Anti Theism and The Melting Pot [View all]

Anti Theism does seem to be a real thing, despite the efforts of a few to pretend that it doesn't exist. I am reasonably convinced that the vast majority of anti-theists at DU simply want to see religion disappear through the natural process of time. They simply envision a world in which the differences in religion melt away so that all that is left is a generalized agnostic atheism.

It put me in mind of the melting pot theory of racial differences. The phrase first appeared in a play in 1908, where it referred to all of the various Europeon races melding to become a unified white "American" race. This notion, when played out against the background of the First World War and then the Red Scare of the 1920s, lead to humiliating acculturation programs designed to make new immigrants as much like White Anglo-Saxon Protestants as possible.

This criticism that the melting pot produces a society that primarily reflects the dominant culture instead of fusing into a completely new entity is reiterated by other sociologists, anthropologists, and cultural geographers as "Anglo-conformity." This type of assimilation was seen as working like a one-way street and it was viewed as something that depended primarily on the cooperativeness of immigrants to be reoriented towards the dominant culture.

- From "From the Melting Pot to the Tossed Salad Metaphor:Why Coercive Assimilation Lacks the Flavors Americans Crave." by LeAna B. Gloor

Now our anti-theist friends aren't proposing acculturation programs to make us all think like they do; but the end goals are pretty similar. Rather than our current mosiac of various faiths and traditions, we would have one belief system. That seems limiting.

Bryant