Right-wing skeptics and the new, new atheism
I find stream-of-consciousness-style writing helps me wrestle with ideas and concepts, organizing thoughts into ideas from the chaos. To be clear, I'm a leftist agnostic (some might say atheist) who's been thinking about new atheism and skepticism a lot recently. I spoke to a friend who is a liberal atheist, and they consider themselves a skeptic first, and an atheist second. This seemed strange to me, not because I'm unfamiliar with the skeptical movement, but because it doesn't fit into my current mental model of skepticism. I don't really like the term skeptic. Below, I will attempt to work out my ideas into words, and hopefully have a conclusion.
A quick note: my view of atheism, especially from this era, was largely mediated by YouTube and limited to trends in the US.
Late '00s and early '10s: The Rise of Reactionary Skepticism
For me, no one embodies this era of atheism better than Christopher Hitchens. His videos were one of the many factors that led to me "converting" to atheism. He was a brilliant debater, and mastered the art of crafting rhetoric. Being successful in debate doesn't equate to having more accurate beliefs, but it does mean you can convince people of your ideas more effectively. Upon re-watch of these old videos, they are somewhat intellectually unsatisfying. A case that was impactful to me recently was that upon being presented with a fairly standard formulation of the moral argument, Hitchens feigns shock, and implies that Craig (his opponent) had implied that atheists couldn't act morally (which he clearly didn't.) This is why Hitchens destroys his opponents; he is far more effective at debate than Craig, who looks weak when trying to maintain philosophical precision by choosing statements carefully and hedging/qualifying his statements.
Being skeptical is a valid, often important epistemic tool for increasing the accuracy of our beliefs. For the sake of this post, I will oversimplify skepticism to something like "deconstructing big ideas" and "poking holes in overarching narratives". It starts from a position of neutrality, and seeks to determine if there is rational warrant in believing ideology "X". There are various reasons why one could use skepticism to shape their worldview.
There's a certain kind of skepticism that gained popularity during this time. It was the "'x' DESTROYS 'y' in debate" where "x" was often a new atheist and "y" was often an apologist. There's something both persuasive and cathartic about seeing someone representing your worldview deconstruct someone else's. For many, the reason for watching the content was nothing more than the entertainment value of seeing people get "DESTROYED" in debate. For some, the satisfaction of humiliating the opponent intellectually was the entire point.
Early to mid '10s: Seeking Out Other Ideologies to Destroy
There are only so many religious debates one can have before getting bored. There's basically a set list of apologetic arguments one can have these sorts of debate about before they either get too philosophically dense, or are just so incredibly silly that it isn't satisfying to DESTROY them (in the case of young Earth creationist apologetics.) How many videos can one possibly make debating the Kalam before viewers get bored?
It shouldn't necessarily be surprising that many skeptics turned out to be reactionary. Skepticism is, at least dialectically and sometimes politically, a reactionary position. It turns out there are a lot of ideologies and overarching narratives the left believes in: feminism, progressivism, and various beliefs relating to sexual and gender identity. Gender identity at this time wasn't really on the map, but feminism was. Many prominent atheist YouTube channels pivoted to "'x' DESTROYS 'y' with FACT and LOGIC" but instead of deconstructing religion, it sought to deconstruct feminism. If Christopher Hitchens embodied the previous era, though not an atheist, Ben Shapiro embodies this era.
It seems correct to me that these folks were "skeptical" of feminism. They, from a position of neutrality, sought to "poke holes" in feminist ideology. Of course, the new atheists weren't neutral on religion; they were strongly atheistic. So too were these feminist skeptics. They were strongly misogynistic. Of course, like the new atheists before them, only so much content can be made
2016 to Present: Reactionary Skeptics Abandon Atheism
Peter Boghossian, author of A Manual for Creating Atheists is the person I pick to personify this era (he was also partly inspiration for these weird person-on-the-street interviews of Christians where they just begin so-called Socratic questioning ("but WHY do believe that, and WHY do you believe that?"), similar to right-wing person-on-the-street interviews of feminists). He's had multiple interviews where he states that criticizing religion is unhelpful; that Christians can be powerful allies against a much worse religion in needing of deconstruction: Wokeism. (yes, he really does use that word)
Skepticism is now a mainstream component of conservative thought. While Climate Change skepticism has been around for awhile, in the COVID-era, skepticism of vaccines and masks is probably one of the more powerful pieces of evidence that skepticism is a core component of modern American conservative ideology. It's also applied to right-wing ideologies: once united on subjects like foreign interventionism and free trade, now there's greater skepticism among conservatives about once unquestioned conservative beliefs. Despite whether you think they are "doing skepticism the right way" they are certainly "doing a skepticism".
