I'll attempt to defend my expressions as not-caricature.

"Atheist evangelism", as a goal, was a phrase I heard in public speeches at least. Not shared by the people gathered, necessarily, but certainly advocated for.

Long run, with my pining and wishing, I'd prefer to pursue the (A) and (B) -- from where I sit, though, the ethical secular communities that arose out of all that which fulfill the social functions of church seem to be the most lasting thing?

Or, maybe, I've gone too far astray and haven't realized what's come about.

I want to say its a popular unphilosophical reading :D -- but to be honest, I really don't know.

By which Marx meant that the point of philosophy is to change the world. — Jamal

Theses on Feuerbach is still my favorite bit of Marx to reference in understanding him as a philosopher because of how direct the 11th thesis is: can't get a shorter and more direct answer from him about the point of philosophy.

Also, I happen to agree with it. So there's that. (haven't had anything really substantive to say, but it's been interesting reading along)

Fair. And I think New Atheism's decline is pretty well explained by your expression here:

As a muddler-through, they don't really represent me. — Dawnstorm

For the most part the people in leadership positions who were prominent didn't really represent the group that's there. Where most atheists don't feel the need to evangelize, I think it's fair to say that a goal of New Atheism was to make the, in your terms, the secular state into a strictly atheist state -- so not the sort of state which allows many faiths, as you put it, but rather doesn't allow faith into the state at all.

Which, given the rationalist roots, largely consisted of a sort of a dreamy mental picture of what the Enlightenment was (as defined by the words).

But, as you say, most atheists aren't really like that, so while that anger can sell books, it didn't build anything. Anger can start an organization, but it can't feed it. And the organizations that still survive this day didn't pursue that line of thinking, but rather were more interested in building ethical communities for atheist people -- basically fulfilling the social function of a church without the classical works of faith. (though, IMO, obviously still faith based in a wider sense)

:up:

Oof.

The truth is that nothing can absolve humanity of its crimes and nothing can make up for the suffering of the past, ever. Nothing and nobody will redeem humanity. Nothing will make it okay, and we will never be morally cleansed. We certainly ought to strive for a good, free society, but it will never have been worth it. — Jamal

Preach on. :)

I'm not sure. I'm a gnat watcher. Sometimes I turn into the gnats, too, I'm afraid. But the Thought of Man isn't something I've heard or seen yet.

There are no types of experiences, only experiences. Toothache and leg pain are classified as pains only because they are similar, so it is for language purpose, but in reality they are two different things. Similar does not mean identical, so:
1. We don't need the same physical structure - multiple realization solved.
Having no categories, but simply experiences, I don't need a justification for fitting an experience into a category, so:
2. I don't need to equate an experience with a function. There is no law of nature that prevents the existence of an experience without it fulfilling a specific purpose. — Eugen

So there's a weak emergence, but none of the experiences are the same. Even within the same person, because the physical structure is always changing.

Seems a weird space to think through -- I certainly feel a lot more coherency than that. At least a before, a now, and a later: all three tenses sit within an experience.

Now, if language were to fulfill the functional aspect then totally possible. It just feels somewhat like Hume's conclusion on the skepticism of causation -- I see how we got here, but aren't we confused now?

I think with the dedicated atheists they were sort of evangelists for atheism. So the point would have been a kind of self-elimination, except there was always more to it than that in practice: it had political goals and ends (which is why I didn't pursue further).

More generally, the liberal capitalist state is an atheist organization, at least intentionally speaking. The library, too, is an atheist organization, in the sense that it's not organized around theism.

I think if we took the New Atheists seriously, they'd have liked the liberal capitalist state to be rid of all influence from God or religion in any way for . . . various reasons. "rationality" figured prominently.

So a reflection of what you've set out could be -- that theism would be nothing without atheism, and what the dedicated atheists want is a return to something before their perversions ;)

As a general recipe:

But in the world, at one time men shun death as the greatest of all evils, and at another time choose it as a respite from the evils in life. The wise man does not deprecate life nor does he fear the cessation of life. The thought of life is no offense to him, nor is the cessation of life regarded as an evil. And even as men choose of food not merely and simply the larger portion, but the more pleasant, so the wise seek to enjoy the time which is most pleasant and not merely that which is longest. And he who admonishes the young to live well and the old to make a good end speaks foolishly, not merely because of the desirability of life, but because the same exercise at once teaches to live well and to die well. Much worse is he who says that it were good not to be born, but when once one is born to pass quickly through the gates of Hades. For if he truly believes this, why does he not depart from life? It would be easy for him to do so once he were firmly convinced. If he speaks only in jest, his words are foolishness as those who hear him do not believe.

