The quiet, nonhostile atheists are not the ones heard about, so this is selection bias. The theists offended probably do meet unjustified hostility from the vocal and hostile atheists, so in this case it’s a very weak sign of being deserving.
In some situations, such as leading a group, if you meet unreasonable hostility or dislike everyone, yes, there is something wrong with that your leading abilities. Labeling assholes as such would be making the fundamental attribution error.
Once you met a few hostile Greens, it is easy to take Greenness (disproportionately) as an evidence for hostility. After all, they are Greens, so they must agree with everything those other Greens said; they are just strategically less open about it.
If your group happens to have a Blue majority at given moment, and you find more people like this, you can organize a Blue takeover of the group by declaring a fight against hostility, and by specifying Greenness (and defending Greens) as one of the symptoms of hostility.
I note that in your description of atheists, “quiet and nonhostile” go hand in hand, as do “vocal and hostile”.
Daniel Dennett is a very vocal atheist, yet I find it ridiculous to consider him a hostile person. Further, one might compare the hostility that atheists show theists to the hostility that theists show atheists for some needed perspective on “hostile atheists”.
I was specifically thinking of the worst group of all, the atheists of r/atheism who are both very vocal and very hostile. For an issue like this, there’s hostile people on either end of the spectrum and being vocal helps makes them more so. A quiet and hostile person isn’t particularly threatening and neither is a vocal and nonhostile person. I was not trying to suggest that being vocal alone makes someone hostile.
It would have been helpful to note up front that your reference population was the “worst group of all”, as it otherwise looked like you were making a very broad generalization.
The quiet, nonhostile atheists are not the ones heard about, so this is selection bias. The theists offended probably do meet unjustified hostility from the vocal and hostile atheists, so in this case it’s a very weak sign of being deserving.
In some situations, such as leading a group, if you meet unreasonable hostility or dislike everyone, yes, there is something wrong with that your leading abilities. Labeling assholes as such would be making the fundamental attribution error.
Once you met a few hostile Greens, it is easy to take Greenness (disproportionately) as an evidence for hostility. After all, they are Greens, so they must agree with everything those other Greens said; they are just strategically less open about it.
If your group happens to have a Blue majority at given moment, and you find more people like this, you can organize a Blue takeover of the group by declaring a fight against hostility, and by specifying Greenness (and defending Greens) as one of the symptoms of hostility.
I note that in your description of atheists, “quiet and nonhostile” go hand in hand, as do “vocal and hostile”.
Daniel Dennett is a very vocal atheist, yet I find it ridiculous to consider him a hostile person. Further, one might compare the hostility that atheists show theists to the hostility that theists show atheists for some needed perspective on “hostile atheists”.
I was specifically thinking of the worst group of all, the atheists of r/atheism who are both very vocal and very hostile. For an issue like this, there’s hostile people on either end of the spectrum and being vocal helps makes them more so. A quiet and hostile person isn’t particularly threatening and neither is a vocal and nonhostile person. I was not trying to suggest that being vocal alone makes someone hostile.
It would have been helpful to note up front that your reference population was the “worst group of all”, as it otherwise looked like you were making a very broad generalization.