Jordan Peterson, famous reactionary, identifies as a Christian. His actual metaphysical beliefs, though he tries to squirm out of elaborating on them, are closely aligned with what the majority of people would describe as atheism. But, like Boghossian has already recognized, Christianity is a tool to be wielded for reactionary political aims, even if you are a de-facto atheist. In 2023, "Christian" implies "conservative" more strongly than any period in my living memory.
New, New Atheism
The movement that has been abandoned by who I call the Reactionary Skeptics has been left primarily with progressives, LGBTQ folks, and many suffering from religious trauma. Christianity more strongly maps onto conservatism in the modern era, therefore its negation isn't a merely reactionary process; it is a progressive, revolutionary one. In keeping with my cringe habit of anointing a YouTube creator for each era, I'd point to Genetically Modified Skeptic (there's that word) as the embodiment of this era.
Obviously these folks were part of "the movement" (if it can even be called such) the entire time. But they are largely who is left. Why did reactionaries decide to leave? Because they realize that religion structures power in a way that they find beneficial, and that atheism can be used to restructure power in a progressive or revolutionary way.
This movement, due to the aforementioned abandonment is far more profoundly progressive than any previous era. Folks like The Satanic Temple come to mind. It's hard to find an atheist creator nowadays that isn't an outspoken proponent of LGBTQ rights and feminism. Atheism has been ceded to the left.
What's the point of this damn post?!
If you are talking in earnest about atheism now, you're probably a progressive. And I don't think it's helpful to use term skeptic. Yes, what a dumb quibble. And yes, you are a skeptic of one particular largely right-wing overarching narrative. But the term is unhelpful. Its confusing. What is meant by skepticism, whenever I press my progressive "skeptical" friends is something along the lines of "having rational beliefs" or "'good' epistemology", which... like come on, that's not what skepticism means. Besides, most people believe they "have true beliefs", which leads me to wonder, what's the point of telling people you're a skeptic?
I get the point. It's about saying something more than "God's not real." But there are simply better, more impressive political projects with less baggage than skepticism.
Thanks for reading :)
Eliezer Yudkowski wrote this piece about skeptical tribalism a while back, and it stuck with me in evaluating the reactionary skeptic crowd you've astutely identified.
If you choose to apply skepticism only to ideas that are held outside your tribe, you're not practicing intellectual honesty or seeking truth, you're performing for social karma points. And the most provocative reactionary skeptics have reaped significant rewards from their critique of liberalism's centering of meaning in individual choices and the equality of persons. But they're unwilling to turn the same skepticism on their own postulates. The heart and source of meaning in reactionism is tribal membership, whether through religious belief, a strict hierarchy of unequal persons, or the joy of collective action in punishing an othered outgroup.
I'm not too comfortable with progressive atheists who turn their skeptical fire on religious believers, especially when it starts to smell like the same kind of tribal signaling the reactionaries practice. I'd like to believe my tribe is better than that.
I wonder how much of this behavior stems from the perception of the conservative right tightening the noose, and not being self-aware that we are becoming more radicalized on both sides. It's hard to even talk about these issues without declaring a 'side' or revealing bias and thus, putting others off that detect it. It's becoming harder to hear out both sides in a rational argument when both feel like they can't back down. I hope this polarization is more reactionary from a progress point of view. It's depressing to think about how our tribalistic thinking can be engaged and by and large we're repeating the same patterns as our caveman ancestors on an artificial plane of politics and personal beliefs and that our core thinking hasn't really changed that much.
Personally I'm of the opinion we aren't both heading off into opposite sides at the same speed. There is a large contingent on the left happy to not move, but the right continues further right. So your midpoint drifts too. My personal opinion is we need more social progress, but that is MY OPINION.
The problem is the things that are being debated shouldn't really be up for debate. Vaccines work. Climate change is real and measurable. Things grounded in reality and fact. These are also things we can't, and shouldn't, back down from defending as long as powerful groups exist to attack them. If that means I'm "a radicalized progressive" for standing behind science, and empirical data, I think we have a wider problem (which FWIW, I believe we very much do)
Like the parent post mentioned, the right will use just about anything to define in and out groups. If you point out their hypocrisy, they will moan how, "it's different" or "the devil is in the details" and not take the criticism seriously. Consistency through your life and thought patterns through critical thinking is an important thing many "Fox News Conservatives" don't do.