We must remember that the future is neither wholly ours nor wholly not ours, so that neither must we count upon it as quite certain to come nor despair of it as quite certain not to come.

If that's wrong, then 10 years.

At least I was able to pick a position. :D

Heh, I should have kept scrolling. Yup!

Though I still like the whole movie experience. But I'm in home-body mode mostly now

While what I call triple-A films have sort of become meh, I have to say that film as a genre has actually exploded into so many different directions now due to streaming services launching their own media -- I think television is where the past bit of time has really taken over in terms of exploring the medium.

In particular, the long form has been explored a lot by the streaming TV services. I think that at this point there are so many shows which use this form that we can likely see its downsides, but there were still some really good films that came out of this way of telling stories that was basically unheard of pre-2000. At most there were mini-series, but nothing like the sheer magnitude of shows which have connected episodes, and even seasons, across years like a book does.

Prior to streaming, due to commercials, episodic was the mode of storytelling, and long-form was something only explored by theatre nerds.

So, if you stand in the middle of the road, you're likely to get run over by cars. Now, let's say you have some cognitive impairment that doesn't let you conciously perceive cars, and you don't like admitting something's wrong with you. So you develop a worldview without cars. There's a divine taboo to stand in the middle of the road, and you still instinctively detect movement on the road (you're brain just doesn't make them into cars). So you're convinced that cars don't exist, but you still won't stand in the middle of the road, because some sort of divine taboo, and you don't cross a street when cars are about, but you edit out the actual vehicles, and in its place you have some sort of intuition which you interpret as divine guidance. (And this is where this analogy becomes to silly to continue, because how you avoid getting rides is sort of harder to explain; but luckily the point is about not dying in the road here, so it doesn't need to be plausible or coherent, just sort of illustrative - which I hope it is):

Anyway: as long as you don't get run over, it doesn't matter whether it's because of "the truth". "Truth", unlike reality, needs some system of... axioms and transformation rules? Not sure. Something. Truth conditions. And for such a "truth" to be useful, it needs to compatible with reality. How much compatibility you need? Well, reality's the judge of that. So not just anything goes (and that's why the no-car example above is ultimately silly, but to me it feels more like extreme hyperbole than a category mistake).

Of course, "truth" is always social, too, which complicates matters. — Dawnstorm

I like the example. Makes perfect sense to me.

So one way to parse the example would be to say there are two worlds, which can be represented by the set of objects within that world, and that there is a relationships between the worlds such that it's irrelevant which set we are thinking of when we make choices.

The important thing here is that there is a relation between the objects of each world (given our psychological description above, we could call these "mental worlds" or something along the lines designating how a person is experiencing). It doesn't matter that we have the truth (whatever that is), it only matters that we can relate to the world around us such that we do not die. In fact, I'm inclined to agree that it's irrelevant whether we call it a road or The Devils Deathbed: functionally, the words work the same. (and, yes, we could come up with more plausible versions, but I'm understanding I think so no need)

And so what's interesting to me, up reflection, when we suppose that our current scientific picture is not just true in the same way that The Devils Deathbed is true, but rather is the truth to which we can compare all other sentences to check for a relation to reality (rather than just using the sentence for our ends), then one must conclude that for the majority of our species' time on earth we believed in false things, or maybe relatively true things depending upon how we want to skew this relationship.

Now, you say you are a relativist, so I'd wager you'd not make this commitment. I, for one, am not a scientific realist, so the scenario is there more for explication than to state my belief: hopefully it highlights rather than confuses.

I just think some things are so high up the abstraction ladder that the meaning of this is most closely related to the one making the abstraction. And an abstraction can be so habitual, that it's just felt backgound and not accessible to introspection without difficulty. A lot of it can just be random variation that cancels out statistically: some theists survive, some atheists survive - none of it matters from a survival point of view. Is that true? Who knows?

