This is personal for me, because I'm just old enough to have been active and around for that weird time in Dubya years when it finally started to become permissible, even cool, to call oneself atheist in at least some parts of the United States, especially on college campuses like the one I went to.
I kept in contact with scores of people that I had close ties with from the early 2000s, but watching the followers of the "Four Horsemen," as well as the horsemen themselves (fuck Sam Harris in particular, the quack hack), lead their flock in an increasingly reactionary direction was disturbing. Dawkins in particular had many swans to wrestle, especially against even the slightest attempts to make the movement about anything in particular other than dunking on religious people and feeling smart about it.
I saw the "dunk on fundies" video makers become "dunk on feminists and SJWs" almost overnight, around the time the Gamergate reactionary movement began.
To summarize though, it freaks me out how many of my old New Atheist college contacts started calling themselves "culturally Christian" (which means lots of tradwife craving and authoritarian and colonial aspirations, minus the inconvenient deity part) and even started becoming subscribers to Jordan Peterson.
Wild ride, buckos. :agony-yehaw:
Oh boy, Elevatorgate
TW: sex pestery
spoiler
Young sceptic Youtuber goes to con
As she tries to leave for her hotel room late at night, Sam Harris or whomever muscles his way into the elevator and propositions her for sex
She is understandably upset by this and later writes a blog post about the experience without naming names and how older men trying to leverage their fame and power to sleep with younger women is gross and bad for the movement
Dick fucking Dawkins shows up in her comment section to apologise to an imagined Saudi Arabian woman about how Western feminists are too busy whining about being innocently flirted with to save her from getting stoned to death
Also I think a bunch of skeptodudes shat their pants about how crazy feminists want to ban guys from looking at or talking to women at events
The "Dear Muslima" letter launched a million fedoras straight toward the then-upcoming Trump campaign.
Gamergate, Trump campaign, same shit different year.
:shrug-outta-hecks:
Helen may have launched a thousand ships, but they had to cross an ocean first to get to Troy.
In our modern case, an ocean of gamers. Gamers. :heated-gamer-moment:
It wasn't, but people sleuthed his identity from circumstantial details
Can't remember now, this was in the comment section of a blog, Youtube video or Reddit post years ago
Dick fucking Dawkins shows up in her comment section to apologise to an imagined Saudi Arabian woman about how Western feminists are too busy whining about being innocently flirted with to save her from getting stoned to death
Don't forget how "all catcalling is done by urban Black people" but when a creepy white guy asks a rando girl for sex "hey, he was just ASKING, relax"
With few exceptions (Matt Dillahunty IIRC), you could see those people transforming from "religion sucks and because Christianity is the largest form of organized religion in the US, I will mostly talk about that" to "Muslims scary tho".
That was what I noticed too, in almost every case. "Muslims bad" somehow aligned with "feminists bad" and soon after that "SJWs bad" then "commies bad" then "poors bad" and so on and so on... :zizek:
islamophobia is the main way of keeping europeans in check by capital. everything else flows from there.
Been a while since I heard the term cultural Christianity. I had no idea it was associated with such garbage. I'd always thought it was a useful term for how growing up in a Christian society shapes your views on what things like god and religion mean, even if you come to reject Christianity itself.
I'm sure there are other uses and exceptions, yours included, but among the New Atheists I had ties with and slowly drifted away from since my college years, "Cultural Christianity" to them meant all the right wing conservative ideology of a typical fundamentalist church, but none of that annoying God stuff that might inconvenience them.
Was also heavily involved in the New Atheist movement when I was a kid—questioning god and religion (in my case Catholicism in particular) led me to atheism and it felt so freeing. It was also the first step in my journey towards communism as well, because once you start thinking critically about religion thinking critically about everything else naturally followed (at least in my case). Without the New Atheist movement I might not be the committed communist I am today, but god damn have they all turned out to be a bunch of reactionary hacks.
It's increasingly baffling that PZ Meyers has managed to remain a radlib as everyone else became a chud or went commie.
I wish more New Atheists that I knew went left instead of right.
Almost all of them are MAGA or ancaps or "dark enlightenment" or chuddery like that now. Some are even Qultists.
Huh, interesting I’ve been sorta calling myself culturally Christian recently. However, I had no idea this was a thing related to New Atheism and I arrived at it independently. Getting into Marxism rehabilitated religion in my eyes.
