Condell gets kind of schizophrenic on the subject. Sometimes, he seems to be expressing his general distate for Islam as a religion, and other times he seems to be arguing that the Burlington Coat Factory Mosque is a "triumphalist gesture" from a malicious group. While he obviously believes both of these to be true, it's not fair to fall back on one argument when the other looks weak.
Anyways, I've never heard of the Amazing Atheist before today. He's a YouTube guy, and pumping him up as some sort of Super-Atheist is just weird. Condell's got some legitimate fame outside of Youtube.
In any case, Condell's arguments are just weird from my point of view. Considering how many atheist billboards get vandalized, I don't think it's really a smart idea for non-religious people to start taking pot-shots at the 1st amendment rights of other. minorities.
Well, that's only one quote from Pat Condell. I think it should be best, before anything, to look at all four videos -- even thunderf00t's videos -- before making final opinions. As for TheAmazingAtheist, I only based their greatness on their subscriber count or audience in my opening post, but I think that he is about equal to Pat Condell in popularity and recognition in the atheistic community. He has surpassed Pat Condell on Youtube by subscriber count, but he also, like Pat Condell, does some out of Youtube projects such as charities, and, more recently, he had campaigned for donations to the recent oil spill in the gulf.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO_umb4g8yo
And, as stated beforehand in my personal views, TheAmazingAtheist has also expanded out of the atheist community into the political community with his libertarian-liberal ideals. I mean, that's something right there -- he switches between his libertarian and liberal audience all the time. TheAmazingAtheist, as an essentially professed Communist or at least a Socialist, ironically enough, was the one who got me to become a libertarian in the first place, by attacking libertarians on Capitalistic idealism, but the person he attacks, particularly the libertarians, which he was when I first started watching him in 2006, end up providing stronger arguments than he does, and I then eventually become a fan of those libertarians. I mean, sometimes I think he just uses reverse psychology. He also advocates strongly against Feminism, and he even embarrassed a woman so much that she had to close her account right there and then. Many of the people he attacks also complain that his atheist fans go out and just spam, flag, rate down, and just try to destroy the person he disagreed because of their loyalty to TheAmazingAtheist.
He also just recently made some guy he liked, with only around 30 subscribers, into an internet celebrity like him with around 24,000 subscribers now. So, quite frankly, I'm ambivalent about TheAmazingAtheist. I disagree and agree with him on many of his views, but I do observe that he has this subtle power that can either ruin another Youtuber or bring him or her to fame. I mean, this is one of the people he attacked, and this is his reaction after all the heated exchanges. He only had a few subscribers before then:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVNkO-T_f6Y
You may percieve me as an envious fellow, but I think I rather stand by my convictions before any one assume I am a hater for this guy on youtube - I just find his stuff watered-down and banal. I just wish that upcoming atheists- or atheist individuals - find other source of obtaining views from an atheist perspective rather what they see on youtube. The first one I can think of is reading some books from well known philosophers who had atheist beliefs.
