One common stereotype regarding today’s western atheists is that they are predominantly white, male, and from Christian backgrounds, and this demographic profile stands to this day based on the latest polls on the atheist community.
And as pointed out by people like Contrapoints, both the alt-right and the SJWs of the 2010s were products of the New Atheism movement, the bulk of its members being, once again, white males from Christian households.
So this begs the question: Did they leave because the churches weren’t racist enough following the adoption of the civil rights movement’s philosophy by most churches in the 1990s?
As polemical and farfetched as it sounds, I don’t necessarily think it’s improbable given the obvious demographic profile, the fact that the decline in Christianity (in America, Canada, and Australia at least) and rise of sub-cultures were heavily driven by young middle-class white people (especially white men) who left the churches, and that was back when the churches were at least nominally anti-racist following the decline of the white nationalist movement as a significant political bloc in both the north and the new south, as well as the fact that whilst elevatorgate did drive many young white atheist men into further reactionary politics (e.g., the “redpill”, incels, scientific racism, transphobia, etc…) the reactionary streak was there since the beginning as the “four horsemen” used bait-and-switch tactics in their writings to sell the message during the GWOT era: “You don’t need to be a fundamentalist Christian to support another crusade in Iraq”, as well as the universalist civilisational rhetoric. and that was long before the “horsemen” like Harris and Dawkins began to promote a particularist view of the west as it becomes clear that its hegemony is being challenged by nominally non-liberal countries like Russia and China.
There’s also the fact that Christianity in America and elsewhere in what made up old Christendom hasn’t gained any more followers outside of mass immigration as seen how churches across Europe and elsewhere in north America and Australia need to import priests to fill the roles of the clergy as white people there don’t wanna work in churches. While it can be argued that much of it is to do with how Christianity’s universalism is clashing with the increasing particularism of white people who only want Christianity if it affirms white identitarianism, that still wouldn’t support the notion that Christianity declined when it was conservative, as churches became progressive in America in the 2010s and yet still failed to gain converts in a self-sustaining way that didn’t rely on mass immigration. Matter of fact, the new “great awakening” is occurring just as Christian’s politics has shifted further to the right and became increasingly associated with the alt-right. Examples of it include every western populist politician, and Nick Fuentes. All in all, it does support my idea that Christianity in the west has largely survived thanks to contradictory and often fragile coalition-building involving both white nationalists and liberals.
But I do have some doubts about it since the thesis largely relies on connecting the dots more than anything else.
So, is it true?
By subcultures, I mean shit like satanist edgelords, rock, metal, goth, emo, nerds, fandoms, etc…
New Atheism was largely a covert Zionist operation, no?
It exploded after 9/11, when religion in general, but Islam most so, was seen to be the root of all evil. It has nothing to do with civil rights, since homophobia was seen as another problem in the church.
there are probably many factors leading to its decline, like education, lower attention spans (church is boring yall). who the fuck wants to wake up on a sunday to hear some old guy drone on about the bibble
although even though Christianity might be in decline, spirituality, new age, paganism, and the occult seems to be in demand on the margins of america
i feel like Christianity is progressive, historically it was christens behind things like abolitionism and the temperance movement, it was the original "woke"
this sort of thing is ignored on the right, you see guys like nick fuentes using christ as a identity label to collect, ignoring any anti racism or left leaning ideas from the bible
the only right wingers i have seen admit that chrisnitay is progressive are the one who are really into Nietzsche, who call it slave morality
The problem with that theory is atheists in America are one of the most liberal voting bloc and the most socially liberal bloc above even American Hindus and Buddhists.
There are an factions of young RWer who don't like christianity because it is now "brown coded" but this is just them not wanting to have the church doctrine breathing down their neck and finding some bullshit excuse. They are atheists for the same reason why most liberal athetists are atheist, we do not like the Big Mommy and Big Daddy telling us what to do and what to think.
>Decline of Christianity
What decline? The Christian right is literally at its zenith.
>>2815094In terms of political manigance, on the ground even conservative parishes are dying.
>>2815094you must be a zoomer if you think this is their zenith, their zenith was from the 80s-2000s, thats when they had the most cultural influence, evangelical right used to be the obnoxious moral police before liberals turned woke and decided they were the new moral police
>>2815091>i feel like Christianity is progressive, historically it was christens behind things like abolitionism and the temperance movement, it was the original "woke"Gotta disagree there. Christianity was more progressive and “woke” during the early church period preceding the council of Trent, when there were various factions like the Donatists who held some proto-communist beliefs before being quashed, as well as during the Reformation as Engels explained on his essay about the peasants’ revolts.
