askchapo

The key difference is that there's a certain type of atheist that is essentially Christian in every sense aside from actually believing in God. They tend to have a lot of racist ideas about any religion that isn't Christianity and criticize them far more harshly than Christianity. I think these people are worse than your average religious person, and I would most accurately describe myself as a staunch anti-theist.

While I agree with the other posters on here that "Reddit atheism" has become synonymous with a brand of cantankerous old white guy western chauvinism with godless characteristics, I take issue with the definitions that stop at "smug assholes about it" because that definition frequently gets wielded against users on this site, including in the linked thread.

Guys, gals, and enbies, I don't know if you've read some of the things the rest of the fediverse has to say about us but we are frequently accused of being smug assholes because we refuse to mince words or follow liberal rules of politeness when calling out bad shit, and it shouldn't be controversial here to acknowledge that religious institutions generally are responsible for some bad shit and apply the standard Hexbear irreverence.

I agree there's a time and a place and said time and place is when the religion is a culturally dominant force enabling oppression as is absolutely the case with Islam and less so when it's a cultural identity of a group fighting extermination, as with the Muslim Palestinians and the Rohingya, for that matter. I think certain users have trouble navigating that distinction but I'm not interested in going to the mat about it so I'm not calling anyone out specifically. Y'all can figure it out, look for the

Reddit atheism was called out at the time for being a veil for Western (and even Christian) chauvinism. It was mainly used as a justification of imperialist wars on Muslim countries.

This critique has born out, as Reddit atheist types (Dawkins, Elon) have since self identified themselves as Christian Chauvinists.

"Reddit Atheism" is a type of "crusader atheism" (I'm pulling this term out of my ass). When atheism takes on the form of a "civilizational" project, that we, the enlightened, must impose on them, the backward superstitious hordes. As a social mechanism it isn't much different from how Christianity was used as a justification to bulldoze indigenous cultures, to justify colonialism as a righteous project to "save" the nonbelievers.

Reddit atheism requires you to be a smug asshole about it.

Reddit atheism was just thinly veiled islamophobia. Everyone showed their ass after 9/11

Reddit atheism is primarily informed by Islamophobia and unexamined western bias. Misogyny too. It's the same thing as any other reddit version of something, it's insufferable, liberal, and racist.

When you ask what makes a reddit version of something, just imagine a middle aged cis American white man who makes $300k per year and owns several rental properties. Imagine the kind of worldview he would have and apply that to whatever.

I think religion kind of stinks, but I have vastly more important things to get mad about. Like capitalism. I'm more of the mind, "Well, as long as you aren't hurting anybody, that's pretty low on my priority list."

I think that's the difference between my atheism, and Reddit Atheism™. I don't think gods are real, but holy macaroni, I am not gonna make that my entire identity. I have negative juice in the tank I'd need to debate it with anybody.

BI (before internet) being an atheist meant being in complete ideological isolation. If you tried to discuss it with anyone you would be ridiculed and sometimes even physically threatened. Theists had complete domination. Atheist = devil worshiper/commie. These people developed a persecution complex that dates back at least to Giordana Bruno but probably much earlier. The first real online social networks were newsgroups which were almost entirely academic and darpa techie nerds. I got my first internet uni account around 1997 and gnu atheist rationalists were already controlling the online (newsgroup) narrative by then. For the first time in history they had an advantage and they kinda went mad with power. Reddit and other early social forums were just the graphical web extension of newsgroups.

Iirc there were some obscure social networks BI like Center for Inquiry and James Randii foundation and they quickly took control of the atheist/rationalist online narrative. People like Michael Shermer, Penn Jillette, Richard Dawkins etc. As a 90’s kid I was initially excited because I thought I found my people but I was also becoming a baby leftist and I noticed the far right influence. I believe the right/left split was already there ( Feynman/Randii vs Carl Sagan/Steven Gould) but there was a sense that control of the internet was at stake. A massive war for control raged during the naughts (some really funny shit happened lol) and finally came to a head around 2012 with ElevatorGate. The scorched earth take no prisoners nature of ElevatorGate pretty much destroyed whatever was left of the internet atheist power structure.

