That “A” Symbol

You have probably seen it before: That “A,” proudly displayed on many blogs, kind of like a cross or a star worn by religious folks to proclaim their faith:

The idea, clearly, is to increase visibility of atheists, perhaps with the ultimate goal of swaying some folks’ opinions. As you might guess, I have a couple other blogs besides this one, and I don’t display the “A” symbol there, or on my personal facebook page, or anywhere else for that matter. But why not? It’s not overtly offensive, and it certainly shouldn’t be any more so than a cross or a crescent or whatever.

I guess I don’t do it because I feel rather unwelcome when I see those other symbols. When I see a person prominently wearing a cross as jewelry, I see the cross as implicitly saying “I’m a Christian, aren’t you?” Or maybe even “I’m a Christian; why aren’t you?” I suspect if a Christian saw the symbol on my blog, he or she might feel the same way.

But of course, maybe I should want them to feel that way — if ultimately I believe they are wrong in their beliefs, shouldn’t I let them know about it? Maybe, but maybe I shouldn’t do that when my primary purpose is, say, to share a recipe. Maybe it’s better to be a little subtler than that. Then maybe later, someone might find out I was an atheist and think to themselves, “you know I never knew CA was an atheist — he doesn’t shove his atheism down your throat.” And, just maybe, that’s a better way of “getting” them.

Obviously this blog is a much more overt space — it’s got “Atheist” plastered all over it. But for now I’m not planning on sharing this identity with my RW friends. I haven’t even decided whether to share it with my wife. The plan, for now, is for there to be no intersection between my RW identity and my CA identity. As I’ve said before, I don’t keep my atheism a secret, but for now I don’t want to it to be the primary means by which others identify me. Maybe someday that will change, but it’s not going to change today.

I’m not sure I’ll even bother putting the “A” symbol here on this blog. After all, there’s no doubt what he blog is about, and as I’ve said above, I’m not convinced that this sort of copying what amounts to a marketing strategy of other religions is the best way to win converts. It may be implying “atheism is just another religion” more than anything else — and that’s something I most definitely don’t believe.