Before I proceed, I shall preface this post with an axiom that needs to be constantly reiterated, lest this post be obfuscatory: in the purest sense, atheism is defined simply as “a lack of belief in the existence of God or gods.” That is to say, anyone, irrespective of political views, can be an atheist. Atheist is not a liberal nor a conservative ideology; it is simply a lack of belief. So, by definition, a neo-Nazi and a hippie can both be atheists.
Yes this is absolutely correct. I have actually known neo-Nazi atheists & atheist hippies. I have known both. Atheism is simply one thing, the idea atheists have a collective mindset is insane. Many atheists are dumb as hell. Many are intelligent. They just happen to have been born to non religious parents or simply stopped believing in something.
When people were really religious in say America, atheists with wildly different upbringings or opinions were joined closely by their lack of religion since it was unique, but it isn't so unique anymore, therefore the differences become more important as the atheism is less important.
However, generally, atheists as a group tend to hold a leftist view; while certainly not without exception, they tend to embrace secular, liberal views, uphold freedom of, and from, religion, and support minority rights, including LGBTQ rights.
This is only true to a certain extent. Most atheists do not really focus on their atheism. Therefore a person who is an atheist but doesn't really identify as one, is often as likely to be left as they are right. Their atheism is very unimportant to their views. Only in atheist communities and atheist groups do you actually find the common traits you're suggesting.
You have to be very careful with minority rights stuff in the west in 2015. It's not like it was in 1970 or like it is today in the Islamic world. It is very different, so much so we have a large mindset built into many people that they must be treated differently(better) that ONLY minorities can be oppressed/persecuted and this is very problematic. Things change & evolve and they do not stay static.
It is very normal for minorities to empathize with other minorities. My issue here is that this empathy can be misplaced if certain nuance circumstances are not understood.
LGBT etc like atheism isn't a collective at all anymore. We see gay Conservatives often treated terrible by other gays. We see many gays not entirely comfortable with certain transsexual claims. LGBT had its appropriate needed time, but like everything things evolve & gays in the west are seen as normal now. Therefore the stigma has been mostly erased. Meaning most gays do not think of themselves as gay..they think purely like anyone else. So politically they are going on broad general policies rather than who is LGBT friendly. As such gays are spread out quite wide in the political spectrum, particularly in the UK. Hardly anyone is religious here. So there is no religious right.
So implacable is their crusade against liberals that some have even outdone some Republicans in their liberal-bashing. While some of their criticisms of the left is not without merit (the criticism levied against the “regressive left,” for example, especially when it comes to Islam, is spot-on), their critique transpired into a full-blown assault against the left. Cenk Uygur, for example, a guy with whom I disagree on many things, has faced a war of attrition on Twitter because of his views on Sam Harris. It almost seems as though that, had he said something truly controversial, he would not have faced such belligerence. It was not the disagreement with him, nor even the criticism, it was the orchestrated attack against him that pointed to a general trend in the atheist community that I find less than beguiling.The regressive left is a nice name. Essentially regressives are progressives. Progressives have poisoned liberalism. Essentially they took standing up for minority's and made it into bash 'majority's' They use ism's....racism, sexism etc etc as tools of control. Everything can be twisted to label someone who doesn't fit into a box.
Cenk Uygur is a prime example. He is almost proudly anti white. He is hugely anti Christian.
Cenk has never once stood up for atheists in the Islamic world. Not once. Despite he himself being one.
He even belittled the treatment Raif Badawi got, saying it could have been a lot worse & it was a 'few lashes'
Cenk clearly lies about Sam Harris because Sam Harris isn't a progressive. Sam Harris is a liberal & progressives do not tolerate anyone who doesn't follow their minority's win rhetoric. As Muslims are a minority in the west, they view Islam as a minority & thus give it special treatment. This is problematic for a zillion reasons. And this is where the Cenk-Sam clash stems from.
Cenk has an anti white anti Christian agenda pro minority.... progressive/regressive agenda
Sam has no agenda
Sam will give a clear factual breakdown of Muslim behavior or Islam
Cenk will not like it & will lie to make Sam Harris seem like a racist/bigot
Thus people get angry because he keeps doing it & will not stop.
