By dismissing religion’s positive aspects and creating a societal void, neo-atheism has inadvertently paved the way for activists to find meaning in secular progressive causes.
The most important value to me is searching for the truth, for the reality that is revealed by prolonged, deep questioning. Most religious ideas fail to hold up under that process. I get that religious faith is a source of comfort to believers, and I have sometimes wished I could join them in their beliefs and their worshipping communities. Some people say that my value system is about the Western Enlightenment, but I disagree. People have searched for truth throughout recorded history, and probably long before.
I agree, reality wins, it doesn't need a last stand. We have a last chance to stand with it or fold. I also love the woooo voice in my head when he writes "feminism".
It's just another witch hunt. These cowardly dudes trying to run back into the arms of Christianity. Leaving us rational women to hold the line.
No liberal feminism and corporate capture of the appearance of feminism didn't work well. I'm happy I with the vote, divorce law, not being beaten by my husband. Liberal feminism is just trans feminism. The men who sh!t on feminism are just ignorant or willfully ignorant of the history of feminism.
Not for children and women of abuse. Women in America weren't even allowed their own bank account or credit card before 1974. Women's reals before men's feels.
This is a very superficial article which misses the point. The author's thesis is based on the assumption that somehow Atheism+ CAUSED wokeism by weakening traditional religions. This assumption is false and, frankly, silly. The atheist movement did not cause wokeism. On the contrary, it was a VICTIM of wokeism, just like all other formerly progressive movements. The entire political left has been ideologically captured and corrupted by "woke" ideologies. Atheism+ involved adding left-wing politics to atheism, and that is what dragged it down when the left imploded.
Although the author of this article mentions identity politics, he fails to name the real causes of wokeism. Those causes include postmodern philosophy, the collapse of the political left, the collapse of the Soviet Union (thus removing a major anchor, albeit very imperfect, for left-wing sympathies), and the abandonment of Enlightenment values, in particular the abandonment of universalism.
Liberal Christian churches are very attracted to wokeism. In fact, wokeism very much resembles a sect of liberal Christianity which has evolved into something very illiberal.
Wokeism is not a "secular religion." That very expression is an oxymoron. Wokeism is a parareligion (or even a religion according to some authors). We need secularism, i.e. separation between religion and State. In particular, we need SEPARATION BETWEEN WOKEISM AND STATE.
No. The Religious Right has been around for centuries. Wokism is a much more recent phenomenon. The Religious Right does not keep wokism at bay; it feeds on it (and vice versa). Wokism is a godsend (pardon the pun) for the right because it discredits the left and thus strengthens the right. The woke claim to be on the political left (but they have abandoned the very Enlightenment principles which define the left) and the political right is very happy to believe them, because of the irrational behaviour of the woke.
Wokism and the Religious Right are factions which promote competing versions of nonsense. Both oppose universalism. Both are anti-secular. The woke promote Islam (as well as their own magical beliefs), while the Religious Right in the USA (and in many countries) is Christian.
You are a perfect illustration of what I explained. You are evidently on the political right. You make no distinction between the left and the woke (and neither do the woke) and that confusion suits your prejudices perfectly.
In reality, the "woke" are not the political left. They have abandoned universalism (e.g. the "antiracism" movement is now racist). They have abandoned rationality and science (e.g. transactivism now rejects the binarity of biological sex). They have largely abandoned economic issues. All this was not inevitable. It is NOT the logical conclusion of left principles. It violates those principles.
> You make no distinction between the left and the woke (and neither do the woke)
Because it is. Wokism is what happens when you take the leftist worldview seriously.
> They have abandoned universalism (e.g. the "antiracism" movement is now racist).
Racial differences in achievement haven't gone away, despite decades of anti-racist policies. This must mean that either there exist real non-trivial differences between the races or that racism is even more subtle and insidious than was assumed. If one is not willing to accept the former belief the only possible conclusion is the latter.
> They have abandoned rationality and science (e.g. transactivism now rejects the binarity of biological sex).
Feminism is based on a rejection of biological sex ("One is not born a woman, but becomes one"), and for decades you leftists had no problem with it.
