:what-the-hell:
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ngl my old edgelord atheist phase might be making a comeback for this shit
Edgelord atheists became a thing because of this shit, they just got co-opted into being reactionaries
And I’m really still not sure how that happened, the whole point was being opposed to reactionary religion.
Anti-sjw/anti-feminism craze was the co-opting moment imo. Dawkins got in some kind of trouble for iirc aggresively hitting on a woman in an elevator with him and there was a backlash against him for being a creep, and the anti-feminist backlash because someone dared slander papa dawkins was a huge push into reaction for the lot of them. That was my jumping off point. It feels like that happened just before or around the same time as gamergate so in hindsight that feels connected given the underlying :gamer-gulag: nature of reddit
Dawkins wasn't himself the perpetrator in "Elevatorgate." Rebecca Watson told a story of how she was sexually harassed by a man at a skeptic conference whose identity she did not disclose, and a bunch of shitheads in the skeptic "community" accused her of overreacting, one of whom was Dawkins. Honestly his comment was so fucking evil and unhinged that I think it's worth reproducing here:
cw for misogyny, sexual violence, and islamophobia
Dear Muslima
Stop whining, will you. Yes, yes, I know you had your genitals mutilated with a razor blade, and ... yawn ... .don't tell me yet again, I know you aren't allowed to drive a car, and you can't leave the house without a male relative, and your husband is allowed to beat you, and you'll be stoned to death if you commit adultery. But stop whining, will you. Think of the suffering your poor American sisters have to put up with.
Only this week I heard of one, she calls herself Skep 'chick', and do you know what happened to her? A man in a hotel elevator invited her back to his room for coffee. I am not exaggerating. He really did. He invited her back to his room for coffee. Of course she said no, and of course he didn't lay a finger on her, but even so...
And you, Muslima, think you have misogyny to complain about! For goodness sake grow up, or at least grow a thicker skin.
Richard
Thanks for the correction but also what in the absolute fuck was that response he wrote
Okay but like, wasn’t the sexism of the Church literally one of the core reasons we opposed them??? Or was that just me?
Feminism was literally one of the things that made me be a loud annoying atheist. Like, did these dipshits forget what Christianity is?
Maybe I just got to those conclusions in a different order? For me it was “Being sexist, racist, and homophobic are bad” > “Believing in magic appears to make people more likely to be sexist, racist, and homophobic” > “Believing in magic is harmful” > “Religion bad”
Did they like, start at religion bad and work backwards and when they got to the bed point went “Ew no not like that”?
For a lot of them, I honestly don't think they took a similar approach. Something like "Islam is bad because it oppresses women" in hindsight just feels like a workaround to wanting to be racist but needing a different avenue to attack. Starting at "religion bad" and doing no further examination on why does sound about right sadly
But like, why religion bad if not for those reasons? If you want to be a misogynist Christianity is right there waiting for you, you can just be religious and join the dominant group in our society.
What is the point of complaining about religion when you want everything they want anyway?
never been to a moving church service & self-important enough that they want to feel superior to believers. a bit of half-understood rationalism that makes it uncomfortable to endorse a fake theology?
I think they first became atheists because religion is, well, kinda silly tbh, and dealing with the brain rot of conservative Christianity probably made them feel really confident (euphoric, even) about their own intelligence and critical thinking skills.
Then they were confronted with unfamiliar concepts and arguments from the progressive left, had a negative initial reaction and, thinking of themselves as intelligent and rational skeptics, dismissed them immediately ("these extreme liberals are just as ridiculous as religious conservatives!").
Finally they grew obsessed with "SJWs" and epically owning them with facts and logic and fell into the reactionary pipeline.
Relevant :citations-needed: https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-12-new-atheist-celebrities-crusaders-for-empire
As far as i remember for many/most of the very loud ones it was also and maybe primarily an excuse to justify their racism and bigotry against Muslims.
War on Terror turned "New Atheism" into "Omg! We have to stop those evil Muslims from ruining Western society!!!"
Also, just the wages of YouTube and other terminally online personalities. There's only so much you can say about not believing in the supernatural. But guys like Sam Harris have to churn out infinite content. The takes just get worse and worse over time.
Yeah I never really understood how that happened either. Because my strong atheism led me to the obvious conclusion that western society is bad.
If opposition to religion is one of your core beliefs how the fuck could you end up at the conclusion of “Actually the societies created by the Christian church are the best”?? A large part of the reason western society sucks so bad is because of Christianity
Because my strong atheism led me to the obvious conclusion that western society is bad.
If you get your Atheism from Anton Chekhov or Simone De Beauvoir maybe. But Christopher Hitchens is going to offer very different vibes.
If opposition to religion is one of your core beliefs how the fuck could you end up at the conclusion of “Actually the societies created by the Christian church are the best”??
Because everyone knows that foreigners are savages and only upper class white male intellectuals are advanced enough to get beyond religion. And they're all Christians by default, because Christianity is the religion that's open-minded enough to allow for Atheism. So if everyone was Christian first, rather than some barbaric heathen religion, we could eventually do more Atheism under the tutelage of Wise White Men Masters.
I think there was a middle step. In between that, we heard how Muslims were just as bad as if not worse than Christians. There also was the Obama years where the religious right kinda went into retreat (I know that is simplifying it), which I think led to Muslims being an easier target.
