[jedrider]

I couldn't come up with a better title, but the article seems interesting to me and I do tend to really like to generalize:

Godless grifters: How the New Atheists merged with the far right
https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/the-new-atheists/

"I'm done playing. … I am waging full-scale ideological warfare against the enemies of Western Civilization. … We must broker absolutely zero tolerance with this ideology, and the only way forward at this point is full-scale ideological war, and I will take no prisoners, … . I seek the complete eradication and extirpation of the ideology from every facet of life."
That's scary, intolerant and even fascistic. And it's exactly where the New Atheism movement has ended up, to the exasperation of those who still care about secularism.

To conclude, let me bring things full circle: At least some studies have shown that, to quote Phil Zuckerman, secular people are "markedly less nationalistic, less prejudiced, less anti-Semitic, less racist, less dogmatic, less ethnocentric, less close-minded, and less authoritarian" than religious people. It's a real shame that New Atheism, now swallowed up by the IDW and the far right, turned out to be just as prejudiced, racist, dogmatic, ethnocentric, closed-minded and authoritarian as many of the religious groups they initially deplored.

[Outcast_Searcher]

I couldn't come up with a better title, but the article seems interesting to me and I do tend to really like to generalize:

Godless grifters: How the New Atheists merged with the far right
https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/the-new-atheists/

"I'm done playing. … I am waging full-scale ideological warfare against the enemies of Western Civilization. … We must broker absolutely zero tolerance with this ideology, and the only way forward at this point is full-scale ideological war, and I will take no prisoners, … . I seek the complete eradication and extirpation of the ideology from every facet of life."
That's scary, intolerant and even fascistic. And it's exactly where the New Atheism movement has ended up, to the exasperation of those who still care about secularism.

To conclude, let me bring things full circle: At least some studies have shown that, to quote Phil Zuckerman, secular people are "markedly less nationalistic, less prejudiced, less anti-Semitic, less racist, less dogmatic, less ethnocentric, less close-minded, and less authoritarian" than religious people. It's a real shame that New Atheism, now swallowed up by the IDW and the far right, turned out to be just as prejudiced, racist, dogmatic, ethnocentric, closed-minded and authoritarian as many of the religious groups they initially deplored.

Generalizing is necessary for people to survive.

But trying to generalize groups of people, re how they will consistently behave in the future, ironically, is fraught with all kinds of risk.

And no, I know of no simple or effective solutions to that -- especially since they'd involve lots of generalizing about people. (I'm not claiming to be the sharpest crayon in the box, but I do eventually learn, at least sometimes).

[evilgenius]

The question this forces us to ask is whether the accusations made against religion are more about human nature than anything to do with God? I mean the bedrock accusations, like how religion is really about war when it says it is all about peace. Never mind that when people seek truth in a church they tend to run into hypocrisy. Again, that is about people. Religion can be as interesting as math. It has deep things to it like math does that actually offer us solid things to add to our lives. It's also a place where if you want to be intellectually lazy and not learn those things there are plenty of charlatans waiting to tell you what you've been missing.

[jedrider]

This is hardly an exhaustive list. But it's enough to make clear the epistemic and moral turpitude of this crowd. There is nothing ad hominem in saying this, by the way: The point is simply that the company one keeps matters. What's sad is that the New Atheist movement could have made a difference — a positive difference — in the world. Instead, it gradually merged with factions of the alt-right to become what former New York Times contributing editor Bari Weiss calls the "Intellectual Dark Web" (IDW), a motley crew of pseudo-intellectuals whose luminaries include Jordan Peterson, Eric and Bret Weinstein, Douglas Murray, Dave Rubin and Ben Shapiro, in addition to those mentioned above.

I haven't wrapped my head around the gist of this article yet, but I think it's important. I'm not talking about religion versus secularism, but I'm talking about the messengers that many of us follow. Yes, this does turn back into a reflection of ourselves.