Nu-atheism

[Anonymous No.16113387]

What went wrong? Why did so many of them move on to become reactionary hacks?

[Anonymous No.16113507]

>>16113387
They were hacks to begin with and Evangelized Atheism has historically provided some of the most cringey examples of reddit and millenial culture.
Idk if you’re a zoomer who’s very late to the party or someone who’s managed to go ten years without realizing they’re a laughing stock

[Anonymous No.16113661]

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2010/05/believe-it-or-not

[Anonymous No.16113678]

>>16113387
oh look it's this thread again
>What went wrong?
nothing, they won

[Anonymous No.16113777]

They’ve always been cringe. You just finally grew out of it and realized they’re one trick scammers

[Anonymous No.16113783]

>>16113777
>You just finally grew out of it and realized they’re one trick scammers

What a waste of digits. Hitchens wrote on numerous topics that had nothing to do with religion.

[Anonymous No.16113798]

>>16113387
Cringe

[Anonymous No.16113814]

>>16113387
>What went wrong?
Taleb BTFO then

[Anonymous No.16113817]

>>16113387
Because (Dennett excluded) they had no philosophical preparation, and all they were doing was discussing philosophical matters.

[Anonymous No.16113833]

Hitchens' entire career was built on being a reactionary hack. Same with Harris.

[Anonymous No.16113839]

Dawkins and Harris were totally uneducated and out of their element. Hilariously bad contributions designed to be edgey and sell books.

Hitchens was perhaps the wittiest Of them but like his predecessors uneducated in philosophy is his weakness.

NONE of these 3, ironically, could read past the rhetoric of philosophy and understand the arguments being made.

Total trash, the lot of them.

Dennett on the other hand seems to be a tier above them. I haven’t read his work but I get the idea he’s a vastly superior intellectual to his cringe peers.

This true?

t. Not an atheist but always read their arguments for fun

[Anonymous No.16113842]

>>16113387
Dennet and Dawkins are to be taken seriously.
The other two are literal whos.

[Anonymous No.16113879]

Isn't Hitchen's bit kind of self-defeating?

In broad terms I think that we suffered through some kind of scientism that lasted somewhere from 195x to 201x. The evangelized atheism is a product of that, as is the "skeptic" stuff. When they founded the skeptical association Skepsis in Finland in the 1980's, the chairmen were high profile doctors and academics. Now the chairman is some literal who IT support guy. They're unironically going through the same development as the Finnish parapsychological association almost 100 years earlier: All academic at the start, but ended up a housewives' tea club after a couple decades.

I think that the tide has turned. People are now more skeptical about science, for whatever reason. The old science vs. pseudoscience dichotomy is a lot harder to sell when the seedy underbelly of science i.e. things like
>publish or perish
>p-hacking
>replication crisis
>string theory debacle
and many others have entered public discourse. The old scientist adage "my worldview is based on science" sounds sort of oblivious now. Expecting present day science to answer all your questions is like expecting the Bible to do the same.

So in short, I think that the world just passed these dudes by.

[Anonymous No.16113894]

They won. Being a Christian on the internet would get you mocked and berated, for entirely justifiable reasons. Then everyone got bored and moved on. Their work remains unchallenged, as no one is actually a Christian on the internet (LARPers don't actually believe anything at all).

Atheism was seen as a chance by people to escape Liberalism. Liberalism is rooted in Christianity, and the Atheists correctly thought that if they could kill Christianity, they could kill Liberalism. Their problem is that they didn't realize that Liberalism is malleable, and so it took their arguments and used them to bolster its own: God isn't real, so you should be EVEN MORE Liberal! Liberal because good is just good! There is no God, so you won't go to hell for being bad, and heaven for being good! So if you're good you're REALLY REALLY good for no reason but because you're good! How holy and pious!

If you were alive at the time you'd see two pretty clear strains: one of people who were more or less using atheism as an excuse to go do National Socialism In Space, and one that just wanted to dunk on Southerners for being hicks. The latter got what they wanted (Christians are dumb dumbs, everybody is now aware, let's laugh at them), the former got shafted.

Ironically, the former realized that you don't have to be an atheist to be Illiberal, so many of them ended up becoming Christians. Very few became Evangelicals, however (Evangelical Christianity is fundamentally Liberal; you cannot be an Illiberal Evangelical).

[Anonymous No.16113950]

>>16113387
>rebel
Everything about this is cringe but this takes the cake

[Anonymous No.16113967]

>>16113950
"In thish moment *sniff*, by means of pershonal feelings and sho on *swish*, I am in what Lacan would call the jouissance. But not becauje, you know, of any phony liberalism and totalitarian ideology. Political, buddhism materialism and sho on. No, no *snort*...But becauje, you see, *swallows fly* of marxshist dialectic in the sense of the foucauldian genealogical method, *tugs shirt* there is this *sniff* enlightened shuffering that comes with tolerance, genocide, *unintentional voiced linguolabial trill* anti antisemitism, analogous to *wipes nose* some religious prophecy *sweats profusely* and sho on! *snort*"

[Anonymous No.16113971]

>>16113879
String theory has a bunch of issues, but it's not anywhere near the other things on that list. I can at least understand the temptation to believe that it was right, given how extraordinarily nicely the physics comes together in string theory.