Another factor is demographic. Since atheism is associated with individualism and a disdain for seeing humans as part of a multi-generational continuum, it leads to very low birth rates. As a result, atheism tends to eliminate the genes that make people atheists, particularly those linked to high IQ.
" a disdain for seeing humans as part of a multi-generational continuum"
Of course this is nonsense. And the individualism atheism is associated with is due to the herd mentality, in which people simply follow the norms unquestioningly. Those who question the common "wisdom" are not so much opposed to being a part of the community, but rather they're unwilling to sacrifice an ability to think for themselves in order to do so.
In fact, as a lifelong atheist I could not possibly give up the gratitude, fascination and wonder I feel knowing I'm part of a multi-generational continuum! You could not have been more mistaken in your casual "Since atheism is..." comment. (And Sandra's comment explains the ACTUAL reasons for low birth rates.)
I think it does not help to say that atheists do this or do that. Atheists come in all stripes as do people in general. People need to recognize that individualism is a virtue. It is not a bad thing, it means that one recognizes the importance of his ideas to his life and his success in living. The mobs burning police buildings, supporting the vicious murderers of the people of Israel, calling on young people to renounce their “whiteness”, declaring men in dresses to be “women”, or storming our nation’s Capitol, are not people who understand the meaning of individualism; they are collectivist, mystical, tribalists from the primordial swamps.
Yes, young activists are usually quite explicit in denying individual differences. I recently was talking to one of them about cultural differences between American families of recent Italian immigrants versus British immigrants. The young woman across from me looked confused and said, "These are all cisgender white people. Same culture!"
I think that it is a decentralized, cult-like mass movement of the pathological type. It has been compared to the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and there are many striking similarities. I have been reading Eric Hoffer's 1951 book "The True Believer." He describes many attributes of this type of mass movement that can be observed in them all, no matter what variability exists in the contents of their ideologies. Reading Hoffer enables me to step back from my emotional reactivity to the specific beliefs and practices of the woke movement. I think that this kind of mass craziness must be hardwired in human brains, given that it emerges every so often over time and across cultures all over the planet.
It is highly desirable that the birth rate be reduced globally. Our species has overrun the planet, and our excessive population is the cause of most environmental problems. Intelligent and educated people are more likely to see this, so also are more likely to opt out of having a bunch of kids. Unfortunately, many religions still push people to have as many kids as possible, because that is what the authors of their scriptures told them to do---a couple thousand years ago. But you are correct, the tendency of smarter people to opt out of reproduction does leave the planet in an even worse state, because the less intelligent will continue to have higher birth rates.
Religious people in the West have a total fertility rate of 2 children. It's low but close to the replacement rate. If they didn't use contraception, they would have 10.
You write about them as if they’re these sweet conscientious characters in a Bertol Brecht play. I’m sorry, but these people are generally full of hate, latch on to atheism because it goes hand in hand with their brainwashed Marxist fever dreams, relate ignorantly to oppressed nations round the world and become minions of a corrupt Totalitarian government. Can we still look at them as bleeding heart “Liberals”? Absolutely not. They are the root and branches of the destruction of our Country. “They know not (what the hell) they do. That’s about all the mercy I can show them.
My goodness. The amount of buffoonery required to write that comment must have been enormous.
Leave The Cult. The clearest indication you're in one comes when you recite common cult beliefs -- entirely without basis -- and then exhibit the lack of self-awareness to describe others as having "brainwashed fever dreams". One can only assume (if you're in the USA) that a certain orange man will get your deeply misguided vote this November. Your loss, and ours as well.
If these dumbasses didn’t cover everything they look at or believe in with a thin veil of politics, they might not have destroyed even atheism. They destroy everything their misguided thinking comes in contact with. But isn’t that the agenda? One can be completely mindless, as is evident with Kamala and her sidekick, dumber than a dumbass Tim, and still be political activists? Some of these kids couldn’t explain what they want if their life depended on it. Unless they’re screaming about abortions and the freedom to tattoo, pierce and mutilation their bodies. And really? All you got is your own cultisms of orange man bad. Real impressive.
Well, that is one thing we can agree on about Atheism, but I get what the author was trying to say. Looking forward to your argument, because your repetitive Buffoonery comment is lame.
