So...there seems to be a debate on the online left in recent years over the status of so called "reddit atheism." New atheism, or reddit atheism was a common strain of left wing ideology on the internet in the 2000s and early 2010s, and it's kinda controversial on the modern era. It was my own introduction to left wing politics and while I dont consider myself an atheist any more, it's still very influential to my mindset. But with the woke era, and christian lefties like James Talerico being popular, a lot of woke lefties hate it. TO be fair, I dont like wokeism much either, even though I feel forced to defend those guys in the trump era because well...fascists be fascists. But yeah, point is, the woke lefties dont like us secular lefties criticizing religion. They think it's "bigoted." Its not, depending on context. Religion is a set of ideas. Ideas deserve criticism. Sorry, they do. I know we like to act like religion is beyond criticism, and we like to act like its like race, gender, sexuality, etc., but really...it's not. It's more aligned with political ideology in my book. While there can be bigoted criticisms of religion, I wont say criticizing religion is inherently bigoted.
And....I think we should criticize religion more. Some commentators I follow are leaning toward bringing reddit atheism back, like Kyle Kulinski and Vaush, and I'm all there for it. I honestly think religion is one of the most destructive forces on the planet, and its a root cause of much of our current societal dysfunction.
Around 4/10 Americans believe in some variation of young earth creationism. Many of these believers are reluctant to believe in climate change, which is an existential threat to our civilization that threatens to doom us all. What's the link? To paraphrase Rush Limbaugh, why would God create a world that we can destroy? Good question. But if we can destroy our own world, what does that say about your religion? And because for these people admitting to being wrong is like the worst thing you can do in that regard, of course they're going to just deny reality instead. But think about how dangerous that is for society. You deny physical reality to maintain belief in questionable holy texts. While more moderate and reasonable christians like to reconcile their beliefs with reality, the extremists dont. The religion IS their reality. And that makes them fundamentally dangerous.
Let's talk about how else this impacts politics. Vaush talked about Israel lately. In the Bible, Israel was God's chosen people. The logic of the Bible is that those who are on Israel's side will get god's blessing, while those who aren't face his wrath. You can guess why we mindlessly support Israel based on this.
Heck, it goes deeper, Vaush was talking about how American evangelicals believe in the literal end times and are a death cult. They believe that Israel is essential to the end times due to the temple being mentioned and it being reconstructed (the Bible was written while the temple was still standing), and yeah...they literally believe in a variation of "Left Behind", but happening in reality. If you think I'm making this up, no, this is what I was taught in school.
In the end times everyone knows about the Bible. This encourages missionaries to reach remote tribes to try to save them and share God's word with them, even though they're not wanted. And of course, those who are murdered by locals in these other parts of the world become martyrs. I watched so many creepy videos about that in Christian school. It was actually one of the things that set off alarm bells in my head even back then. Like you should be willing to die for the religion. It was insane. And looking at it now I'm just terrified by those teachings.
I know Islam gets a lot of crap for suicide bombings and martyrdom. And to be fair, they have an extremist problem. Not all muslims are like that though, a lot of them are relatively moderate. I have a muslim friend from iraq and he kinda reminds me of your typical Christian here in the US. Like hes not super crazy with it, he does the rituals, and yeah, heavy parallels to moderate Christianity. Of course, the extremes also have heavy parallels, and the versions of Christianity were talking about are literally the same kinds of people like the taliban who wanna impose sharia law on everyone. That's what christian nationalism is. It's Christian sharia law. There are Christian terrorists out there who, say, bomb abortion clinics who arent much different than muslims terrorists. Religious extremism is a problem, and you shouldn't diminish the experiences of those who are trying to warn people.
I know people like Sam harris for years talked about how Iran getting nuclear weapons is a threat because they're a bunch of religious psychos who will bomb the world with them. Fair point...but what does it say when we got these evangelical nuts in our own government with all of these christian end times nonsense in their own worldview? Are they not dangerous? And this is where Vaush was coming from in his recent segments.
And they are. And again, this is the origins of a lot of reddit atheism. A lot of reddit atheists are literally just ex christians who realize how fricking crazy these evangelical branches of christianity are (because we were in them to varying degrees!), and it's kinda left a lasting scar on us emotionally. A lot of reddit atheists literally suffer from religious trauma syndrome. They fear going to hell when they die. They fear the end times coming and being stung by something that looks like a stingwing from Fallout 4 (yeah, that's in the bible). The triggers for all of us are different, as our own journeys with leaving Christianity are different, but I can honestly, say, it's no joke. RTS is no joke. And a lot of ex christian atheists are literally traumatized by their experiences with religion and have forms of PTSD like symptoms ranging from it. Even I have my triggers. Hell, one of the reasons I'm spiritual again is because one of those triggers was hit in just the right way that it convinced me that some form of god is real after all. Should I be spiritual? Idk, the evidence for god and all is still weak objectively speaking, but man, that experience just messes with my head.
Either way Ive been able to successfully compartmentalize that from my secular worldview, and we need a secular worldview in politics. It's said that Christianity isnt a religion, but a relationship with God. Atheism is said by atheists to be a relationship with reality. And that's largely true. And we need more of that. When nearly 40% of our population isn't living in the same reality as the rest of us, how can we have a functioning country. Hell, we talk about our political divisions all the time. But what's driving them? It's this worldview issue. ANd that 40% of the population just isn't living in the same reality as the rest of us. And should we cater and compromise to them? No. Not unless we want the whole country to become some psychotic religious theocracy, which is the direction the GOP would take it if they had unlimited power. Hell, they're trying their best with project 2025. This is why compromise with the GOP fails. We're literally trying to appease a bunch of religious fundamentalists who dont live in the same reality as the rest of us and keep trying to meet them part of the way. We shouldnt. We should take back the overton window for ourselves, so we can all live in a shared reality again. We should try to deconvert these people, moderate them, and get them out of these dangerous mindsets. And at its core, that's been a core mission of mine since I left. Maybe I'm harsh, maybe im crusty. Maybe I'm le edgy reddit atheist, but you know what? We NEED that in an era where a good third of the country or more is pushing for Christian nationalism, and they actually have organized political power. These guys are driving much of the republican party and the trump administration's agenda. And if we're not careful, these guys will force us to live under Christian theocracy, and they could even destroy the world in the long term, whether from nuclear war, or climate change, or who knows what else?
I say this as an ex follower in these guys' belief system. Take that as you will.
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