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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
"Religious freedom" in this context means "the freedom to practice my religion and demand that everyone else follow what I think it means".
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Yeah, in its day, new atheism felt like an appropriate response to the conservatism of the country in the Bush era, but in retrospect it really looks like a lot of pseudo-intellectual posturing and self-aggrandizing. Once their talking points became more normalized and people moved on to other more pressing social issues, new atheism showed its true colors with many of its adherents sliding deeper into anti-feminism, islamophobia, and so on.
TBH, even before I found out more of New Atheism's baggage, the very fact that they styled themselves as a movement — heck even the capital letters — made me go "...ehhh".
It kind of had a whiff of pretentious arrogance.
I had similar concerns about the Skeptic "Rationalist" community, which also has similar issues.
Edited by M84 on Apr 2nd 2019 at 9:55:10 PM
Disgusted, but not surprisedIt's been my experience that what a Christian thinks about atheists is a pretty solid What You Are in the Dark litmus test. Many fear atheists because of traits they're projecting from themselves.
There are Christians who don't have this problem. I, a poly-misotheist, work for a Catholic NPO and it's easily the most diverse workforce I've ever been a part of in my ten or so years drifting from corporate ladder to corporate ladder. The philosophy is that it doesn't matter who you are or where you come from: if you believe in helping people and dedicate yourself to providing medical care, then you do the Lord's work all the same and that's all that truly matters.
I've overheard a lot of people in my chain of command having not-very-kind words to say about Trump, too.
But outside the company, I still hear the rhetoric I've heard for my entire life: that atheists aren't "as bad" as rapists or serial killers, but rather that atheists simply "are" rapists or serial killers. See, the logic there is, "The only reason to live a good, moral life is because God said so. The ONLY reason. If I didn't have God telling me what to do, I'd be out there raping and murdering left and right. Why wouldn't you? Morality cannot exist without God; Good and Evil are literally defined as obeying and denying God. So you take God away, and every person, every single one, becomes a raping, murdering monster."
Those people, the ones who 100% see themselves as prospective rapists and murderers if they ever lost faith, those are the ones to steer clear of. Especially because every time they say, "Without God, I'd be a monster," I just can't stop thinking about the fact that God forgives all sins.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Apr 2nd 2019 at 8:02:21 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1113041708730802176
Jesus Christ, Trump.
Really.
(Trump isn't aware Puerto Rico is part of the US)
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.![]()
You worship the many gods of miso soup. They're surprisingly robust in number.
So then they hate the many gods of miso soup?
Edited by sgamer82 on Apr 2nd 2019 at 8:19:26 AM
Polytheism is the belief in multiple gods, misotheism is the hatred of gods.
It's believing in the existence of a divine pantheon housing multiple gods of limited scope and power who are not always on the same page about everything and are prone to bickering and in-fighting. Rather than believing that one almighty infinite flawless will governs all things that transpire.
Also being distrustful that those gods may not have humanity's best interests in mind, are pursuing their own agenda that might not be a great one by our own mortal standards, and therefore may not be deserving of worship. Rejecting the notion that because something is big and powerful, that automatically makes it benevolent.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.The thing to understand is the politicized Christian religious movement isn't actually that large of a part of the Christian religion in the United States. It's also a fairly recent movement. Politicians have always been religious and appealing to them but the mobilization of the Religious Right to serve the Republican Party is actually a thing that happened fairly recently.
Reagan created the Culture War as we know it.
There's some fascinating studies on "Enemy Politics" that I've read and attended lectures on that basically amount to the idea that the GOP created the abortion debate and later homophobia as weapons to make sure that religious movement was directed away from social justice issues to the idea their "way of life was under threat."
It also was deliberately done as a substitute for racial politics that had often tried to lean heavily on a religious theme.
The thing is that it's easy to confuse the Religious Right TM for Christianity as a whole in America but it's not—not even close even in my state. The problem is the religious in general are not actually supposed to mobilize for politics.
There's a long tradition in rural Protestantism that you're NOT supposed to be involved in government—but clearly you don't hear this. There are no big budget corporate Left Wing churches because corporate churches are inherently Scam Religion that have nothing to do with Christianity beyond a veneer.
I'm in an odd place here because I 100% agree that churches should stay out of politics but because of such, wll, that means the only people who are in politics religion wise are the people who disagree.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Apr 2nd 2019 at 7:29:53 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.Speaking more seriously and on the subject of where I stand religiously, I've never considered myself an atheist or, if I am, it's in the "If one truly did not believe they would not bother to deny" sense. I tend to think of myself as Apatheist
, in that I legitimately do not care about God's existence or lack thereof.