I've been an agnostic atheist for most of my life - since I started to think for myself. I don't know whether a god or multiple gods exist (agnosticism), but the (lack of) evidence leads me to to the conclusion that none do. I sometimes wish it were different - the comfort some people get from belief in something greater, a purpose, a destiny is lost to me. Even the social function of church membership would sometimes be a boon, but I cannot in any conscience pretend to a belief that I do not hold simply for my own ends. Having said all that, I have never felt the need to fill in the space religion might otherwise take up with any other cause - except, perhaps, Enlightenment rationalism, and the vital importance of evidence over feeling. It leaves me a little lonely at times, but I'm satisfied with who and what I am.
Atheism, going back to the 19th C, has slowly eroded the position of religion as a source of purpose for people. And as Viktor Frankel so eloquently wrote in Man's Search for Meaning, purpose in life is central to man's existence and happiness.
Most people want simple rules to follow - meaning in a bottle - because to create your own meaning takes a lot of deep thought. Our busy lives and shallow media discussions squeeze deep thinking out and fill our minds with fluff. So, when a new slate of 'virtuous' simplistic goals comes along, people easily grab on and feel good about themselves. The more dedicated ones turn into activists, just as religious converts are the most strident in their faith.
Our education system also dismisses critical thinking in favor of 'critical theories'. Add a censorious culture on-line, and you get an army of self-righteous cranks of all stripes. The media simply amplify their favorites and exclude others, hence wokism.
I'm increasingly of the mind that we need to do away with "good intentions" as a justification for actions with unanticipated downstream consequences.
First off, virtually everyone has good intentions for whatever actions they take, no matter how damaging on net balance. What we call good or bad intentions is often informed by our own chosen frame of reference. A child watching a dog weaning her pups may come to believe that bad intentions are involved because the dog is withholding milk from her pups. Adults know, however, that the weaning process serves a greater purpose in the development in the pups, and therefore the intentions (if dogs have those) are good if looked at from a broader frame of reference.
You can play this game all day long with various issues. Liberals want price controls to raise wages, and wanting to raise wages for poor people is obviously rooted in good intentions. But so is the conservative desire to avoid price controls. By their estimation price controls will be worse for those same people in the long run, therefore they, too, have good intentions, but their chosen frame of reference is different.
Point being, virtually everyone has good intentions, based on their chosen assumptions and frame of reference. But if everyone has good intentions, then it's kind of pointless to say so, and it lets people off the hook too easily.
Downstream consequences aren't completely unknowable. The question you want to ask about new atheists, or really any group pushing for a change, is not whether their intentions are good, but exactly how much time did they spend thinking through the potential downstream effects of the change they're pushing for? For a group of people who value critical thinking so highly, it's surprising how little of it was done toward considering what the effects of their actions would be if they got their way. It's not like any of this societal void business came as a surprise to Christians. Just go back and read any number of prominent Christian authors over the past century, or even farther back. People are using "good intentions" as an excuse act as though our current situation was impossible to predict. It wasn't. Don't let them off the hook for their intellectual laziness. Or to go back to the price controls example, if price controls have a consistent record of failure that stretches all the way back to the Romans, at some point good intentions seems less like ignorance and more like a decision to avoid pursuing evidence and lines of thought that might lead where you don't want them to.
All that said, does that mean "good intentions" is never a valid justification for actions? No, I think it's still useful to explain simple misunderstandings. You meet someone and want to learn more about them, but one of your questions comes off as culturally insensitive. Good intentions should be an okay justification here, because cultural groups aren't a monolith and the response to such questions is often heterogeneous, so you had no way to know. On the whole, though, "good intentions" lets people off too easily.
When atheists threw out God, they also threw out children and family as the cornerstone of social organization. This created a generation of people who have internalized the idea that family and children are unimportant or even undesirable. These are the results. Solid example of Chestertons fence--i don't think atheists really considered this very much in their assault on Christianity. If they did, they certainly didn't consider the consequences very deeply.
It is fanatical devotion that has true believers fly planes into buildings, murder innocent party goers in Israel, kill millions in Nazi Germany, Communist Soviet Union, Red China. This is a good thing? It is mysticism, collectivism, irrationalism at the root.
