The Nirmukta Freethought Community

Some of you might have read Jerry Coyne's WEIT post where he posted the "Gnu Atheist" symbol designed by Aratina Cage. Others posted variations of the same, and I loved one of them designed by someone called Sputnik so much, I decided to get a T-shirt printed (the artist said use it in any way, so there shouldn't be any trademark issues). I tried pringoo.com, and here is the result:

   

I quite like it, except I wish they had positioned it a bit higher. Also it's a sticker-thingy, so it probably won't last long. It would be super if there was a way of getting proper quality T-shirts printed of this. Anyone have any ideas?

Looks nice! The first thing that popped into my head when I read Gnu atheist was GNU and Richard Stallman. Now I know that gnu is also an animal.

I think the logo looks nicer on your shirt!

I strongly support the gnu atheists in the aggressive campaign against religion and superstition, and have been following Coyne, Benson and Myers on and off, but I don't very much like the idea of branching the atheist movement off into new identities (which is what is going on here). I like to think of these as different strategies within Freethought. This is a subtle but important distinction.

This distinction doesn't mean much as far as actually confronting believers is concerned, because the different strategies will come into play either way, but it means something as far as maintaining communication between atheists with diverse strategies is concerned, since the tendency here is towards in-group allegiance. This lack of communication makes the entire movement less efficient as far as the common goals are concerned.

The idea of there being gnu atheists is awesome, but the idea that we are dividing ourselves like this is not. As I have written before (1, 2) I believe in pluralism in promoting freethought.

I do not disparage those atheists who strive to create the distinct identities within the atheist/freethought movement, but in light of the diversification of strategies, my role is to maintain communication and act as a conduit between the different groups. I choose to do this because very few atheists are advocating for such political pragmatism in the movement.