Tangent: New Atheism

"Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" is basically "Bring your Golden Calf to your place of worship day". Good to see New Atheists were just as ignorant and uncouth as the "extremists" they were criticizing; As if sacrilege and disrespect for over a thousand years of tradition and customs of people they fundamentally do not understand is some righteous denunciation from whatever their version of God is. The US Airforce I guess

Armany Habed

Wow. I've followed Rebecca Watson for several years, and I knew she was involved in the new atheist movement and had some conflict when it fell apart, but I had no idea about the whole elevator incident and the fallout from it. It really does shine a light on what became Gamergate and why Rebecca knows the psychology of these backlashes so well today. It's deeply infuriating that she was put through all of that for the "crime" of voicing a very basic boundary - and, of course, to dare to be a woman voicing anything outside the status quo. Bleak.

Paige

I've struggled a lot with being stimulated and genuinely interested in some of the ideas and discourse coming from figures such as Sam Harris, while simultaneously tearing my hair out at his myopic, invalidating, and hypocritical social opinions and behaviors that aren't explicitly racist (and sexist), but are functionally racist (and sexist.) Thanks for this video.

TheLovingAvoidant

I am an evolutionist, pro-choice, left-wing canadian who grew up after the Quiet Revolution but I still learned about the Bible trhough film and school and also because I'm a huge ancient history nerd and I remember mostly agreeing with the atheists but resenting how american-centered the whole thing was. An american response to an american idea of religion. Not all of us were raised by evangelical parents who didn't let us listen to Marilyn Manson. The Catholic church in Canada gave us residential schools and Duplessis orphans but also universities, hospitals (no, really!) that were staffed by nuns, yes, but who had been trained as legit nurses who could help in operations, not just chant prayers. So that was a big crack into the big "you can either believe in science or religion, not both!" ultimatum. because the two worked together here for a very long time though not in perfect harmony, it even went spectacularly wrong sometimes so we got rid of that system for a reason. When I hear american Atheists dunk on the idea of the Rapture and the perennial Middle East wars it creates, I think "By all means, but that nonsense is all american, made in the 1800s. Other branches of christianity don't believe that."

Cynthia Sonier

I think it's interesting to note that the Satanic Temple began around the same time as Gamergate (2013) and one of their first acts was to hold a Pink Mass. I suspect the Satanic Temple was able to collect the feminist/queer atheists who became disillusioned with the New Atheism movement. If my suspicion is true, then it's hilarious how the "Four Horsemen" were so ineffectual at their attempt to destroy religion that they accidentally contributed to the rise of a new religious movement.

Queen of Narnia

interesting that my political awakening could've been in this time -- this movement for marginalised communities. i feel like i've been informed by the people that came before me (since I'm about 12 years younger than you), and that's whom my viewpoints have been influenced by -- 9/11, and the new atheism movement, and gamergate, and all that happened after. i literally live in australia and this wouldn't have been possible without the internet...

Nicole Song

I actually did "come out" to my parents as an atheist. I'm from a small-mid size suburb in the Deep South (Louisiana specifically) and I fully sat my parents down when I was 13 and "came out" as an atheist. Unrelated, a few years later I came out as gay to them, and much to my surprise, they were MUCH cooler with me being gay than me being an atheist. I think this might say something about the intrenchment of religion specifically in the south, to the point where I felt compelled to lie to my sweet and loving (bless her heart) grandma that I believed in god, but I did not hide my first girlfriend from her

Madeline Bolin

Coming back to this because I've been getting really interested in the connections between atheism and masculinity. Masculinity is often self understood as rationality meaning the mind's conquering of the body (in contrast to women who are imagined as having their minds dominated by their bodies - i.e. origin of sexist ideas of women's mood being controlled by hormones or emotion). Part of this idea is the notion of men having control over their lives (particularly as a head of a household or as the heroic individualist figure in a lot of fiction). Religious ideas massively threaten both of these conceptions through their focus on indeterminacy, liminality and humility before an all-powerful God. In works on Muslims at least works on dream interpretation (by Amira Mittermeier), Sabah (by Ammara Masood - the idea of having patience in waiting for God to act), or predestination (Alice Eliot) all point to this idea of an acceptance and openness to the fact that we don't have control over our own lives. So it follows from this someone involved in new atheism would also turn to anti feminism, both of them threatening a masculine self-concept

Najeeb Khadim

I honestly think the atheist spaces on YouTube and Reddit were rife with arrogant men who wanted to be/thought they were Christopher Hitchens, and were focused on developing persuasive arguments in online/imagined debate and logic pedantry ("that's an ad hominem!"). Even though they really thought they were the most rational person in the room, they honestly were invested in and attached to Hitchens, even to the point of defending his Iraq War nonsense. This model fits so perfectly with Jordan Peterson and probably why many New Atheist men followers moved on to anti-feminist, alt-right content in the same vein.