The image of young Americans kneeling in prayer on some campus in protest for Gaza as a gesture to Islam circulated throughout the Arab world, where they noted with admiration that American students are converting to Islam. In practice, they are not really converting to Islam, but they are seeking the kind of meaning that only religion can provide. Most of it they receive from the "oppressors/oppressed" religion of wokeness, but this is a weak religion in itself. Why is it so weak? Because it is short-term and has not stood the test of generations. It stems from the shallow thinking of spoiled rich kids, not from the deep, fanatic devotion that characterizes true believers who are sure that paradise awaits them on the other side of existence. Therefore, this religion is doomed to be parasitic on traditional true religions. Like the communists in Iran who foolishly tried to lead a revolution alongside the ayatollahs, and were eventually executed by them one by one.
Wait! Religion is an intricate evolved phenomenon with important social and psychological benefits that can't just be ripped away without profound consequences for civilization?! Wait, every new atheist who ever gloated self-righteously about how the sky wizard is fake had the faux sophistication of a 13-year-old boy?!!
Since when did something being an intricately evolved phenomenon mean it was worth keeping around? For much of human history we got to have the intricately evolved communal bonding experience of having the plague wipe out a chunk of it.
Consequences aren’t bad just because you’re afraid of them.
I didn't say it was, or wasn't, worth keeping around. That would depend on your personal values. If you inferred from my comment I am a Christian, or a theist, you are mistaken.
Take all the "cans, maybes, mights, and coulds" out of this, and you'd have a decent opinion. The oblique approach to reality undermines the point. Yes, in fact, people need meaning and purpose and if the State wants to be that totem, it will destroy "all other gods before" it. Duh. So, now, in many forms, too many kneel before the State's latest meme, power play or lure that promises the security of belonging. All that is necessary is mindless compliance. I'll take God, thank you, who created this exquisite, marvelous universe we are blessed to live in. Keep your scientific, mechanistic, digitized, dehumanized existence to yourselves. And wonder at the deep unhappiness all around.
No. Identity politics rose prior to the New Atheist movement so the thesis has not accounted for but is acting against the real world. This is religious apolgetics at its 'finest'.
First came post modernism (70s to mid 80s) out of which arose identity politics (late 80s into the millennium). New Atheism arose in the early noughts after 9/11 (Harris started it with Dennett, Dawkins, and later Hitchens to round out the Four Horsemen).
Towards the end of the decade, Dennett came up with the Brights, which quickly morphed into Atheism+. This was the kernel for the marriage between social justice goals and the non religious 'progressive' identity politics creating what we call the 'woke' movement for lack of a better term.
Nowhere in this lineage (bringing about the rise of the Nones as the largest 'religious' affiliation in polling) is there the timeline link used in the post as if atheism were the major causal factor leading to a substitutive religious association to wokism/progressivism. This simply isn't true by timeline alone. The link, I think. is about the role of faith-based belief switching effortlessly between empowering one imaginary truth with another and non religious people are just as susceptible as religious to the allure of righteousness.
The most important value to me is searching for the truth, for the reality that is revealed by prolonged, deep questioning. Most religious ideas fail to hold up under that process. I get that religious faith is a source of comfort to believers, and I have sometimes wished I could join them in their beliefs and their worshipping communities. Some people say that my value system is about the Western Enlightenment, but I disagree. People have searched for truth throughout recorded history, and probably long before.
I agree, reality wins, it doesn't need a last stand. We have a last chance to stand with it or fold. I also love the woooo voice in my head when he writes "feminism".
It's just another witch hunt. These cowardly dudes trying to run back into the arms of Christianity. Leaving us rational women to hold the line.
Well feminism hasn't worked out particularly well even for women.
No liberal feminism and corporate capture of the appearance of feminism didn't work well. I'm happy I with the vote, divorce law, not being beaten by my husband. Liberal feminism is just trans feminism. The men who sh!t on feminism are just ignorant or willfully ignorant of the history of feminism.
Divorce has been a disaster for families, and hence general society.
Not for children and women of abuse. Women in America weren't even allowed their own bank account or credit card before 1974. Women's reals before men's feels.
> Not for children and women of abuse.