I'm skeptical about anything that sounds like evolutionary psychology. It feels a little too much of a mix between hermeneutics and empirical pea counting to be useful. But then I have sociology degree and that discipline isn't all that different in some of its incarnations. — Dawnstorm

I'm thinking less on an individual basis here and more on a cultural basis and its relationship to our biological reality -- they aren't one and the same, and I'm equally suspicious of evolutionary psychology. (evo-psych is also annoying because it makes it more difficult to attempt teasing out the relationship between biology and human social structures)

So true in the above sense, such that there is a relationship between the sets of worlds and reality that the previous cultures from us could navigate their environment. Not the truth. (also, note how I'm looking at truth and knowledge on this social level rather than an individual level. Individual a/theists and their beliefs aren't as important as the success of general social structures)

While I'm rambling about playfully, I might as well share my hermeneutical indeterminacy principle: of a proposition you can either know whether it's true, or what it means, but never both at the same time. There you go. That's the sort of atheist I am.

Hrm! I'd say truth is part of language, and that meaning and truth have a relationship to one another such that we could -- but I suspect this is just a way of using words, and I could adopt your way.

But I couldn't say I understand it up front :)

It's not a belief. Anything I can't make sense of is nonsense to me. — Dawnstorm

Cool. I understand.

Once I try to understand a concept I sometimes make progress. With God it's a random number of steps in a random direction (I can't even tell where forward is). Since I need a worldview I made mine with placing God into the category of things that other people say but make no sense. I fear I'm old enough now that there's a crust of dust around it. I can't scale back my own worldview far enough to make sense of God and still have enough concepts left to think with. But maybe not. There's always the chance that someone says something, or something happens, that makes me suddenly experience a... shift? Maybe a change in the hardware'll do it? A stroke, maybe?

God makes sense to me from an anthropological perspective, as I said above -- while the specific claims of the various religions, some of which don't even quite have a God in the Abrahamic sense, are all over the map, there seems to be a general structure or pattern to communities of faith, and from my atheist perspective I really only see humans organizing as such -- and noticeably, from a scientific picture of the world, we didn't start with a scientific worldview (it had to be developed), yet we still survived.

That's the part that always sticks with me. I figure you have to understand truth at some level to survive -- I am a realist of some kind, though I get confused in the discussions there -- but the specific meanings and claims of various religions, while wildly different in that particular sense, seem to have some kind of general coherence that got our species this far (just assuming the scientific picture true)

Speaking for myself, I start and then stop at 'what we say about g/G', that is, 'what religious scriptures attribute to (the) deity', and assess them as claims which are either true, false or incoherent. I don't bother with addressing g/G itself. As far as I can discern it, theism – its sine qua non claims about g/G – consists of both false and incoherent claims; and an idea (e.g. theism) of a deity ascribed false or incoherent properties is a nonsensical idea, no? So theism is not true, to my mind, whether or not '(the) deity is real'. — 180 Proof

Thanks for laying this out, because it's giving me a "shard" of thought to start from.

I have an anthropological bent when it comes to understanding God. That people are brought together across cultures in similar-ish looking organizations is what sticks out. And I know that the evaluation of claims aren't the sorts of things that bring people together -- so it's not the particular claims that seem to matter at all. Especially given the diversity of those claims in comparison to how common the general frame seems to be. Claims seem to be secondary, as the sorry state of apologetics will attest to.

So coherency is a lot harder to pin down, with such a notion. Also why I'm bringing up the civic religion as a contrast point -- voting and praying being fairly close to one another. (at this level of abstraction, at least)

Yup.

Though of the sorts that I've been critical of so far, he counts.

Oh wow! I didn't realize how close to home it was for you.

For the next track, I felt this one:

:cool: I just finished that one. I'm looking for the next track.

Hell yeah. :D

It's good to have a Moliere in this forum, so I can talk about plays :) — Eros1982

Hell yeah!

That was the original reason I joined the forum way back when: I was excited to see an aesthetics section, and was really turned onto theatre at the time. (as it turns out, I've stuck around for other reasons -- but I'm a theatre lover!)

