Shit Rich College Kids Say

Anonymous asked: Can you give some more info on the major criticisms of (new) atheism? I don't really understand why SO many people here on tumblr attack the atheist movement, I feel like atheists are one of the religious ("") minorities most discriminated against.

-New Atheist politics often include support for Western Imperialism along age old civilizing narratives (call it the Godless Man’s Burden)

-Its sex politics are fucking awful and the coinciding of men’s rights activism and new atheism isn’t coincidental.

-It has a defunct philosophy—logical positivism—as its basis.  Logical positivism, which placed an aestheticized science as the center of human understanding, leads to an understanding of society based around the data produced by society but without a critical understanding of society.  This leads to mental gymnastics like “women don’t make less because of sexism, sexism isn’t a problem anymore, they just choose to go into lower paying careers”.  Its love of logical positivism also coincides with New Atheist attitudes about the humanities, especially the ‘softer’ humanities like literature or gender studies (which coincidentally goes along with the MRA/New Atheist grouping).

And nah, atheists aren’t the most discriminated against religious minority.  There haven’t been mass attacks on atheists or rallies calling atheists to leave the country of their birth, there aren’t random security screenings that coincidentally only seem to hit atheists, and atheists actually have a higher income than affiliated families.  These don’t coincide with an idea of overwhelming anti-atheist discrimination.

Like, there’s no issue with being an atheist.  But New Atheism has a lot of major problems with it and it represents almost everything problematic about atheism.

Mod R

Tagged: mod r, new atheism, anti-semitism mention, islamophobia mention, sexism, imperialism, Anonymous

Posted on February 9, 2015 with 357 notes