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I find it interesting that The Motte tends to treat atheism with kid gloves that are not reserved for other belief systems. For example, the idea that there is no difference in intelligence between different genetic groups of humans is widely called out here as being simply wrong. Which it almost certainly is, in my opinion. But consider the idea that methodological constraints actually are a metaphysical theory, or further implying that shoes are atheists. These ideas are, I think, even less likely to be true than the idea that there is no difference in intelligence between different genetic groups of humans (at least the latter can be empirically shown true or false; the former is just a category error). But atheism on The Motte is usually not met with accusations that it is as absurd, indeed perhaps more absurd, as any flavor of wokeism. Nor is the history acknowledged that New/Internet Atheists almost certainly led to a willingness to embrace relativism everywhere and ultimately wokeism by the masses of "laypeople". Wokeism gets often and in my opinion properly pilloried on here for being nonsensical on the level of correspondence to objective reality, but atheism typically gets a free pass. Even the philosophers on here mostly refuse to really call it out as being absurd when the topic comes up.
Does this happen because atheism is largely not viewed as a threat anymore (since its birth of wokeism is already in the past) and because since wokeism is this community's main out-group and atheism is vaguely internet-weirdo-aligned in the modern West, people here tend to follow the principle of "the enemy of an enemy is my friend"? Or, to be more charitable, maybe it is because wokeism can fairly easily be criticized on the level of normal scientific investigation, whereas the claims that atheism makes go so far beyond typical constraints of the scientific method that one actually does just quietly make an exception for it because its claims are fundamentally viewed as being orthogonal to scientific investigation (and people just fail to ever mention such)?
What in the heck are you even saying here?
To the rest of your post, atheism is correct in the sense that if there's not sufficient compelling evidence then people should default to a position of not knowing instead of just blindly believing things on faith. This jives pretty well with the rationalist movement that this forum is a descendent of.
Atheism used to be pretty blue-coded back in the Bush days when proto-Wokeists teamed up with principled atheists to lambast the evangelical hegemony of the early 2000s USA. The movement splintered when the principled atheists like Dawkins essentially said "actually our critiques apply to ALL religions, like Islam too", which caused consternation with the proto-Wokeists since Muslims are blue-coded. This caused the Atheism+ to be born to try to explicitly pivot the movement towards social justice and woke causes, but the inconsistencies were big enough that the movement collapsed almost immediately. Atheism as a political movement has effectively no power today, even though the rates of irreligiosity continue to increase.
Implying atheism gave rise to wokeism is nonsense. The two were aligned a few decades ago, but they have very separate origins, goals, motivations, etc. which is why they split.
If any group is given the kid glove treatment on this forum, it's religious people themselves. I've seen a lot of people here argue junk like "wokeism is just the lack of religion" (it's not) or try to promote a revival of religiosity by cherrypicking parts of religion that present it as an almost godless political philosophy for conservatism while ignoring the superstitious parts like, say, the whole origin story, the concept of eternal salvation, etc.
I've explained it in a few comments downthread. Man, if anything came out of this post, it's that this forum needs more Girard. And basic metaphysics/philosophy of science.
That would more accurately be described as a type of agnosticism. A particular type, in fact.
The claim is that wokeism was only able to rise so quickly and so broadly was due to the effects of atheism on the masses, not that they had the same origins/goals/motivations.
Oh yeah? Does Girard explain what hard determinism is, since you aren't capable?
I think you are relying on references, name drops and vague gestures at metaphysics/philosophy of science to elide your incomplete understanding, knowing that inserting the word basic in there will make people who consider themselves smart cautious about challenging you. But no, we have managed to have plenty of intelligent discussions prior to your arrival, and that is because people explain the terms and concepts they bring up. Prior to our last exchange I would consider this the arrogance of youth or like @Ben___Garrison says, you hung out with too many philosophy students, but I keep seeing you do this. You never explain yourself, even when you claim to it's just "go read Foucault" or "this forum needs more Girard."
But you don't get to declare prerequisites to engage in discussion with you. If you can't explain anything you are talking about then I have no reason to believe you know what you are talking about. And after our last exchange I have good reason to believe that you don't.
The thing is, I bet a lot of people on this forum have been in your shoes, pretending to know more about a topic than they do, because it can be embarrassing to admit you don't have complete knowledge when you are arguing. But it's a binary decision - either you can maintain your ego on a forum full of strangers, or you can set it aside to learn and have interesting discussions. It's one or the other. Step one is explaining concepts you bring up or admitting your knowledge is insufficient to explain the concepts you mention in your own words.
I've been around these parts since the old old old old old place. You remember those days?
Aaand, you've shown that you haven't read my comments. I said that this was the response I got from the academic wokies.
This was just a general observation. My actual response to the particular concern was to point to other comments that I had made explicitly explaining myself. Which of course you didn't read.
Oh my, I'm super excited to back through the comment history and see what other comments of mine you didn't bother to read.
either you can maintain your ego on a forum full of strangers, or you can set it aside to learn and have interesting discussions. It's one or the other. Step one is reading the things that other people write.
EDIT: Oh, I see it now. You linked to it, too. ROFL. Apparently, you didn't read my reply there. You just swooped in to say literally nothing at all. At the very least, you didn't respond to me again explaining the very basics. Because of course you didn't. You just wanted to act like you didn't understand. ROFL.
Lol yes it was indeed "the academic wokies" who said "go read Foucault". Was it the academic wokies who said "this forum needs more Girard."? Well no, no it wasn't. I wonder what I could have been saying? I wonder how I would say it if I didn't know it was the academic wokies who deflected if you even tried poking at their philosophical underpinnings? Differently I imagine.
This entire thread from beginning to end is fucking dozens of posts asking you to explain what the fuck you are talking about, and you deflecting your ass off. Is that in plain enough English for you? Well then how about returning the God damned favour for once?
PS, the first link in my post is to our previous exchange, no need to go through your comment history, just "reading the things that other people write."
Yeah, I still can't find anything of any value in this comment. The first paragraph is nearly unintelligible. The second paragraph, well, would you like me to hold your hand on the way to the various comments where I did explain what Girard meant? I will admit, I was unprepared for quite so many people seeming to honestly have no idea at all about the entire enterprises of science and metaphysics.
Lol what? Did you have a stroke? You seemed to have mostly pieced it together before you made that oopsie about reading posts, and now it has become unintelligible? You were so eager to break it down and laugh at it before, but now you can't find anything of any value in my post?
Talk about synchronicity, I swear this same thing happened to me before in another recent thread, the person I was talking to understood what I was saying enough to reply until I clearly explained the issue I had with their argument and then I suddenly became inscrutable. Maybe I'm transcending reality and concepts break down in my presence? If I recall correctly, we were discussing something called hard determinism, I can't remember who my interlocutor was though.
Don't post like this please.
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