I really don’t get it, like, I thought the reason we were all annoying atheists because of a sense of love for humanity, equality, etc. and seeing that Christianity was the most powerful force for regression and subjugation for the last 1500 years or so.
Like, how did we go from atheism to “protecting western civilization”? What is western civilization if not the societies produced by hegemonic Christianity? My atheism is a big part of what drew me to oppose the values of western civilization. And I really thought we were all on the same page on that.
And I guess I wasn’t entirely wrong, as it seems like Russel Brand went the other way around and became a Christian to keep supporting western ideals.
there’s that, but also I think for some of them being a new atheist libertarian was a way to be conservative while separating themselves from the unfun aspects of religious conservative ideology (but specifically the anti-drug and anti sex before marriage parts)
but now they’re old, their days of partying and chasing girls are behind them and they’ve either settled down with a partner or accepted being foreveralone, so they no longer need the veneer of being a fun dudebro, and even if on the inside they don’t really believe in religion, they realize that it supports their interests with regard to upholding social hierarchies, so they turn back to it
I’m going to take a different angle for my answer: Content.
There were a lot of people rallying around secularism but they had no guide post. The Intellectual Dark Web and similar groups of grifters targeted this unorganized group heavily with videos, posts, meet and greets, etc. They offered a direction to people who had no direction (in part because their cultures were predicated on members being traditionally religious). They made people feel heard, like they were special.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that a large number of self-identified atheists at the time were being reactionary and hadn’t really detached from their religious programming - this was a huge talking point / criticism back in the day. It was true of many even though it was not true of all. When these reactionaries in particular chased after the IDW, it destroyed the fabric of the emerging community. How was a loose-knit, unorganized bunch of atheists supposed to survive half of its members becoming an army for religious cryptozealots?
The Islamophobia was obvious and disgusting. It was a mess of double standards. There was pushback against it - I gave quite a bit myself - but pretty quickly it had become too late to nip in the bud. We all fractured apart and the few existing spaces were absolutely overrun by reactionary ideologues. There was no longer a point to interacting with these groups. Inside of them, atheism was no longer even a common talking point. Instead it was the alt-right’s talking points that took over - and standing in my shoes, I have to say that I still believe there was a concerted and inorganic effort to make it that way. But ultimately their efforts worked and that’s all that matters.
I was already a Marxist (my atheism was also a big factor in my rejection of western hegemony) but I leaned more heavily into Marxist spaces as we all scattered in the wind away from the brigaded communities. I think I’m probably in the minority in that regard, but I know that I was far from alone.
I think this was a wakeup call for many of us about the continued strength of cultural religiosity and the challenge of actually deprogramming.
My takeaway was that there is serious work needed on the cultural and educational fronts before they can start changing the course of the material front. Or conversely, a massive material state change to provoke cultural adaptations.
However if part of the issue really was a lack of guidance outside predatory and exploitative grifters then I believe it reinforces the idea that more non-reactionary role models and content would help to counter those reinforcing the status quo. If there had been a coherent alternative to the IDW at the time, they may never have taken off.
This opinion is also a bit of self-criticism because I hate clout. I don’t want a platform. I despise influencer culture. I think dialectics among communities should guide us, not the half-baked ideas of “Great Men” on youtube. But these preferences are not highly compatible with countering the effects of influencers like the IDW on directionless individuals. My anonymous pushback might have been well-constructed but it didn’t move the needle even a single tick. Meanwhile the IDW was offering a pre-packaged and microwave-ready ideology that reinforced deep-seated biases and could be defended with “Just watch **** on youtube” instead of requiring individuals to personally explain their arguments. There was basically no contest.
I really don’t get it, like, I thought the reason we were all annoying atheists because of a sense of love for humanity, equality, etc. and seeing that Christianity was the most powerful force for regression and subjugation for the last 1500 years or so.
I believed that too, until Elevatorgate and the “Dear Muslima” letter from Dawkins showed me otherwise.
The reactionary rage against even the idea of “Atheism+” damned the New Atheist moment for me. Perish the thought that atheism as a movement actually try to improve society somewhat. No! The purpose of atheism is a sense of superiority against those impoverished, ignorant, superstitious fools! Atheism is cruise control for smartness and total immunity to being tricked or conned!