Analyzing religion through a Marxist lens showed me nothing is inherently wrong with following a religion. In fact I think being a believer of any faith can be a very powerful feeling. Think of Malcolm X’s pilgrimage to Mecca. Religion would have not been used as a vehicle to dominate and subjugate much of the world had there not been a need for endless expansion of markets. So many conflicts were fought over resources and material goods with religion being the theme. And you can even look at the Taliban. If you listen to their rhetoric, it’s a twisted form of anti imperialism because of Afghanistan being at the mercy of the United States.
So yeah I don’t believe in a higher power and none of the abuses at the hands of Christianity or any religion should be hand waved away but I’m definitely more at peace with a religious faith. I grew up with the ideology of hope, charity, and redemption and I think it helps reinforce my socialist beliefs even if it’s in the background.
Edit: I wonder if there was any overlap of new atheists and liking Ron Paul because damn do I remember scouring YouTube around 2008 for videos of Ron paul being censored and Dawkins dunking on creationists.
Liberation theology is good stuff. I don't actually see a problem with being religious in and of itself.
The reactionary New Atheist angle of "Cultural Christianity" is a nightmare word of redpilly tradwife colonialism, though.
I don’t doubt it’s reactionary. It just so happens I named my changed attitude the same as they did.
The real issue with the new atheism movement is that Richard Dawkins is an arse he's also like Jeremy Clarkson in that there's no deeper layer to him the whole of his being is summed up in the phrase "he's an arse".
He is a model obnoxious asshole for other obnoxious assholes to emulate. He's like the Rick Sanchez of real life, fandom included.
Tbh I'm actually kind of glad he isn't on the left as the strong anti-religious sentiment of past leftist movements has been used to great effect by right wing propaganda. For example when Irish catholics were convinced to go and fight for Franco in spain after priests were murdered bear in mind that this was the same recruiting pool as the IRA
Yes, to many of us suppression of religion is a delicate issue, and the USSR may have taken things farther than they should have in the name of perfecting a counter-revolution.
For a lot of people this is a crime against humanity and makes the USSR and every other state with a (partly) successful communist revolution something that must be destroyed.
I always need to remember to tread lightly when I'm around religious friends of mine.
Also the left takes a lot of positions like feeding the hungry and curing the sick that should appeal to people who are apolitical but have moral beliefs but can get instantly shut down while the right can say that the left is anti-god. It's really doing a lot of their work for them to play into that and I just don't see the benefit
In Finnish, there's a similar sounding term, "tapakristitty" lit. "customary Christian" but it's just used to describe non-religious Finns who still observe Christian holidays and traditions ie. most Finns
When I first heard about cultural Christianity, I assumed it meant something similar
Yeah, that's how I use the term. I celebrate Christmas, but just as a secular holiday.
That might be how some use it, but among the New Atheists I had ties with and slowly drifted away from since my college years, “Cultural Christianity” to them meant all the right wing conservative ideology of a typical fundamentalist church, but none of that annoying God stuff that might inconvenience them.
Ayup. I stopped calling myself an atheist for a while because New Atheism was so obviously warping in to proto-fascism. Really gross.
What you say really lines up with what I saw happening to so many New Atheists I used to be friends with and go to classes with. The pulpit became numerous reactionary celebrities, using much the same format as "watch me dunk on this creationist" and building their brands accordingly.
From the start, looking back, most of those New Atheists never really had that moment of epiphany and vulnerability. They felt smart and enlightened and chased that dragon to the point that they convinced themselves that they couldn't be suckers, couldn't fall for charlatans, couldn't stumble into a cult by some other name.
Do you have the Horn of Valere hidden in your pocket this time?
Wasn't the atheist church thing an attempt to recreate that sense of community in a non-religious context
Would it be much of a stretch to say the feds had a hand in some of this? It feels like a psyop tbh, priming us for eco fascism.
It could be as simple as the voices that said pleasing things to the ruling class got paid to keep saying those pleasing things. It's the near entirety of Big Yud's profitability.
They moved on to dunking on feminists, SJWs, and so on, because they needed to keep chasing that dragon.
The Wheel of Time and the wheel of a man's life turn alike without pity or mercy.
I was super into new atheism. As a kid who went to a fundamentalist Christian school where I had an Israeli convert for a social studies teacher it was honestly really cathartic to loudly and proudly proclaim "there is no god you losers!!!" Still identify as one today.