[Anonymous No.16113997]

>>16113971
It's not so much the theory itself as the social ugliness that apparently happened around it

[Anonymous No.16114090]

>>16113387

Great, just what this board needs, more dimwit theologians

[Anonymous No.16114123]

>>16113997
Oh, alright, I wasn't aware. I avoid popsci like the plague but I was hugely into supersymmetry pre-LHC. It's easy to criticise from the outside but once you see how beautifully the theory works (or doesn't) it's very easy to get sucked in.

[Anonymous No.16114268]

Ignore Anglo intellectuals.

[Anonymous No.16114312]

>>16113387
They were always embarrassing. Their "atheism" was just a nominally non-religious sect of Anglo-Protestantism, but they basically reproduced it 99.9%. They had a moment because after 9/11 in 2000s everyone tacitly agreed with them, and ZOG used them as support for ME wars by the non-religious social class. As we moved past that, they either got assimilated into pro-gay Jewish le rational one-liner conservatism (the "intellectual dark web"), or just plain tranny progressivism.

Another way to put it is that they got assimilated into the 2 sides of the 2010s Kosher Dialectic.

[Anonymous No.16114533]

I think they basically achieved their objectives in terms of moving large swathes of the population away from religion and helping to identify the evangelical right as a serious threat to the West.

[Anonymous No.16114540]

On the internet at least, the nu atheist movement hasn't died down at all. On Amazon the 10th anniversary edition of God Delusion (2016) has 6 times as many ratings as On the Origin of Species, 4.5 times as many as the King James Bible and in its bestseller category (philsophy of Religion) it stands at rank 5 and 6 only after some happy life pseudo-Buddhist self help but above Nietzsche and Kierkegaard and way above Augustinus and Pascal.

[Anonymous No.16114594]

>>16113839
a little bit. he can actually base his suppport of atheism based on his research into the cognitive. Chalmers still btfo him though

[Anonymous No.16114601]

>>16113842
Dawkins is only to be taken seriously on evolutionary biology, his commentary on belief in God is pathetically shallow

[Anonymous No.16114673]

>>16113894
based copypasta

[Anonymous No.16114784]

"I wiped the blade against my jeans and walked into the bar. It was mid-afternoon, very hot and still. The bar was deserted. I ordered a whiskey. The barman looked at the blood and asked:

‘God?’

‘Yeah.’

‘S’pose it’s time someone finished that hypocritical little punk, always bragging about his old man’s power…’

He smiled crookedly, insinuatingly, a slight nausea shuddered through me. I replied weakly:

‘It was kind of sick, he didn’t fight back or anything, just kept trying to touch me and shit, like one of those dogs that try to fuck your leg. Something in me snapped, the whingeing had ground me down too low. I really hated that sanctimonious little creep.’

‘So you snuffed him?’

‘Yeah, I’ve killed him, knifed the life out of him, once I started I got frenzied, it was an ecstasy, I never knew I could hate so much.’

I felt very calm, slightly light-headed. The whisky tasted good, vaporizing in my throat. We were silent for a few moments. The barman looked at me levelly, the edge of his eyes twitching slightly with anxiety:

There’ll be trouble though, don’tcha think?’

‘I don’t give a shit, the threats are all used up, I just don’t give a shit.’

‘You know what they say about his old man? Ruthless bastard they say. Cruel…’

‘I just hope I’ve hurt him, if he even exists.’

‘Woulden wanna cross him merself,’ he muttered.

I wanted to say ‘yeah, well that’s where we differ’, but the energy for it wasn’t there. The fan rotated languidly, casting spidery shadows across the room. We sat in silence a little longer. The barman broke first:

‘So God’s dead?’

‘If that’s who he was. That fucking kid lied all the time. I just hope it’s true this time.’

The barman worked at one of his teeth with his tongue, uneasily:

‘It’s kindova big crime though, isn’t it? You know how it is, when one of the cops goes down and everything’s dropped ’til they find the guy who did it. I mean, you’re not just breaking a law, your breaking LAW.’

I scraped my finger along my jeans, and suspended it over the bar, so that a thick clot of blood fell down into my whisky, and dissolved. I smiled:

‘Maybe it’s a big crime,’ I mused vaguely ‘but maybe it’s nothing at all…’ ‘…and we have killed him’ writes Nietzsche, but—destituted of community—I crave a little time with him on my own.

In perfect communion I lick the dagger foamed with God’s blood."

- Nick Land

[Anonymous No.16115306]

>>16113387
Their whole identity was less about religion being wrong, and much, much more about how 'political correctness' was the only reason criticism of religion had to be couched in cautious language if allowed at all. They didn't like that and fought against it. That is why they moved on to becoming reactionaries afterward. People into social justice tend to have a problem with politically incorrect expression. That's everything new atheism stood against in its fight against religion. So they turned against them next.

[Anonymous No.16116210]

>>16113387
For a lot of these guys they just hate misplaced faith.
In their mind empirical data is number 1. If you can't support it, it doesn't matter.


