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I’m skeptical of the ‘new atheism birthed woke’ idea, tbh, and I say that as someone who doesn’t like either very much- new atheists are still around being new atheists, and they’re often stridently anti-woke. No one really pays attention to them(which I suspect is why the motte is so uninterested in criticizing atheists), but Dawkins is still out there making 13 year old Redditor arguments.
The impression I got is that somewhere around 2012 there was a massive schism within the New Atheism community, from which the daughter community Atheism Plus was born. Atheism Plus, spearheaded by people such as PZ Myers and Richard Carrier, added several social-justice causes to New Atheism, and indeed largely shared interests, priorities, and rhetorics with the modern social justice movement. Eventually most of its members lost interest for the atheist aspect and sort of faded into general-purpose SJ. After the schism, people who still considered themselves New Atheists, such as Harris and Dawkins, were pretty much anti-SJ by default -- if they hadn't, they would have moved into the A+.
A good summary, but my impression as a New Atheist-ish type was that A+ was a consequence of a wider trend, from about 2008, to elevate economics over social policy issues, and for feminism to regain some of its early 90s prescriptivism rather than later 90s/00s "Girls just wanna have fun" feminism.
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As someone who does think that the "New Atheism" community played a pretty outsized role in shaping what basically makes up modern progressive culture, I would almost certainly say that the Atheism part of it is largely irrelevant. It's more of a coincidence than anything else, it could have happened in pretty much any other online community (I do think social media plays a role in this) that leaned left.
I don't think irrelevant at all, if anything I feel like the denial of any higher source of truth or morality is pretty damn central to wokism. Hence the emphasis on "lived experience", and statements like "no bad tactics, only bad targets".
Harvard was founded as a Calvinist Seminary, do you know what you get when you take Calvinism and delete the concept of Divine Grace? You get something uncannily similar to the modern progressive "victimhood" memeplex. I don't think that is a coincidence.
It might be in my view of what Wokism actually is. To me, I think it's a way to make a better world in a way that doesn't threaten, and maybe enhances status/class based advantages. There's nothing inherent in that, I think, that goes against belief in a higher deity.
For what it's worth, Calvinism is one of those religious beliefs I do have a serious problem with, in the same light as I look at Wokism TBH. And the truth is, I don't see any reason why much of the memeplex couldn't come from a liberal Calvinist community.
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Many mothers who aren't particularly nice people end up greatly disliking their children when they turn out to be, surprise, not very nice people either. They just realize something about the fruit of their labor after the deed has already been done.
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