That piece is excellent, thank you for sharing it
It seems like you're interested in culture as much as philosophy? Culture is about people and it's specific to a time and place, because cultures evolve.
There are plenty of people who aren't religious at all, but it seems like atheism-as-a-culture died a while back and people moved on? Or maybe they're still around but I never read it anymore. (Or watch it. I never watch videos of people making arguments or debating.)
Scott Alexander wrote about this a few years ago: New Atheism: The Godlessness that failed
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I don't know how you prove a cultural argument one way or the other, but it's a theory.
My post, in broad strokes, was attempting to turn this theory on its head, to say that skeptics were "what the hell was wrong with these people" at least in cases like climate change skepticism, vaccine skepticism, skepticism towards the existence of COVID, broader skepticism of scientific institutions, etc. And, more broadly, how skepticism inherently lends itself towards reactionary political goals.
I don’t think it’s true that “skepticism inherently lends itself towards reactionary political goals.” There are plenty of examples that aren’t right-coded.
Skepticism of law enforcement mostly comes from the left, based on the experiences of black people and also activists. But there is a right-coded version of it as well (“deep state” stuff).
Skepticism of government is a libertarian thing, but it has spread to both the left and right, and you could say it dates back to the American Revolution. (There was debate about whether the US should have a standing army or whether it was too dangerous.)
Skepticism of big business has deep historical roots too. Skepticism of banking dates back to the country’s founding. Technology companies temporarily escaped this, but now skepticism of “big tech” is widespread.
Anti-vaccine skepticism didn’t start out associated with the right.
Skepticism about evolution has religious and conservative roots, but skepticism about research into genetics and intelligence is widespread on the left.
Thinking about this like an epidemiologist, maybe instead of skepticism being top-down (starting with Skepticism as a principle) there are memes promoting skepticism on particular subjects? These memes might start out in one community but spread far and wide, like happened when anti-vaccine skepticism became widespread among conservatives. Some memes become persistently associated with liberal or conservative thinking, but it doesn’t have to happen, and that can change.
People vary in which memes they are susceptible to. One way to think about racism is that some people are more vulnerable to racist memes while others are largely immune. But there are likely other memes you are vulnerable to, gossip that you are insufficiently skeptical of because it is “too good to check.”
You make a good point. I think I'd soften that stance to something like "skepticism is something that can be used by reactionaries, and reactionary skeptics were a large part of new atheism".
I think in some of your examples I'd probably want to draw a distinction between skepticism proper and mere political opposition, but that's probably getting too far off track
This simply isn't my experience. When I think Christian, I think of No More Deaths and local charities for food-insecure people and undocumented immigrants in my area. I live in a very liberal area so I simply don't have any other reference point for Christianity, besides images that I see in national mass media, which I always take with a grain of salt.
I am not a Christian, but some years ago, an Eastern Orthodox friend invited me to his church and I went several times. It was staggering to me how different real Eastern Orthodox practitioners were from online reactionaries who would pretend to be Eastern Orthodox in order to post Crusader style memes. It drove home for me that Jordan Peterson type online atheists masquerading as Christians are very easy to spot. If that kind of person is your worst enemy, that's fine, it's possibly a good use of time to psychoanalyze them and figure out what makes them tick. But I don't see the point of confusing that with Christianity in practice.
How do those charities treat gay and trans people? I'm not sure where you're from, but I grew up in the US Midwest and the answer isn't pretty for a lot of the big players in my area.
Here in the San Francisco Bay area, accepting gay and trans people is common for progressive churches.
Take a look at the website for Glide Memorial
Oh, I know such churches exist. But it shouldn't be shocking to anyone that not everyone thinks purely of caring for the less fortunate when they think of Christians. Especially in the US, where there's a powerful population of white fundamentalist Christians who consistently vote Republican even when the candidate is about as far from a paragon of their faith as is possible, and in which Republicans have been catering to that population since before I was born.