Vic

I got into New Atheism as a teenager in 2017 after the movement had already lost momentum and fragmented, and after youtube started pushing anti-SJW channels to any followers of atheist channels, even to followers of relatively socially progressive atheist channels. Today, as a leftist I've long outgrown and disntanced myself from new atheism's ideology generally speaking, for various reasons, only further amplified by today's remaining New Atheists being pro-Israel shills, illiterate about the nature of the conflict, and incredibly callous toward Palestinian suffering. However I've retained a few important beliefs from this movement. The most outwardly striking is that i purposefully don't use the term Islamophobia, using instead the term Muslimophobia/anti-Muslim bigotry, because i believe Islamophobia directly by way of it's etymology implies Islam instead of muslims as people should be a protected class/entity and any criticism of Islam as a set of ideas is bigoted by default. I've seen the word's etymology exploited a large amount of times to claim that exact thing, that refusing islam's ideas' protected status (from any kind of criticism, e.g. claims that niqabs and what not are extremely feminist and liberatory being rejected) is inherently racist. While i understand how purpousefully inflammatory performative criticism of Islam from culturally christian people can turn racist quickly, spewing the clash of civilisation narrative, the term islamophobia has the potential to snuff out criticism of Islam coming from ex Muslims and non-racist voiced disagreement with Islam's morality coming from progressives (for example Feminists), which I've just always stayed uncomfortable with. It's not just about both-sidesing terrorism, it's about Islam's ideas. As a gay disabled woman who has survived conservative christianity in my childhood and youth (in all of its sexism and unhinged beliefs about how my epilepsy is caused by demons that should be dealt with via exorcism), i think it's perfectly reasonable to be afraid of the ideas contained within the holy texts of the abrahamic religions, and a fear response to Islam's ideas is reasonable. When that fear transfers into being racist toward muslims as a group of people, it becomes a form of bigotry (Muslimophobia) that one just never left, because of my experiences, and I doubt it ever will. And personally i dont see it as problematic. Much like New Atheism, i believe religion and "spiritualism" is a force for ill in the world, but I've rejected New Atheism's almost single issue campaigner-like centrist/centre right approach to politics, which i saw as one of their main flaws.

Sappho's Friend

Phew. The blatant imperialism hits hard in 2024. But there is a long tradition of using rationality as a cudgel for colonialism--the 4 horseman are very much in line with a long history, the dedcendants of which my friend has deemed "the rationality bros," a posturing of rationality that is really just reactionary insistence

D. Muthulingam

rebecca watson airing all of these dingus's dirty laundry and pulling back the curtain was such a formative "DAMN, what the fuck" moment when i was a teen. new atheism and the whole peripheral "skeptic" online community was one of the few escapist/vicarious solaces i had at that time, but as soon as she started talking about what half of these weirdos would say to her in convention hall elevators and got unceremoniously ejected from SGU, i had to discard basically all of it cause the ramifications were all just way too gross. by the time i started hearing maher and harris and the whole lot peppering in their warhawk/crypto-chauvanist/-imperialist pablum, my guard was already up and my bullshit detector was on a hair trigger. i ahudder to think of what i may have let slide otherwise. in hindsight that ended up being my early ideological offramp, so silver linings... i guess? ughh.... 🤢 EDIT: OMG SHE WENT AND PIVOTED RIGHT INTO REBECCA LMAO

¶

Fantastic tangent. So well done. Your reconstructing the kind of historical moment and why new atheism had a kind of felt urgency to it really took me back. This lucidity then makes the subsequent clarity even more direct.

dreamiestdays

I was in the new atheist movement, too, but I'm 6-ish years older than you are, Natalie, so I saw the racism emerging and really felt the sting of trying to be openly female in that space. I think the final straw for me was when Sam Harris and some of the others started getting really into armchair evolutionary psychology. They were saying stuff like, "Women are genetically unfunny because society has never required them to be funny," like genetics can be teased out from socialization in ANY WAY in a belief like that, and it just felt way too much like being told what women could and couldn't be when I was growing up super religious. I was still in touch enough to hear about the elevator thing, but by that point I basically just rolled my eyes and thought, "Yeah, of course Dawkins would say that. What an asshole."

