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.

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.

It’s increasingly baffling that PZ Meyers has managed to remain a radlib as everyone else became a chud or went commie.

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”.

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”.