It should also be noted that it wasn’t the church that pioneered abolitionism, but secular anti-clerical enlightenment figures who posited that human equality meant that slavery was immoral. And I’m not sure if the “temperance” movement can be deemed as progressive as so much of the reactionary shit American leftists complain about comes from the progressive movement that the temperance one was part of. And need I remind you that the progressive movement is the one that gave us the second KKK, eugenics, institutionalised racism in the form of Jim Crow laws in the South and informal de facto segregation in the north via stuff like redlining, carceralism, purity culture, etc…?
>>2815107Can’t forget about imperialism and colonialism.
>>2815091roman paganism was historically progressive given that if it continued, it would have been on track to produce an industrial society by the 8th or 9th century
>>2815110This tbh.
But i would say Christianity was clearly historically progressive on the woman question though. While being extremely regressive on the qveer question, but women are 50% of the population so the bargain was acceptable.
>>2815112not even that, the graeco-roman society was about as misogynistic as similar levels of development christian europe was, if you gave them about 300 years they would probably be woke-ish
>>2815115I'm not so sure. Indo-European paganisms, despite having goddesses and such, considered women as almost non-human and regarded them in a purely utilitarian manner. Abrahamic theology changed that by a lot.
Christian misoginy = Paternalism restricting liberty
Pagan misoginy = It's Abort A Foid Fetus Day
We can see that by comparing Saudi Arabia and India.
>>2815131You’ll find this interesting:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N0U9iZsJbpsIt’s a debate between a Muslim fundamentalist and a Hindu nationalist over the treatment of women in their respective religions. And somehow, Islam comes off as being almost feminist compared to Hinduism, with the Hindu nationalist being unable to come up with proper counter-arguments.
I think this illustrates your point well, as well as how eastern philosophy’s lack of emphasis on absolute truth often clashes with the debate tactics common among Abrahamics who genuinely believe that truth is absolute.
>>2815094There is a decline. This typically happens in Amerjcan history a lot which leads to a Great Awakening that adapts to changing times. The Cold War and intelligence agencies encouraged Prosperity Gospelism to encourage consumerism,capitalism and give a different idea of what a conservative is because too many Christians in the US was Social Gospelist or Christian democrats which was too left wing for the Cold Warriors (Norman Thomas and George McGovern to name examples)so they had to mold a Christianity for the times. Now that old Evangelicalist gospel is dying out in the States in a similar way to the Reagan Revolution that made it have its peak in the 80s-00s.
>>2815131that's different to how graeco-roman society functioned on the issue, obviously you can look at india but the roman view was pretty much what it was in later christian europe, as in they viewed women as lesser, but they didn't view do female infanticide like in india (which only really happens due to the fact indian societal development got stuck for about a 1000 years and didn't change positively until the modern period), instead treating women like highly valued property, and sometimes as almost equal, depending on social status of course
>>2815094it's fading out by this point, the reason it still has the appearance of being ultra relevant is mainly due to the fact most of its followers from 20-30 years ago are still alive and still do their bullshit, the christian right has more power in getting their way now; if only because they got lucky enough that their opponents were incompetent and didn't do much to stop them
>>2815098>>2815106>>2815159>>2815164What is this idealist crap based on feelings and vibes? Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. There were more than 400 women arrested for so-called pregnancy related crimes in only a handful of states in the last 2 years alone. Evangelical zionists are completely dominating the two party system.
What the actual fuck are you talking about? Christian nationalism is such a dominant force today, so prevalent that you people don't even realize how immersed you people are in it.
>>2815201Protestantism especially in America isn’t Christianity, it’s Jew worship mixed with consumerism
>>2815142It just seems like youre doing apologetics for Islam. All religions treated women like shit back in the day. But in the modern day which is actually relevant, Islam is the most misogynist religion, while Hindu women have much better human rights, both de fact and de jure.
>>2815219No true Scotsman bullshit.
>>2815233So you openly admit to being an idealist which I literally said in my very first post. Thanks for playing.
>>2815220Not really considering how India has a rape culture and said culture is downstream from Hinduism. Watch the video and you’ll see why.
