Tag Archives: future of atheism

October 11, 2017

Are You A “Meta Atheist” Or A “Pop Atheist?”

I recently wrote a blog lamenting that Atheist subculture is attracting disingenuous members, and I predict that this trend will continue until Atheists are actively trying to disassociate themselves from idiots who do stupid things in the name of Atheism just like how “good” or “true” Christians have to disassociate themselves from child-raping priests, The Westboro Baptist Church and ordinary suburbanites who make no attempt to actually live like Christ.

Admittedly, this whole topic is a bit silly, because Atheism is merely the lack of a belief in God. It’s a non-entity. To say that Atheism is a religion, culture or identity is like saying not collecting stamps is a hobby or that bald is a hair color. If you can’t lump “not-stamp-collectors” together into a group and talk about what “not-stamp-collectors” are doing, then how can you talk about Atheists as a group and what Atheists are doing? Well, you can because Atheist have chosen to identify as a group, wear Atheist labels, and create Atheist communities with a budding Atheist culture. I didn’t start this fire. I’m just watching it and talking about it.

The fact that human beings have made a subculture out of Atheism is neither good nor bad. It all depends on what human beings do with it. Some humans will take the Atheist subculture in a productive direction, but there’s a growing number of idiots who identify as Atheists and are going to screw it up for everybody else. I divide these two groups of Atheists into what I call “Meta Atheists” and “Pop Atheists.”

Meta Atheists are people like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. They arrived at their Atheism through a rigorous, lifelong quest for truth. Now that they identify as Atheists, they’re still pushing the limits of their own understanding as well as the limits of human understanding. They’re more likely to be quoted by Atheists than to quote other Atheists, but any instance when they identify as Atheists, or quote other Atheists, or do anything Atheist-related, is merely a by-product of their search for truth.

Pop Atheists are not engaged in a rigorous, lifelong quest for truth. After reading a few books and a few internet memes they accepted that the universe wasn’t created by a magical unicorn, but once they embraced that elementary fact they went out and bought a $50 T-shirt that says, “MY HOBBY IS NOT COLLECTING STAMPS!” and have spent their life ever since then insulting Christians on the internet. Their Atheism is not a means to an end. It is the end destination, and they will spend the rest of their lives wallowing in it…or at least until they move onto the next big fad.

Meta Atheist and Pop Atheists aren’t mutually exclusive. They’re opposite ends of a scale. The main difference is that one thinks proactively and objectively. The other thinks reactively and subjectively. This outlook on life leads them to behave differently, but nobody thinks completely proactively/objectively or reactively/subjectively all the time.

**Here are a few signs you might be a Meta Atheist:**

1: You don’t believe in God. You believe that Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, “Mormonism,” Scientology and Wicca are mythologies entirely invented by humans. In addition to all that….

2: You’re engaged in a lifelong quest for truth and understanding. You may identify as an Atheist, but you identified as a truth-seeker before you arrived at Atheism. Not that you feel the need to back up your claim to be a truth-seeker, but if you had to you could produce a growing list of books you’ve read that are not on the best-seller’s list. You can also explain a pattern of conscious decisions that led you to seek out these books; they weren’t just random books that fell into your lap. You can also produce a stack of notes you’ve taken personally that show how you’ve made a conscious and objective effort to tweeze patterns of truth out of what you’ve learned.

3: You have an articulate philosophy on ethics that you actually use. If a child came up to you and asked you, “What’s the difference between right and wrong?” or “What’s the most important piece of advice you can give me?” You’ll have an answer ready to go since all you’ll have to do is give the answers you live by. You won’t say, “Uh, well, you know? I think we all just…” And you won’t give any answers that are vague to the point of being useless like, “Be good to everyone.”

4: You’re not a dick. You don’t take joy in tearing down other people. You’re not vindictive, and when you argue it’s not to win, it’s to arrive at truth.

5: Your identity isn’t strongly defined by your association with popular subcultures. Sure, you might like Star Trek, but you’re not a Trekkie. You might have been to a football game, but you don’t own a room full of football memorabilia.

6: You don’t watch TV for 7 hours a day and listen to “the hits of the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and today” every moment you’re in your car. You don’t constantly bombard your brain with pop culture. If you know what “American Idol” is, you hate it for everything it is and everything it isn’t.

**Here are a few signs you might be a Pop Atheist:**

2: Your identity is rooted inseparably to Atheism. Here’s a test you can take (or give). Draw a blank mind map on a piece of paper. In the middle circle write down what you identify most as. Then in the surrounding circles write down what you identify as in a secondary fashion. A pastor might put “Christian” in the center circle. Then in the secondary circles, he might put, “husband, father, citizen.” In a tertiary ring of circles, he might put, “American Idol fan, long-distance runner, traveler.” If you would put Atheism in that center circle you might be a Pop Atheist, because a Meta Atheist would likely put something like “sentient start dust, life form, mammal, human being, or truth-seeker” in the center circle.

3: You’ve spent a shit load of money on Atheist-themed merchandise.

4: You’re a dick. You savor winning arguments and tearing other people down. You will not accept defeat. You must have the last word.

5: You left religion for subjective reasons like you hated your Christian father or you decided God doesn’t exist after watching your grandfather die a painful death from cancer.