Another topic where the rift is truly conspicuous is in the discussion of the ever controversial #BlackLivesMatter movement. While people are certainly entitled to disagree with it, some of their views still disturb me. And it’s not their disagreement that disturbs me – it’s their pugnacity in fighting against it. So unrelenting are they in their opposition to BLM that would do everything to just to see that movement crash and burn; they would tarnish it, discredit it, and even project the bad apples associated with the movement and hold them as its quintessence in an attempt discredit the entirepremise of the movement. Some agree with BLM, and some disagree with it, but amongst some of those who disagree, the bellicose truculence is unsettling.
Black Lives Matter arose from the progressive media of race baiting. They've convinced a lot of people they're oppressed when they're not. They're victims, when they're not. That they live in a country of white supremacy, when they don't. There is a huge resentment among many blacks due to ancient American history, so when you combine the two, you now have a lot of anger.
In this anger, you have some vile hateful ugly people who can be as racist & disgusting as they want about certain people and actually get paid or gain fans for it. This has culminated in some of the worst people in society becoming leaders of a huge number of people under the pretense of 'civil rights' However the whole thing is statistically proven false. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/apr/21/police-kill-more-whites-than-blacks-but-minority-d/?page=all
It was based off multiple lies & consistently fake stories & also... fake events are made up to keep the outrage narrative. To keep the mob baying for blood. Then when incidents do happen, they're often distorted & blown up again to keep the mob baying for blood. When an actual real bad thing does occur(which is rare) then this is used to justify all the lies & fake outrage created beforehand.
America is a country where blacks kill & rape whites at an alarming scary rate. It is a country where black gang violence is huge. It is a country with many ghettos & violent areas being almost exclusively black. A lot of these people find pride in their race. They identify as melanin beauty or black nationalist. They have little empathy for people who are not them already. This media narrative of BLM has given license for them to justify their own anger & hatred. So now we see some vicious horrible crimes by black people as well as cops being killed, and people just respond ''They kill us everyday, we're not going to cry for you'' That's a huge lack of empathy based off a lie. This is why BLM is hated a lot. Race relations were seen at 77% positive in 2013. Today 41%, BLM is solely responsible.
Many atheists, I fear, are beginning to exhibit the hallmarks of conservatism. And some are even beginning to exhibit signs of bigotry (but in a carefully worded way). And it scares me.
Yes this is both true. But not in the way you think. Atheists became progressives thus they became bigots. They started treating being straight as a privilege, being white as a negative, being male as a problem. This is all bigoted. They encouraged a mentality of treating people differently based off race, sex, sexual orientation. Anyone who didn't was themselves called a racist.
For example...
Progressive ''We should give the role to a PoC(person of color) because we need to be more diverse
Normal person ''We should give the role to the best person for the role, whoever they are''
^ Is the difference. One is discriminating under a pretense of 'justice' and 'fairness' That is entirely illiberal.
I hail from the most conservative country in the world; a country that not only bashes liberals, but alsopublicly tortures them. As is the case with some Western atheists, Saudi Muslims also hate liberals, so much so that they would cheer at the sight of the lashing of Raif Badawi, which is ironic, because the most anti-liberal country is also anti-atheist, to the point that they now consider atheism to be terrorism. Any atheist from Saudi will be immediately shocked into liberalism. In a theocracy, liberalism is just not a point of view; it’s a necessity and the only salvation from a society bent on self-destruction. So to see many atheists attacking liberals is to see them attacking those who sacrificed their lives to establish a secular society, primarily those who fought for the establishment of this country.
The problem you seem to miss is that in different countries different people think differently despite sharing the same label. French socialists are patriotic, British socialist are not. American liberals are so anti Christian that they've become pro Islam. They see that the Christian right doesn't like Islam & they see it as their duty to defend Islam. Now in doing this, they often support the very people you hate. Where as the Christian Conservatives will oppose & expose the people you hate.
That's why Ayaan Ali favors Conservatives. That's why this whole thing has many atheists often agreeing with Conservatives. So much so the terms have lost their meaning.
