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You accuse people of this…
And then you turn around in the same post and say stuff like this. I believe I grasp that you are trying to turn my own statement around on me, by implying that, metaphorically, she is the tail and Catholic priests are the trunk of Christianity. Or whatever “It’s all the same thing” metaphor you want to use.
To which I say…okay? I don’t know what big gotcha you think this is. Every Christian and Christian church at least wants to be headed the same direction, with greater or lesser success. I think she was dumb and wrong, but she’s part of the same elephant. That’s exactly the same thing I’m saying about New Atheism, Atheism+, Rationalism, The Enlightment, Liberalism, Post-Modernism, etc etc etc.
Moving on to this part. If it is your stance that one toe and another toe are meaningfully different when the elephant is charging at you, then okay, I have nothing further to say that I think will mean anything to you. I think you are contradicting yourself, but I’m sure you will disagree.
I, on the other hand, say that the purpose of the elephant is to dissolve all the pleasant and gainful things about human society in the pursuit of ever greater and greater atomization of man. So if the one toe is called “New Atheism” and another is called “Rationalism,” well, it all looks like an elephant to me.
But then you also say that your argument is a fact based on your personal experience and your self-knowledge that you’re right, to which I say, “Why should I care what you say you personally know?”
I can tell you, right now, that I have direct experiential knowledge that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and Savior of Mankind, coupled with a vast intellectual edifice constituting thousands of years and millions of pages supporting me in that statement of fact. Does that convince you that I’m right and you need to run immediately to the nearest church and get right with God?
C’mon man, that’s laughable. We both know that if you engaged with this, you would tell me that millions of people can say the same thing about Vishnu or the Buddha or whoever. Or some other circa-2000’s online atheism argument.
So if you are going to tell me what kind of argumentation I should be better than, then you should be better than “It’s a fact because I said so.”
Well, that would be flattering to Catholics, certainly, but yes, I see little difference in how closely they hew to reality, however much more erudite in theological matters the seminary graduates may be.
What I meant by "I was there" was not some metaphysical experience of the birth of wokeness, but that I actually witnessed the birth of both new atheism and rationalism, and I am saying they were intersecting Venn diagrams that became increasingly separated. Now if you want to argue that everything is "the toe of the same elephant" as poisonous fruits of the Enlightenment, well, okay, but you might as well say Nazis and Socialists and Libertarians and Evangelicals are all the same thing. Maybe that is what you actually believe.
Good grief, are you so bitter about everything that this kind of snark is your response? Fine, the priest can be the elephant’s shitter and your Sunday school teacher the ivory. I don’t care, whatever you want to call them. Come at me with better stuff than this.
Sure, but again, that is just your opinion that they are two meaningfully different movements. They’re both headed the same direction. They both use the same tools. What is your actual, factual evidence that they are meaningfully different? Because to me, they both look like atheistic, materialist, bond dissolving, utilitarian movements.
Seriously, what beliefs of rationalists can you point to that are not shared by New Atheists? They share being pro gay rights, pro feminism, pro trans, pro redistributionist, pro liberalism, they both don’t like the Church, they have HBDers, they have people openly worrying about and discussing AI alignment, on and on it goes.
The People’s Front of Judea can tell me they’re not the same thing as the Judean People’s Front, but they look the same to me.
I'm not bitter, dude, at least not in that way. You're very un-calm for someone accusing others of being excersized.
I think you should review where rationalists are at nowadays. You're lumping a lot of people with views from mildly positive to actively hostile towards every position you named. I could just as easily say that there is no meaningful difference between Catholics and Mormons. And indeed, to someone completely unfamiliar with Christianity this would be true. But of course to someone who actually takes the time to examine what they believe, it is obviously not true. They share lineage, obviously. Hence my description of "intersecting Venn diagrams that have moved apart."
At least we’re getting somewhere now. What would you say the core tenets of Rationalism actually are, then? Because to me they look the same as, really, generic materialist atheism, and certainly the new atheists.
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