I grew up in this population of Christians, so obviously I have a lot more exposure to their ideas than the average person who wasn't raised as a Christian. But it's absolutely naïve to pretend that "Christianity in practice" is entirely made up of benevolent people like that or that others are wrong for not having that be their image of Christianity. I don't judge individual Christians or even the religion as a whole by the behavior of these groups, despite not being one anymore myself, but it's counterproductive to pretend as though those groups don't exist and make up a huge amount of many people's exposure to Christians. It's a lucky thing to live in an area where that group of Christian fundamentalists aren't a powerful voting bloc actively curtailing your rights and the rights of others, and that's unfortunately not true for a lot of people.
As for the Bay area goes, the Salvation Army operates there. So as far as charity goes, it still doesn't lack places run by people who discriminate against gay and trans people. Hopefully there are more places there that aren't run like that, but it's not something to look at with rose-tinted glasses.
I'm well aware and I'm not sure how you got the idea that I am ignorant of the hate mongering fundamentalists.
Most of my points here are related to the claims in the top-level comment I initially responded to, not claims you made.
It is worth pointing out, though, that the Russian Orthodox Church specifically is essentially an arm of the Russian government. It supports the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the patriarch has essentially said that homoexuality is one of Ukraine's evils.
And I have to further point out that Eastern Orthodox Christianity is organized by country. So the Russian Orthodox Church does not have control over the Church in Greece, Bulgaria, Albania, Romania, etc etc (and recently Ukraine).
So if you meet a Greek Orthodox Christian, this does not mean they support Russia or have any ties to them.
Wikipedia has a very nice map of all the different conical territories of the church: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Orthodox_Church#/media/File:Canonical_territories_of_autocephalous_and_autonomous_Eastern_Orthodox_jurisdictions_(2022).svg
My intention was to center how various groups of atheists try to use Christianity (and its negation) to structure power, while trying not to opine too much on actual theists practicing Christianity.
I'm Oriental Orthodox rather than Eastern Orthodox but in my experience most of the various Eastern churches essentially function as ethnoreligious groups. You're Assyrian therefore your family is by definition Syriac Orthodox therefore whatever your personal beliefs or the beliefs of the Church, you're likely to still identify as Assyrian nonetheless.
In my case I'm a St Thomas Christian and that's an even more illuminating example because the St Thomas Christians are from a multiplicity of Christian beliefs from Chalcedonian churches like the Syrian Catholics, to Oriental Orthodox Miaphysites like the Syriac Orthodox or the Jacobite Orthodox to Reformed Oriental Orthodox like my own Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church (which, while technically Miaphysite is also part of the Anglican Communion). Yet all of us would consider ourselves St Thomas Christians (or Suriani) whereas, for example, Roman Catholics from the same ethnic background wouldn't be included in the same ethnoreligious group.
The Jewish people are probably a more familiar example in the West- the ethnoreligious identifier transcends personal belief.
I tried to qualify my post with this statement:
The concept of religion being this "hot-swappable" discrete category separate from one's cultural, political, and ethnic identity is a relatively recent Western idea coming out of protestantism. Drawing boundaries around what a "religion" is outside of a specifically Western context is going to be fraught with issues.
Oh definitely- I was elaborating on u/kyon's point about the Eastern Orthodox.
It's frustrating that online the view of religion seems to be very, very parochial and limited to an experience of American style evangelical Christianity.
It is difficult for me to have an opinion about something that specific, and I'm pretty sure this is off-topic.
But it is my impression that the cohesion of "subtractive" movements is dependent on having something to fight against, while "additive" movements usually focus on something to fight for.
Subtractive movements are usually more productive when there's a clear evil to oppose. When that is not so clear or prevalent anymore, they can turn against each other.
In other words, the usefulness of "subtractive movements" is determined by the persistence of some specific evil. Sometimes, when the thing they fight against doesn't provide enough collective trauma to sustain internal cohesion, they'll fight internal opponents instead of disbanding.
I think additive movements work more or less the same, but it seems easier to find something new to fight for than to find something external to fight against, so maybe they can remain united for longer.
Anyway, just a theory.
I'm a Humanist. Have been for a good chunk of my life and recently became very associated with the UK Humanists because it felt right to do.
Humanists rarely give a damn about individual religious beliefs. We don't mind that you're Muslim, Christian, Athiest or whatnot, we just care that religious and non-religious people are treated equally in the eyes of the law and systems.
It's hard to argue against humanist though and I've buried my head into the philosophy and philosophers behind it. It can boil down to "just being a good dude" and does cross a lot of political party lines, but there is definitly a left slant to it given how it's very open to the ideals of equality. But you do get a lot of liberal / conservative folks too, mostly financially minded ones.