Sharra Gamez

In 1987, at the age of 16, I told my mother I was an atheist, and got a slap for my trouble. That was pretty much indicative of my experience as an atheist up until the New Atheism movement. My atheism was intertwined with my sexuality, and my anger at religion came (still comes) from the same place that lived through the AIDS epidemic and its concurrent moral panic against queerness, that got me run rather ungently out of the military for liking to kiss the "wrong" gender, that grew up in the rabidly, virulently, violently homophobic 80s, and so on, curdling with internalized shame and self-loathing, all blessed by the gods and teachings of religion. So, I was a gleeful participant in the nasty, in-your-face-ness of New Atheism. It was, in my mind, "about fucking time" we pushed back. And when the fedora-wearing crowd turned it into a whiny sadboi privilege-signaling exercise in cringe, I discovered I *could* actually find a group more contemptible than I found religious bigots. I mean, religious bigots at least had the excuse of their religion to help explain why they were so awful. I was made embarrassed to call myself an atheist, a label I'd suffered to wear proudly.

lotusmaglite

Except he wasn't using it as a name, but as a way to refer to all Muslim women. Which doesn't sounds remotely right coming out of a white guy's mouth to silence other women, so... and speaking of proper names, hers is Natalie :)

Emily

Contra, Muslima/Muslimah is a girl's name, common in the muslim word. I remember the mother of an afghan toddler who was murdered by our Croatian border police and denied right to seek asylum was named Muslima, so it's a real name.

Sappho's Friend

I don't think this sexist dominating impulse is unique to rationalism as opposed to a psychoanalytic approach, let alone of the freudian type: psychananalysis was the biggest weapon of sexists and homophobes in the medical and scientific establishment (which is where their performance in relatively controlled settings can be tracked) for a reason, the opposition to the depathologisation of homosexuality was composed chiefly and most prominently of proponents of freudian psychosexual development. Instead, sexism is just a widespread human societal bias, that will to a large degree infest even the most resistant of approaches to truth determination. Because of how labile and unfalsifiable it is, psychoanalysis in the hands of an average academic, and amateur, is an even stronger catalyst of sexist dominating behaviour than rationalism imo. At the very least its not less conductive to it. All it takes to underline the failure of masculine antler clashing pseudo-rationalism is to sarcastically draw attention to the irrationality and hypocrisy of their behaviour, and thus correctly describe it as a strong deviation from the ideals of rationalism (whereas psychoanalysis posesses no such placeholder ideals, and "theoretisations" can run more rampant with no accountability and no adherence to evidence), and as a failure to follow rationalist ideals. Certainly not all rationalism is 18th century enlightenment style rationalism (classical rationalism) either. Personally im certainly on board with the idea that humans are driven by sexual impulse, that persuasion is primarily in achieved via persuading the emotions and not hard logic, that humans arent individually rational (i wrote an essay in philosophy class at 18-19 with this exact thesis), yet i still think trying to stick to the ideal of rationalism is useful, exactly because we arent naturally very prone to being rational actors as individuals. One could call this critical support for rationalism. W that said i do like Poppe's conception of rationalism, and revisions stemming from his version fixed a few typoes

Sappho's Friend

I really love this one. I got into polics in 2017 at 17, and I remember the dear Muslima thing being still referenced, and that same attitude being replicated by anti-SJW channels like ShoeOnHead. I also noticed these weird parralels, both how mainline atheist reddit had originally this anti-muslim bigotry/anti-SJW tendency years ago (idk about now), and how Vaush's content way too often reminds me of anti-SJW videos done by men because a lot of the debates (especially the early ones) and such tend to prominently feature insecure macho posturing; "im so intellectually superior, I totally @n@lly demolished you", "you are just an insecure *insult about height*, you have nothing in your life to look forward to!" etc type of vile tangents. Saying this as his frequent viewer, I know he's like that. It's interesting knowing in more detail how contemporary political youtube attaches to past movements.

Sappho's Friend

Thanks for making this! I was really into the "new atheist" movement in high school and although I recognized even then that people like Hitchens and Dawkins were kind of arrogant and dickish, I didn't recognize the misogyny and racism in the community until way later. I even still had fond feelings towards people like Sam Harris in high regard until I started listening to his podcast in 2018 and finally saw how the so-called "secular humanist" movement had curdled into a group of anti-feminist, anti-progressive, smug "centrists" both-sidesing literal eugenecist arguments. Big yikes! I feel really ashamed that it took me so long to catch on to this but it was at least a valuable wake-up call that I am no more immune to this kind of rhetoric than anyone else. Hearing you describe your past in new atheism helps me feel a little less alone.

