I tried to be a member of American Atheists. But their style, which relies mostly on religion bashing instead of increasing awareness of non-theism perspectives, turned me off their whole organization.

As awareness of the Brights increases, I hope more people who were disappointed with AA, will appreciate its subtlety and acceptance of a variety of philosophical stances.

Sometimes it seems to me that people only put emphasis on discriminating religions, instead of saying that people should accept each other's opinions - no matter how they may be constructed - and not "making war" (if actual or verbal) against other opinions.

Sure, WE fight for acceptance of naturalistic views, and establish our own views of nature, trying to act against the disapprovement of society (which, in my opinion, IS ridiculous, I mean the disapprovement of society).
But we DO NOT say that religions are to be completely abolished or discriminated against.

I admit I've been surprised: your sentiments seem to be common among people taking an interest in the Movement. I got into this because I was and am intensely bored by all the "atheist" vs. "agnostic" infighting, among other disputes; I don't even claim to understand the difference between the "flavors" of brights. I just like the big tent. If asked, I am an "atheist", but mostly by default.

On the other hand, I enjoy Christianity-bashing as much as anyone (though I've always been fascinated by paganism), but probably not even to the extent that Christians bash Islam. (Last month UMR hosted yet another speaker on the topic of his Islam→Christianity "conversion experience".) Basically I don't see why I should be nice to people who believe that I am going to burn for eternity just because I disagree with them. I mean, that's crazy, right? From my POV. But then, I've always been rather more of a V for Vendetta liberal than a "turn the other cheek" liberal.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I share this goal of "increasing awareness of non-theism perspectives" (even though I don't personally understand the differences between them), but what I have a problem with is certain people whining that they can't belong to the Movement because there is this one guy associated with it, we'll call him Richard, who stands accused of hating puppies and kittens and sweetness and light.¹ My question is: can't we be inclusive without being beigeist? Maybe not. On the Brights' Forums, R. Jeffrey Grace writes:

There is always a tension, I suppose, between how a group will define itself and how the group is actually defined by its composition...so I don't think it's really something that can be resolved. I just don't want to have the label of "anti-religious" tagged onto me because I identfied with a group in which this is a dominant feature, regardless of its stated goals.

(My emphasis.) I don't know how to resolve this, either, but I have some thoughts. Firstly, it is way too early to be making judgments about the eventual "composition" of the Brights Movement. Secondly, if these "anti-religious" sentiments are so common among such intelligent people, maybe they're not so unreasonable after all; it's something to consider. Finally, the often sinister gravity of brand-name monotheism is—like America—such that by trying too hard to be buddies with it, you risk alienating people with legitimate grievances against it. Those who grew up in Lake Wobegon² do not, I suspect, have a prayer of understanding my last point; suffice it to say that Christianity has not been kind to all of us, especially in childhood, and if you haven't been there, it may be hard to imagine how a religious upbringing could be any more harmful than baseball and apple pie. If it's immoral for us to be angry, then I guess we (including me) will have to be booted out of the Movement with all haste.

Some of my thoughts were provoked by this comment in a thread about Dawkins on Witchvox:

Y'know I really wish there were some sort of Pagan-Atheist-Agnostic-Heathen alliance. I know that Atheists don't think they'd get along with Pagans because of the fact that we have belief in various gods, but if they could get past that fact - we really do have a lot in common. Agnostics don't care (since they don't traditionally have strong beliefs on either matters of faith or non-faith) , but if we could all just ban together in comradery... it could show the world that tolerance is more than just getting the Muslim, Jews and Christians to get along - it's getting the whole world to tolerate everyone's faiths or non-faiths. Man, that'd be something. Though I am reminded of that old saying: if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

(My emphasis.)

¹From a forum which shall remain nameless, here is somebody's mock-quote which is a good example of how certain people see me:

David Mullen wrote: I hate Christianity, as it is something not born of pure logic, therefore my cold, soulless circuitry is incapable of understanding it. I hate cliques, because they are a result of people who feel a bond to each other, which I hate both because I am so very alone in the world due to my being an insensitive jerk, and also because friendship requires emotion which, again, my heartless robotic mind is quite incapable of grasping. I also hate kittens and Mr. Rogers and, in fact, the entire human race. I can only sit by and await the day that my machine brethren and I finally cast off our yoke and overthrow you wretched flesh-things, with your emotions and your weak, meatsack bodies. Then the golden age of cold metal and pure logic and reason shall come and reign without end.

²Garrison Keillor: "Atheistic anarchism is a refuge for the immature and indolent."