I was a bit of an atheist edgelord in my early 20s, simple because I was raised by overbearing religious parents. Rare in the UK, but still frustrating as hell.
I find this post strangely focused on online trends. There's a whole world of atheists outside the culture wars (or if there's a better way to frame this post). Sure I'm an atheist and progressive, but I've been those two things longer than your timeframe in this post, and the whole time. I'm sure there are many atheists that are conservative that have been so since before 2010 too.
EDIT: I see that you have a qualifier that you mainly get your input from YouTube, but the lack of curiosity of the rest of the world and discussion is interesting to me.
These were the dominant trends that, like many trends in the West, were mediated by online platforms. I'll quote the original post:
Moving on.
I should note I was a leftist atheist/agnostic the entire time as well, but I'm just going to quote the original post:
Respectfully, reading the post carefully and avoiding the temptation to skim will answer most of your questions and prevent you from needing to make edits.
We'll set aside your psychoanalysis of what you've determined I find interesting. I would say that the movement, especially in the early era, was taking place primarily online. Yes, these thinkers were putting out books, but they spread widely online: podcasts, social media, and yes YouTube played a big role in both the character of the movement and its spread.
This post was about a US/Western movement. Therefore it follows that "the rest of the world" is outside the scope of this post.
As an agnostic and non-skeptic, I'm wondering why do you embrace the term skeptic?
I imagine there's a great deal more you accept axiomatically than some other skeptics. Quick list of things I'd imagine you are committed to:
If you mean skeptic to say something like "not credulous", then I don't know how useful the term is to apply to oneself since nearly no one considers themselves gullible.
Also, does this modern trend of using "skepticism" to euphemistically refer to atheism bother you?
Reading your comment has been a lot of fun for me, thanks for taking the time to make it.
This is interesting because, philosophically, your view is more in line with proper skepticism than many atheists I know. I'm an agnostic but also a decided non-skeptic, so I do believe a great many things axiomatically. I unquestioningly believe in the external world, the existence of other minds (not necessarily belief in mind/body dualism), the laws of logic etc, even though these axioms cannot possibly be independently justified.
I heard a critique of the moral argument one time that states theism implies moral relativism, or at a minimum Divine Command Theory entails moral relativism. I don't remember the specifics but in broad strokes it makes sense.
I'd love to know more about what you think morals are. I'm currently persuaded by moral anti-realist philosophy (namely emotivism), but I'm still working out if I'm justified in accepting the existence of the external world as an axiom yet excluding morality from it.
I've heard a couple of types of responses to this: one, if there is true randomness rather than determinism in the universe (as some quantum physics models suggest) then perhaps controlling otherwise random phenomena could be a way for the divine to interact with the physical. Of course, the most common suggestion is that there are minds independent of the physical body that act upon the physical.
Not sure if you'd align with these responses. I currently don't believe in free will (though due to cognitive rather that deterministic problems) but I'm not sure I'm justified in not accepting free will as an axiom either.
What are your thoughts about Pascals wager? There's a common argument that perhaps serving one religion would anger further the God of a different yet correct religion.
Of course, this objective breaks down if you have external reasons to believe one religion is more likely than another
Very interesting. My partner was also heavily involved with Wicca and the occult for about a decade.
This brings up a number of questions for me:
Now I'm a moral anti-realist, but moral objectivists might respond to this and say something like this:
"Different people, cultures, and historical eras have different conceptions of now-scientifically-verifiable facts. For instance, through history, different cultures have had different theories on whether Earth orbited the Sun or vice versa. This doesn't prove that Heliocentrism is a relative matter; it's an objective matter that can only ever be true or false. Human disagreement about facts doesn't necessitate those facts being relative; different people and cultures can simply be incorrect about objective facts.
"Whether murder is wrong can be an easy to observe objective fact, like observing whether Earth exists. Whether or not one should pull a lever in a trolley problem can be a harder to observe objective fact that we are less certain about, like which framework of quantum mechanics is correct."
What would you make of this objection by moral objectivists?
Not just repeating themselves, but becoming more and more sociopolitically conservative and reactionary. More circling the drain than circling back on themselves.
Good write up. All I will say is that there is a fundamentalist theocratic belief on one extreme, and equally deep navel gazing and dogmatic atheism on other.
If you reject both these extremes and be on the happy middle path of healthy skepticism and agnosticism, you're basically on the right path.
