(I have amended the title of this post based on feedback and critique, to more acutely reflect the target of my grievance)
This could be a bad take, but, hear me out.
I was once a subscriber to r/atheism a long time ago. I was absolutely a smug ass fucking atheist. I'm not sure what it was that caused this world view I held to change, but as time marched on I've grown incredibly suspect of anyone who willingly identifies themselves as an "atheist".
I grew up going to church every week. That slowed as I got older. I remember my grandmother telling me I needed to cut my hair at church, and telling her "I have hair like Jesus, you think Jesus should cut his hair?" I learned later we stopped going to church because they started preaching about antiabortion and my mother wanted nothing to do with that.
So I was at least fairly indifferent about religion by the time I was in highschool. I remember Atheism giving me a sense of superiority that was deeply rooted in "facts and logic" despite being a severely under read dipshit in highschool. I'm sure I spent countless amounts of time debating people in comments, being a general idiot on the internet. Probably passively consumed a bunch of Hitchens work/ideas without having read any of his books.
At some point I stopped putting a lot of thought into it, and this smug sensibility was pushed into the back of my brain. Then in 2020, like a lot of people, I was swept up in this rise in socialist thinking, leading me to change my entire perspective on the world.
I think it wasn't until recently, when I was having a conversation with someone I knew and the topic of Islam came up that I realized how much I had distances myself from this smug atheist perspective. They said something about Islam being an "inherently violent religion", and my gut, instinctual reaction was to blurt out "What? What makes you think that's true?" They responded with something being in the Quran, and again, like water from a faucet the words "Listen, maybe that's true, maybe its not, but Islamic people are not a monolith." poured out of me and the conversation kind of died on the vine.
The reason I'm even thinking about this today is because, of all things, I watched the Asmongold "apology" video he published today. He attributes his shit ass takes about Palestinians being an inferior culture and thus worthy of genocide to his "hatred for religious extremism of all kinds". He goes on to say that he was or is a "r/atheist enjoyer" and a self professed "atheist". It really confirmed a lot of assumptions I have about atheism that I guess have been lingering in my skull.
Those assumptions being that Atheism is, on it's face, a religion in and of itself. It's belief is in that of non-belief. It has missionaries like most other religious belief systems, seeking to secularize communities and cultures. It believes it is the one true religion and that all other religions are false religions with false gods. It demonizes all other practitioners of these false religions indiscriminately, believing that they are either upholding their wicked systems of oppression, or are directly complicit in them. Countless books have been written about the its theology and the logic of its faith. It is a fully fledged faith, in that you have to believe in this non-belief, on faith that you will be proven correct when you die.
Not only all this but its clear to me now that Atheism is the western liberal religious belief system. Its fully compatible with western chauvinism, as it demonizes the wests enemies on the grounds of their systems of belief, which are regularly the reason for the wests interventions. Western wars are "secular" wars and as such they are atheist colonial projects as well. The idea that modernizing a backwards 3rd world country would bring about liberal democracy and with it liberal values. Atheism is liberal values.
Now this isn't to say that religious violence doesn't exist or that religious extremism is also a fable, but instead that Atheism and its ideas are a form of religious persecution, it breeds the same phobic believes that other religions develop about the ones they are attempting to conquer. The Atheist believes that through the abolition of religion, via changing hearts and minds, a entire form of violence will be removed as well. It completely denies the material realities and conditions that cause religious extremism to begin with. Because of this, it doesn't recognize that to achieve a secular world, it will only be done so through violence.
Somehow the atheist believes that religion and culture are all somehow disconnected and isolated phenomenon. That somehow you can remove religion from the equation without damaging or altering culture. That some how this secularization will happen quietly and without conflict.
When I'm asked if I'm religious I say no. if asked if I'm an atheist, I say no. The only thing I would identify as in this context is as a materialist. It matters not to me what lays beyond the vale of life, but what does matter to me is what is happening here and now. Pain and suffering exists here in this conscious reality. Happiness can be achieved here in this conscious reality. That happiness can include religious and spiritual belief.
I have no conclusions here. This is just the ramblings of an old wizard. If I'm off base here please tell me. Interested in your perspectives as always comrades.
Hitchens was a popular dude. I know people who are neither of those who still spit his ideas about religion and call themselves atheists. I think its a western centric perspective on western centric atheists, which is naturally lacking a greater perspective as a result.
Yes, it's good that you see the western centrism now, because in its own, this post was a bit racist and invoking orientalist cliches. Like suggesting, that all non Western people are theists. Or saying, that atheism is a western liberal thing, when people all over the world actually think for themselves, draw their own conclusions and become atheists. Like every Marxist movement everywhere, for example. China, Cuba and the Soviet Union. Every liberation movement ever had to struggle against organized religion. Yes, even religious ones like liberation theology in South America, which struggled against the Vatican and lost or in part was ordered to stand down and obeyed.
A Marxist should accepts personal believes and fight oppression based on religion because it splits the working class. But in the end, while organized religion might in some cases be a temporary ally in national liberation, it has historically always succumbed to reactionary authority in the end and turned against us.
Furthermore, you're right, that the new atheists invocations of "facts", "logic" and "science" are seldom more than thinly veiled appeals to authority. They often do not define these things, nor do most of them seem to understand the many material contradictions and open philosophical questions within them. But that doesn't in itself make theism an defensible philosophical position either.