Not sure if there's an actual god of miso, but there is the Binbōgami
or "poverty god" whose favorite food is miso.
Edited by M84 on Apr 2nd 2019 at 10:23:50 PM
Disgusted, but not surprised![]()
![]()
Likewise, most churches I've been too have been pretty clearly "politics is not something we concern ourselves with within these four walls" - other than occasional flings at Trump or the far-right. Which is a moral position, not a political one.
Edited by GoldenKaos on Apr 2nd 2019 at 3:28:15 PM
"...in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."Growing up in the Bible Belt and being a liberal Christian, I knew a woman named Becky (not her real name but let's go with that) who grew up in the "bordering on cult" fringe religion that was incredibly grateful when she escaped her family as well as abusive environment.
She promptly embraced New Atheism and the belief religion was a toxic evil meme that needed to be destroyed for feminism to triumph (her atheism was strongly linked with her gender freedom ideals). It was an awkward issue when she found out I was intensely religious. But we remained friends.
Then she attended a "New Atheist Con" (for lack of a better term) in Indiana. Her experience was terrible as it was nothing but nonstop sexual harassment, Islamophobia, quite a bit of outright scientific racism (i.e. "brown people are inferior, that's why they're more religious"), and general dismissal of her as an uneducated poor hick.
Despite my own beliefs, I felt really bad for her.
I think she's a Wiccan now or simply dating one (her bisexuality came out later).
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Apr 2nd 2019 at 10:44:37 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.That kind of drift tends to demonstrate another odd thing about religion. When you get right down to it, a lot of people's faith is determined not by what they truly, actively think is correct based on all of the evidence presented to them. But rather, it's driven by community.
People will believe all kinds of things if their friends believe it too. If I started a cult about worshipping carrots, you'd think I was nuts. But if your best friend became a carrot-worshipper, you might be like, "Oh, yeah, I'm all about the carrot worship. Let's be best pals and go worship carrots together."
Often times, what drives people away from a faith is simply that they don't feel accepted in the community. They aren't really here for God, they're here to make friends and be liked and have someone pat them on the back and tell them they've done a good thing by... well, whatever they just did. Whether it's helping a stranger or making a cool effigy or burning a cross on someone's lawn.
People want to belong somewhere, and young people especially aren't picky about where. And as they grow up, they internalize the values they were previously just accepting for the sake of it. Carrot Bob stops being an ironic teen and becomes a real True Believer in carrot philosophy, simply because he's said the words for so long that they've come to define his identity all the same.
Toxic groups, both religiously and politically, have used this simple fact of human behavior as a recruitment tool for ages.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Apr 2nd 2019 at 8:37:38 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.That's not a good look.
Biden's statement in the article is also not a good look.
"You groped women inappropriately."
"Well, I didn't think it was inappropriate."
That's just about the worst defense ever. Jesus Christ, Joe.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.There's a long tradition in rural Protestantism that you're NOT supposed to be involved in government—but clearly you don't hear this. There are no big budget corporate Left Wing churches because corporate churches are inherently Scam Religion that have nothing to do with Christianity beyond a veneer.
EDIT: While Reagan often gets criticized in the rise of the political Religious Right, this article
argues that it was George H.W. Bush who really got it going, and culminated in his son being elected over a decade later.
Edited by speedyboris on Apr 2nd 2019 at 9:53:41 AM
Bear in mind that the conspiracy (yes, it's a real actual one) to subvert and co-opt evangelical Christianity to the side of conservatism was hatched in the wake of the New Deal, and was brewing in American culture for over half a century before it spilled over and begat us Ronald Reagan.
Edited by Fighteer on Apr 2nd 2019 at 10:56:31 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

It cannot be stated enough that (some) Christians justify voting for/supporting Trump for two reasons: 1) They know of his MANY faults but don't care because he's tilting the courts in favor of conservatism (which smacks of "morals don't matter as long as I get what I want, to the detriment of others"), and 2) They say God has used imperfect leaders in the past, so Trump should be given a bottomless bucket of mulligans.
Also, the distrust/revulsion of an atheist/agnostic president stems from a couple things: 1) The fallacy that you can't be a good person if you're not a Christian, and 2) An atheist would be hostile towards "religious freedom".