They were progressive because they were against old-school oppression or moralizing legal systems that weren't rooted in empirical data.
They weren't progressive in that they were freedom fighters based in a moral duty, like an MLK or whatever. They were interested in wiping out that which wasn't based in material reality.
After they pretty much succeeded in that, the realpolitik and rather moderate to conservative beliefs of some of them started to come through.

[Anonymous No.16116238]

>>16113387
None of these people even come close to addressing Montano's "steelmanned" case for God.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxYbA1pt8LA

[Anonymous No.16116243]

>>16113817
Dennett is an NPC

[Anonymous No.16116301]

>What went wrong
Nu-atheism is a response to American protestantism, both blind evangelicals and lightweight 'spiritualists' that barely even attend church. In the aggregate, people that got into nu-atheism were not looking for refutations to canonical arguments for God from the catholic church, they were young people fed up with their lunatic pastors calling them devil worshippers for thinking homosexuality isn't a "choice."
Nu-atheism is itself pretty lightweight, as tearing open the hypocrisy and lunacy of American evangelicals is child's play. But because that protestant spirit is baked into conservative American suburbia, discovering nu-atheism is for many people their own version of a spiritual awakening. It allows them to shatter the natural order they grew up in and follow a 'secret' truth that most of those around them are blind or hostile to.
>Why did they become reactionaries
Making money. Youtubers beat American religion like a dead horse, the book is basically closed. When they were introduced to feminism and shit through buzzfeed they realized they could make fun of shitty Buzzfeed "manspreading" articles just as easily as they could debunk deranged online evangelicals. Then they felt dug in and stuck to their guns shooting down popular facsimiles of important topics and branding themselves 'skeptics' while never actually engaging with experts on those issues.

[Anonymous No.16116312]

>>16113814
>Stalinism
LMAO dude whining about economists only to spout Bourgeois ahistorical bullshit in the same sentence. This is Taleb, the retard so many on /lit/ meme about?

[Anonymous No.16116350]

>>16113387
>That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence."
How religiousfags even survive this?
Holy shit.

[Anonymous No.16116354]

>>16114540
Harry Potter And The Sorcerer's Stone has 4 times as many ratings as God Delusion. Checkmate atheists.

[Anonymous No.16116374]

>>16116238
lol I remember seeing this guy his videos were nice

[Anonymous No.16116379]

>>16114673
That is the first time I've ever posted that.

[Anonymous No.16116381]

>>16113387
>Move on to become

[Anonymous No.16116388]

>>16116301
The only difference between "lightweight spiritualists" and Catholics is the fact the latter can always backpedal to some obscure literature from 1500 years ago that they are 100% nobody has ever read and can go "aha! Got ya". Since those nu-atheist want to pretend to be scientific, they can't just say "fuck your literature". That's the only problem. Catholicism is just a paper light as soon as you ignore the whole doctrinal bullshit and attack the basis, which is obscure as shit.

>>16113387
The one and only reason why those atheists fucked themselves up is because they started attacking Islam. Plain and simple. When they attacked Christianity, they were heroes. When they attack Muhammad, they became Islamophobic and the media censored them. Without the spotlight, they're nothing.

[Anonymous No.16116452]

>>16113387
New Atheism is best understood as the American left's reaction to Bush-era geopolitics, the influence of evangelicalism/pentecostalism in US internal matters, and of course, post-9/11 fear of religious extremism. After Obama got elected New Atheism didn't have much in the way of reason to exist anymore - and the whole movement fizzled out. Most of its remnants transformed into the emergent idpol crowd after the Occupy Wall Street protests (in all likelihood due to corporations using idpol as a tool to fragment the then growing anti-capitalist/anti-globohomo crowd), while a smaller portion of it shifted over to the also emergent "alt-right" as a way to continue being contrarian to the mainstream current of US politics. It's also worth mentioning, IMO, that New Atheism was never fated to be anything more than a fad that lasted a couple years - atheism just doesn't have enough "internal social glue" to sustain itself in the long term like religious or quasi-religious movements do.

My 2 cents : I feel like idpol will reach its boiling point in a couple years - it can't keep devouring itself forever as it currently does. When idpol implodes, we'll probably see another Occupy Wall Street-like movement being suffocated in its crib with another fragmenting ideological weapon.

[Anonymous No.16116496]

>>16115306
The shift in the left is far more interesting there being a considerable opposition to the iraq war which mostly vanished after obama was elected most 'leftists' will support capitalism and imperialism and consumer culture if only their corporate masters plaster rainbows over everything and give them mandatory white privilege reeducation seminars. 20th century leftism was based on industrial era technologies and forms of organization, superseeded by the internet and other forms in many cases developed during the cold war as explicit mechanisms of communist counterinsurgency . marxism today is nothing but a rather excetric hypermediated consumer identity, just as incels consuming incel content or furries consuming hardcore animal molestation content.

[Anonymous No.16116498]

>>16116238
He isn't saying anything of value, or even sense

[Anonymous No.16116507]

>>16116498
Brainlet detected. If a superintelligence is possible to create, or if the universe it a simulation, then tat is no different than God existing.

[Anonymous No.16116508]

>>16113967
I heard most of it in my head.