Nearly all divorces had no legitimate abuse.
> Women's reals before men's feels.
Women's reals are that nearly half of women in today's "feminist utopia" need to rely on anti-depressants.
Sorry to see you have become a target for snarky comments. I think you deserve better.
Thank you very much! I have learned that many people do not have critical thinking skills or a willingness to engage civilly.
This is a very superficial article which misses the point. The author's thesis is based on the assumption that somehow Atheism+ CAUSED wokeism by weakening traditional religions. This assumption is false and, frankly, silly. The atheist movement did not cause wokeism. On the contrary, it was a VICTIM of wokeism, just like all other formerly progressive movements. The entire political left has been ideologically captured and corrupted by "woke" ideologies. Atheism+ involved adding left-wing politics to atheism, and that is what dragged it down when the left imploded.
Although the author of this article mentions identity politics, he fails to name the real causes of wokeism. Those causes include postmodern philosophy, the collapse of the political left, the collapse of the Soviet Union (thus removing a major anchor, albeit very imperfect, for left-wing sympathies), and the abandonment of Enlightenment values, in particular the abandonment of universalism.
Liberal Christian churches are very attracted to wokeism. In fact, wokeism very much resembles a sect of liberal Christianity which has evolved into something very illiberal.
Wokeism is not a "secular religion." That very expression is an oxymoron. Wokeism is a parareligion (or even a religion according to some authors). We need secularism, i.e. separation between religion and State. In particular, we need SEPARATION BETWEEN WOKEISM AND STATE.
Atheism contributed to Wokism by greatly weakening the main political force that was keeping Wokism at bay, namely the Religious Right.
No. The Religious Right has been around for centuries. Wokism is a much more recent phenomenon. The Religious Right does not keep wokism at bay; it feeds on it (and vice versa). Wokism is a godsend (pardon the pun) for the right because it discredits the left and thus strengthens the right. The woke claim to be on the political left (but they have abandoned the very Enlightenment principles which define the left) and the political right is very happy to believe them, because of the irrational behaviour of the woke.
Wokism and the Religious Right are factions which promote competing versions of nonsense. Both oppose universalism. Both are anti-secular. The woke promote Islam (as well as their own magical beliefs), while the Religious Right in the USA (and in many countries) is Christian.
> No. The Religious Right has been around for centuries. Wokism is a much more recent phenomenon.
That's because Religion kept the tendency to Wokism suppressed.
> The woke claim to be on the political left (but they have abandoned the very Enlightenment principles which define the left)
No, the woke are the principles of the left taken to their logical conclusion, at which point the contradictions in those principles become manifest.
You are a perfect illustration of what I explained. You are evidently on the political right. You make no distinction between the left and the woke (and neither do the woke) and that confusion suits your prejudices perfectly.
In reality, the "woke" are not the political left. They have abandoned universalism (e.g. the "antiracism" movement is now racist). They have abandoned rationality and science (e.g. transactivism now rejects the binarity of biological sex). They have largely abandoned economic issues. All this was not inevitable. It is NOT the logical conclusion of left principles. It violates those principles.
> You make no distinction between the left and the woke (and neither do the woke)
Because it is. Wokism is what happens when you take the leftist worldview seriously.
> They have abandoned universalism (e.g. the "antiracism" movement is now racist).
Racial differences in achievement haven't gone away, despite decades of anti-racist policies. This must mean that either there exist real non-trivial differences between the races or that racism is even more subtle and insidious than was assumed. If one is not willing to accept the former belief the only possible conclusion is the latter.
> They have abandoned rationality and science (e.g. transactivism now rejects the binarity of biological sex).
Feminism is based on a rejection of biological sex ("One is not born a woman, but becomes one"), and for decades you leftists had no problem with it.
Another factor is demographic. Since atheism is associated with individualism and a disdain for seeing humans as part of a multi-generational continuum, it leads to very low birth rates. As a result, atheism tends to eliminate the genes that make people atheists, particularly those linked to high IQ.
" a disdain for seeing humans as part of a multi-generational continuum"
Of course this is nonsense. And the individualism atheism is associated with is due to the herd mentality, in which people simply follow the norms unquestioningly. Those who question the common "wisdom" are not so much opposed to being a part of the community, but rather they're unwilling to sacrifice an ability to think for themselves in order to do so.
