The particular neckbeardy, fedora wearing, Sam Harris listening trend of atheism was a pretty clear reaction to the evangelical psychosis of the Bush administration.
Other geriatrics here can attest that the character of Christianity at the time was way different than it is now. These days, the fascists are more “culturally Christian” and avoid overt bible apologism. But back in the day, these people were constantly on TV spewing young earth creationism and other shit, and they were largely taken seriously. It’s hard to believe now how much time was spent “debating” evolution back then. The atheist backlash at least affected discourse aesthetically for some time, making these views laughable, which deplatformed a lot of evangelicals or made them hide their power levels on TV.
Some argue that this brand of atheism justifies imperialism. It does so really only in theory. There really is no material basis for atheists in the US to justify an invasion anywhere in the world. The truth is that Christianity is still a far more powerful force for imperialism. Bush said that God told him to invade Iraq. I don’t see any president saying anytime soon that the US needs to secularize a country through force.
If fundamentalist and political religiosity were defeated, then belligerent atheism would dissolve, but the reverse is not true.
Overall, it really does seem like people over emphasize this group of internet no-lifers because of the cultural cringe they manifested.
We didn’t mean to do it. At the time we didn’t understand we created one monster to fight another. The church was strong, and the only thing we could find powerful enough to fight it was white privilege. So, sorry about that one.
Some argue that this brand of atheism justifies imperialism. It does so really only in theory.
Except it also did in practice, making this claim categorically false.
New Atheism was a deeply, deeply liberal movement in the way that it worshiped uncritical ideas of “rationality” and “science”, which just like classical liberalism can only produce a farce as the ruling ideology increasingly casts itself as “rational” and thereby wins the approval of the self-satisfied chauvinists who were always the base of New Atheism. See Neil DeGrass Tyson’s “Rationalia” for an even more recent example of this flimsy approach to values.
It is also the natural and inevitable development of any “movement” so concerned with castigating backwater rural populations and promoting their “universal” values that they would seek to impose these values on other places they saw as backwater. The Islamophobia was therefore not a change in ideology but a change in focus.
Well said. It is not “in theory” if it was the sentiment that was trotted around by everyone from atheists to secular americans to Christians who don’t seem to realize they themselves are partisan religious followers in order to dehumanize Muslims. I would say the same sentiment with the same train of thought is shared between a lot of the weird crusader guys pushing for war with Afghanistan and Iraq as with nu-atheist people. I don’t seem it as a coalescence, but the same strain between the two “look at these savage people with their moon god” shit. They didn’t come to the same conclusion, they both built their worldviews around justifying their imperial expansion
The western chauvinism was always there, but my memory of the day to day posting was largely Kent Hovind, “look at this bad take on christian-mom-forum.org”, and proto-manosphere dating advice.
At least when I was doing the rounds in the mid-2000s (so post 9/11 and during the main Iraq occupation). I was definitely after the heyday of Usenet channels.
It was always just assumed that Western culture produced superior values to the hyper religious middle East, as can be shown by how we just beat them in a war, but it rarely actually produced that much discussion.
The reddit atheist / tumblr sjw split and it’s consequences have been a disaster for the human race
Honestly… It seems like hexbear has created a synthesis of these things lol. The contradiction has been resolved.
Edit: /s
Come on, after getting dogpiled in that Barry thread because you made a joke and everyone took you seriously, you’re gonna give me shit for this?
It’s cool that you think my post is bad, but it’s not my fault I’m not funny.
This sidenote that I was going to do is so off topic that I’m actually going to put it in another comment because its just, way too left field
This whole thing has me thinking about RationalWiki. And how despite being athiest to the core, its violently AGAINST the bigoted elements of nu-athiesm. How the fuck did that website come to be. What are its origins. (Not that RationalWiki cant ever be cringe, its got some terrible takes on AES countries obviously and its obsessed with Christy Myth in an unbecoming way).
You know Atheism has been around for thousands of years before a bunch of hat wearing racists got real popular with debate nerds, and will continue to exist for probably as long as their are humans, right?
It really sounds like a lot of you have only ever encountered atheism from New-Atheist bullshit, when that is literally five or six years out of a thought tradition that goes back a very, very long time.
I really don’t understand what you’re getting at. Atheism is Empiricism encountering religious delusion. Atheists, at least the ones who are serious about it, don’t believe in gods and fairies and magic and healing vibrations because there’s no evidence of any of those things, and they do believe in an empirically observable universe.
“Atheists are cooler and gooder than religious people” is self-satisfying to say
Yeah that’s the hat wearing racist new-atheism I’m talking about, the phenomena that is a blip in the history of atheism and doesn’t define it or even comment on it in any meaningful way. People weren’t running around France shivving priests during the Revolution because they saw South Park make jokes about Mormons.
And the Soviet Union did a really, really good job of getting rid of religion, with relatively little violence, in like 70 years. It’s not some pie in the sky when you die thing. Socialist societies have been very effective in relieving people from religious belief, and I sincerely hope we’ll continue to be effective in the future. Europe is doing a pretty bang up job, too, with religious adherence plummeting since WWII.
Idk who or what Big Yud is. I am less online than you.
But also who or what is it.
I do remember the anti-islam justifying of why the US could beat Iraq (clearly a case of the secular West against the zealotry of the Middle East, in the internet atheist’s eyes), the areas I was in definitely focused a lot more on Bush’s religious right with the teaching of evolution stuff.
Looking back on it, it had a pretty huge undercurrent of right libertarianism that I’d put ahead of justifying the Iraq war or being explicitly anti-islam (though those were a part of the culture, and are also connected).
This was largely my experience, as well. Tbh, I don’t remember things related to libertarianism being discussed at all. But I had my Fukuyama glasses on at the time, so I probably just didn’t notice.
I don’t remember libertarian stuff being discussed explicitly, but almost every explanation for some policy or other assumed libertarian assumptions. Trying to think of a good example. Probably something about the “dating marketplace” or moral hazards about welfare.
