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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   3095 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 23, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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I am happy to report that life as a Western atheist is actually quite pleasant.

In terms of not being subject to Christianity, yes.

It's a deep personal irony for me that while I had my minor annoyances with Christianity as a youth, most of my atheist grievances were secondhand. The personal grievance was being forced to engage with it at all; a lot of time spent being bored, bored enough to dwell on how in addition to being boring, it contradicted all the science/natural history stuff that I was actually interested in. In a conflict between Jesus and Dinosaurs, Jesus didn't have a chance.

Now, as an adult, I actually have experienced being subject to an oppressive ideology that deranges the people around me in obviously unhealthy ways.

Everyone assumes I share this ideology, but also talks constantly about how much they hate/fear those who don't, resulting in a vibe of "You better agree with me, or else". I get to hear incessant little digs about my immutable characteristics that imply they make me a Less-Than. Sometimes I even get a backhanded compliment that's the equivalent of "Wow, you're very articulate for a Black."

Just about everyone (as in, a social peer, not a rando) who's been interpersonally foul to me in the last six years has used ideological lingo while doing so. And didn't suffer social consequences for their foulness, once more because of ideology, and my immutable characteristics that are disfavored by said ideology.

So yeah, all my under-justified dislike of Christianity has been redirected into a quite-justified dislike of, you guessed it, Intersectionalist Leftist-ism.

From "I Am A New Atheist, And I Repent" by Eneasz Brodski:

Over the past few years I watched a new religion born. A secular religion, which doesn’t have the dead-easy failure mode of requiring belief in a sky-fairy. But, since it was created in America, with strong Christian roots, it has all the trappings of Christianity.

  • Original sin
  • Essentialism
  • Repentance and confession
  • Manichean good/evil dichotomy
  • Focus on martyrdom and victimhood
  • Salvation dispensed by the church and needing constant reaffirmation

Even worse, since it is a new religion that is being seized as a lifeline by people who’ve been spiritually drowning for over a decade, it is full of fiery zealots. All conflicts are recast as spiritual struggles focused around the original sin. Like the puritans, they can harbor no dissent in their midst. Everyone must be equally zealous and on their side, or they are on the side of evil. Any price is worth paying to save a soul from evil.

When the scales fell from my eyes and I finally realized what had happened, I felt true crushing failure. Not because I had failed in my objective. Tradition religion is less relevant than ever. The New Atheists won. But in winning, having not realized how different others are, we left a massive religion-vacuum in society. We laid the groundwork for a new religion. One that had been purged of the greatest weaknesses of traditional religions, and with a dense underbrush of religion-starved kindling to tear into.

So, yes. New Atheism helped to create Wokeism. I repent of my ways, I was wrong. Religion is needed, and we should have focused on strengthening the least harmful religion(s) while tearing down the most harmful ones, rather than trying to eliminate them all. Forgive us, for we knew not what we did. :(

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