Renaissance Humanism was essentially the idea that citizens get a liberal arts education in order to become ‘good citizens’. These humanists rejected the ignorance that the church of the time promoted. That doesn’t mean they rejected religion.

This led to people reading the classics (including the bible). You can certainly draw a line between this and secular humanism, but you could also trace the history this way:

Renaissance Humanism
Protestant Reformation
Secularism (result of religious wars of PR)
Christian Fundamentalism

Secular Humanism is just one result, not the only result of this historical process.

Even if you mean ‘leads to’ ahistorically, as in deductive logic, you’d have a hard time. Humanism and even modern science has no real problem with a Deistic god. So while it may seem a good logical leap to you, there is no logical imperative to jettison such a god.

Just because it seems reasonable to you, doesn’t mean it is strictly logical.

The atheist movement is an old boys club? Give me a break. How anyone can say this atheism+ movement is not divisive have got to be kidding me:

I want Deep Rifts. I want to be able to truthfully say that I feel safe in this movement. I want the misogynists, racists, homophobes, transphobes, and downright trolls out of the movement for the same reason I wouldn’t invite them over for dinner or to play Mario Kart: because they’re not good people.

Really? The atheist movement has such a huge problem with misogyny, racism, homophobia and transphobia that you want to cause “huge rifts”? Ridiculous.

“Atheists (vanilla atheists) have no right to demand a seat at a discussion about ethics and morality, because “atheism” (vanilla atheism) doesn’t encompass those things”
Being a member of a society gives you the seat at the table, you can do it as a humanist if that reflects you concerns.

No, it really doesn’t. Otherwise any random crank off the street can claim a seat at serious discussions about social policy.

The point of movements and organizations is that they represent a view that a sizable group has, not just one or two people on the fringes. And the point of “Atheism+” is that it has a coherent view, agreed upon by everyone who wears the label, where “atheism” does not.

My concern really is that when theists read about atheism+ they will not see the + (human perception being what it is) and any discussion with them will end up having to deal with atheism as a religion first.

A silly concern. If they don’t “see” the plus, point it out. If they can’t grasp the simple fact that “Atheism[something]” is not the same thing as “atheism”, point out that that must also mean that they think “Christian atheist” means the same thing as “Christian”, so congratulate them on becoming atheists. (Substitute the “Christian” in “Christian atheism” with whatever their religion is, because there are “X atheists” for every religion “X“.) And if they’re too stupid to understand even that, then what’s the point in trying to talk with them?

All you’d have to do, when someone brings up something to do with “Atheism+” and tries to conflate it with “atheism” is say, “that’s not atheism, that’s Atheism+; that’s something else, and I’m not part of that.” And if they persist in conflating Atheism+ with atheism – then, for example, if they’re Christian – you start conflating the Westboro Baptist Church’s version of Christianity with theirs. If they’re not Christian, there’s no shortage of whackjob religious groups in ever flavour of religion, so just find one that works.

Just trying to avoid confusion, how about Atheists for Social Justice?

That implies that the “atheism” and the “social justice” are two different things. The point of “Atheism+” is that it’s all just one worldview, like “Humanism”, that covers atheism and social justice; the “social justice” part is not an afterthought, it’s a part of the package.

That isn’t just for the egos of the “Atheism+ers”, either. The whole idea – as with Humanism – is that the fundamental basis of it all is reason, and out of that springs both atheism and social justice (along with all the other things the Atheism+ label implies, like a pro-science outlook). You can’t separate the atheism from the social justice. If you say “i like the social justice; don’t think much of the atheism”, the retort is that they’re both results of the same thought process. The social justice doesn’t just pop out of existence ex nihilo, it comes from the foundations of reason, just as the atheism does (and the pro-science leanings, and so on). If you’re going to take their social justice positions seriously – which i imagine the “Atheism+ers” will demand – then you automatically give recognition to the atheism, too.

Which, frankly, does a world of good for all atheists, because part of our problem right now is that we’re being ignored, disdained, and not taken seriously. How many times have we read about panels on the role of faith in society where not a single atheist was invited, despite the fact that we make up around three times the amount of Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Muslims and Sikhs combined (in Canada)? Atheism+ can get us seats on these important panels by virtue of having a coherent, unified message, and once atheists are on the main stage, if you want to say you’re against something the “Atheism+ers” are for, you will at least be telling people that care.

But as for the second bit, about Atheism+ being a “religion”, that’s just slander – it’s not true, and it’s based entirely on a combination of ignorance and malice. Does anyone really believe that every single positive worldview (as opposed to a negative one, like “vanilla atheism”, which, by itself, has nothing to add to the conversation except that some people don’t believe in gods) is a religion? Of course not. Every view has its “religious” proponents – some more than others – but unless the view itself is based on some combination faith, mysticism and revelation, then the view itself is not religious. Atheism+ is not religious, no matter how much name-calling you try to get it interpreted that way. There may be some zealots in the movement, but that’s true for “vanilla atheism” as well. If you’re as much as a rationalist as i believe you’d like to pretend to be, you should be interpreting the actual position of Atheism+ to determine whether or not it’s religious in nature – not simply calling it offensive names because you don’t like it – and if you find something in there that’s religious, i’m sure we’d all like to know. But i fail to see how “we stand for reason, which leads us to doubt the existence of god at the same time it leads us to believe in social justice issues” is religious in nature. (And if it is, then i would have to ask when “Canadian Atheist” became a religious site, because looking back just a in the last month’s archive, i see posts dedicated to social justice issues, such as the incarceration of Pussy Riot, and other posts devoted other non-atheistic topics like Harris’s book Lying and a couple posts about CfI – an organization interested in far more than just atheism – and space exploration and study.)

There are many atheists who don’t like the world Humanism because of it’s religious origins. I tend to think that is silly, since atheism is as well, if more in the pejorative sense.