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 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.
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).
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.
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.
Reminds me of Christopher Hitchens. A man who made a living on the talk show circuit by tweaking people’s noses and saying “Are you mad? Are you mad, yet?”
All fun and games when the people getting tweaked were self-important holy rollers. But as soon as he saw a payday in pissing on anti-war protesters by calling them Islamists, the man was urinating like a fucking fire hose.
I don’t think it’s fair to say he was ungenuine or just chasing a pay day.
He did a good job of delivery early on. But once he started defending George Bush Jr - a man who stacked his career on phony religious pandering - the mask dropped like a rock. No one who goes this hard for an American Christian Conservative can possibly hold the views he claimed a decade earlier.
Maybe he changed over time. Or maybe Rupert Murdoch found the price for his soul. But the guy sold out hard all through the '00s.
I tried to steer it in to a militant occult organization but, obvious, i got distracted yelling at the memes guy about Islamic history and forgot to train my godslaying army.
isn’t an atheist, but he’s quite popular with reactionary Reddit New Atheists, the kind that like to say “I’m an atheist,” (religious fundie shit here, especially against gays, feeemales, or brown people).
It’s been wild watching the new atheist movement slowly morph into the new batshit religious quack movements in only 10 years
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
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/
deleted by creator
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).
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.
Have you thought maybe they just wanted to be mean to the weird sheltered christian kid at school, and girls?
That was what I thought too, and was the reason I moved away from nu atheist stuff
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.
They were always grifters
Reminds me of Christopher Hitchens. A man who made a living on the talk show circuit by tweaking people’s noses and saying “Are you mad? Are you mad, yet?”
All fun and games when the people getting tweaked were self-important holy rollers. But as soon as he saw a payday in pissing on anti-war protesters by calling them Islamists, the man was urinating like a fucking fire hose.
Dawkins is just a lower-rent Hitchens.
I really disagree. The guy was argumentative for the sake of it, but I don’t think it’s fair to say he was ungenuine or just chasing a pay day.
He did a good job of delivery early on. But once he started defending George Bush Jr - a man who stacked his career on phony religious pandering - the mask dropped like a rock. No one who goes this hard for an American Christian Conservative can possibly hold the views he claimed a decade earlier.
Maybe he changed over time. Or maybe Rupert Murdoch found the price for his soul. But the guy sold out hard all through the '00s.
hitchens is the posterboy for the modern trot-to-neocon/fascist pipeline
Fair enough, I’ve nowt to say but that I disagree.
They were always unwell.
The holdouts that still claim to be atheists but “culturally Christian” are the worst.
Well, maybe the worst are the “TradCath means Warhammer 40k LARPing” converts.
so a fascist lol.
I’d ask Dawkins if he’s a fascist but I don’t know which particular public park he battles swans in.
I tried to steer it in to a militant occult organization but, obvious, i got distracted yelling at the memes guy about Islamic history and forgot to train my godslaying army.
what a lack of material analysis does to motherfuckers
Meh, happened with the boomers. This whole country is designed at every level to stifle progress in left wing thought.
They were anti religious without being anti capitalist. So they were farcical Voltaire esque liberals at best
At least Voltaire was savage enough to get exiled multiple times.
Are either of these people classified as "new atheist"s?
It’d be more accurate to say people like this now attract the types of dudes who would’ve been really into “logic” and atheism 15 years ago
I was 100% that type of person, and I still don’t agree. But maybe it’s just me that’s out of touch.
I meant the really annoying types who were into weird atheist youtubers
Ah, those types… definitely wasn’t me…
They fall under that same category of “rationalist larpers that is actually a right-wing woo grifter”