I have legit misgivings about religion but even I see how hawkish new atheists and their types are. Got dawkins cheer leading imperialistic actions and calling himself culturally Christian. How does one take it? Not to mention how phony the other so called horseman of atheism are. I mean look at this shit

To me it's the difference between "There is no god." and "If you believe there is a god then you're stupid." or the only slight variation "I believe there is no god because I'm smart" typically dressed up as "I believe there is no god because I am an entirely logical and rational being and well-versed in all the different logical fallacies, anyone who believes there is a god is not as logical and rational and either needs to be educated or is incapable of understanding the high forms of logical calculus I perform.".

The smugness and showing off ones atheism as a sign of superiority is what I typically mean when I talk about "reddit" atheism.

There also is a very strong islamophobic undercurrent, where they are trying to justify their racist feelings of superiority towards all the MENA countries by being "equally" as derisive of christians (a.k.a. republicans/red states). I have never seen a reddit atheist extend good-faith, it's always dunking or debate-broing to flex how "logical" they are.

Reddit atheism is white nationalism under the pretense of philosophy. Famous examples are Asmongold going on a rant about inferior cultures. Richard Dawkins recently said he is a cultural Christian and there is no genocide in Gaza.

What they meant was "we hate brown people" but they wrap it in a few layers of pretend.

It is largely a consequence of liberalism and the focus of trying to prove the white man is scientifically superior by figures such as Darwin.

Here is a large video addressing it https://youtu.be/xPgTeq8d8tg?t=31m25s

"Reddit" Atheism is when you're stuck dunking on young earth creationists (who deserve it but are extremely low hanging fruit) while also being islamophobic.

I was raised YEC so reddit atheism was good for me to an extent, but then I had to shed the islamophobia. fortunately I also came down on the right side of "Atheism+" schism, which deserves its own writeup but I'm not doing that.

I feel confident saying I know, as a fact, that the Abrahamic god does not exist. That said, I don't know how or why the universe exists. Life & consciousness seem to be phenomena which arise naturally out of laws of physics so I have no reason to believe in survival of the self beyond the physical body. It is literally true that we are "the universe experiencing itself" and not something separate from it. That idea is a form of monism which has a rich tradition in eastern religion, and even Marxism!

There are even forms of the idea of reincarnation which I find somewhat compatible with a materialist, monist view of the world. This is a powerful essay on the subject.

Smugness and basically replacing God with “logical thinking”

I disagree with a lot of the commenters here that Islamophobia and focusing more on Islam than Christianity is a key part of it. It’s somehow what a lot of people landed on, but I don’t think those are requirements to be a Reddit atheist.

As someone who was a prime example of a Reddit atheist when I was like 14, my thoughts on Islam were “It’s bad but we can deal with that after getting rid of Christianity.” Why would I care about Islam, only like 1% of the US is Muslim, and they’re not the ones who told me I would burn for eternity at my grandma’s funeral.

I wanted to (and still kinda do tbh) destroy every remnant of Christianity root and stem. Every cross destroyed, every church repurposed or burned. There was a year I decided we should turn Christmas back into Saturnalia. I (frankly, correctly) saw Christianity as the largest cause of harm and misery in history. Turns out capitalism is the bigger cause in modernity, but capitalism was birthed from Protestant Christianity, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

Similarly, a lot of Reddit atheists are western chauvinists, which never made sense to me, because I saw (again, correctly) western civilization as the outgrowth of the evils of Christianity, and if only (and this is where I went wrong) everyone could see the world through the logical eyes of atheism everyone would understand that racism and sexism, poverty, war, are completely illogical and would end. I didn’t have the vocabulary to articulate this at the time but I basically believed religion was the only thing holding us back from communist utopia.

