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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   36129 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 20, 2023

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I find it interesting that The Motte tends to treat atheism with kid gloves that are not reserved for other belief systems.

Okay, interesting. I honestly can't recall the last time atheism came up here, though, sometimes, prominent atheists are discussed.

For example, the idea that there is no difference in intelligence between different genetic groups of humans is widely called out here as being simply wrong.

HBD does have a lot of purchase here, but it's not like there's no pushback.

But consider the idea that methodological constraints actually are a metaphysical theory, or further implying that shoes are atheists. These ideas are, I think, even less likely to be true than the idea that there is no difference in intelligence between different genetic groups of humans (at least the latter can be empirically shown true or false; the former is just a category error).

I do not understand anything said here.

But atheism on The Motte is usually not met with accusations that it is as absurd, indeed perhaps more absurd, as any flavor of wokeism. Nor is the history acknowledged that New/Internet Atheists almost certainly led to a willingness to embrace relativism everywhere and ultimately wokeism by the masses of "laypeople".

Well, let me be the first to acknowledge that for you because that's empirically true. So much of contemporary wokesim can be found in atheism+, which came out of new atheism. It's notable that only one semi-prominent new atheist, PZ Myers, went full woke as far as I can tell. The rest of the "four horsemen" have either died, faded into obscurity, or gone off in their own strange direction, but none have gone woke.

Does this happen because atheism is largely not viewed as a threat anymore (since its birth of wokeism is already in the past) and because since wokeism is this community's main out-group and atheism is vaguely internet-weirdo-aligned in the modern West, people here tend to follow the principle of "the enemy of an enemy is my friend"?

The tone and assumptions you make in this post are strange to me. It's like you expect to see members of this forum deride and criticize atheism... why? Why not assume that a majority of mottizens were "new atheists"? That's what I would bet on, personally. The people here are most likely new atheists who got off the train at atheism+ or well before. Maybe we have some Christians that were new atheists at the time. Are you aware of the history of this forum?

Atheism as a topic just feels completely irrelevant. It doesn't seem to be correlated with being woke or not, either (see: all of these liberal churches becoming woke). Atheism might have been the initial vector of wokeness, but only because it was the weakest organization to take over. It seems to have consumed pretty much everything else since then.

The tone and assumptions you make in this post are strange to me. It's like you expect to see members of this forum deride and criticize atheism... why?

I thought it was pretty strange to see those expectations going in another direction, but it seemed to be considered not strange at all; just a regular, serious question. I wonder what you make of that asymmetry.

I don't really see a huge asymmetry. I missed that comment, but I'm surprised it inspired you to make this parodical comment. To me, the assumptions in that post are just as strange and out-of-nowhere as the reversed ones in your post are.

Opinion noted and data updated. Thanks!

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