>>2815152Afghanistan “then” was the same as Afghanistan now barring the fact that Afghanistan now is torn by decades of war since the Soviet invasion of the country, and that Afghanistan then used to be a sex tourist destination for western pederasts.
The pic above is just cherrypicking of a negligible group of ultra-rich women from small quarters of Kabul. The rest of the country (Kabul included) then and now was and still is incredibly poor with Afghan women wearing traditional clothes.
I fail to see how’s that any different from chuds trying to claim France was “better” off by being under Nazi occupation by posting a meme compairng today’s Parisian Stalingrad station with the Grands Boulevards station of 1944 as if both are the same station in different eras LOL.
For the record, Stalingrad is multiracial, while the Grands Boulevards is still overwhelmingly white.
Religion is fucking retarded and so is atheism just take some acid ffs
>>2815272>So you openly admit to being an idealistYou are being idealistic by saying that Roe v. Wade died solely because of Christian Nationalism and not billionaires desiring more children.
>>2815201>it's vibesit isn't vibes, i'm quite literally agreeing with your point that they're still powerful, but they only got in via luck and an inept opposition, if the democratic party were ran by somewhat competent people, roe v wade wouldn't be overturned because the courts would never get as outright conservative as they are now, nor would the establishment clause be reduced to nothing more than a suggestion, the main advantage is they're all 70-80 years old and will probably die soon, so there is that
>>2815344you're a conspiracist retard and should fuck off back to /pol/ where you can do your mein kampf-tier bullshit, you christslave
>>2815350You are an idealist with your thinking right now.
>>2815355vague words my man, give me something more to work with
>>2815364You are calling saying porkies trying to increase the population through multiple means like ending Roe v Wade is a conspiracy
>>2815066Christianity's decline is partly because of class and race issues. Traditionally, the working class, women, and non-whites were depicted as more religious and superstitious, which became an excuse to exclude them from politics. So religion became a form of cultural capital of the lower classes. Secular beliefs, including secularized religious creeds, are associated with the middle classes and the elite. Whatever the lower classes take an interest in becomes despised by the upper classes and those aspiring to be affluent. New Atheism was extremely classist. It promoted the idea that atheism made you superior to the backward masses and that's where the appeal was.
>the new “great awakening” is occurring just as Christian’s politics has shifted further to the rightI don't think it has. The majority of Christian clergy in the West are left leaning, at least on economic issues, and aren't hostile to minorities. The embrace of Christianity as an identity, instead of a religion, has parallels with Zionism and it started happening after the Iranian revolution but really accelerated after 9/11. During the GWOT, Western intellectuals (including atheist leftists) started going on about how their Christian heritage made them better than the barbaric Islamic East, that Christian heritage had to be preserved and celebrated even if God is dead etc. Zizek is a great example of this chauvinism on the left. So the Christian revival isn't actually about belief in Christianity but more like Zionist secularization of religion for nationalist purposes.
>>2815112> While being extremely regressive on the qveer questionThis is a bit silly. Queer is a modern construct, so obviously Christians had nothing much to say about it in history. In the 50s, the pre-Stonewall homosexual rights movement was influenced by a new trend within mainline Protestant theology (new morality). In fact, before Stonewall there were riots and protests for homosexual rights led by Protestant clergy. That aside, this does reveal something important: as the post-Stonewall LGBT movement has become a dominant cultural institution in America, people have turned their back on religion on queer grounds. Stonewall gay liberation was dominated entirely by white atheists who were fanatically anti-religious and used Christianity as an ideological punchbag. This caused many Christian leaders (especially Evangelical fundamentalists who hated the mainstream churches) to either abandon gay liberation or see it as radioactive. A similar thing happened with abortion.
>>2815391>This is a bit silly. Queer is a modern construct, so obviously Christians had nothing much to say about it in historyThis a tedious theorycel argument. Christian were against buttsex and crossdressing and body modifications for most of it's history. You know very well what i mean.
For some reason reactionaries arent confused about this they just go "yeah we outlawed fags and transhumanists in rome then got annihalated by barbarians and that was BASED".
>>2815397Barbarians adopted roman culture and laws, only think they didn't were the names. Crossdressing was never well seen by the romans, pagans or christians.
>>2815399Depend on the time, place and the people doing it. Much like homosexuality and pedrasty havent always be well seen in pagan Rome and Grece.