If you don't have puzzles, character development and a motive, you definitely do not have a play. I can say, for example, that Jean Racine is a poor playwright (for my taste), but he has all those three features in his works, and I do not deny that he writes plays. But for some works of Eugene Ionesco, I doubt whether those should be called plays, as I might say also that Ibsen's Peer Gynt comes closer to novels and movie scripts, than to plays. — Eros1982

Heh. I love Ionesco. It's definitely a play. And Ibsen is the basis for all modern theatre! So it sounds like you must like Shakespeare? Or what?

How do you feel about Stanislavski? Or are you strictly one who reads/watches plays?

Another great flick. (one which I'd even defend to the hoity toitys :D)

Ah, see, that's already a step too far for me. That's what I mean by flytrap: the moment I say "God doesn't exist," I get tangled up in a conversation of the type winning-losing that I can't win. I've admitted too much already, and now I'm comitted to a statement I ultimately feel is meaningless. I can argue back and forth in that groove, but I get more and more alienated by the stuff I say. And I can't get away. — Dawnstorm

I think flytraps are common among philosophical topics. What you describe here is a pattern I'm familiar with! "Saying too much" is a wonderful insight, once you know that's what you are doing.

I'm fine with taking a step back. I'm an apatheist in addition to being an atheist.

The truth is, if you ever catch me saying something like "God doesn't exist," it's most likely a bid to end the conversation. It's more a hyperbolic demonstration of my worldview in a simplified manner that my interlocutor can easily understand. The problem is, though, I project a false view of myself. I'd have to say something like "To me, the concept of God is nonsense," which would be closer to the truth, but it's about my intuition and doesn't easily lead to rational talk. And, also, people tend to miss the "to me," so I have to explain that I'm a relative of some sort (which sort I'm not even sure of myself), and... So it's just easier to say stuff like "God doesn't exist." But I use that rarely, and only as a conversation ender, and only if I feel the person I'm talking to isn't going to view this as a challange.

Well, I won't bite.

How do you get to the belief that the concept of God is nonsense?

I grew up the son of Catholic person, but my belief in God to the extent that it was there to begin with never grew up with me for some reason. I always knew who got my Christmas presents; my parents made no secret of it. But around Christmas they'd never admit to that; it's always the local equivalent of Santa around that time of the year. (Add to that me being an animal geek and never seeing the easter bunny as anything else than an amusing absurdity.) It's possible I thought believing in God was a similar game? To be honest, I don't remember. I do know I don't remember a moment when I realised I didn't believe in God. I do remember worrying about telling my mother about it (which would have had to be somewhere between 9 and 12 I think?). I don't know how that came to be.

Mormanism for lil ol me.

It's the new Catholicism. Flashier. More blatantly racist. ;)

As you can see, I have fond thoughts for the faith of my birth :D

I'm fairly relaxed about being an atheist, mostly because I'm living in a fairly secular society (Austria), and religion is mostly a private affair people don't ask about, and when they learn you're an atheist people aren't prone to argue (unless there's nothing else to do; most of my face-to-face discussions happened in trains). There are... incompatibilities. For example, when my mum's down turning to God's a source of comfort, so God talk would come naturally to her when sees me feeling down, but that's precicely the moment I have the least tolerance for God talk. I can't or don't want to spare the effort to translate.

A computer metaphor might help: I'm running the OS unLucky-relativist, and it doesn't natively run programs written for DeusVult; all that's available is a shoddily written emulator and it takes up a lot of processing power, and the programs won't run as intended anyway. So when I need to run intensive debugging routines because the OS acts up, also running the emulator could crash the system. But not running the emulator might cause background processes like Interaction to crash...

Hrmm... think I understand what you're saying. I'd say it's possible to, say, switch out not just OS's, but even hardware, and that the hardware morphs along with the OS in a weird (dialectic? no... no! it can't be! :D)

I'd say that the worldviews are likely incommensurable, up front, but that one can eventually develop a way of commensurating. (though, usually, no one is satisfied with such a language)

Listened to them all.

I'll have to listen to more Wayne now. That was great.

What do you think the power of religion is? or rather the primary power or purpose? — praxis

I think it morphs, really... as @Jamal pointed out, these are, through history, political ways of organizing. Or, at least, we'd look at them like that, having little invested in the various disputes between or within religions. And when you start considering religion, in general, it might be too abstract a category to definitively say. (how much of a similarity is there, really, between the worship of Cleopatra, and the modern civic religion, though we can reasonably call them both religions?)