All of this is to say I don’t think those are the factors that define a reddit atheist, because I definitely consider my teenage self one, despite not having those beliefs. It’s the smugness, the annoyingness, and the worship of “logic”. It’s commenting annoying shit on people’s social media posts because they mentioned God. It’s thinking that if you can just explain the obvious contradictions in religious texts people will be like “Oh wow, I hadn’t noticed that! This whole thing is silly!” That you can debate-bro people out of their religious beliefs.

Honestly, most of my beliefs haven’t changed I’ve just become a lot less annoying about it. I still believe that Christianity is a scourge on this planet that should be destroyed, and liberation theology and other attempts to sanitize it are not enough to justify its continued existence. I think if you could wave a magic wand and erase every Bible from existence the world would become a somewhat better place overnight. But I now have a better understanding of just how entrenched it is, and how the current causes of harm have disconnected themselves from it, and so it’s hardly even worth targeting. Capitalism grew out of Christianity, but it’s like those contagious tumors that Tasmanian devils have, and it’s spread to infect every other aspect of society, and euthanizing patient 0 now won’t do much. So I mostly shut up about it and focus on the more immediate problem, capitalism.

To dissent from most people, I don't see any real separation between the two, or more accurately, I don't see a real separation between Reddit atheism and Western atheism, as in atheism as understood and adopted by Westerners. This becomes very obvious when you talk to and observe Chinese atheists. Pretty much the only thing your average Chinese atheist and your average Western atheist have in common is that they don't believe in any gods. That's pretty much it.

But your average Chinese atheist believes in the concept of luck on par with any religious belief. The concept of auspicious days or finding some fortune teller that will give their newborn a name that brings good fortune or diving into numerology isn't something that Western atheists would do. Feng shui, which many Chinese people believe on some level, boils down to how much luck you could generate by optimizing the arrangement of your home and the location of your building (funny aside, there was some Taiwanese politician who apparently bought some house and did everything he could to maximize the amount of luck it would bring to him through feng shui except he didn't even live in the fucking house. And it wasn't an empty house either. It was filled with like statues and other random shit that apparently brings good luck.)

Would your average Western atheist even consider them atheist? I honestly don't think so because there's a lot of additional beliefs baked into Western atheism just like there's additional beliefs baked into Eastern atheism. Western atheism espouses a materialist reality, the disbelief in an afterlife or a soul, an empiricist/skeptic view of the world, confidence in science as the best methodology to understand reality, confidence that there's almost nothing conceptually out of reach of the human intellect, a strict separation between religious belief and religious practice, and centering religious belief over religious practice. None of these have anything to do with the belief or disbelief in a god.

To me, "reddit atheism" is basically just another name for what was once called the "new-atheist" movement. The problem with that movement was that it was a rejection of religion, but not specifically of religion's reactionary aspects.

Several of the figureheads of new-atheism would go on to become "cultural christians" and bullshit like that, because for too damn many of them, their only real issue with religion was that they thought religious people were annoying and stupid, and the rest was just dressing up their contempt as something more.

The new-atheist movement also served as a way for people with liberal / left affectations to mask their complete internalization of Bush-era war-on-terror rhetoric and islamophobia as a principled opposition to religion rather than bigotry and chauvinism.

Atheism versus edgelord atheism.

I'd say not much besides the fact that Redditors will make anything insufferable, combined with the lib fash userbase using it to excuse bombing hospitals and schools while conveniently not applying the same logic to Christianity

If you don't do the dew them it's not real reddit atheism, just being a sparkling gentleman

"Reddit Atheism" is Atheism with debate bro characteristics. Its what happens when you try to substitute not believing in god for an actual personality. Also its largely undergirded with un self-aware (sometimes self-aware) western and white supremacy. They are more interested in being abrasive and irreverent than actually learning/understanding any sort of greater truths or why people believe them.

Reddit atheism: cringe

"Regular old atheism:" based, especially if you're referring to the Marxist takes on it

I've always called myself an atheist and even an antitheist, but the fedora tippers in that thread definitely made me go, "Yikes."

