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Of course, #NotAllAtheists are prone to this sort of dickishness, and some are annoyed that some of the New Atheists' hijinks give nonbelief a bad name.Chris Stedman, the executive director of the Yale Humanists and an interfaith activist, is one of those atheists. When he attended his first atheism conference in 2010, he was shocked when his fellow attendees put on a sketch making fun of burkas."I think the idea behind the performance was supposed to be a parody and critique of practices that oppress women, but it just made them the butt of the joke, " Stedman told me. "The jeers, the laughs, the mocking comments… oof."He thinks that kind of behavior is insidious and that it's ridiculous to deny that there's no connection between the murders and the rhetoric. "Obviously we don't know what [Hicks's] motive was, but if you're not taking seriously that there isn't something going on here, I think you're absolutely in denial about it," Stedman said. "I think this is should be used as an opportunity for atheists to reflect on how what is intended to be criticism of ideas can become attacks on people."Alas, criminal individual killers exist. But there's only 1 ideology now that preaches the legal killing of dissenters. And it isn't atheism
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins)February 11, 2015
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