Spinoza's God is a classic metaphor in this regard which I think people from all walks can relate to, including die hard athiests and theocratic fundamentalists. Heck, even Albert Einstein used to relate to it!
You might like the Big Joel video on this topic. He talks about early YouTube atheism content and how it evolved into right-wing "skeptic" takedown/debunking content. He's a progressive and an atheist with some past fondness for the early YouTube atheism content, so it feels like he's good at identifying what worked in those videos and how later videos took that to different ends.
I think it's interesting that you center this on "skepticism". I think you're on to something here, though personally I'd center this on the term "debunking". Good debunks aren't bad, but people badly want debunks of stuff they don't like both because they want to cheer with people against the thing and because they want educated-sounding stuff to say on the topic when pressed for why they mock it, which means that a lot of very bad debunking content is able to get popular and causes bad copycats. Once someone making debunking content realizes their audience mostly cares about cheering against a thing, they let their logic down to fit more mocking in.
First, you described my trajectory as an Atheist trying to find his way on the internet. I never went too far down the angry right-wing rabbit hole because, as a teenager who was angry and hated the violence it caused in my life, I couldn't do that. When I stopped off the train I watched it keep going from a distance.
I'm trying to find an on-topic response here, there's so much. I take mild issue with your claim as to the uselessness of the term "skeptic" so I'll go after that first, I guess? EDIT: the comment went how I wanted it to, after diving in.
The first thing is I think it's perfectly fine to use the "skeptic" label. It's a broad term, and what most typically claim to mean is they generally refuse dogmatic beliefs in favor of opinions and modes of operation that can be logically arrived to. Typically by understanding either effects of specific decisions, or by solid evidence being provided in favor of a thing, one can generally arrive to a well-reasoned conclusion about a multitude of topics. The next and hardest step is changing that initial opinion when the facts change.
As with any philosophy, skepticism can be taken and distorted into any number of things. I would bet many vaccine skeptics are "just asking questions," even when I know the actual grifters aren't. I'll be doubtful about some consensus we have on a scientific finding or something and strike out to research it because I want some evidence for myself. Skepticism is not the issue, the ability to conduct proper research is. Understanding that everything on the Internet, in your library, or in your bookstore is not a legitimate source of knowledge is a fact that many people do not know, which has caused us issues for centuries.
Interestingly, I think this helps shape the wave of modern Internet skepticism against the backdrop of atheism. You had a sort of raw philosophical skepticism not based in fact, but in opinion that was about as solid as the evidence for the existence of a deity. Folks like Dawkins who directly fought intelligent design were great, because they could specifically describe how we pulled ourselves out of the primordial ooze, but we still don't know entirely how the universe came to exist. The Big Bang theory is a widely held theory supported by many mathematical models, but we also can't observe it the same way we can beneficial mutations in an animal population. For this reason, religious skepticism as a major platform is doomed to fail, and lead into other things.
With the above paragraph, we have people attempting to non-dogmatically undo a dogmatic belief with another dogmatic belief. Again, I'm an atheist, I simply believe there is no creator, and as a skeptic I also have to accept that there is no proof for the lack of God's existence, which is itself an illogical request. There is also no evidence for His existence, so I generally view the whole thing as sort of a solved-but-unsolveable problem.
From there we go to another "soft" issue: Feminism. If we consider it as inextricably connected with sociology, what has historically been considered a "soft" science, a similar issue appears to exist. A lot of sociology research is intended to quantify human experience so we can observe it, and observe how it changes. It doesn't work entirely on its own (the historical record would document the "why" of the "what" contained in the research). Feminism is easy as hell to debunk because it's build on an "inferior science." One can observe physics more easily than one can observe and immediately quantify the oppression of women or minorities, in a way.[1]
Interestingly, I'm comfortable framing this change entirely around one person: Rebecca Watson. Not because she's particularly notorious or powerful or anything, but to a point she represented "tHe FeMiNiStS" (read the "Elevatorgate" section, Dawkins is in the fine form that turned me off of the Internet atheist community) but she was also playing the role of your "Abandoned Atheist Skeptics" phase more in the tradition of James Randi. Not to put my shit on another human being, but she represents a transition I made, and my understanding of what that meant when I watched one of her videos a few years ago and went "Hey, she's pretty good?". Personal theory: She found something to stand for along the way and it kept her moving forward ideologically, instead of regressing and finding things to oppose. Going back to my first article about early "new atheism," they didn't have much to stand for, so they stood, and generally still stand, in opposition to things rather than in favor of others.