[Anonymous No.16116516]

>>16113387
Dennett has never done any psychedelics before.

https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/08/06/that-time-daniel-dennett-took-200-micrograms-of-lsd/

[Anonymous No.16116524]

>>16113839

Dennett is the best of the four because he never tried to capitalize on his "New Atheist" credit by writing insipid pop criticism

[Anonymous No.16116631]

>>16116238
>roid gut

[Anonymous No.16116683]

>>16113839
He might not say dumb shit publically, but I think Dennett is an absolute brainlet. You might be aware of his compatibilist stance on free will (something he couldn't defend or even properly articulate in a debate with Harris who is hardly educated on philosophy). As van Inwagen (one of the most influential philosophers on this topic) wrote:
>A whole chapter of Daniel Dennett's first book on free will was written to no purpose because he did not realize that "could have done" sometimes means "might have done" [...] and sometimes "was able to do."

Then we get into his stance on consciousness which is... weird, to say the least.

[Anonymous No.16116701]

>>16113387
The West was already in the secularizing process anyways and once all their bluster and media publicity faded, they offered very little else. >>16116452 does a good job of encapsulating the New Atheist movement as a response to the American neocons. Eventually even some atheists grew weary of their rhetoric and frankly poor argumentation, especially from Dawkins Now that religion is less of a hot topic in the public discourse and politics is the new religion in America, they've become largely irrelevant, except for maybe Harris.

[Anonymous No.16116835]

>>16113387
They didn't, society just moved to the left as a reaction to Bush, and because we were on schedule for a left-wing religious revival in America anyway.

[Anonymous No.16116911]

>>16114540
Origin of Species is dry as shit and no layperson in their right mind would actually read more than a few pages of it.
t. actual biologist
And not sure if this is b8 but what casul redditor is paying money to read Aquinas and Kierkeggard? You have to look at bestseller lists in perspective. To compare "if gOD is real why do bad things happen???" to legitimate philosophy is retarded.

[Anonymous No.16117041]

>>16116388
>When they attacked Christianity, they were heroes. When they attack Muhammad, they became Islamophobic and the media censored them.
i don't remember them making "thought experiments" about first-strike nuking the westboro baptist church or about torturing christians being a-ok or supporting the wholesale murder of christians

[Anonymous No.16117102]

>>16113387
Because atheism isn't important plus it got taken over by foids.

[Anonymous No.16117119]

>>16116238
i love this guy. so sad he passed

[Anonymous No.16117170]

>>16116312
kys tankie

[Anonymous No.16117273]

>>16116516
>Aside from alcohol, caffeine, nicotine and cannabis (which has little effect on me, so I don’t bother with it)
Dennett confirmed NPC.
>>16116683
I remember reading van Inwagen going hard after Dennett on free will. It was one of the first times I saw someone being savaged so hard in philosophy and for it to be Dennett was surreal to say the least, since he's usually the one trying to 'savage' religion and dualism.

[Anonymous No.16117297]

>>16113387
>What went wrong?
Nothing, their existence is precisely what capitalism intended for. Midwits, whether their Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, atheist, or whatever, need midwit-tier entertainment, in order to endure their shitty urban lifestyles and dead-end jobs.

[Anonymous No.16117360]

>What went wrong? Why did so many of them move on to become reactionary hacks?
Because once you don't believe in God there really isn't much else to talk about, that is all being an atheist is really.

[Anonymous No.16117403]

>>16113387
Because they themselves became cringe in the end. Atheism is a cringe movement in general. And I am not referring to the , "I guess I don't believe in god, but I don't really think about it or care" esque people. I am referring to the people who, when realizing someone is a christian, try to debate them or insult them. They make atheism their identity and try to fight when no fight is needed. So edgy. You really saved humanity by debating fucking creationists. Everyone knows creationism is dumb, who gives a shit. And who gives a shit about the creationism debate? How will proving the big bang to dumb creationists really improve any of our lives in any way shape or form? How are any of our lives tangibly improved from this? ANSWER: it doesn't. It's just a vanity project for idiots who want to feel smart.

[Anonymous No.16117430]

>>16113839
Dawkins is uneducated? How the fuck do you figure that? He made one of the most important contributions to evolutionary biology of the 20th century, and is highly regarded in the field.

[Anonymous No.16117448]

>>16117430
No.

[Anonymous No.16117450]

>>16117448
Nice retort, fuckwit

[Anonymous No.16117458]

>>16117450
Why don't you specify what this "important contribution" is and I will give a nicer retort, faglord.

[Anonymous No.16117464]

>>16117403
And I forgot to add, that a lot of these nu-atheist followers are 11 year olds on reddit who are just upset their parents forced them to go to church. The fact that the main followers of nu-atheism are literal children is revealing enough to most people.

[Anonymous No.16117477]

>>16117458
Specifically The Selfish Gene. I don't think anyone who knows anything about the field could deny that was an important and influential book

[Anonymous No.16117488]

>>16117477
>Pop-psychology
That is like saying Ron Chernow's hamilton book was important and influential. Its influential I admit. But only because of its mainstream appeal. The book has no serious weight in the historical community. It was not important at all and did not advance the field in any way.

[Anonymous No.16117492]

>>16117477
Well, it's nice that he wrote a good popular exposition on gene-centered evolution, but is that "one of the most important contributions to evolutionary biology"?

