futami-chan the non-religious (so called atheist - i used to hate the english word for it a lot)July 4, 2025 at 10:31 PM
Everything is easy to judge through the len of hindsight. IIRC what got Dawkins on his atheist crusade was an off-hand undeliberate anti-religion comment he made on some Irish television after some church related scandal. Unexpectedly, people cheered him for that, and this was in the 90s. I don't wanna go out of my lane, for things I have never had more than some cursory knowledge, and that are sensitive, but there's not a lot of chance to say this: it's pretty something to chide Dawkins as a fedora-tipping atheist when he's spiritually more religious than most of the people who love to be smart-alecky about it. Not just his upbringing background, but he also recommended everybody regardless religious convictions to read a number of King James bible books for the sake of culture, or apparently he does make a distinction between necessary logic and (a leap of) faith ("it's okay to have some faith in science", said in an evolution TV program) - all while being pretty firmed in his crusade. People seem to be missing the point (or deliberately doing so) by ignoring the actual targets of Dawkins's attacks: people who abuse authority to do horrendous things, or things that would be preferable if they don't do at all (e.g. calling children who have no conception whatsoever of these things when they are born, with the labels of 'Leninist child' or 'Hayek monetarist child'). Pretension of having a middle ground is just cumbersome (which is why he doesn't have to say "of course not everybody is like that"). How do I say this...? Everyone was clueless and loved to act smart-alecky at some point, some don't stop doing so - be it hat tippers or people who call that out. Not just religious topics, but speaking of online discourse in general: having meta-commentaries or meta-discourse usually means people don't have anything to talk about. Some Youtubers of course want to make money and they should exhaust whatever that earns them some incomes however - that's natural of them, but for most people, perhaps they are better off finding something that are more fun or substantial. But I guess that's the internet for you.
I think the target of the video is not Dawkins himself, but the reddit atheists who took their inspiration from Dawkins (and Hitchens). i.e. the so-called "reddit atheists" I also got the impression that it was probably a satire coming from someone inside the group--i.e. that the creator of this video was himself an atheist, and is just making a humorous video about how it's so hard to be considered cool nowadays when you're an atheist. The video resonated with me because it very closely reflects my own journey. Back in 2008, I was very aggressively anti-religious. (Some of my blog posts from 2008 and the years following reflect this.) I look back on all that now, and cringe. I feel like some of my anti-religion sentiment was just an excuse to argue, or an excuse to try to claim the moral high-ground. Now, I no longer wish to antagonize my religious friends or family, and don't want to argue about religion anymore. I had thought that this was just a result of mellowing with age, but seeing this video made me consider that perhaps there was a cultural shift as well.
Yeah, maybe my point on Dawkins isn't really related to the video. Perhaps it rubbed me the wrong way since I had been hanging around several wrong types of internet crowds - they seemed to be guilty of the same thing they complained of people. Another reason is the satire of the video doesn't seem biting to me, rather, it bites itself - being ardent atheists, people on the internet went out of their way to be prickish to other people; being grown-up atheists who realize there's more to religion, people on the internet still go out of their way to be prickish to other people (see how insecure the 2025 guy looks due to how bothered he is by random comments). What a great mature attitude netizens have managed to reach these days, and the love to appear all enlightened and holier than thou on the internet battleground sure hasn't been quelled at all. Really a great and encompassing satire. I think this is more of a cultural zeitgeist stuff - the niche (but not really niche) site I had been to used to host some crusades against religious or fringe forums, despite being known as the corner for the very opposite these days. Popular science media were enormously popular one to some decades ago. Thanks to the internet, people realized science is about as fascinating as reading bureaucratic papers. I wouldn't be weirded out if the future grown-up zeitgeist would denounce popularizers for having injected leftism into science. Reddit is more like a hugbox (of course r/atheism has to be like that) or playground. I hope people don't expect it to be a university, in the first place to begin with. The cringe engine runs perpetually, might well just live and let live.
...one of that was to say, the Youtube comment section and the author seem to me as the very issue they love to make fun of (which makes their very convictions irrelevant), to put it in another way. "People" here could mean people on both sides, or anybody at all.
