There's been a lot of discourse about nu-atheism and internet atheism being reactionary lately but not a lot of talk about what it was a reaction to.
There's been a lot of discourse about nu-atheism and internet atheism being reactionary lately but not a lot of talk about what it was a reaction to.
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.
Tangentially related, but I just remembered everyone flying flags on their car windows after 9/11. So fucking cringe.
Just as someone who was around during that time and very conscious of the atheism thing, they absolutely were justifying invasion. Sure they acted appalled at Bush saying god told him to go to war, but they also spent a lot of time talking about how fundamental Islam was a threat to Western enlightenment. When you have Hitchens giving speeches saying that Muslims are dangerous and they have mushroom clouds on their Jihad flags during a time when wacky Christians are leading their own holy war, it's kinda helping them.
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Idk maybe I was too engrained in the tumblr SJW side of the conflict at the time but I really think this is an overly rosey view of things. Like, I personally remember the anti-feminism and racism coming from that side very viscerally. I know that a lot of people say that the athiest youtube channels they followed started out just doing athiesm and THEN did the anti-sjw thing but idk. I feel like the fact that that happened so many times tells me there was always something poisonous there.
Nu-atheism always had a white chauvinism element to it, which was why it was so quickly weaponized to serve Islamophobic ends. Their whole understanding of history is that humans were enslaved by superstition and religion until a certain group of humans (ie white people) realized that superstitions and God aren't real. Their partial freedom from the God delusion lead to a flourishing of human thought and achievement, first realized as the Enlightenment, which then lead to them ushering forth the Industrial Revolution upon which their thriving societies are built on. The rest of humanity is stuck as backwards people living in mud huts thinking praying to the rain god would give them rain because they're still enslaved by superstition and God, so it is the duty of the atheists of the secular world to free the rest of humanity from the darkness of God.
This is just typical missionary white chauvinist bullshit. It's no wonder they would eventually "find God" again once it became more in vogue to embrace religion. Perhaps the rise of China has something to do with it. Once a non-European country ruled by an atheist ideology begins to rise, suddenly "atheism is the key to human progress and civilization" begins to lose its luster.
Perhaps the rise of China has something to do with it. Once a non-European country ruled by an atheist ideology begins to rise
from this one would locate the catalyst for pop atheism in the 2000s being the fall of the soviet union :thinkin-lenin:
That genuinely might be the case. There was always a great deal of ire directed at the Soviets on theocratic grounds. When they were gone, that habit of religious rage had to go somewhere . . .
The rest of humanity is stuck as backwards people living in mud huts thinking praying to the rain god would give them rain because they’re still enslaved by superstition and God, so it is the duty of the atheists of the secular world to free the rest of humanity from the darkness of God.
Carl Sagan had a book about that, it was called, "The Demon-Haunted World". It was a best-seller, of course.
This makes a lot of sense.
I always wondered why so many of these dudes who would openly mock religion took such a hard right turn and became alt right christo fascists themselves. Really weirded me out.
Didn't Dawkins himself turn into an anti-muslim lunatic? Not to mention Sam Harris of course.
Speaking of which, one of my favourite Zizek quotes is "People ask me why I support the death penalty. It's because Sam Harris is still alive." :che-laugh:
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This post hit the mark.
2002 was a hell of a time to be a. Non-Christian and/or b. Against the invasion.
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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.
Reactionary Christianity is back on an upswing right now. There needs to be a counter.
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.
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
Yeah. To add to this - The Nu-Atheists started out mostly opposed to the 2000s version of Christian Fascism. Their big bugbear, initially, was evolution. That's why dipshit's like Dawkins shot to the forefront.
When 9/11 happened it turned out that their only issue was religion, and they were perfectly happy to support, defend, and apologize for the Christian Fascist crusade to kill as many Muslims as possible and plunder the middle east. In so far as they had an analysis, their analysis was that Islam was turbo-Fundamentalism, uniquely evil, and extermination of all brown arabic speakers was totally justifiable. In foreign policy they were 100% aligned with the Christian Fascist regime.
That's pretty much when I broke with them. I want to kill god, not brown people who believe in god, and that turned out to be an irreconcilable difference.
What everyone else is saying about secular calvinism is spot on. They were protestants in every way except a professed belief in god. They basically took the protestant secularization of Christianity one little tiny step forward and just removed god, while retaining all the beliefs and values of calvinism.
It's not really surprising that a lot of them have turned towards other secular religions like techbro utopianism, or lapsed back to just being Christian Fascists again. A lot of them were probably also involved in GamerGate and the various bowtie debate bro movements that have been bouncing around the last few years
TLDR
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Reactionary anti-Christian Fascist/Fundamentalism
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100% pro imperialism, American empire
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Liberal PMC white supremacy. No klan robes, but totally on board with killing as many muslims as possible
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Mostly either Democrat style right wing or GOP-Lite, back when the gop was less bizarre and openly unhinged than it is today.
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Really liked debates even though debates never achieved anything useful, ever
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I don't remember too well, but I think a lot of them neatly transitioned from "relgion is oppressing us" to "feeeeeeeeeemales, feminisms, SJWs, and women in game's journalism is oppressing us"
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They're mostly CHUDs now. I bet a lot of them ended up in the Why I Left The Left right, because that would fit with their whole shtick of being against "oppression" while siding with the establishment in every way that matters.
And the consequence is that when non-New-Atheist Atheists say things like "I wish to avenge myself against the One who rules above." and "The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness" and "Everyone must be absolutely free to profess any religion he pleases, or no religion whatever, i.e., to be an atheist, which every socialist is, as a rule." we get yelled at for being part of a quasi-movement that hasn't really existed in any coherent way in years.
There's sort of a counter-reaction-reaction to a New-Atheist boogieman that mutated in to anti-SJW fascism or whatever it is :funny-clown-hammer: is doing years and years ago.
We've lost Socialism's principled opposition to delusion, falsehood, charlatans, and false hope. A lot of woeo woo new age delusions have been allowed to have a space on the left and that's at least partially because New Atheism tied all atheism to right wing reactionary imperialism in the public mind.
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As a reaction, I think its underlying impetus is islamophobic renaissance broughy to the forefront by 9/11 and the associated media and political response. Angloids latched on, in part, to Christianity because it was proximal, but in terms of the material changes that were happening, and what consent needed to br manufactured, it really revolved around the question of how to dehumanize muslims and make them deserving targets of violence.
Some of the new atheists were pretty explicit that islam was their primary enemy and doubler and tripled and quadrupled down on islamophobic rhetoric even as people stopped caring about atheist stuff. That crowd is the same one that also went down the misogynist path.
Gotta post it again, twice in one day. :citations-needed:
But I will say, @UlyssesT is right it's a secular Calvinism. There's no real humanism or materialism behind it, it's not like the new atheists were supportive of a welfare state or material changes
Ahh, yes, the official Pod of the site.
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I should clarify that there's nothing wrong with atheism as such, especially if it leads to a Marxist humanism where we care for each other and build a world worth living in because it's the only one we've got.
However there's veins of Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, etc that also foster this kind of worldly community just as there are also versions virulently opposed to the world and degrading to life in it.
Basically, reddit atheism is probably as corrosive to communistic politics as the forms of evangelical Christianity it opposes. It might produce a slightly less hostile society for certain minorities in the imperial core, but at the cost of a fig leaf for adventurism in the middle east.