[Anonymous No.16117505]

>>16117488
https://www.nature.com/articles/529462a
>Books about science tend to fall into two categories: those that explain it to lay people in the hope of cultivating a wide readership, and those that try to persuade fellow scientists to support a new theory, usually with equations. Books that achieve both — changing science and reaching the public — are rare. Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859) was one. The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins is another. From the moment of its publication 40 years ago, it has been a sparkling best-seller and a scientific game-changer.

[Anonymous No.16117538]

>>16117488
>>16117492
30,000+ scientific citations

[Anonymous No.16117704]

>>16113894
>Christianity is fundamentally Liberal
How so?

[Anonymous No.16117883]

>>16113387
Atheism was a common sense internet community that teenagers joined to prove their own individuality to themselves.Since they favored science, they were 'smart' and not like their parents.
Eventually most grew up and stopped caring about Christianity's 'problems', because it doesn't matter what other people believe. They realized there was merit and value to the religion, even if they didn't believe in it themselves.
The people that remained in atheism circles are the complete fucking autists. They are the early SJWs, they just didn't look like SJWs until gamergate.
The only person I feel bad for in all this is Sam Harris. His income has probably declined a lot because nobody cares about smart scientists wrecking Christians anymore.

[Anonymous No.16118228]

>>16113387
Atheism is just Christianity flipped on it's head, the denial of the spiritual world
negation in Christian faith is affirmation
Atheists like Dawkins don't make a lot of sense unless you understand that

since this is Christianity after all and at it's core stands resurrection, it means that the death of God is just the beginning
you can already see it happening how the Socialists try to resurrect a dead faith just like the original Christians modeled themselves around Jesus of Nazareth

[Anonymous No.16118272]

feels good just being an atheist and not caring about religious/anti-religion cucks opinions
its fucking liberating

[Anonymous No.16118286]

Who's the edgiest atheist out there?
I need someone who embraced his fedora and sharpened his katana (made out of pure facts and logic of course) so he can eviscerate Godcucks with swift motions instead of trying to be moderate.

[Anonymous No.16118295]

>>16113387
Dawkins at the very least pretty much believes the same things he did in 1980's, I wouldn't be surprised of the other dudes there weren't the same.It's not them who "became reactionaries".

[Anonymous No.16118300]

>>16116507
>chimp lower than humans
OOOO AAAAA AAAAA

[Anonymous No.16118302]

They won. Christianity is all but dead in the west, some parts in USA perhaps excluded.>>16113967

[Anonymous No.16118313]

>>16118286
>Who's the edgiest atheist out there?
Amazing Atheist

[Anonymous No.16118518]

>>16113387
Zionist shills with an atheist angle

[Anonymous No.16118724]

I hate to be a blogfag, but the SSC introspective on them is pretty good.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/10/30/new-atheism-the-godlessness-that-failed/

[Anonymous No.16118742]

>>16116243
This Lanier guy must be retarded. Arguing with a zombie would be indistinguishable from arguing with a non-zombie. This retard literally doesn't understand what the concept of p-zombie means.
Also his prose is infuriating

[Anonymous No.16118749]

>>16117273
>I remember reading van Inwagen going hard after Dennett on free will. It was one of the first times I saw someone being savaged so hard in philosophy and for it to be Dennett was surreal to say the least, since he's usually the one trying to 'savage' religion and dualism
Source? I'd love to read it

[Anonymous No.16118803]

>>16117430
You’re right, but he was out of his element when railing against theology and philosophy the way he did.

[Anonymous No.16118848]

>>16117430
He’s really not relevant in biology at all, hence why he he’s writing atheism books and not studying biology .

[Anonymous No.16118853]

>>16117477
The selfish gene contributed almost nothing to biology but really summed up some new ideas for public reading.

That’s the thing kid. Scientists don’t communicate via books anymore. They use nature

[Anonymous No.16118938]

>>16118286
Cult of Dusty

[Anonymous No.16118965]

elevatorgate

[Anonymous No.16119002]

>>16117704
EVANGELICAL Christianity is fundamentally Liberal. You can be an Illiberal Christian. You cannot be an Illiberal EVANGELICAL Christian. American Protestantism coagulated into three groups: Quakers and Puritans (who merged together to become "Social Justice", and do the "God isn't real so I'm better than you" trick I described above).

Quakerism-Puritanism and Evangelicalism form a sort of sparring-partner system wherein they're both trying to kill each other, but they don't actually have the means to, so they end up just become increasingly good at countering each other. The "opposing" side ALSO catches people who leave a given side, thereby preventing them from becoming Illiberal. For example, if you're an Evangelical Christian and realize that Christianity is horseshit and god isn't real *tips* then you COULD go become a Hindu, or a Buddhist, or a Muslim... Or you could become a Quaker/Puritan because that's easier. Likewise, if you're a Quaker/Puritan and realize that God is real *tips* you COULD go become a Catholic, or Orthodox... Or you could become a Baptist because that's easier. This keeps people in Liberalism, and keeps them bickering back and forth about totally meaningless things (Quaker/Puritans and Evangelicals believe in 99.99% of the same stuff, right down to the exact same Creationist schema; they just argue about the technicalities of that 99.99% of stuff).