My point was that Christianity was explicitly opposed to all these things but it also humanized women greatly compared to indo-european pagan societies.
>is the decline of christianity
evangelical christianity is stronger and more reactionary than ever in the USA, unless you are talking about the number of believers and not the level of power wielded
>linked to the churches' adoption of the civil rights movement
most churches did not "adopt" the civil rights "movement" but explicitly tut-tutted it for being "too radical" even when it was really "too liberal" outside the black panthers.
>One common stereotype regarding today’s western atheists is that they are predominantly white, male, and from Christian backgrounds,
most atheists, especially non-white non-male atheists simply are quite about their atheism rather than outspoken, and definitely don't make it a primary aspect of their personality, since they have more important things to worry about, like paying rent and buying groceries.
>As polemical and farfetched as it sounds, I don’t necessarily think it’s improbable given the obvious demographic profile, the fact that the decline in Christianity (in America, Canada, and Australia at least) and rise of sub-cultures were heavily driven by young middle-class white people (especially white men) who left the churches
This is farfetched and polemical, subcultures exist within religion, and definitely within non-white non-male groups
>There’s also the fact that Christianity in America and elsewhere in what made up old Christendom hasn’t gained any more followers outside of mass immigration as seen how churches across Europe and elsewhere in north America and Australia need to import priests to fill the roles of the clergy as white people there don’t wanna work in churches.
I also think you are speaking reductively here since you aren't even considering the denomination question, since the attitude of each denomination towards the civil rights movement is quite different.
>>2815407I can't think of a time where the barbarians didn't adopt roman culture, Maybe England ? But the Romans had already left. Franks, Goths, Suebis, Vandals and Burgundians all adopted and modeled themselves in the roman system, their old culture erased. The Franks, who are the most germanic of them, abandoned paganism, their legitimacy was based on greco-roman traditions (Beingg descended from the Trojans and also, merovee's father Half-bull Half-fish) creature.
Even the Muslims adopted themselves into roman culture
>>2815407>Christianity was explicitly opposed to all these things but it also humanized women greatly compared to indo-european pagan societies.Christianity turned
paganism all pre-christian religion into a monolith and target of theological denunciation and now our entire understanding of pre-christian religion is based almost entirely on documents left to us by biased christian sources. I'm not saying pre-christian religions treated women great, or that they never committed human sacrifice or pedophilia rituals, rather I am saying that christianity's body of literature on pre-christian religions reduce all pre-christian religion to the worst aspects of those religions, while also adding unsubstantiated slander sometimes, depending on the other.
I should also add that I am being lazy with my wording here, just like there wasn't one monolithic "Paganism" there wasn't one monolithic "Christianity" either, even in the very early church of the 1st century CE.
This also isn't an advocacy to RETVRN to pre-christian religion. I do not advocate religion generally.
Also I question even the arbitrary separation of "Christianity" from "Paganism" or "Pre-Christian Religion" when you look at the strong overlap between the two, and lack of a clear historical and ideological cutoff, especially when you consider more weird branches of Christianity, like gnosticism, and the fact that even in Europe, "pagans" who never converted may still exist.
>>2815397Its not tedious at all. Its pretty much established history. In medieval Christendom there was no idea of being gay, that there are a special minority of people who have buttsex and are only attracted to men. Sodomy was a blanket label for sexual impropriety and the church didn't become obsessed with it until the Crusades. Sure, they might have opposed anal sex or crossdressing but the idea that these activities are part and parcel of what it means to be gay is really back projection. Christians had their own reasons for opposing these things e.g. crossdressing was associated with prostitution and the anal sex taboo already existed in Roman culture anyway. Homosexuality is a modern invention. There were no homosexuals or heterosexuals before the 19th century.
>>2815408>evangelical christianity is stronger and more reactionary than ever in the USAEvangelical Christians aren't universally right wing. In fact some of the most prominent Evangelical theologians are progressive leftists (William Barber). Evangelicals were long looked down upon by the mainstream Protestant churches and most came from rural and working class backgrounds. They adopted conservative positions as a sort of fuck you to the mainstream churches in America.