This. Same thing i went through. Eventually i asked what’s the point? And for nu atheism the only point was watching Hitchens epically own some nobody with Oxford debate shit on Youtube. I started looking at humanism - but all they cared about was stories about “they’re making my kids say god in the pledge of allegiance” or “some southern city is building a ten commandments monument!” No movement that isn’t explicitly left wing can ever even imagine the possiblity of a better world*
*actually Sam Harris thinks he’s imagining a better world, but its through genocide, holy wars, and phrenology.
Sam Harris’ cult is so fucked up that they see a “better” world as a vulgar deterministic panopticon of cishet white techbros lording over whatever remnant of the rest of humanity they haven’t outright annihilated yet.
Its no wonder that Sam Harris was Dave Rubin’s first guest, and was Joe Rigan’s original “smart guy guest”. He is the ultimate dumb guys intellectual. Like he knows absolutely nothing about anything he talks about.
That’s why everything is a “thought experiment.” He doesn’t know anything outside of his own thoughts
He’s a quack and always has been. Even his doctorate was effectively bought with his parents’ money, making a foundation that only existed long enough to award him the doctorate. He doesn’t do peer reviewed papers; he just makes shit up and his credulous Reddit New Atheist rube followers believe it.
Yeah I mean at that point Christianity was all about bombing people and hating LGBT people and those were big factors for me in rejecting it but it turns out there were also people who rejected it for some other reason and then realized that they’d accidentally undermined their justifications for bombing people and hating LGBT people and had to scramble to come up with new ones.
Christianity was the most powerful force for regression and subjugation for the last 1500 years or so.
Turns out it wasn’t Christianity, just aristocracy.
Russel Brand went the other way around and became a Christian to keep supporting western ideals.
He was always a mediocre entertainer. First he rejected Christianity as part of his dog-and-pony show. Now he’s come around, because the original bit couldn’t pull the same audience. But its always just been a performance. The only thing he cares about as the attention (and the money it generates).
This breed of atheism is all about opposing the values of religion that are humane, harmonizing, and fundamentally good. The sense of community and goodwill for others is a tenet of many religions that still hasn’t been completely annihiliated and at least bregudgingly accepted by the most reactionary.
These atheists, in contrast, and ironically enough in the words of steve harvey, truly have zero moral compass that binds them to any sort of pesky virtues that would have them accept others.
I really don’t get it, like, I thought the reason we were all annoying atheists because of a sense of love for humanity, equality, etc. and seeing that Christianity was the most powerful force for regression and subjugation for the last 1500 years or so.
Like, how did we go from atheism to “protecting western civilization”? What is western civilization if not the societies produced by hegemonic Christianity? My atheism is a big part of what drew me to oppose the values of western civilization. And I really thought we were all on the same page on that.
And I guess I wasn’t entirely wrong, as it seems like Russel Brand went the other way around and became a Christian to keep supporting western ideals.
the reason they were all annoying atheists was because islam bad, turns out
there’s that, but also I think for some of them being a new atheist libertarian was a way to be conservative while separating themselves from the unfun aspects of religious conservative ideology (but specifically the anti-drug and anti sex before marriage parts)
but now they’re old, their days of partying and chasing girls are behind them and they’ve either settled down with a partner or accepted being foreveralone, so they no longer need the veneer of being a fun dudebro, and even if on the inside they don’t really believe in religion, they realize that it supports their interests with regard to upholding social hierarchies, so they turn back to it
I’m going to take a different angle for my answer: Content.
There were a lot of people rallying around secularism but they had no guide post. The Intellectual Dark Web and similar groups of grifters targeted this unorganized group heavily with videos, posts, meet and greets, etc. They offered a direction to people who had no direction (in part because their cultures were predicated on members being traditionally religious). They made people feel heard, like they were special.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that a large number of self-identified atheists at the time were being reactionary and hadn’t really detached from their religious programming - this was a huge talking point / criticism back in the day. It was true of many even though it was not true of all. When these reactionaries in particular chased after the IDW, it destroyed the fabric of the emerging community. How was a loose-knit, unorganized bunch of atheists supposed to survive half of its members becoming an army for religious cryptozealots?
The Islamophobia was obvious and disgusting. It was a mess of double standards. There was pushback against it - I gave quite a bit myself - but pretty quickly it had become too late to nip in the bud. We all fractured apart and the few existing spaces were absolutely overrun by reactionary ideologues. There was no longer a point to interacting with these groups. Inside of them, atheism was no longer even a common talking point. Instead it was the alt-right’s talking points that took over - and standing in my shoes, I have to say that I still believe there was a concerted and inorganic effort to make it that way. But ultimately their efforts worked and that’s all that matters.
