right??? I mean, I cut my teeth in the early '00s fighting against the stupidity of the internet atheist crew and liberalism, so this was not news to me, but I don't have a good sense of how people who aren't extremely online (for the last 20 years) and argumentative are or aren't culpable for knowing about this. Maybe? How much play does this get?
Conservative/alt-right atheists confuse me; do they really think that
after rolling back women/LGBT/minority rights and empowering white men
that the one religion that was still is all about those
things won’t make a sudden resurgance, and put you in the inquisition
torture chamber along with all the rest?
To what extent did conservative Christians really go after conservative atheist white men who were quiet about their atheism?
After all, atheism itself doesn't necessitate opposing white supremacist heteropatriarchy. Which is the real religion of Pence et al.
Maybe so. But what happens when minorities, women and gays are put back in their "rightful" place? Do you honestly think churches won't take the opportunity to up their numbers? If misogyny, racism and homophobia become as mainstream as they were in the past, religious leaders can quote any number of Bible verses to bring people to the pews. The end result is a growing number of people who view religion as an important part of their lifes, which leads to an increase of religion in government, one which probably won't be tolerant of godless heathens on either side of the aisle.
Christianity (as well as the other Abrahamic faiths) are conservative religions. There's no scenario in which society becomes more conservative and doesn't become more religiously authoritarian.
I think it’s pretty obvious that New Atheism owes a lot of its vigor
and popularity to 9/11 and the neoconservative descriptions of that
event (“They hate us for our freedom”.)
On the other hand, I don’t think the study showing /r/atheism is the
“third most bigoted” forum on reddit actually shows any such thing. One
of their criteria for toxic comments is “disagreeing in a
nonconstructive manner,” and the posts were evaluated by the
crowdsourcing the annotation (another way of saying you paid far below
minimum wage to people in the third world to do the work.) Many of the
poor places where these workers come from (e.g. Kenya and Haiti are
examples from Figure Eight’s Wikipedia) have fairly negative views of
atheism itself.
Yeah, also the Vice article is a year old, and references a Gawker article that's four years old, which draws its conclusions from a no-longer accessible article from a company that no longer exists.
Also I would add that highly rated comments in that sub now include many things like "Fuck Ted Cruz", which is certainly nonconstructive yet not bigoted.
The switch happened years ago, during the European refugee crisis.
They started arguing that Christianity may be false, but it’s the
foundation of European civilization, and we have to defend it against
the Islamic hordes. If they wanted to sound woke they’d talk about
protecting women and gay rights against the regressive global south, a
tact borrowed from the early years of the War on Terror.
Men have voted more conservatively with each successive culture war,
it seems, including a big spike around 2012. This
chart shows party identification of women in bright colors, men in
the background in faded colors.
Women by comparison have voted much more consistently. That is, until
this most recent culture war of electing Trump, which knocked
them farther left than they’ve ever been.
Kind of weird to say the women are "farther left" when on the chart you share they are clearly quite a bit closer to the middle line now than many points in the past? Of course, *college* women, as in the article, may be a different story.
Right, yes, that chart doesn't cover the post-Trump years. The [actual article](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/12/opinion/trump-midterms-gender-gap.html) has a little more detail but when I linked to the image it removes details.
This also matters more than is shown because women register and vote more often than men.
Random related factoid:
>There also has been a gender gap in congressional voting in every recent midterm election. In 2014, there was a 10-point gender gap, with 58% of men compared to 48% of women voting for the Republican candidate in their district. In 2010 there was a 6-point gender gap, with 57% of men compared to 51% of women voting for the Republican candidate in their district. In 2006, there was a 4-point gender gap, with 56% of women and 52% of men voting for the Democratic candidate in their district.
[Another article.](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-2018-gender-gap-was-huge/)
>Women were one of the driving forces that helped propel Democrats to victory in the House on Tuesday. According to national exit poll data, 59 percent of women voted for Democrats and 40 percent voted for Republicans, which adds up to a record margin of 19 percentage points — nearly double the margin by which they voted for Democrats in 2016.
Tfw that part about Stiller thought experimenting about glassing the Muslims didn’t tip you off back in 2004.
Conservative/alt-right atheists confuse me; do they really think that after rolling back women/LGBT/minority rights and empowering white men that the one religion that
wasstill is all about those things won’t make a sudden resurgance, and put you in the inquisition torture chamber along with all the rest?I think it’s pretty obvious that New Atheism owes a lot of its vigor and popularity to 9/11 and the neoconservative descriptions of that event (“They hate us for our freedom”.)
On the other hand, I don’t think the study showing /r/atheism is the “third most bigoted” forum on reddit actually shows any such thing. One of their criteria for toxic comments is “disagreeing in a nonconstructive manner,” and the posts were evaluated by the crowdsourcing the annotation (another way of saying you paid far below minimum wage to people in the third world to do the work.) Many of the poor places where these workers come from (e.g. Kenya and Haiti are examples from Figure Eight’s Wikipedia) have fairly negative views of atheism itself.
The switch happened years ago, during the European refugee crisis. They started arguing that Christianity may be false, but it’s the foundation of European civilization, and we have to defend it against the Islamic hordes. If they wanted to sound woke they’d talk about protecting women and gay rights against the regressive global south, a tact borrowed from the early years of the War on Terror.
Men have voted more conservatively with each successive culture war, it seems, including a big spike around 2012. This chart shows party identification of women in bright colors, men in the background in faded colors.
Women by comparison have voted much more consistently. That is, until this most recent culture war of electing Trump, which knocked them farther left than they’ve ever been.