>>2815408>subcultures exist within religion, and definitely within non-white non-male groupsChristianity was very important to black subcultures (soul music, hip hop etc), even Michael Jackson and Prince were Jehovah's Witnesses and peppered Christian imagery into their music. In white subcultures like punk and metal, the relationship to Christianity was more hostile. Although, there did emerge a Christian punk scene that spun off straight edge. White subcultures involved widespread rejection of Christianity. This was backlash against the popularity of Evangelicalism among the working classes, rural communities, and lower middle classes. Quite a lot of these metal and punk kids came from middle class backgrounds and their parents were mainstream Protestants or Catholics. So in away their "rebellion" had a class element.
>>2815420>depending on the other.meant to say author here
>>2815421>Evangelicals were long looked down upon by the mainstream Protestant churches and most came from rural and working class backgrounds. revisionist narrative, they are zionist petty bourgeois
>They adopted conservative positions as a sort of fuck you to the mainstream churches in America. so they are reactionary like i said. it doesn't matter if they're doing it to trigger the libs, who are also reactionary
>>2815419The cult of Bacchus was the only cult, apart from christianity, that the Romans persecuted.
>>2815420While this is true for most "pagan" religions, like Celtic or Nordic paganism.
This isn't true for greco-roman paganism, of whom we have extensive writings, even in relation to christians. Julian's incomplete and fragmente essay "Against the Galileans" is a good way to understand Roman and Christian interactions in the late Roman empire, see what the pagans deemed to be the failure of christianity.
As for surviving pagans in Europe, beyond a few tribes at the outskirt of Russia like the Mari or the Chuds, there aren't any. Most people you'll see as being called pagans simply kept some pagan traditions alive, but this is also true for our society, just think of the Calendar.
>>2815421there are black muslims and atheists they just don't make hostility to christianity a prominent aspect of their personality since they need all the allies they can get
>>2815427>The cult of Bacchus was the only cult, apart from christianity, that the Romans persecuted.I'm just messing with you dude I don't really care about neo-paganism.
>>2815427i just don't think we can get a clear image of all pre christian religions from documents left to us by christians, as for documents by pagans like julian the apostate, that is one of the most powerful people in the ancient world. he is not representative of pre-christian religion, but actually representative of post-christian polytheism which was slowly being eroded by christianity, so of course by that point a lot of "paganism" existed in reaction to christianity, rather than within its own hegemonic context.
>>2815435Fair enough, but for Rome specifically we have plenty of sources that predate christanity, even for more popular types of paganism. If anything we have a lot less on early christianity, I'd say we can have a fine enough interpretation of what religious life was like during ancient roman times.
It's still important to note that there wasn't exacly a difference between religious and political power (this was brought on by Christianity) the political leaders also took the religious roles.
>>2815426>they are zionist petty bourgeoisEvangelicalism is 300 years old. Zionism didn't come about until the 1890s.
>so they are reactionary like i said. it doesn't matter if they're doing it to trigger the libs, who are also reactionaryIts not about triggering libs. The mainline churches and the Evangelicals have always been theological opponents and that sectarianism had a class dimension, Evangelicals were rural and marginal in America. Evangelicals opposed German Biblical criticism and liberal Protestant theology which denied things like miracles etc. they believed this was undermining Christianity and, in a sense, they were right. In the 50s and 60s, there were many Protestant and Catholic clergy who supported the sexual revolution, didn't see homosexuality as a sin and wanted it decriminalized etc. by the 70s, those same clergymen admitted that supporting it had backfired in their faces. The liberated youth didn't care about Christianity, post-Stonewall gay activists blamed it for every problem under the sun. This was all happening as popular Evangelicalism was spreading throughout America.
You had a fanatically anti-religious gay movement at the same time America's lower classes were converting to Evangelicalism in droves. Naturally, when the Evangelicals saw Christian bashing by white middle class atheist gay activists, they reacted by supporting anti-gay conservatism. It was an alliance that made sense because back then the left not only looked down on religion, they looked down on Evangelicals as especially weird and backward. The hubris of middle class white gay activists had a lot to do with it too. By being anti-Christian they encouraged a homophobic backlash. People also forget that the surge of Evangelicalism in the 70s led to gay converts and gay Evangelical groups (Ralph Blair and Evangelicals Concerned) and these people faced hostility from atheist gay activists.
>>2815429Black atheists are a dime a dozen. Black Muslims were, and some still are, anti-Christian. Just see the stuff Malcolm X or Muhammad Ali used to say about MLK in the 60s. Sure, they've toned it down a lot for good reason. Regardless, atheism is basically a class ideology.
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