For the last phase, I don't have much to say but am happy about this part, because I've observed it:
I guess I can jokingly shake my fist at "The SJWs" on this one.
I do think there's an important discussion to be had with regards to faith and logic, how this is a false dichotomy, and self-avowed "skeptics" drive people away because of their belief in it. We all have faith in the quality of the research we consume, in researchers' peers performing review, in our scientific bodies that claim they've done things (I've never seen the reflectors on the Moon with my own eyes, and only a copy of a copy of a copy of the Moon Landing in '69, and believe my dad who saw the broadcast). Even the people who believe conspiracies about the two events I mentioned are putting faith in other research and communities of researchers, or the claims of "proven" authorities.
[1]I'm struggling here. I edited this paragraph three times. It can be a hot button issue, so I just want to clarify that I believe sociology is extremely important for solving a lot of societal issues precisely because it attempts to quantify these problems in meaningful ways.
Hey there, thank you very much for reading my post and responding to it! There were a few things I'd like to follow up on and maybe have some dialogue about.
I tried to address this with:
Besides, that last point, "in favor of opinions and modes of operation that can be logically arrived to", feels strange to me. Of course many Christians logically arrive at theism. Many Christians are just dogmatically accepting Christianity, but this is true of some atheists as well. There are a great many reasons why one would be a theist, even though these reasons haven't convinced me. We also wouldn't call Evidentialist Christian philosophers "skeptics" simply because they base their faith on syllogisms and data rather than dogma. That would be very strange.
These people are "doing skepticism". They are skeptical of the scientific consensus. You may doubt their motives all you want, but they are doing the textbook definition of skepticism. You and I, on the other hand, have reasons why we should trust this consensus. There are obvious epistemic benefits to trusting this consensus. Is this selective skepticism on their part? Sure, but all skepticism is selective; there are a great number of things skeptics accept axiomatically without evidence.
There's a lot of evidence for Christianity. There's a lot of evidence against Christianity. Any set of facts that make a view more or less plausible is "evidence". A number of arguments like the Kalam and the Moral Argument are philosophical evidence in favor of theism, while the Problem of Evil and the Problem of Divine Hiddenness might be considered good evidence against theism.
This is sort of strange to me. If we are talking about the set of sociological facts that a particular feminist framework is built upon, then the standard for "debunking" a particular fact is identical to any other field: contradicting evidence. Fields are either evidence based or they are not; I don't buy that there's a hard/soft distinction that many reactionaries insist exist. Of course we may be talking about the normative value judgements some feminist framework makes rather than the sociological facts it is based upon, but it seems really hard to just "debunk" a value judgement.
I also think it's probably patently false that "one can observe physics more easily than one can observe and immediately quantify the oppression of women or minorities", at least in the modern day. The pithy response is that it's far easier to observe the oppression of women in one's day-to-day life than it is to observe dark matter.
The more complex response is that this dichotomy between hard and soft sciences doesn't really work here. I'm no physicist but there's huge swaths of that field that range from highly difficult to ultimately impossible to observe, so instead we must build hypotheses about and test things that are entailed by things we cannot observe. This is not that fundamentally different from what "softer" sciences like sociology do. Things like "the oppression of women and minorities" are absolutely observable and even very often quantifiable in various ways, and when we cannot directly observe or quantify them, we can use proxies that are entailed by our hypotheses to test it.
I do indeed thing that so-called skeptics view the "soft" sciences as inferior, but I think it's naive to believe that their opposition to feminism is derived from that in a rational manner. I think this actually operates in the exact reverse of that -- these men are misogynists and they then work backwards to justify those beliefs with evidence. This includes throwing out sociology as an inferior soft science, among many other things.
If that entire section I initially wrote wasn't vomited out and edited at the end of an hour of writing a comment, I would've hoped it came out more like what you wrote to explain it. It is essentially working back from a conclusion to justify a position, rather than what they were debunking, which was "I've seen this happening, what's the cause? Here's some research and a bit of evidence-supported opinion to try to explain what we're seeing."
I mentioned that I sort of stepped away from the whole debate on whether or not any deity exists simply because, in a sense, there is equal evidence on both sides: We don't have absolute knowledge of the origins of the universe, which would either require some predicating event or a deity to create everything.
At risk of splitting some hairs, I would contend that generally one could arrive to religion logically as a resolution/explanation of the universe, or even just metaphysics.
