"Revolution has already been televised. Revolution has been merchandised. Revolution is a commodity, a packaged lifestyle, available at your local mall. $19.95 gets you the black mask, the spray can, the "Crush the Fascists" protest sign, and access to your blog where you can write about the police brutality you suffered when you chained yourself to a fire hydrant.
Capitalism has learned how to sell anti-capitalism."
Similarly in the atheism movement movement there's 'freethinkers'. It annoys me that being a freethinker is just subscribing to another labelled group with a doctrine, as opposed to being a free thinker. A small space makes a lot of semantic difference.
This kind of thing tends to happen to historical terms. Groups that trace their lineage from group X call themselves X, especially if the name has positive associations. This happened with, to use a somewhat controversial example, the term "liberal" in the US but, curiously, not in Europe. In computing you could say that this happened, and continues to happen, with the term "hacker" ("growth hackers" are a recent example).
Atheism is not a doctrine any more than not believing in Santa Claus or the tooth fairy is a doctrine. It is possible that there are doctrines within atheism but atheism itself is not one.
I'm not bothered about the term free thinker and wouldn't necessarily have linked it with atheism.
