Another atheist’s experience on an atheist community has echoed my own experience with an online Australian atheist forum. Mano Singham recently posted Well, that was interesting!
PZ at Pharyngula recently alerted me to what happened to Chrys Stevenson when she pointed out to the people on a Facebook group that is called Atheist Safehouse that claims to have 42,4114 members that their page featured a montage of eight atheists, all of whom were male and only one was non-white.
She suggested that they might want to make the image a little more inclusive. She promptly got banned from the group because apparently raising the issue of the photo alone is sufficient to get you banned!
. . . . .
But then a moderator from Atheist Safehouse named Brad Hoschar chimed in and said that the reason Chrys got banned was not because she raised the topic of the photo but because (I kid you not) she did not speak politely!
That’s my own emphasis there. It echoes my brief experience on AFA, the Atheist Foundations of Australia forum. I have not yet been banned (though I have not revisited the site for some weeks to know for sure) but it was obvious that moderators and others there were seizing on every word of mine to twist in a way to represent me as a homophobic(!) arrogant, bullying, pig-headed intruder who had the gall to not politely accept their abuse over my attempt to point out the logical flaws in arguments in support of the historicity of Jesus. They clearly wanted me off their site.
Why are atheist communities like that?