6: You can point to a place in a book, movie or song where you learned everything you know. Don’t get me wrong, learning is vital. But if you’ve never figured anything out on your own and the extent of your beliefs is a list of regurgitated footnotes…then you’re not a meta thinker; you’re a product of your environment, and you’ll never break free from that box. The only hope you have of growing is if someone else pushes the limits of human knowledge, writes about it and you stumble upon that book.

7: You gorge yourself on popular culture day in and day out. You’ve seen every episode of every prime-time sitcom as soon as it came out. You love pop music. The best night of your life was at a concert. You’re on top of the latest fashion trends. You identify with pop culture. You think wearing a “Star Trek,” “Star Wars,” “Bieber Fever,” or “Cannibal Corpse” shirt makes you cool.

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Leave a comment | tags: future of atheism, good and bad atheists, new religious movements, types of atheists | posted in Atheism

October 11, 2017

Predictions On The New Atheist Movement

By wise sloth

The only difference between a New Atheist and an Old Atheist is that New Atheists live in a time when it’s socially acceptable to be an Atheist, and Old Atheists lived in a time when it wasn’t. I draw the line in the early 2000’s when authors like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins made it cool to be an Atheist.

Dates aside though, New and Old Atheist’s have the same core ideology (or lack thereof). They believe there is no God, and religion is mythology. At least, that’s what a linguist would tell you, but New Atheism isn’t just a word in a dictionary. It’s a social movement. It’s a meme, and it’s evolving at the speed of society.

After 100 years of evolution, I believe Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins will be rolling in their graves as New Atheism will come to resemble the the ugly religious movements it takes so much pride in distinguishing itself from now.

Religion is defined:

“1: a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially (but not exclusively) when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.

2: a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects”

I challenge you to go on an Atheist chat board and declare Atheism is a religion and see what happens. Every argument you find on the internet for why Atheism isn’t a religion may be technically true, but outside of the debate chambers something interesting is happening:

Photo of a man sitting next to his car, which has a license plate that reads, "ATHE1ST."

Photo of a man holding up a fake license plate that says, "Jesus paid it all!"

Picture of a T-shirt that says, "Born again. I didn't turn our right the first time. John 3."

A few pieces of tongue-in-cheek merchandise do not constitute a religion, but what you see here are the first stones being laid in a path that leads to religion. The individuals buying all this Atheist merchandise today may never go all the way down that path. The individuals wearing Atheist shirts, putting Atheist license plates on their cars, listening to Atheist music as they drive to a convention center to hear an Atheist author speak about the book they’ve written on Atheism may just be doing all that as a form of social protest against the oppression of Atheists at the hands of Christians, and that’s great.

I would say, “Long live social progress!” but somewhere out there are legions of idiots who feel lost in this great big, mysterious, lonely, cold universe we live in and are looking for answers and a sense of identity and will gladly latch onto any social movement that will offer them that sense of closure and belonging they’re looking for. Those legions aren’t going to latch onto a social movement or a systemic explanation of the universe because it makes sense. They’re going to latch onto whatever is most popular, and if they see one group of people being smug, condescending assholes to another group of people they’re going to join the smug, condescending assholes because they would rather be the one picking on outsiders than the one being picked on.

Look at Christian culture. 99.9% of Christians don’t act at all remotely like Christ in any way whatsoever. The average Christian has no idea what the Bible even says aside from the quotes printed on whatever sweatshop-made Christian merchandise they bought at their nearest Christian megastore. And yet they’ll defend their beliefs (or rather, their identity) to the death despite the fact that they don’t even know what it is they believe in, and what they actually believe contradicts what they claim to believe. Those idiots didn’t choose to be Christians because they looked at all the belief systems presented to them, studied them and picked one based on objective reasoning. They just jumped on the first bandwagon that rolled by and refused to get off.

Well, the Christian bandwagon is finally breaking down, and the Atheist bandwagon is picking up speed. Naturally, it’s picking up idiots at an exponential rate. Those idiots are going to drag down Atheism the same way they did Christianity. Atheism may not be a religion today, and there might not be brick and mortar churches of Atheism with ordained Atheist evangelists, but give it time. That day will come, and it’ll probably come sooner than you think.

That might not be a bad thing. In the New Atheist’s scramble to differentiate themselves from old school mythologists few of them have stopped and considered that maybe Atheism should be a religion. Just because old school mythologies committed countless atrocities in the name of God and continue to drive people insane, teach immoral behavior and cripple society that doesn’t necessarily mean Atheism has to end up down the same dead-end road as it evolves into a specific, fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects.”

But you can always count on idiots to screw up a good thing. I predict that idiots will hijack and screw up the New Atheism movement. In fact, I reckon that process has already started, and it’s not a matter of when the degeneration will begin but how fast it will progress. It’s only a matter of time before an idiot who identifies as an Atheist beats up and/or kills someone for their opposing beliefs… not because Atheism makes people insane and immoral, but because stupidity makes people insane and immoral, and the number of idiots who are taking advantage of calling themselves Atheists is growing every day.

Update: Turns out I was right. New Atheists are becoming their own worst advocates.

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