Quaker/Puritans, despite saying that they are atheists, are not actually atheists. They believe in a Creator ("God"), and that he interacts with the world and answers prayers.

[Anonymous No.16119009]

>"I've forgotten the details, but I once piqued a gathering of theologians and philosophers by adapting the ontological argument to prove that pigs can fly. They felt the need to resort to Modal Logic to prove that I was wrong" ( God Delusion , p. 84).
This perfectly encapsulates everything wrong with the movement. He walks into a room of professionals in a field that he has no knowledge in, thinking he's going to dunk on them. In the process he accuses them of having to resort to modal logic to refute his dumb argument because he doesn't realize that he himself is attempting to utilize modal logic to argue that pigs can fly. It's the perfect mix of arrogance and stupidity.

[Anonymous No.16119014]

>>16117477
>>16117430
You're arguing with people who started using the internet after the death of nuatheism, dude. These people genuinely have no idea who Dawkins is, just that people dunk on him and you're uncool if you don't.

[Anonymous No.16119033]

If your religion is true, why do you get so angry when a person say things that are contrary to it? Why do you need societal approval of your personal experiences? Why can't you just live your own life?

[Anonymous No.16119047]

>>16118724
this one is really good for newfags

most of the people in this thread were either not on the internet at the time or were single digits in age. it shows. its comical seeing people like fuentes have authoritative opinions on stuff that was happening when he was ten and acting as if this was just a quaint little background thing and everyone was ACTUALLY a baptist or some other dumb shit.

[Anonymous No.16119068]

>>16118803
What about Einstein talking about vegetarianism and the future of humanity? And Tesla talking about world super population? I guess those opinions completely invalidates all their scientific work, right?

>>16116683
The whole debate about free will can be reduced to semantics. It's a goddamn stupid concept that will always fall back into endless repetition. Van Inwagen is just playing words with a phenomenon he's got no idea what is supposed to be about. That's the whole work of "philosophers" these days.

[Anonymous No.16119087]

Because the 4 horsemen already came before
Descartes, Newton, Darwin and Freud

[Anonymous No.16119102]

It still makes me laugh. I remember in early Youtube watching a grown men debate a Christian who couldn't have been more than 12 years old. It was so ridiculous.

[Anonymous No.16119157]

>>16116507
what an incredibly scientific diagram lol

[Anonymous No.16119743]

>>16113661
Interesting article. Did the author ever get a rebuttal from one of the people he talks about throughout the article, at least the alive ones?

[Anonymous No.16119750]

This is how the alt right started.

[Anonymous No.16119807]

>>16119102
>a grown men debate a Christian who couldn't have been more than 12 years old
Give the kid the benefit of the doubt, anon. He might be Christian but he isn't necessarily stupid.
>/r/atheism
The Internet's corner of pure cringeness and unwarranted religious bashing. However, remember that at a base level, the only common thing between two atheists is their lack of belief in any deity and that's it.

[Anonymous No.16119823]

I have a friend who is a militant atheist and ancap
what do I do

[Anonymous No.16119838]

>>16119807
Shut up

[Anonymous No.16119889]

>>16119807
I believe you meant:
>The Internet's corner of pure intelligence and logical fact-based rational evidence against magical sky fairies.

[Anonymous No.16119890]

>>16119838
haHAA smosh reference

[Anonymous No.16119918]

I personally like the idea of an atheist approach. This is the very first step of any enlightened being. But to confound this with science, that is rubbish. Science has no saying in the human soul. You have to deconstruct your mind, not embrace one side and denounce another.

It is a good start nonetheless. Specially for Christians, because they got out of their comfort zone and started inquiring more about their own faith.

[Anonymous No.16119964]

>>16113661
Very good article. I really enjoyed that his criticism was focussed on the nu atheist movement rather than being a diatribe against atheism itself. Juxtaposing Nietzsche to the nu atheist movement and hinting at the the aesthetics of tragedy acknowledged by the former while the latter is oblivious was a nice way to demonstrate how passing and ephemeral the nu atheist movement really is

[Anonymous No.16120020]

>>16119807
>>16119102
You're missing the cultural context for this. In the early 2000s it was common for Protestant Christian groups to bring out children and have them expound the gospel, or claim divine revelation given to them, talk about how they'd almost died and gone to heaven, etc. Joel Osteen actually started his career this way. The atheist subtext for this was that the atheist was demonstrating that the kid was being used as a tool by their parents or whatever.

Catholics objected to this too, and "debated" these kids as well.

[Anonymous No.16120041]

>>16118302
True, but that doesn't mean most people don't believe in God

[Anonymous No.16120172]

>>16119918
I was a nu atheist for several years and I came out on the other side a more sincere Christian

[Anonymous No.16120213]

>>16113894
>no one is actually a Christian on the internet (LARPers don't actually believe anything at all).
I'm amazed at how you can so casually dismiss literally every single Christian as insincere
>Atheism was seen as a chance by people to escape Liberalism.
Oh I see, you're just retarded

[Anonymous No.16120248]

>>16118742
>Arguing with a zombie would be indistinguishable from arguing with a non-zombie.
No it wouldn't. If epiphenomenalism is false, the ability of being able to talk about consciousness is evidence of that individual being conscious. Hence, if there is an individual who claims consciousness doesn't exist, like Dennett, that is evidence that Dennett is not sentient.

