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It's all right in front of you. This is a belief system that posits "scientific" politics as a substitute for what christians would call "godliness". "Science" is the clerisy that interprets the Moral Arc of History (the Popular Will, or Will of God) and informs the initiated what the correct Just Being A Decent Human Being (politically correct, christian) behavior is. Marx was just the first big one to take off during the religious doldrums of the second half of the nineteenth century, and so it is his name most associated with all the related sects that squabble among us to this day. From the enlightenment until now, this has been the pattern. The first attempt in France to replace Christianity failed miserably, the second in Russia worked, sort of, for a while. The third, in the west has been more successful, largely by free-riding on western military power and religious tolerance. But here too, we see cracks forming.
I'm not really following. Sure, "Science" has been the calling card for many a scientismist for quite a long time, core to their being as atheists. One question is whether this is truly "Christian heresy", but all these atheists have, indeed, been around for a long time. Plenty stretching back to antiquity and in non-Christian societies.
Then, within this group of scientism atheists, there are remaining questions. The standard "big four" being epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and politics. I think we're mostly skipping the squabbles on the first two, as I think you're focusing on the latter two (ethics as "correct Just Being A Decent Human Being behavior" and politics is called out by name). These have, indeed, been tough questions for atheist sects for a long time. I've observed plenty that The Ethics was always a sore spot for Internet Atheism; they just couldn't figure it out, and they ran off in a bunch of different directions with mutually-contradictory sects, some trying to prop up some form of "science-based" "objective" version and others often running headlong into naive meta-ethical relativism. Interestingly, you see both forms in Wokism, depending on how hard you scratch and how far up the priesthood you inquire.
Of course, I would be remiss if I didn't note that even more recently, we're seeing the anti-woke atheist Counter Reformation still grasping with these problems, thinking that they're going to get game theory to do their work for them. I've noted before that most of these attempts misunderstand the basics of game theory, and you can see by their actions that the Wokists actually understand some elements of game theory better than their opposing sect.
I think the TL;DR is that you're probably just mistaking what they're doing as replacements for specific Christian things, whereas it's more that the pieces you've described are just versions of Ethics/Politics. They were all already atheists, and then they split sects depending on how they wanted to build Ethics/Politics, where in these topics, Scott points out that hamartiology turns out to be important. This is unsurprising, since so many atheists think that they've grasped the Problem of Evil and think that it's a big deal for them. Hamartiology is pretty naturally paired with it.
I'm not sure why we'd assume a continuity of ancient atheism and modern atheism. Atheism is a rejection of God(s). How we see gods influences it.
Consider New Atheism: their moral critique of Christianity was that it was a) unnecessary and b) insufficiently universalist because non-Christians are excluded from full communion. The latter is not a critique that ancient atheists would necessarily have cared about. Ethics doesn't actually obligate you to be a universalist.
Criticisms of the morality of the Old Testament God are born of the same impulse that gave us an actual, clear Christian heresy like gnosticism: the god of the Hebrew Bible, at first blush, fails by the standards of the New Testament/NT-inspired modern morality. This is a problem that becomes acute when you're not a polytheist.
The other claim is that science can fill the role religion plays as an arbiter of truth, a moral authority and a source of meaning and the sense of the numinous. I see no reason for these to be basic atheistic assumptions. A lot of our debates are about principles. And truth doesn't have to be numinous.
I don't know that I would. But I think that's kind of not my point. My point is more that I saw the reasoning as being, "Look at these people, having an Ethics and Politics; that's Christian!" (Yes, that's a simplified caricature.) I don't think that qualifies it as being a "Christian heretical sect".
In general, I should probably make an effort post on what it would be to be a "______ heretical sect". Tentatively, I would expect that one would find some folks in that sect writing within the context of the tradition that they are being heretical from. I think it likely that you would find them claiming that what they are doing is that tradition, while others in that tradition are saying that their work is actually heretical. I highly doubt that if we go look at the folks who developed the frameworks for wokism and the like, we will find them writing, "Jesus Christ is our Lord; we are doing our best to follow Him as we find guidance in the bible. Here are the parts of the bible that support our woke doctrines and guide our sect."
There may be other ways to argue that folks are a "______ heretical sect"; thus the need for a larger effortpost. But that would be, I think, the top-tier type of evidence.
I think you put a lot of stock in the universalist axis, and I don't think it's that load-bearing. Again, it's a bit of a superficial relation. Not quite "Hitler was a vegetarian", but yeah, I think we can find a range of views on the universalist axis across all sorts of traditions.
Oh boy. This one takes a whole lot more actual theology, but I'm not really sure how it's germane to the question at hand of the provenance of wokism.
This is a within-atheists fight between sects, which I wrote about:
Either that what they do is that tradition or is in fact the truer fulfillment of the essence of the faith even if it does violence to a lot of the claims the tradition they're attacking stands by. Which is why I compared it to Gnosticism. Christians would deny that Gnostics are Christians. Gnostics might not deny that they are Christians, but they certainly claim that all non-Gnostics are ignorant of the true implications of their gospels and the real ground for Christian faith.
The New Atheist claim is that you can have all of the good things about God without God and, in fact, what you think is necessary might as well be the commandments of the demiurge that prevent full flourishing.
Sam Harris came up with a hypothetical "worst possible misery for everyone" and uses this to bootstrap himself to a justification for what is basically modern liberal Western morality.
Theoretically it could come from anywhere when a Western atheist basically reinvents hell so he can also reinvent existing moral theories I think we're significantly more justified in skepticism that it comes from the aether. Harris could have come up with a more collectivist view, or something centered more in relations than individual human dignity he didn't. He could have accepted that his hypothetical appeal lacks the sort of universalizing force of God (sure, avoiding WPM state for me and mine make sense but why are we obligated to avoid it for others?)
But he ends up in the same place. This isn't ethics as such. It's a particular form of ethics.
I don't think this satisfies either prong, accepting the second prong for the moment arguendo.
I don't think this satisfies basically any of the of the possible prongs. It's more of a superficial resemblance. (Putting aside other quibbles about hell in the Christian tradition.) Consider Roko's Basilisk; is all AI-doomerism somehow just Christian heresy? I sort of doubt so. Plenty of jokes have been made about the people who try to identify different ideologies that have some form of utopia and say that they must, therefore, be actually the same thing. Here, you seem to be doing the same, but swapping dystopia for utopia. I think the reasoning is equally fallacious.
I mean, Sam Harris's attempt at ethics has always been laughable, for a variety of reasons. But I would still find it laughable to observe that he's worked hard to try to make it palatable to the modern liberal Westerner, so therefore, he and all other atheists are just Christian heretics.
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Can you explain this claim a bit more. It is not self evident to me what specific basics the anti-woke atheists are missing nor what elements the Wokies get better.
If I could, I'd like to take a rain check on this. I have an effort post in the works, and I think it's going to include this (at this moment, there is a minor chance that a narrow component of this will get edited out of that one and pushed further, so please remind me if it does).
In the meantime, here are a few comments/chains which contain some elements.
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