I was already a Marxist (my atheism was also a big factor in my rejection of western hegemony) but I leaned more heavily into Marxist spaces as we all scattered in the wind away from the brigaded communities. I think I’m probably in the minority in that regard, but I know that I was far from alone.
I think this was a wakeup call for many of us about the continued strength of cultural religiosity and the challenge of actually deprogramming.
My takeaway was that there is serious work needed on the cultural and educational fronts before they can start changing the course of the material front. Or conversely, a massive material state change to provoke cultural adaptations.
However if part of the issue really was a lack of guidance outside predatory and exploitative grifters then I believe it reinforces the idea that more non-reactionary role models and content would help to counter those reinforcing the status quo. If there had been a coherent alternative to the IDW at the time, they may never have taken off.
This opinion is also a bit of self-criticism because I hate clout. I don’t want a platform. I despise influencer culture. I think dialectics among communities should guide us, not the half-baked ideas of “Great Men” on youtube. But these preferences are not highly compatible with countering the effects of influencers like the IDW on directionless individuals. My anonymous pushback might have been well-constructed but it didn’t move the needle even a single tick. Meanwhile the IDW was offering a pre-packaged and microwave-ready ideology that reinforced deep-seated biases and could be defended with “Just watch **** on youtube” instead of requiring individuals to personally explain their arguments. There was basically no contest.
The new atheist movement was for neocons who didn’t care to do the Jesus stuff but still wanted in on being racist to Middle Eastern people
I believed that too, until Elevatorgate and the “Dear Muslima” letter from Dawkins showed me otherwise.
yep, the elevatorgate was the start of me going wtf
The reactionary rage against even the idea of “Atheism+” damned the New Atheist moment for me. Perish the thought that atheism as a movement actually try to improve society somewhat. No! The purpose of atheism is a sense of superiority against those impoverished, ignorant, superstitious fools! Atheism is cruise control for smartness and total immunity to being tricked or conned!
This. Same thing i went through. Eventually i asked what’s the point? And for nu atheism the only point was watching Hitchens epically own some nobody with Oxford debate shit on Youtube. I started looking at humanism - but all they cared about was stories about “they’re making my kids say god in the pledge of allegiance” or “some southern city is building a ten commandments monument!” No movement that isn’t explicitly left wing can ever even imagine the possiblity of a better world*
*actually Sam Harris thinks he’s imagining a better world, but its through genocide, holy wars, and phrenology.
Sam Harris’ cult is so fucked up that they see a “better” world as a vulgar deterministic panopticon of cishet white techbros lording over whatever remnant of the rest of humanity they haven’t outright annihilated yet.
Its no wonder that Sam Harris was Dave Rubin’s first guest, and was Joe Rigan’s original “smart guy guest”. He is the ultimate dumb guys intellectual. Like he knows absolutely nothing about anything he talks about.
That’s why everything is a “thought experiment.” He doesn’t know anything outside of his own thoughts
He’s a quack and always has been. Even his doctorate was effectively bought with his parents’ money, making a foundation that only existed long enough to award him the doctorate. He doesn’t do peer reviewed papers; he just makes shit up and his credulous Reddit New Atheist rube followers believe it.
https://rhizzone.net/articles/sam-harris-fraud/
Hell yeah. Theres so much wrong with Harris it needs a part two
Yeah I mean at that point Christianity was all about bombing people and hating LGBT people and those were big factors for me in rejecting it but it turns out there were also people who rejected it for some other reason and then realized that they’d accidentally undermined their justifications for bombing people and hating LGBT people and had to scramble to come up with new ones.
Turns out it wasn’t Christianity, just aristocracy.
He was always a mediocre entertainer. First he rejected Christianity as part of his dog-and-pony show. Now he’s come around, because the original bit couldn’t pull the same audience. But its always just been a performance. The only thing he cares about as the attention (and the money it generates).
That was what I thought too, and was the reason I moved away from nu atheist stuff
Have you thought maybe they just wanted to be mean to the weird sheltered christian kid at school, and girls?
That’s certainly my reason for being an annoying atheist
This breed of atheism is all about opposing the values of religion that are humane, harmonizing, and fundamentally good. The sense of community and goodwill for others is a tenet of many religions that still hasn’t been completely annihiliated and at least bregudgingly accepted by the most reactionary.
These atheists, in contrast, and ironically enough in the words of steve harvey, truly have zero moral compass that binds them to any sort of pesky virtues that would have them accept others.