I received this email from friend of the site, April, who informed me of this brand of atheist centered clothing:

Hi Jacob,

A friend recently forwarded me this link [www.thearrogantatheist.com], I thought it might be loosely related to your recent topics of more atheists being open in public about their lack of belief. I’m not too keen on the use of the word “arrogant,” but if you are going to be smarmy why not go the whole way I suppose. I own an Atheist shirt or two, and I can’t help but think that I’m as obnoxious as those clad in garb covered with that fucking Jesus fish when I wear it, so I usually wear it only among friends, or around the house…but feel conflicted at hiding something so important and personal to me.

What do you think? Where is the line drawn between being open with your atheism and being arrogant with it?

I’ll be honest, April. It’s a bit tough for me to judge, since I’ve seriously been considering selling my own atheist t-shirts in an effort to pay the bills. It’s nice to be able to advertise your atheism to others, but it’s true that most of the time, that shit will just make people get in your face for no damn reason. I will admit, however, that I found these guy’s About Page to be a little bit ridiculous:

First, you speak with your money, and money runs the world. If we can show that there’s a viable atheist market, instantly politicians will work for the atheist vote (affecting policies), media won’t be so obscenely biased against atheists (affecting mindsets), more products will be created to suit atheists (affecting industry), and so on.

I won’t deny money is important, but I’m not entirely sure this line of reasoning makes much sense. It kind of feels like a bit of a hard sell here. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all the years I’ve been doing this atheism thing, is even with loads of fans, it’s really difficult to make any serious waves out there. Just because you sell a few hundred t-shirts doesn’t mean shit in the grand scheme of things. If you want to sell shirts and make money, who am I to stop you? Just don’t pretend you are saving the world here. It’s a fucking t-shirt, after all.