I'm not sure militant is the right word--seems like that would be adopting the nomenclature of the religious. I've never had an atheist knock on my door and try to convert me. I think the term militant comes out because believers sometimes find non-belief threatening in and of itself.
Most religions have, built into them, a meme for spreading (evangelizing) themselves. There is no such meme for atheism to spread itself. The idea is to put atheism on a more equal footing. Being open about atheism counters conformity:
I called it militant because Dawkins has used that himself (http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/richard_dawkins_on_milita...), but it may have been a bit out of context, because he seems to use it with a bit of irony intended (about 5:30 into the video).
On the second point, I agree that atheism doesn't have the same self-spreading mechanisms, but most religious people I know don't make any effort to convert other people either. They see religion as a personal thing, are respectful of other people's religion or non-religion, and do not try to push their belief on others.
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I'm not sure militant is the right word--seems like that would be adopting the nomenclature of the religious. I've never had an atheist knock on my door and try to convert me. I think the term militant comes out because believers sometimes find non-belief threatening in and of itself.
Most religions have, built into them, a meme for spreading (evangelizing) themselves. There is no such meme for atheism to spread itself. The idea is to put atheism on a more equal footing. Being open about atheism counters conformity:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments
I called it militant because Dawkins has used that himself (http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/richard_dawkins_on_milita...), but it may have been a bit out of context, because he seems to use it with a bit of irony intended (about 5:30 into the video).
On the second point, I agree that atheism doesn't have the same self-spreading mechanisms, but most religious people I know don't make any effort to convert other people either. They see religion as a personal thing, are respectful of other people's religion or non-religion, and do not try to push their belief on others.