In fact, as a lifelong atheist I could not possibly give up the gratitude, fascination and wonder I feel knowing I'm part of a multi-generational continuum! You could not have been more mistaken in your casual "Since atheism is..." comment. (And Sandra's comment explains the ACTUAL reasons for low birth rates.)
I think it does not help to say that atheists do this or do that. Atheists come in all stripes as do people in general. People need to recognize that individualism is a virtue. It is not a bad thing, it means that one recognizes the importance of his ideas to his life and his success in living. The mobs burning police buildings, supporting the vicious murderers of the people of Israel, calling on young people to renounce their “whiteness”, declaring men in dresses to be “women”, or storming our nation’s Capitol, are not people who understand the meaning of individualism; they are collectivist, mystical, tribalists from the primordial swamps.
Yes, young activists are usually quite explicit in denying individual differences. I recently was talking to one of them about cultural differences between American families of recent Italian immigrants versus British immigrants. The young woman across from me looked confused and said, "These are all cisgender white people. Same culture!"
I often wonder how some people have enough functioning brain cells to be able to support themselves.
I know. Considering how the rates of literacy are falling in American public schools, in another generation most people will have to be on welfare.
Your description suggests that wokism is a perhaps not a religion, but operating close to it, in terms of being illogical.
I think that it is a decentralized, cult-like mass movement of the pathological type. It has been compared to the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and there are many striking similarities. I have been reading Eric Hoffer's 1951 book "The True Believer." He describes many attributes of this type of mass movement that can be observed in them all, no matter what variability exists in the contents of their ideologies. Reading Hoffer enables me to step back from my emotional reactivity to the specific beliefs and practices of the woke movement. I think that this kind of mass craziness must be hardwired in human brains, given that it emerges every so often over time and across cultures all over the planet.
It is highly desirable that the birth rate be reduced globally. Our species has overrun the planet, and our excessive population is the cause of most environmental problems. Intelligent and educated people are more likely to see this, so also are more likely to opt out of having a bunch of kids. Unfortunately, many religions still push people to have as many kids as possible, because that is what the authors of their scriptures told them to do---a couple thousand years ago. But you are correct, the tendency of smarter people to opt out of reproduction does leave the planet in an even worse state, because the less intelligent will continue to have higher birth rates.
No, it’s really not desirable societally. That’s debunked Malthusian hokum.
Eugenics much? So only idiots who have nothing else in their lives desire children? Brilliant analysis there.
It’s not atheism that leads to a low birth rate. It’s wealth and contraception. Banning contraception is not one of the positive aspects of religion.
Religious people in the West have a total fertility rate of 2 children. It's low but close to the replacement rate. If they didn't use contraception, they would have 10.
You write about them as if they’re these sweet conscientious characters in a Bertol Brecht play. I’m sorry, but these people are generally full of hate, latch on to atheism because it goes hand in hand with their brainwashed Marxist fever dreams, relate ignorantly to oppressed nations round the world and become minions of a corrupt Totalitarian government. Can we still look at them as bleeding heart “Liberals”? Absolutely not. They are the root and branches of the destruction of our Country. “They know not (what the hell) they do. That’s about all the mercy I can show them.
My goodness. The amount of buffoonery required to write that comment must have been enormous.
Leave The Cult. The clearest indication you're in one comes when you recite common cult beliefs -- entirely without basis -- and then exhibit the lack of self-awareness to describe others as having "brainwashed fever dreams". One can only assume (if you're in the USA) that a certain orange man will get your deeply misguided vote this November. Your loss, and ours as well.
You sound like you're reciting the common TDS beliefs.
Define TDS.
If these dumbasses didn’t cover everything they look at or believe in with a thin veil of politics, they might not have destroyed even atheism. They destroy everything their misguided thinking comes in contact with. But isn’t that the agenda? One can be completely mindless, as is evident with Kamala and her sidekick, dumber than a dumbass Tim, and still be political activists? Some of these kids couldn’t explain what they want if their life depended on it. Unless they’re screaming about abortions and the freedom to tattoo, pierce and mutilation their bodies. And really? All you got is your own cultisms of orange man bad. Real impressive.