What I really mean by the power of religion is more in the political sense: however religion operates, which I'm uncertain about, it's demonstrably a powerful manner of organizing people, up to even having state powers, though that has diminished in some parts of the world.

When I say I think secular people underestimate religion, I mean that it's not going to fade away. Further, while its power has diminished in some parts of the world, it is still very powerful in the sense of how many people are organized around religion. That's not to say why it's appealing, nor am I trying to say something like "oh, these are brainwashed persons, that's the power of religion!" -- I'm just talking about the raw numbers, and the political power that comes from having numbers of people organized together.

IIii..... probably will not anytime soon. :D

I did read the Anti-Christ once upon a time... but I've forgotten its contents by this point.

And I tried the Theological-Political Treatise last year! I put it down, though. I remember getting impatient with all the arguments from the Bible (I'm a bad Spinoza student, I'm afraid). A buddy loved Spinoza for that stuff, but my rejection of theism has always been on a more general level.

Though, these days, I'm more inclined to listen to see what people mean by "theism", because often times they mean things closer-to-metaphor, like Hegel, which is where things get interesting -- it's often been put that we have a civic religion, for instance. And if we're not getting caught up in fairy-land tales or ancient histories, then differentiating between a civic religion and a non-civic one is a lot harder when one means "theism" to mean something like "love", or an ideal. Anthropologically -- materially -- they function similarly.

I'm saying if nothing we feel is truly genuine then what's the point of living? Your life is essentially a lie. — Darkneos

Right!

So suppose that my life is a lie, and it's a comfortable lie. Might it be possible for a person to say "the point of living is comfort" rather than "the point of living is to be truly genuine"?

And, even if we are truly genuine, one could also demand some other condition to satisfy "the point of living" like "life should also be exciting" -- we could be genuinely bored for all eternity, and feel like living life is pointless just because of this.

Which should highlight how the question "What is the point of living?" is open-ended, and the answer is dependent more upon the speaker asking the question than anything else.

Which, in this case, would be you.

For me, I don't mind living a comfortable lie, in the sense that you've outlined what is genuine. I don't need to be genuine in the sense of not-influenced. Even further, the way I look at the world, to be not-influenced would be disingenuous, because we are connected to a world, we are connected to people, and we should listen to them. We are only an island when we choose to be, and then there's no one else around anyways. Genuine, and entirely alone.

Sounds awful to me. Why would I care about that?

Hell, even if everything we feel happens to be genuine -- in the case of our set definition at this point, God -- why bother living? Everything can be exactly as you want it to be. How dull.

Not all artworks are beautiful in any straightforward sense; some that are considered great may even be grotesque. — Janus

And in-between (thinking of Guernica here, one of my favorite paintings)

the idea of aesthetics is tied to the idea of non-ethical value judgement and the question is what exactly are we valuing if not beauty? — Janus

Sounds about right to me. Or, upon accepting the beautiful (or the sublime), explaining why they are appealing, or what they are, or how to judge them, or which artworks are beautiful/sublime. (contra those categories, I think "the comedic" might work)

One response I have gotten when I complained about academic publications is surprise that I cared. "Why do you want to know about what is happening in the context of our dialogue?" — Paine

Hrm! Well, goes against the kindness I've been treated to. Though, upon reflection, that gets along with the elitist sentiments often expressed in philosophical writing. I probably was lucky in my encounters.

That makes it similar but different than issues of copyright in music and literature. — Paine

Yup. Academia sits in a very weird position, economically. It seems like a guild system, primarily. Even in the sciences (or maybe even especially so, given that the sciences care what you trained in and who trained you)

Well, that's why you drive an hour to the nearest city...

Oh I definitely think people should be paid, and I respect the work of academics.

Something I've often felt about academic publishing, given that it's widely funded by taxes, is that it ought to be available to everyone. So this criticism would actually apply not just to philosophy, but the sciences, and all the academic disciplines.

But even more, I've noticed that people who do the work aren't the ones who are opposed to this idea, for the most part, of making academic research widely accessible. It's the monster that is the academic world that prevents it.

I loved the drum transition right around after the 6 minute mark.

And the trio upped intensity at the 7 minute was great.

