Posted By Stefan Monsaureus

The Atheist Alliance International has posted a new web site called Atheist Symbol. The purpose of this site is to promote yet another symbol for the freethought community.

This symbol is not the symbol of AAI or of any of its member organizations. It is meant to be a generic symbol of freethought for the world. The symbol shows how atheists fit into our world and are an integral part of it. The “A” is capitalized because we are important. It is attached to the circle (a globe) in the same way we are attached to our world.

This newest entry into the growing collection of freethought icons comes in a variety of colors and styles. It joins the recently released “Scarlet Letter A,” which is part of Richard Dawkins’ Out Campaign,

the symbol of yesterday’s upstart incarnation of freethought known as “The Brights Movement”

and, of course, that venerable standard from American Atheists:

And the point of these symbols declaring one’s lack of belief in some theistic construct? Building a sense of community and shared purpose, I suppose. But, the use of these symbols suffers the same weakness as self-identification as an atheist; it is at best an uninformative statement of the negative, imparting nothing of one’s values or beliefs. Why the compulsion to proclaim this lack of belief?

A preferable approach might be a symbol of rationality, reason or skepticism. Or something whimsical, like the interrobang (a hybrid of a question mark and an exclamation point).