scales (click on the image to enlarge).

Please let me know your thoughts on this. Also, please let me know if I should make this into a survey – it might be neat to measure the responses.

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Edit: I’ve decided to call this my Atheism Advocacy Scale. Click this link to see how I rate myself.