Lotta atheists never reexamined their assumptions about women. They shifted from a theological framework of gender essentialism to an evolutionary framework of gender essentialism.
online atheists:solidarity:online christiansnot seeing women as peopleedit
calling that emoji 'solidarity', rather than hand-clasp or hand-shake or just 'arms' makes it hard to find
Right? I was extremely disappointed to find out my fellow travelers were all just Muslim hating bigots and not sincere about their commitment to kill god.
When I was a kid I was taught that the puritans came to North America for religious freedom.
No. It was because everyone was sick of their shit! When they took power in England they outlawed dancing, celebrating Christmas, and launched a genocidal invasion of Ireland. Just total pieces of shit that make John Calvin look like a hippie.
No. It was because everyone was sick of their shit!
I mean, that's sort of two sides to the same coin.
Europe had cycles of liberal Protestantism and conservative Catholicism, wherein the response between the two got more and more severe. By the time of the Puritans, you're dealing with people who had friends and family tortured to death for saying "Maybe the Pope isn't infallible". The only folks who stick by their guns on that are necessarily going to be crazy. And the folks who are die-hard Catholic zealots are also crazy.
It's a bit like QAnon and BlueAnon folks being the result of this escalation of tension between mass media organizations.
True, both sides were doing real psycho shit. The queen of England during that period isn't called "Bloody Mary" for no reason.
I also dated a Portuguese woman whose ancestors converted from Judaism to Catholicism because they didn't want to get expelled/tortured/murdered by the inquisition.
Edit: point I'm trying to make is I'm not letting the catholics off the hook, either.
well they were fleeing the consequences for regicide. Also they only went crazy once they got to America back in England they were some of the first in centuries to propose common ownership of the means of production
No they were plenty crazy the whole time. They went to Amsterdam first but the Dutch told them to gtfo.
I'm a little biased as I'm from a part of the UK that faced really violent reprisals for it's historical puritanism. But I would recommend reading the world turned upside down by Christopher Hill
if you don't want to read a book this video does a pretty good examination of them, they were definitely weird but they also are largely responsible for a lot of left wing political ideas. Back in England some of them were essentially proto-anarchists
And they are still doing the same shit, the god dammed yanks mess with everyone who does not share their puritanical ideology.
Small consolation: after Cromwell died and the monarchy was restored they dug up his body and put it in a cage for people to gawk and mock. Dude was a dick and deserved it.
The modern ones will get theirs eventually. :inshallah:
lmao at the faces of the people behind this gibbering loon as he "breaks down" his strip mall christian youth pastor cosmology. in a normal country, they'd put a man on him immediately to tail him with social workers on speed dial to evacuate the minors and other victims from whatever Holy Tabernacle of Blood high pressure group suburban/exurban anthill he crawls back into.
because no fucking chance this guy's faith community is benign.
It's funny to me how even many of those who understand the problems with statements like "but not all men" or "stop complaining, at least you're not <x>" will try to minimize the very real problems atheists can face in certain places.
- "But not all Christians! Liberation theology!" (generally said to people who grew up in the Bible Belt)
- "You're still privileged because you can just move somewhere else."
- "You were never really oppressed, you're just mad because church was boring and your parents made you go."
- "You're just strawmanning Christianity (even though the kind you're arguing against is dominant where you live and the one that overwhelmingly affects you materially)"
Thankfully I don't really see this on Hexbear but I've seen it in other allegedly left places and holy shit was it obnoxious.
Lol as someone who is trans and also pretty gay, yeah fuck Christianity it did some serious psychic damage to me being raised like that
The overly combative atheist types that are just doing it to get a rise out of people are incredibly frustrating individuals. They're the political equivalent of "I realize something is wrong" with no theory background that will either end up critically analyzing/reading and shed reactionary takes (similar to the US radlib -> leftist progression of many people in the states- probably many people on this site went through this experience) or just they stay a reactionary who simply seeks to individualize their frustrations by lashing out at the religious nature of other people (and many of these groups ending up identifying as libertarians).
It's incredibly important for someone to emerge in the space to capture this pipeline (especially in an entity as large and globally relevant as the US) because the increasingly large non-religous population is ripe for folding these people into leftist movements (as religion and politics is increasingly intertwined). I, sadly, don't have a global perspective on this so someone else please add if you do.
That said, I genuinely do believe it's necessary to critically assess the historical damage religion has caused and the resulting power structures it creates and reinforces as well as its role in modern politics and the baggage it has brought along with it from the past. I don't think I'm capable of making that assessment as I lack the historical knowledge and evolutionary lineage of various religious beliefs to give a strong critique outside of the negative impact of modern Christianity in the US.
as Matt Christman's ongoing scholarship in his vlog/"Hell on Earth" podcast miniseries has shown, modern bourgeois Christianity is clearly the work of the satanic empire which killed Jesus and would have prevented his existence by excluding immigrants/refugees like his grandparent Ruth
I feel like if you're not willing to respond to this with some variation of "even if we assume demons are real, it has yet to be proven that they are worse than Christians" then you've already lost the argument.
I'm normally not one to reference the marble statue guys but i feel as if the most reasonable response here is taking that guy to the Circus Maximus and feeding him to the lions in front of a cheering crowd.
In 17th-century Japan they just used swords. It is possible that they considered using lions but couldn't find any.
I don't think he would be very good for the lions, he's probably full of corn syrup and preservatives
You know what maybe the Romans were right about Christians and what to do with them
Yeah, I'm starting to think being raised in a church that was in the process of turning more and more fundie over time fucked me up more than I care to admit.
these freaks were always worse than reddit atheists, we just saw reddit atheists more often
Reddit atheists were just annoying, these freaks are actively harmful and dangerous.