Well, that is one thing we can agree on about Atheism, but I get what the author was trying to say. Looking forward to your argument, because your repetitive Buffoonery comment is lame.
My goodness. The amount of buffoonery required to write that comment must have been enormous.
But I repeat myself.
And NO ONE "destroyed atheism". I'll have more to say on the misguided article above when I get the time.
I've been an agnostic atheist for most of my life - since I started to think for myself. I don't know whether a god or multiple gods exist (agnosticism), but the (lack of) evidence leads me to to the conclusion that none do. I sometimes wish it were different - the comfort some people get from belief in something greater, a purpose, a destiny is lost to me. Even the social function of church membership would sometimes be a boon, but I cannot in any conscience pretend to a belief that I do not hold simply for my own ends. Having said all that, I have never felt the need to fill in the space religion might otherwise take up with any other cause - except, perhaps, Enlightenment rationalism, and the vital importance of evidence over feeling. It leaves me a little lonely at times, but I'm satisfied with who and what I am.
Atheism, going back to the 19th C, has slowly eroded the position of religion as a source of purpose for people. And as Viktor Frankel so eloquently wrote in Man's Search for Meaning, purpose in life is central to man's existence and happiness.
Most people want simple rules to follow - meaning in a bottle - because to create your own meaning takes a lot of deep thought. Our busy lives and shallow media discussions squeeze deep thinking out and fill our minds with fluff. So, when a new slate of 'virtuous' simplistic goals comes along, people easily grab on and feel good about themselves. The more dedicated ones turn into activists, just as religious converts are the most strident in their faith.
Our education system also dismisses critical thinking in favor of 'critical theories'. Add a censorious culture on-line, and you get an army of self-righteous cranks of all stripes. The media simply amplify their favorites and exclude others, hence wokism.
I'm increasingly of the mind that we need to do away with "good intentions" as a justification for actions with unanticipated downstream consequences.
First off, virtually everyone has good intentions for whatever actions they take, no matter how damaging on net balance. What we call good or bad intentions is often informed by our own chosen frame of reference. A child watching a dog weaning her pups may come to believe that bad intentions are involved because the dog is withholding milk from her pups. Adults know, however, that the weaning process serves a greater purpose in the development in the pups, and therefore the intentions (if dogs have those) are good if looked at from a broader frame of reference.
You can play this game all day long with various issues. Liberals want price controls to raise wages, and wanting to raise wages for poor people is obviously rooted in good intentions. But so is the conservative desire to avoid price controls. By their estimation price controls will be worse for those same people in the long run, therefore they, too, have good intentions, but their chosen frame of reference is different.
Point being, virtually everyone has good intentions, based on their chosen assumptions and frame of reference. But if everyone has good intentions, then it's kind of pointless to say so, and it lets people off the hook too easily.
Downstream consequences aren't completely unknowable. The question you want to ask about new atheists, or really any group pushing for a change, is not whether their intentions are good, but exactly how much time did they spend thinking through the potential downstream effects of the change they're pushing for? For a group of people who value critical thinking so highly, it's surprising how little of it was done toward considering what the effects of their actions would be if they got their way. It's not like any of this societal void business came as a surprise to Christians. Just go back and read any number of prominent Christian authors over the past century, or even farther back. People are using "good intentions" as an excuse act as though our current situation was impossible to predict. It wasn't. Don't let them off the hook for their intellectual laziness. Or to go back to the price controls example, if price controls have a consistent record of failure that stretches all the way back to the Romans, at some point good intentions seems less like ignorance and more like a decision to avoid pursuing evidence and lines of thought that might lead where you don't want them to.
All that said, does that mean "good intentions" is never a valid justification for actions? No, I think it's still useful to explain simple misunderstandings. You meet someone and want to learn more about them, but one of your questions comes off as culturally insensitive. Good intentions should be an okay justification here, because cultural groups aren't a monolith and the response to such questions is often heterogeneous, so you had no way to know. On the whole, though, "good intentions" lets people off too easily.
I wouldn’t say that everyone has good intentions. Psychopaths exist.