Listening now. Never heard this one before. (youtube, once you get past the algorithm, has so many jazz classics on it)

More thoughts:

I'm interested in philosophy, but I'm not well-read in philosophy. On the topic of theism... my main drive is understanding what theists are trying to tell me when they talk about God. — Dawnstorm

I think this is one of the most interesting questions with respect to the philosophy of religion -- and I think it may get at why religion is as powerful as it is. (I think secular persons tend to underestimate the power of religion too...)

The topics themselves don't interest me much; what's interesting is why they interest others. When it comes to questions such as "Does God exist," I'm not keen on joining discussions, and I feel like building a philosophy around this is... walking into a trap? It feels like fly paper...

I agree that building a philosophy around that question is a fly paper trap :). At least, in our day and age. The medievals get a pass, due to it being their economic way of life. It'd be downright strange if philosophers didn't write about God when the Church ruled.

I can never tell if I'm strawmanning, or if they're shifting goal posts. I can't tell the difference. It's not native mind-space, and I have no good map.

While I claim it's native mind-space for me, I also feel this -- generally speaking religion fulfills more than philosophic desires, so the tools of philosophy will be used to defend rather than explore, even if we're just wanting to know "ok, really, I don't care what you believe, I just want to understand!" -- but that understanding is often viewed with suspicion. Understandably so, since a common religious outlook is that the faith is a way of testing others to see if they conform to your belief structure, and hence can be trusted. So if you start picking at those sorts of beliefs, the natural instinct is to protect the beliefs, and mistrust the person picking at them.

It's not exactly a rational conversation, so often times it's a mixture of strawmanning and goalpost shifting, but you just have to go with it.

Atheism, then, interests me more as a social phenomenon than as a topic for philosophy. I just can't see enough substance to gods to start serious thought.

I can see this, but I guess along the lines of "the power of religion" that I mentioned... I think along those lines and asking what people are talking about are philosophically interesting.

So, yeah, not the denial of gods conversation -- but atheism as a starting point? "OK, God doesn't exist. Sure. So why in the world does this idea have so much influence today, and why did it have influence before?"

Hm, I remember when The God Delusion hit the shelves. I knew of it before I ever saw a physical copy, so I was curious when I finally cam across one and picked it up to read a little. I read an excerpt about the evils religion wrought, I think I remember the section being about Australian aboriginies, and I wondered, so what about the British Empire and it's take on civilisation? I wasn't impressed. It felt too much of a simplistic polemic, so I put it back. Over the years, I found I liked some of Harris and Dennett, but Hitchens has always been nails on chalkboard for me. All in all, I'm not well-read in them, though. — Dawnstorm

I agree that the books that the New Atheists published were generally uninteresting. Even looking back at Richard Carrier's book: I like the idea of building your own worldview. So I still admire him for that. But I look back at a worldview and think: "Hrmm... but here's a problem here, and here, and here..." :D

It's an interesting idea, but I wonder to what extent one can actually accomplish "building a worldview" -- it seems like a lifelong project. In which case, we're sort of talking about a way of life, which starts sounding like a religion on its face.

I'm an atheist. I'm not inherently against religion, but personally I'm bored by ritual, and I've just never found anything to be certain about (which as a negative effect means there's a constant background-radiation anxiety underlying anything I do, but when I'm fine it expresses itself a good-natured ironic attitude towards life - or so I hope).

I'm interested in philosophy, but I'm not well-read in philosophy. On the topic of theism... my main drive is understanding what theists are trying to tell me when they talk about God. The topics themselves don't interest me much; what's interesting is why they interest others. When it comes to questions such as "Does God exist," I'm not keen on joining discussions, and I feel like building a philosophy around this is... walking into a trap? It feels like fly paper... I can never tell if I'm strawmanning, or if they're shifting goal posts. I can't tell the difference. It's not native mind-space, and I have no good map.

Atheism, then, interests me more as a social phenomenon than as a topic for philosophy. I just can't see enough substance to gods to start serious thought. — Dawnstorm

Fair.

I think, just with my background, it's very much native mind-space, but in this weird way due to being an atheist. Maybe that's why I come back to it.