I specifically remember the part when I finally pushed back and starting questioning the movement on a personal level though: the Zeitgeist documentary. Specifically the popularization and online proliferation of said documentary. For those who haven't seen it: it was fairly prominent in new atheist circles and was a multipart documentary that was sort of a poor man's Joseph Campbell meets Adam Curtis flim flam that tried to provide a sort of 'monomyth' expination for the christian deity with its foundation coming from the cycle of the Sun, and also how this somehow led to the new world order and the 9/11 conspiracies.
Now Campbell has plenty of critics who have pointed out that he kind of stretches things and forces square pegs in round holes for his theories but I assure you he had nothing on the people behind Zeitgeist (one of my favorites is how they try to explain how Jesus and the virgin birth is basically the same story as other deities like Dionysus or Horus, lol). I remember specifically groaning in Bill Maher's religulous when he actually sites several things that I'm certain he actually got from it which are basically made up as far as I was able to tell.
All of this is to say: I was never really surprised when all the "skeptics" and enlightened atheists started following Peterson and his "feminine chaotic dragon" nonsense or Q anon or any of the other silly stuff because if you really followed the movement they were always getting primed and conditioned to do so.
I had a very similar journey to what you had.
I now believe that a lot of New Atheists got stuck "chasing the dragon" so to speak and wanted to dunk on other people that they felt were beneath them when they weren't getting the same high from dunking on creationists. That lazy sense of superiority and getting addicted to numerous "logical and rational" internet celebrities and parroting whatever they said lead them a bad way.
I think that's a really really insightful take to be honest. Its interesting because I specifically remember before I stopped watching TJ Kirk/Amazing Atheist he kinda admitted that exact thing in a video. To paraphrase: he got tired of dunking on creationists and lampooning them because, basically, they "won"...or at least as much as they could in the purely online space. You basically couldn't make an creationist argument anywhere online without getting completely blown up and it had a boring stale circle jerk...and thus a new target was needed.
Nothing ever goes as you expect. Expect nothing, and you will not be surprised. Expect nothing. Hope for nothing. Nothing.
Yeah, the modern iteration doesn't seem all that different from the way I remember them behaving in high school. Hopefully they've stopped listening to Tool so much.
On that note, I'd like make an observation as someone who's not a cis anglo saxon. I wasn't raised Christian and so I'm pretty much ignorant of that entire world, so please bear with me. I've always been atheist but I always saw an incredibly aggressive and vile undercurrent of hate within the 'New Atheist' movement and it's lead me to realize that I've met way more tolerant religious people in the US than I have met nonshit-head 'fundamental' atheists/agnostics. I think the Atheist movement in the country is way past the point of being a sort of revolt against oppression coming from religious entities in the country. The New Atheists were a reaction to something else, and I can't quite put my finger on it.
I just genuinely trust religious people more to not be complete pieces of shit with regards to class, gender, and race. Maybe I'm crazy and don't know enough about the world.
I've always seen the New Atheists as a kind of very thin intellectual cover to spread Islamophobia. It wasn't a reaction to something oppressive so much as a lurching, malformed twisted response to 9/11 as a way to get the fundamentalist Christians and the more cosmopolitan liberal types in the same side. New Atheism was the by product. They spent so much focus on Christianity because that's who they were around, but their main focus of hatred was always Islam. Now so many of these same people are overt reactionaries I'd say the intellectual cover worked well. It did what it was supposed to do.
Also there is genuine oppression perpetrated by religious groups in the USA, largely cults and evangelical groups brainwashing LGBTQ kids or destroying their lives. You'll notice that was hardly ever the focus for the new atheist currents. They were more focused on wacky creationists or justifying imperialist invasions.
I grew up Catholic down in Texas, so I was in a bit of a weird place. I don't know that I'd say I would trust religious people more. But there's definitely a generational gap in the attitudes of religious Boomers and religious Millennials. Cultural conservatism is a hell of a drug, but once you kick that habit you just end up with normal people who have a few eclectic superstitions and beliefs.
That's been my more recent experience, too.
Yeah, there's some horrible evangelical fundies that turned faith into a hate-driven MLM, but a lot of religious people use religion as a basis for having at least SOME kind of an ethos. I can't say the same for the cut adrift lazy hedonists I used to know from college who just did a lot of drugs, had an existential crisis or psychotic break, then crawled toward anyone offering them greater purpose than the emptiness they then felt, and generally that new moral compass was Jordan Peterson or someone like him.