Everything is easy to judge through the len of hindsight. IIRC what got Dawkins on his atheist crusade was an off-hand undeliberate anti-religion comment he made on some Irish television after some church related scandal. Unexpectedly, people cheered him for that, and this was in the 90s.
ReplyDeleteI don't wanna go out of my lane, for things I have never had more than some cursory knowledge, and that are sensitive, but there's not a lot of chance to say this: it's pretty something to chide Dawkins as a fedora-tipping atheist when he's spiritually more religious than most of the people who love to be smart-alecky about it. Not just his upbringing background, but he also recommended everybody regardless religious convictions to read a number of King James bible books for the sake of culture, or apparently he does make a distinction between necessary logic and (a leap of) faith ("it's okay to have some faith in science", said in an evolution TV program) - all while being pretty firmed in his crusade. People seem to be missing the point (or deliberately doing so) by ignoring the actual targets of Dawkins's attacks: people who abuse authority to do horrendous things, or things that would be preferable if they don't do at all (e.g. calling children who have no conception whatsoever of these things when they are born, with the labels of 'Leninist child' or 'Hayek monetarist child'). Pretension of having a middle ground is just cumbersome (which is why he doesn't have to say "of course not everybody is like that").
How do I say this...? Everyone was clueless and loved to act smart-alecky at some point, some don't stop doing so - be it hat tippers or people who call that out.
Not just religious topics, but speaking of online discourse in general: having meta-commentaries or meta-discourse usually means people don't have anything to talk about. Some Youtubers of course want to make money and they should exhaust whatever that earns them some incomes however - that's natural of them, but for most people, perhaps they are better off finding something that are more fun or substantial. But I guess that's the internet for you.
I think the target of the video is not Dawkins himself, but the reddit atheists who took their inspiration from Dawkins (and Hitchens). i.e. the so-called "reddit atheists"
ReplyDeleteI also got the impression that it was probably a satire coming from someone inside the group--i.e. that the creator of this video was himself an atheist, and is just making a humorous video about how it's so hard to be considered cool nowadays when you're an atheist.
The video resonated with me because it very closely reflects my own journey. Back in 2008, I was very aggressively anti-religious. (Some of my blog posts from 2008 and the years following reflect this.) I look back on all that now, and cringe. I feel like some of my anti-religion sentiment was just an excuse to argue, or an excuse to try to claim the moral high-ground. Now, I no longer wish to antagonize my religious friends or family, and don't want to argue about religion anymore.
I had thought that this was just a result of mellowing with age, but seeing this video made me consider that perhaps there was a cultural shift as well.
Yeah, maybe my point on Dawkins isn't really related to the video. Perhaps it rubbed me the wrong way since I had been hanging around several wrong types of internet crowds - they seemed to be guilty of the same thing they complained of people. Another reason is the satire of the video doesn't seem biting to me, rather, it bites itself - being ardent atheists, people on the internet went out of their way to be prickish to other people; being grown-up atheists who realize there's more to religion, people on the internet still go out of their way to be prickish to other people (see how insecure the 2025 guy looks due to how bothered he is by random comments). What a great mature attitude netizens have managed to reach these days, and the love to appear all enlightened and holier than thou on the internet battleground sure hasn't been quelled at all. Really a great and encompassing satire.
ReplyDeleteI think this is more of a cultural zeitgeist stuff - the niche (but not really niche) site I had been to used to host some crusades against religious or fringe forums, despite being known as the corner for the very opposite these days. Popular science media were enormously popular one to some decades ago. Thanks to the internet, people realized science is about as fascinating as reading bureaucratic papers. I wouldn't be weirded out if the future grown-up zeitgeist would denounce popularizers for having injected leftism into science.
Reddit is more like a hugbox (of course r/atheism has to be like that) or playground. I hope people don't expect it to be a university, in the first place to begin with.
The cringe engine runs perpetually, might well just live and let live.
...one of that was to say, the Youtube comment section and the author seem to me as the very issue they love to make fun of (which makes their very convictions irrelevant), to put it in another way. "People" here could mean people on both sides, or anybody at all.
ReplyDelete