Shorter organiker: The road to hell is paved with good intentions. ... as the old saw goes.
When atheists threw out God, they also threw out children and family as the cornerstone of social organization. This created a generation of people who have internalized the idea that family and children are unimportant or even undesirable. These are the results. Solid example of Chestertons fence--i don't think atheists really considered this very much in their assault on Christianity. If they did, they certainly didn't consider the consequences very deeply.
It is not atheism stoking these fires. It is mysticism, collectivism and irrationality.
Real atheism hasn't been tried?
It is fanatical devotion that has true believers fly planes into buildings, murder innocent party goers in Israel, kill millions in Nazi Germany, Communist Soviet Union, Red China. This is a good thing? It is mysticism, collectivism, irrationalism at the root.
The image of young Americans kneeling in prayer on some campus in protest for Gaza as a gesture to Islam circulated throughout the Arab world, where they noted with admiration that American students are converting to Islam. In practice, they are not really converting to Islam, but they are seeking the kind of meaning that only religion can provide. Most of it they receive from the "oppressors/oppressed" religion of wokeness, but this is a weak religion in itself. Why is it so weak? Because it is short-term and has not stood the test of generations. It stems from the shallow thinking of spoiled rich kids, not from the deep, fanatic devotion that characterizes true believers who are sure that paradise awaits them on the other side of existence. Therefore, this religion is doomed to be parasitic on traditional true religions. Like the communists in Iran who foolishly tried to lead a revolution alongside the ayatollahs, and were eventually executed by them one by one.
https://tamritz.substack.com/p/the-law-of-conservation-of-religion
I would argue that this was a desired effect of neoatheism. Nature, and humanity, abhors a vacuum.
I e been saying this FOREVER. THANK YOU!!!!
You've been wrong forever? What can we do to change that?
Atheism+ ruined a much-needed movement by fracturing the adherents. Fact.
Check mate.
Wait! Religion is an intricate evolved phenomenon with important social and psychological benefits that can't just be ripped away without profound consequences for civilization?! Wait, every new atheist who ever gloated self-righteously about how the sky wizard is fake had the faux sophistication of a 13-year-old boy?!!
Since when did something being an intricately evolved phenomenon mean it was worth keeping around? For much of human history we got to have the intricately evolved communal bonding experience of having the plague wipe out a chunk of it.
Consequences aren’t bad just because you’re afraid of them.
I didn't say it was, or wasn't, worth keeping around. That would depend on your personal values. If you inferred from my comment I am a Christian, or a theist, you are mistaken.
Take all the "cans, maybes, mights, and coulds" out of this, and you'd have a decent opinion. The oblique approach to reality undermines the point. Yes, in fact, people need meaning and purpose and if the State wants to be that totem, it will destroy "all other gods before" it. Duh. So, now, in many forms, too many kneel before the State's latest meme, power play or lure that promises the security of belonging. All that is necessary is mindless compliance. I'll take God, thank you, who created this exquisite, marvelous universe we are blessed to live in. Keep your scientific, mechanistic, digitized, dehumanized existence to yourselves. And wonder at the deep unhappiness all around.
No. Identity politics rose prior to the New Atheist movement so the thesis has not accounted for but is acting against the real world. This is religious apolgetics at its 'finest'.
First came post modernism (70s to mid 80s) out of which arose identity politics (late 80s into the millennium). New Atheism arose in the early noughts after 9/11 (Harris started it with Dennett, Dawkins, and later Hitchens to round out the Four Horsemen).
Towards the end of the decade, Dennett came up with the Brights, which quickly morphed into Atheism+. This was the kernel for the marriage between social justice goals and the non religious 'progressive' identity politics creating what we call the 'woke' movement for lack of a better term.
Nowhere in this lineage (bringing about the rise of the Nones as the largest 'religious' affiliation in polling) is there the timeline link used in the post as if atheism were the major causal factor leading to a substitutive religious association to wokism/progressivism. This simply isn't true by timeline alone. The link, I think. is about the role of faith-based belief switching effortlessly between empowering one imaginary truth with another and non religious people are just as susceptible as religious to the allure of righteousness.
Wait are we still pretending anti-woke isn’t more absorbed in identity politics than most progressives?