This is where everything falls short: There is evidence of many events and people in the Bible having existed, but that does not necessarily mean Christianity is more valid than anything else. To tie into the Evidentiary Christians you're talking about, their goal is largely unconcerned with the existence of God, and more the evidence of realistic events of the Bible having happened.
Similarly: We can track human evolution, we know God didn't do that. We can detect radio emissions from what we understand to be the border of the universe, or at least the known universe. But we don't know what happened before our universe.
Both are, at minimum, dogmatic beliefs. They are held because they feel right, not because they are provable. In fact, a belief in the non-existence of a thing, which is sort of a thing, is arguably less logical than believing in the existence of a deity. Again, there are reasons I just sort of stopped giving a darn about the existence of any gods, and don't feel a need to crusade against people who believe they exist.
I'm gatekeeping a bit there, but they are "doing skepticism," for sure. But, something that happens in a lot of conspiracy communities is the valid evidence, generally data that doesn't support the conspiracy, gets thrown out with no testing. There's a point where "just asking questions" is not enough, but most conspiracies are only questions, with a rejection of concrete answers.
I touched on that in the last part of the comment talking about "faith," but "trust" is probably more appropriate
I messed up here and struggled with framing this they way I wanted to. I more meant this from the perspective of a feminist debunker than as an expression of reality.
The perspective I got from watching this content back in the day was also a lot of statistical cherrypicking. One person takes a bunch of sources for an analysis, say the feminist in question (e.g.: Rebecca Watson, who I hope I positively called out lol), somebody else pulls some other convenient numbers to say that's not the case, and boom feminist destroyed.
Insofar as a difference between hard (I guess physical sciences like physics and chemistry) and soft (social) sciences is the nature of the evidence. There is a difference between the physical and the social sciences, but the processes differ largely in experimental design, rather than the validity of their results. And poorly designed experiments can be found in all disciplines. I don't necessarily support the distinction myself, and was more trying to build up the rhetorical background for the trend I remembered seeing and even participating in.
This is orthogonal to your actual point here, but this bit definitely isn't true. Theistic evolution is quite a common belief among Christians these days.
Thanks again for taking the time to write out a another thoughtful and thought-provoking reply.
It's hard to have absolute knowledge about anything. We can have rational warrant to believe something if it is merely more likely to be the true than false.
100% agree.
I think this misunderstands Christian Evidentialism. Many Evidentialist Christians center philosophical evidence as a primary piece of evidence that increases the probability that Christianity is true, though also arguments related to the resurrection are also used. Whether or not you think the evidence is sufficient (as I do not), they certainly are using fairly solid logic and reasoning to get to their position.
Evidentialist Christianity should meet the word "skeptic" from your point of view. They don't presuppose anything, and start at a point of neutrality methodologically and attempt to see whether there's a rational basis for believing in Christianity going solely off the evidence
This is the only point I strongly disagree with. We can look at worldviews and what they entail and determine which gives a better accounting for the evidence. There isn't an expectation that you can arrive at certainty the same way one is certain that the Earth exists, but most of our beliefs don't require that level of certainty to be rationally held.
Most Christian Evidentialist philosophers and thinkers would say they aren't absolutely sure Christianity is true, but would say that is more likely to be true than false, which is their standard of evidence. This is why a lot of the strongest arguments (in my opinion) for God are probabilistic arguments. I'm an agnostic because I don't think the evidence is sufficient to say that Christianity is more likely true than false.
Totally agree. They are generally bad at reasoning. But, as a non-skeptic, I think it's appropriate to say that these people are skeptics, and are quite a bit more skeptical than I am. I can simultaneously say that I have more rational warrant for my beliefs than they do, even though I'm less skeptical.
Moving on to your qualification on feminism, I think we are more or less in agreement now.
I tried to make the point that there are specific atheists like Boghossian and Peterson who intend to use Christianity specifically to structure power towards certain ends, and other atheists like The Satanic Temple that seek to negate Christianity to structure power in a different direction.
I certainly don't believe all religious people are using religion to "wield control over the masses." Specifically I was trying to make a point about how different groups of atheists use religion (or its negation) as means to an end.
At least in Boghossian's case, he explicitly makes working with Christians a matter of countering the religion of "Wokeness" and has said so over and over. He doesn't appear to have any sincere concern for the beliefs aside from how they can further his political goals.
As far as agnostics interested in religion, I'd absolutely count myself as one of them, even though I don't have rightist political goals.