I would never judge a Muslim comrade for their religion specifically. Hell, I don't even judge Catholics for being Catholic, and growing up in that religion made me especially feel sour about it. I often feel like saying something whenever I interact with someone who is openly Catholic, but I am able to keep it contained. That trauma will hit deep enough that it will hurt to some degree for me to not say anything, but I acknowledge the existence of based Catholics.

Of course, I acknowledge the material conditions that give rise to one believing in a religion, and so long as no one is tying said religion to harmful beliefs and practices, I have nothing bad to say about them as a religious individual.

Religion as an institution, on the other hand...

Based on the discussion in that thread, one would wrongly be lead to conclude that "Reddit" atheism (or nu atheism) is being a misanthropic edgelord and "regular old atheism" is screaming at atheists you disapprove of even when they admit that what they said was wrong, because you've already decided what they are. That part of the thread was a miserable shitshow.

I think the real answer is that nu atheists make a number of mistakes, such as ascribing their atheism to their superior intelligence, or giving too much (not any) blame to religion when assessing the origin of certain social ills, not understanding the material conditions that were the basis for whatever dogma they complain about. Also bashing on Muslims, which is sort of an ironic reenactment of how they don't understand religious sentiments being born of material conditions, since their desire to single out Muslims clearly comes from the imperial core making enemies of several Muslim-majority countries and thereby having a basis for waging a culture war against them along with literal wars.

We probably should not aspire to "regular old atheism," born overwhelmingly of capitalist conditions, but as socialists seek out some sort of socialist atheism. Anti-theism, for example, superficially seems like a misanthropic nu atheist position, and I'd wager the majority of the time it has been, but what about an anti-theism that seeks to undercut religion not by scolding people or imposing your own culture, but by improving their material conditions so they secularize on their own?

Anyway, I'm not the kind of theorist to devise something like that, I really just mean to say there is potential there.

Others have already pointed out the links to Islamophobia, but to me a crucial aspect is simplifying things to the point where religion is the sole factor. For example, saying that Israel and Palestine would get along if they didn't believe in some freaking sky wizard. Religion usually isn't the sole factor in anything happening.

its a Venn diagram with fuzzy edges trying to compare "classic" atheism to "new" atheism. Nothing definitive can be said to separate them, only trends and tendencies, none of which are really hard and fast.

but "new" atheism is more common and prevalent online, and reddit itself has an effect that influences people with shit opinions to go mask-off almost immediately and constantly, so as far as practical experience reddit atheists are just bigger jerks.

I’m agnostic these days, mostly because I don’t claim to know anything about what happens to you after you die. Nobody fucking knows and claiming you are certain “nothing” happens is just the other side of the “faith” coin.

Which is funny, I am a “nothing happens” believer but I wouldn’t call myself an atheist. It’s just way too presumptuous and arrogant imo.

Additional hot take: if someday atheism became a larger movement it would absolutely be capable of reproducing many of the same atrocities made in the name of religion

Hey, I'm a religion nerd?

But religion nerds who know way more than me and can make a better case for what atheism really is under the hood have made videos i can share.

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

This guy is pretty good in general, if you want to understand religion on a deeper level than like, what's common to everyone. Because common knowlege about religion is garbage. Like huge garbage. It's all shit. I can't have normal conversations about these topics anymore, because i know more than most people and not enough for everyone i learn from. It's great.

edit: also i should probably define terms. I'm aware atheism can mean non-religious, but given that in name it's defined in terms of negating religion, people who study religion are still probably the best lens we have to study it as a phenomenon, but i don't want to imply any kind of personal belief about what atheism is - what it is is complicated and it does range from a redditor who is a little too into dawkins, to atheistic forms of religious behavior that don't fit neatly into categories of belief or non belief - it's a weirdly huge topic.

Reddit atheism is to atheism what evangelical baptism is to christianity

Reddit Atheism: I don't believe in God/Religion and anybody that does is stupid and smells bad.

Atheism: I don't have any particular need to find a God(s) or Religion to make my life feel meaningful.