[Anonymous No.16120270]

>>16120172
My case is the opposite. I was a strong defender of Christianity and now I'm agnostic. It was only after I completely threw outside the window the given idea of God that I started thinking on a whole different level. If you can't pass through this process, you're thinking inside a cube, no matter how intelligent you may be.

[Anonymous No.16120330]

>>16113879
This is a great post

[Anonymous No.16120369]

>>16113678
They won and didn't become thought leaders, I'm sure they would have been fine with that in 05. I bet they didn't see that degeneracy, pseudo religious politics, and acceptance of Islam were around the corner though. Brights BTFO'd

[Anonymous No.16120370]

>>16119068
>The whole debate about free will can be reduced to semantics.
This is literally a brainlet take from someone who has only ever heard about free will through popphil garbage. "My definition of free will is different from yours" games are easily avoided (unless you are Dennett, I guess).
But you wouldn't know anything about that.

[Anonymous No.16120555]

>>16119087
>Descartes, Newton, Darwin and Freud
All of them, except Freud where religious.

[Anonymous No.16120841]

>>16120370
??
Do you have the freedom to choose your free will?

[Anonymous No.16120885]

>>16120841
>??????????
Done.

[Anonymous No.16120897]

>>16120885
Good. Thanks for proving the whole debate about free will is nonsensical blabber.

[Anonymous No.16120952]

>>16113678
They didn't win by any effort of their own; secularization has been a trend for the last 60 years.

[Anonymous No.16120997]

they complete missed the cultural context and significance of religions. By all means, we should do away with fundamentalism, but to repudiate ALL religion as fundamentally stupid and evil is very naive.

[Anonymous No.16121011]

I remember a quote by Jonathan Haidt from somewhere that goes sorta like this: "I don't believe that there is a God, but I believe that there is a God shaped hole in the human heart".

[Anonymous No.16121025]

>>16113879
Saved

[Anonymous No.16121032]

>>16113894
>Their work remains unchallenged, as no one is actually a Christian on the internet (LARPers don't actually believe anything at all)
Imagine being so festooned in defensive irony that you are even on the most base level incapable of recognizing sincerity in others.

[Anonymous No.16121052]

>>16120997
I don't see why that should be a problem since all religions have done that to other religions in the past. Hebrews created their whole religion by taking aspects from both Egyptian and Canaanite religions and then proceeded to massacre their neighbors. Christianity only thrived by persecuting the old religions of Europe. Islam thrived on murdering infidels and forcefully converting tribes to their faith. I don't see any Christians paying their respect for Zoroastrianism despite borrowing so many elements from it either.

[Anonymous No.16121055]

>>16113879
So what you are saying is that science deligitimized itswlf as an authoritative source in the same way christianity was delegitimitized several years ago.

[Anonymous No.16121079]

>>16121011
If I remember his book about morality right, Haidt basically thinks that religion is an evolutionary adaption to help facilitate group cooperation in humans. In effect (primitive) religion helped some groups of early humans outcompete others who were "nonreligious". It's one mechanism that helps solve the freerider problem in human evolution (that any one individual in a group will be most interested in smooching resources off the rest of the group, therefore causing the group to disintegrate)

[Anonymous No.16121146]

>>16121052
I cant believe people still take that zeitgeist horseshit seriously

[Anonymous No.16121159]

>>16121146
>"ha ha, I'll mention a documentary and that will shut them up!"
Weak argument.

[Anonymous No.16121173]

>>16121079
Thats a very self defeating viewpoint. If our cognitive functions are a result of evolutionary necessity and are therefore irrational then our ability to reason and self reflect is irrational. The irrational cannot beget the rational. I think theres a vein of narcissism in the atheists who say this because they think they're so far above their primitive self that they can surpress or surpass evolutionary functions. But what then did they grow into and why is their lack of religion not an effect of evolution?

[Anonymous No.16121192]

>>16121159
I bet you think Horus and and Heracles had 12 disciples and were born of virgins and that all religion is astrotheology. Its just fucking nonsense and is rooted entirely in historical illiteracy

[hungryman !!5BI0oSV9uvS No.16121203]

>>16120369
They didn't see it because they wouldn't have cared. Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris are extremely dismissive of culture, philosophy, the humanities, and art.

[Anonymous No.16121223]

>>16121192
Does posting inconsistencies of said documentary refute completely the hypothesis that Jewish sects, among which one the movement led by Jesus, had influences from Middle Eastern philosophies of the Iranians?

I don't think I need to respond to that.

[Anonymous No.16121231]

>>16121223
This is another demonstration of historical illiteracy. Zoroastrianism is dualistic wheras Jusaism and Christianity are not. The ressurgence of Zoroastrianism by way of Manicheaism was a threat and contradiction to Christianity. Conflating Christ with the Sun is also a revision of Christianity. Thay Zorastrianism is the forebearer of Christianity is just false.