Sam Harris & Douglas Murray are supposedly opposites.
Sam is a liberal. Douglas is a Conservative, yet they agree on almost everything, so how does that make sense?
The terms have lost their meaning because people have became so tribal, they no longer are being liberal.
In Canada they have been defending the Niqab as 'women's rights' like it's an empowerment. In the UK Islamists were infiltrating, schools, governments etc because people thought they were a 'minority'
This is how confused the whole issue is.
How can liberals stand up for Saudi being secular when they are throwing away their own secular countries to Islamists?
That's what Sam Harris & co have realized and are speaking up against, and also Conservatives speak up against, thus the connection is there. Which is why a new term 'Cultural libertarian' was created.
Where liberals/Conservatives who are for secular/free speech etc can be joined.
It was the hostile, anti-liberal atmosphere that drove me to leave my home, my family and my friends and move across the world. It was amongst atheists here that I found my new family. But to see this rift cracking through the ranks in the community is disturbing. Some of the people I came to know and love as my new family are increasingly leaning to the right.
The right is not evil or an enemy. It's a different basis of opinion on many issues. Neither the right nor the left have a monopoly on morals, ethics, truth.
The religious right also is different thing entirely. Like I said the UK right has very little to do with religion because hardly anyone is religious.
And as someone who grew up in London a liberal city where you're liberal by default, I have seen the dangers & ugly things that can happen when you're on the left & I really could write so much about that. I won't. But trust me when I say the left has so much wrong with it right now. It can turn a normal guy into an extremist.
It goes without saying: disagreement, open dialogue and free exchange of ideas are the key to social progress and the establishment of a truly secular society, but I fear that some atheists are embracing values ensconced in the religions they so vehemently fight against; primarily through attacking liberal values and dehumanizing those who hold a different view. And their bashing of liberals (which is different from criticism as I explained) is becoming increasingly reminiscent of the anti-liberal sentiments from which I fled. Sure, it most likely won’t culminate to torture, but the trend is still foreboding.
Religions are not just traditional things. For example third wave feminism is essentially a religion. These are people banning free speech on college campuses everyday for basic opinions they don't like. The western world is in another place.
Being an atheist has little importance anymore.
When lets say 80% of people are atheists why would being an atheist matter on issues?
In America 70% are Christian 45% of Christian are right wing, 25% are left wing. Religion or lack of religion isn't a right or left thing. I just don't understand this thought process.
In your circumstance it is, due to the religious right. But that's purely your circumstance in the Islamic world.
Conservatism currently = Conserving free speech, secular values, treating people as individuals not as collective groups. That's why many liberals are now also Conservatives. Because progressives = Totalitarianism. Banning people, shaming people, shutting people up, treating people as collective groups. That's why many progressive blacks call Conservative blacks racially charged names like ''Uncle Tom'' To shame them, to say you want to be white, you're not one of us. Because they think in collective terms. Blacks should vote this way. gays should hate Conservatives etc.
Where as Conservatives are treating people as individuals. Saying you can be black, gay, whatever & vote purely on issues, not based on race/gender/orientation. And this is essentially a liberal philosophy that was poisoned by progressives. Now Conservatives uphold this, thus many liberals are shifting to the right, as liberalism in itself isn't a left or right thing.
True forward thinking will always treat people as individuals. I don't like the idea if I am straight or white I must vote a certain way. Or if someone is gay they must vote a certain way or black etc.
That's a terrible negative backward outlook. People must be empowered to have their own mind. And all ideologies can get stretched. Far right led can be extreme racist etc. Far left can be extreme communists etc. No ideology is safe from being tainted or getting out of control. Including LGBT groups. Many of whom have themselves become hate groups. Bill Maher labelled it the 'Gay Mafia' where they come after you if you ever say something they don't like.
This is life. When you go out your way to protect or empower one group, eventually it can go too far, where they now have power & can discriminate themselves...and sometimes when people have power, they abuse it, whoever they are.
That pretty much sums up BLM folks & progressives IMO. They have abused their power and what you described is the backlash.
Your issue is from your outlook, you naturally side with say BLM...as a minority, however it's a misunderstanding of the situation.
