The particular neckbeardy, fedora wearing, Sam Harris listening trend of atheism was a pretty clear reaction to the evangelical psychosis of the Bush administration.
Other geriatrics here can attest that the character of Christianity at the time was way different than it is now. These days, the fascists are more “culturally Christian” and avoid overt bible apologism. But back in the day, these people were constantly on TV spewing young earth creationism and other shit, and they were largely taken seriously. It’s hard to believe now how much time was spent “debating” evolution back then. The atheist backlash at least affected discourse aesthetically for some time, making these views laughable, which deplatformed a lot of evangelicals or made them hide their power levels on TV.
Some argue that this brand of atheism justifies imperialism. It does so really only in theory. There really is no material basis for atheists in the US to justify an invasion anywhere in the world. The truth is that Christianity is still a far more powerful force for imperialism. Bush said that God told him to invade Iraq. I don’t see any president saying anytime soon that the US needs to secularize a country through force.
If fundamentalist and political religiosity were defeated, then belligerent atheism would dissolve, but the reverse is not true.
Overall, it really does seem like people over emphasize this group of internet no-lifers because of the cultural cringe they manifested.
Nu-atheism always had a white chauvinism element to it, which was why it was so quickly weaponized to serve Islamophobic ends. Their whole understanding of history is that humans were enslaved by superstition and religion until a certain group of humans (ie white people) realized that superstitions and God aren’t real. Their partial freedom from the God delusion lead to a flourishing of human thought and achievement, first realized as the Enlightenment, which then lead to them ushering forth the Industrial Revolution upon which their thriving societies are built on. The rest of humanity is stuck as backwards people living in mud huts thinking praying to the rain god would give them rain because they’re still enslaved by superstition and God, so it is the duty of the atheists of the secular world to free the rest of humanity from the darkness of God.
This is just typical missionary white chauvinist bullshit. It’s no wonder they would eventually “find God” again once it became more in vogue to embrace religion. Perhaps the rise of China has something to do with it. Once a non-European country ruled by an atheist ideology begins to rise, suddenly “atheism is the key to human progress and civilization” begins to lose its luster.
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This makes a lot of sense.
I always wondered why so many of these dudes who would openly mock religion took such a hard right turn and became alt right christo fascists themselves. Really weirded me out.
Didn’t Dawkins himself turn into an anti-muslim lunatic? Not to mention Sam Harris of course.
Speaking of which, one of my favourite Zizek quotes is “People ask me why I support the death penalty. It’s because Sam Harris is still alive.” :che-laugh:
The rest of humanity is stuck as backwards people living in mud huts thinking praying to the rain god would give them rain because they’re still enslaved by superstition and God, so it is the duty of the atheists of the secular world to free the rest of humanity from the darkness of God.
Carl Sagan had a book about that, it was called, “The Demon-Haunted World”. It was a best-seller, of course.
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If the PLA had not marched into Tibet, still today they would be living in that demon-haunted world and serving the lamas.
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As a reaction, I think its underlying impetus is islamophobic renaissance broughy to the forefront by 9/11 and the associated media and political response. Angloids latched on, in part, to Christianity because it was proximal, but in terms of the material changes that were happening, and what consent needed to br manufactured, it really revolved around the question of how to dehumanize muslims and make them deserving targets of violence.
Some of the new atheists were pretty explicit that islam was their primary enemy and doubler and tripled and quadrupled down on islamophobic rhetoric even as people stopped caring about atheist stuff. That crowd is the same one that also went down the misogynist path.
Idk maybe I was too engrained in the tumblr SJW side of the conflict at the time but I really think this is an overly rosey view of things. Like, I personally remember the anti-feminism and racism coming from that side very viscerally. I know that a lot of people say that the athiest youtube channels they followed started out just doing athiesm and THEN did the anti-sjw thing but idk. I feel like the fact that that happened so many times tells me there was always something poisonous there.
Just as someone who was around during that time and very conscious of the atheism thing, they absolutely were justifying invasion. Sure they acted appalled at Bush saying god told him to go to war, but they also spent a lot of time talking about how fundamental Islam was a threat to Western enlightenment. When you have Hitchens giving speeches saying that Muslims are dangerous and they have mushroom clouds on their Jihad flags during a time when wacky Christians are leading their own holy war, it’s kinda helping them.
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This sidenote that I was going to do is so off topic that I’m actually going to put it in another comment because its just, way too left field
This whole thing has me thinking about RationalWiki. And how despite being athiest to the core, its violently AGAINST the bigoted elements of nu-athiesm. How the fuck did that website come to be. What are its origins. (Not that RationalWiki cant ever be cringe, its got some terrible takes on AES countries obviously and its obsessed with Christy Myth in an unbecoming way).
You know Atheism has been around for thousands of years before a bunch of hat wearing racists got real popular with debate nerds, and will continue to exist for probably as long as their are humans, right?
It really sounds like a lot of you have only ever encountered atheism from New-Atheist bullshit, when that is literally five or six years out of a thought tradition that goes back a very, very long time.
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I really don’t understand what you’re getting at. Atheism is Empiricism encountering religious delusion. Atheists, at least the ones who are serious about it, don’t believe in gods and fairies and magic and healing vibrations because there’s no evidence of any of those things, and they do believe in an empirically observable universe.
“Atheists are cooler and gooder than religious people” is self-satisfying to say
Yeah that’s the hat wearing racist new-atheism I’m talking about, the phenomena that is a blip in the history of atheism and doesn’t define it or even comment on it in any meaningful way. People weren’t running around France shivving priests during the Revolution because they saw South Park make jokes about Mormons.
And the Soviet Union did a really, really good job of getting rid of religion, with relatively little violence, in like 70 years. It’s not some pie in the sky when you die thing. Socialist societies have been very effective in relieving people from religious belief, and I sincerely hope we’ll continue to be effective in the future. Europe is doing a pretty bang up job, too, with religious adherence plummeting since WWII.
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Idk who or what Big Yud is. I am less online than you.
But also who or what is it.
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“Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality” was funded by billionaires lmao? Thats incredible. Thank you for this gift.
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Gotta post it again, twice in one day. :citations-needed:
But I will say, @UlyssesT is right it’s a secular Calvinism. There’s no real humanism or materialism behind it, it’s not like the new atheists were supportive of a welfare state or material changes
Ahh, yes, the official Pod of the site.
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I should clarify that there’s nothing wrong with atheism as such, especially if it leads to a Marxist humanism where we care for each other and build a world worth living in because it’s the only one we’ve got.
However there’s veins of Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, etc that also foster this kind of worldly community just as there are also versions virulently opposed to the world and degrading to life in it.
Basically, reddit atheism is probably as corrosive to communistic politics as the forms of evangelical Christianity it opposes. It might produce a slightly less hostile society for certain minorities in the imperial core, but at the cost of a fig leaf for adventurism in the middle east.
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More and more people are saying Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age and the idea of secularization by eschatology are worth understanding to better understand the techbros.
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Yeah I’m just ready for the same shit as the early church that Blumenberg describes. They start out believing the eschaton is near, it’s any day, but then when it doesn’t happen, you have to create a worldly politics and secularize.
The trouble is the politics the new techbros religion will create is probably going to be so demonic.
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