[Anonymous No.16121243]

>>16120270
do you also reject mathematics?

[Anonymous No.16121244]

>>16121231
You're calling others illiterate, yet you can't make a difference from influence and directly copying whole systems of ideas. You don't seem to notice the difference between religious experience and theology either.

[Anonymous No.16121286]

>>16121243
I'd reject my own language if it was possible, but sadly I cannot. Yet, you can reduce the load of preconceived notions as much as possible and you know that from experience.

[Anonymous No.16121292]

>>16121244
Similarity doesnt prove influence. Its a huge leap. Your viewpoint is just a watered down perennialism with the explicit goal of delegitimizing Christianity.

[Anonymous No.16121304]

> /lit/ is for the discussion of literature, specifically books (fiction & non-fiction), short stories, poetry, creative writing, etc. If you want to discuss history, religion, or the humanities, go to /his/. If you want to discuss politics, go to /pol/. Philosophical discussion can go on either /lit/ or /his/, but those discussions of philosophy that take place on /lit/ should be based around specific philosophical works to which posters can refer.
This thread doesn’t belong on /lit/, go to /his/.

[Anonymous No.16121320]

>>16121292
So, do you truly believe that creating religions is a simple step? All it takes is a pen a paper, right?

Then do us a favor and write a whole sacred text for us right now, without any basis on any religious tradition whatsoever. Do it.

[Anonymous No.16121372]

>>16121320
>creating religions is a simple step? All it takes is a pen a paper, right?
Where did I say this?
>write a whole sacred text for us right now, without any basis on any religious tradition whatsoever.
If this is impossible to do, then what are the origins of the First Religion? If all religions are just built off one another and the generation of a totally new one without tradition is impossible, then how could the First Religion have been made?

[Anonymous No.16121435]

>>16121372
> then what are the origins of the First Religion
You don't know and neither do I. But we suppose it started as shamanic practices. Those aren't religions in the best sense, but merely religious experiences. You have it every day without even knowing. A religious system though is a different thing. It derives from philosophy, it requires a whole complete cosmogony, it requires advanced language, it requires several cultural details that cannot be created by one person in his mere lifetime. He HAS to absorb all those concepts and rationalize with them. Jesus himself had to base his ideas from the Jewish tradition, he couldn't invent everything. He created original conclusions, but the premises weren't laid out by him. Jews themselves couldn't invent their tradition out of thin air, they received lots of influences from the Canaanite tribes and the Old Testament shows that.

[Anonymous No.16121465]

>>16121435
>Jews themselves couldn't invent their tradition out of thin air
You just acknowledged that they could, by referring to shamanic practices and admitting uncertainty to the origins of religion.
I'll give you a hint. The answer isn't sociological

[Anonymous No.16121524]

>>16121203
What is their left in their Godless existence then?

[Anonymous No.16121538]

>>16121524
Post-modern art, video games, prescription drugs, pornography, and suicide.

[Anonymous No.16121606]

>>16121465
>You just acknowledged that they could, by referring to shamanic practices and admitting uncertainty to the origins of religion.
But does that happen in a week? In a single day? Or does it take generations after generations of solidified knowledge? You're missing out the point.

>I'll give you a hint. The answer isn't sociological
Then show me your answer. I gave you mine.

[Anonymous No.16121751]

>>16119823
The ancap part is easy, because they're so easy to refute due to their basis of propertarianism. Just point out to him that property is a by-product of coercion and states, and that true individualist anarchism would not force individuals to recognize arbitrary declarations of property. In short, just have him read Stirner or Tucker.

[Anonymous No.16121774]

>>16121243
To be fair, just because mathematics exists, that is not a refutation of materialism. After all, mathematics could not exist without some physical manifestation of quantities. How would an alien consciousness conceive of numbers in a hypothetical empty universe? How would such a consciousness conceive of the very idea of nothingness without something existing in contrast? Of course mathematics appear as a given ideal to us, but we fail to recognize that the material around us has given us that very capacity.

[Anonymous No.16121792]

>>16113387
Because that's what atheism is to begin with. You'd have to be an idiot to think life is the advent of some chemical reaction and not some greatest unseen force within the universe at large.

[Anonymous No.16121813]

>>16120248
>if epiphenomenalism is false
That's a pretty big "if", and as you've stated, without this premise you cannot claim that consciousness would lead to a difference in the behaviour of a physical body: a p-zombie would still talk about consciousness, it would simply be wrong about it (or, more precisely, it would br neither right nor wrong, since saying that it is wrong would only intentionality behind the words uttered by its body).
Personally, I think that epiphenomenalism is correct.

[Anonymous No.16121817]

>>16120213
>>16121032
>t. im not a newfag, ive been here all summer!

>>16121231
Zoroastrians do not view their religion as dualistic because Angra Manyu cannot be reasoned with. A dualistic religion, in their conception, would have a Good God(s) that gives you stuff in return for worship, and a Bad God(s) that doesn't give you punishment in return for worship. Angra Manyu will still punish you, even if you worship him. He's evil to the core, and breaks any and all rules that he can.

>>16121524
Happy-feely funtime pleasure until death. It's why many people fell out of atheism and into things like Eastern Orthodoxy, Buddism, etc.