New Atheism feels like jumping the shark. My reaction is always something like, do we really still have to talk about this stuff? New Atheists, famous and not, tend to just make me cringe. I have to tell myself that many vocally atheist atheists have grown up religious or live in countries in which religion does damage. — Jamal

Heh. Being the self-critical sort, I've felt that cringe in spite of basically being a part of the group :D.

Kind of, at least. More just a participant than an organizer (though I did grow up religious, so I fit that part of the description). The one interesting trend that I saw coming out of it all was Atheism+, or something along those lines, where people wanted to say more than "Boo, religion!", but wanted to create ethical secular communities. Those are still around, though definitely not as sexy for the press as "Boo, religion!" :D

But, for me, the political has a deeper pull. I was interested in world-changing philosophies and action, not just acceptance under the norm. (tho that's a worthy goal, too)

And that’s the thing. There’s plenty of bad religion around. Intolerant theism in the US and the Middle East, a whole Christian church in the service of an authoritarian state in Russia. So maybe we need some better New Atheism after all.

But no, I don’t think so (I’m thinking as I write here). I’m an atheist but I don’t think the problem is religion as such, just the bad stuff. Take Islam. It’s stupid for Western atheists to tell Muslims that their whole way of life, in its most important aspects, is not only false and a sham but is also responsible ultimately for some terrible crimes against humanity. This does not help reformers at all. — Jamal

Heh, no worries. I'm also thinking as I write. I think that this would have been a much better approach -- helping reformers, fostering acceptance, that sort of thing. Definitely better than "You're a bunch of dummies and I'm super smart and ethical!" :D

And, yes, I despised the "criticisms" of Islam from the New Atheists -- the so called rationalists couldn't see that where they thought they were being rationally consistent, in that time it was just clear they were talking about it due to geopolitics -- and leaning into Islamophobic talking points to be "part of the conversation". So incredibly stupid.

So when I think fondly of the New Atheism, I guess I think more along the lines of the people who were asking for much less than what I was looking for: the people that just wanted a community, and to not be discriminated against for not believing. I was driven away by the talking heads, but looking back those were the people I'd consider to be the only reason it took off. When you're pissed, angry talking heads can sell books. It's consoling to find a voice for an anger you couldn't express.

The leaders were just stupid enough to really believe they were these rationally enlightened people, which totally killed it for me :D (plus, I remember one of the talks I went to, an organizer trying to explain science, and even as an undergrad I was like "Uhh... you're sort of using these Aristotelian notions which are not applicable at all", but that's just the philosophy nerd in me)

So throw New Atheism in the bin and foster tolerance and understanding for religious people while helping reformers within religions. This is a basis for fighting the bad religion.

It has nothing to do with believing in things without evidence or all that. It’s not about faith. What someone is expected to do for their faith, how far they will go, and exactly how the holy texts should be interpreted, are political and historically specific. — Jamal

Oh yeah, we're on the same page here.

There are many communities of faith that just straight up rock. So there are counter-examples to the atheist screed, at least if you have a political viewpoint. As a for instance, Quakers.

Still... sometimes one wishes that things went different. Could still happen! But I agree, overall, that for me at least, I'm not willing to organize along these lines because I really do want more than the status quo. (even though that is a respectable political goal)

Ahh, OK. Gotcha. And it looks like that's more where the OP was headed, too, so that makes sense.

Interesting that you'd call it a problem. Why is it a problem?

I suppose that's the point I take issue with, then.

Though, if we're just taking that definition as the rule -- then your conclusion does follow. You and everyone else is disingenuous, as they are, in fact, influenced by the things around them.

Only God could claim to be authentic under such a criteria, though.

not quite what I'm getting at here. — Darkneos

No? M'kay. Then my mistake.

"Propaganda" was introduced by me, mostly because it fit, to my mind, with what you were saying about our emotions being the result of cause-and-effect, that we are puppets to society, and that these influences render us disingenuous, and under control. But I'm willing to drop that, only justifying where I was thinking from.

Still -- I'm pointing out that I disagree that these influences make us disingenuous, in my first post. That we feel means we are connected to a world, which is, in fact, where we are. If we do not feel, then while we are in a world we are no longer connected to it.

It's not being under influence which makes us disingenuous. It depends upon more than that. Such as being manipulated in a particular way. (hence why I immediately went for propaganda)