Rachel Zitomer

This tangent hits hard. I realize now that we’re very close in age, I’m only three years older than you, and I was also infatuated with New Atheists at the time. It’s really unfortunate to learn that most of them weren’t just racist, but also sexist - I started to veer away from the subculture when Harris became openly anti Islamist, and even started to defend Christianity for “not preaching the hate and destruction of the towelheads” (I’m paraphrasing here). By that point it also became obvious that Dawkins, Hitchens and the rest were in it mostly to listen to themselves talk and gaze into their own navels. Their focus never progressed, they just kept on fighting the same battles over and over again.

Athanasius Kirchner

Awesome video! I'm a semi-recent atheist (or at least... I semi-recently realized I'd been an atheist for a while). Is there a modern positive alternative to what new atheism became? Whatever your brand of atheism is I guess? I'd love to read books and learn things.

New patron, and watching the older Tangents now. Watching this video felt kind of bizarre, because a lot of the things it relates to informed my early teenage years and worldview, but I was unaware of the larger culture surrounding it. I'm in my late twenties and not from the US, and while I did consume a lot of YouTube content later, it wasn't till 2017ish that internet got appreciably cheaper in my country and I had the internet bandwidth for things like streaming platforms or watching YouTube in my household. Read a lot Richard Dawkins in high school, in the early 2010s. I did read God Delusion, but I mostly read his books on genetics and evolutionary biology - The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, Ancestor's Tale. Those were some of the books that inspired a profound sense of numinuous (as you put it) beauty of the world we live in. And I do feel a sense of loss at the dulling of that feeling I had back then, even though it comes back now and again. I'm now in the US for graduate school and I did hear about the cringe compilations and so on later, and it's a bizarre feeling to learn about "Richard Dawkins, the internet persona" as opposed to "Richard Dawkins, the book author" - especially when his books (and those of other science communicators) were very important to me as a teenager. Found this a fascinating video - I did not know that it was the ancestor of the SJW cringe compilations of today nor did I know of the connection between GamerGate/antifeminism and the new atheism movement.

HelloCapers

Love the video! I think your points about the lack of romance/sexuality are really interesting. I used to make my Barbie’s kiss all the time, and I don’t know, I can’t be the only queer woman who’s first exploration into wlw relationships was by playing with Barbies. My straight sister also joked about how she and her friends definitely made the Barbies have sex with the one GI Joe doll that we had. But I get why they didn’t want to touch that. The Barbie movie is a really good movie that I loved, but it’s also an advertisement urging children to play with Barbies. There’s been a big push in our culture against discussing sexuality with children. We’ve taken a huge step backwards in terms of sex education, not that it was ever very good to begin with. Q Anon has created a new Satanic Panic for the 21st century, and it’s not lost on me that another popular movie in theaters right now is The Sound of Freedom. I honestly don’t think the Barbie movie needed to include sexuality/romance, it’s one movie. But if more and more movies are going to be based on brands, and more and more brands are going to be fearful of a BudLight style backlash… yeah, that does concern me.

Kristen Gish

Do you think effective altruism has roots in the new atheist movement?

Hi! New Patreon here trolling through your old videos, Natalie! I saw Christopher Hitchens open for the first Festival of Dangerous Ideas (FODI) at the Sydney Opera House and met Richard Dawkins on two subsequent occasions also at FODI. I was in love with their intelligence and eloquence! Both Christopher and Richard spoke to me as an Atheist who rejected her Catholic upbringing. I also met Ayan Hirsi Ali and I bought all of her books and those from all of the Horsemen. I was obsessed with Atheism for some time. They all gave me the logical arguments and words I needed to argue for reason and why I wasn't going to somebody's imaginary hell. Since that time, I felt that Sam Harris was losing the plot and of course, Hitchens died and it seemed the passion died with him. Or maybe I just assimilated all of the ideas and there was nothing left to learn. I really appreciate your thoughts @Natalie, about the white man's movement and how they mistreated those who were already marginalized and I agree with you that atheism should not be about trying to hurt believers, but rather enlighten them (if you excuse the pun). Also interesting was your "antler clashing" comment and I do agree. In the end, they weren't speaking to me, but to their Freudian libido and anxiety. I am still very, very, atheist, but also feminist and humanist. I don't cringe, though, because I learned a lot from these guys and appreciate that they did wake a lot of people from their religious slumber.

I remember being a teen/early 20 year old during this time and like seeing this from an outsider perspective of never being an Atheist (more of a Pagan myself) and just being like wow this is wild. Not even just the Atheist part but how angry so many men were and the whole Gamergate thing and anti-SJW all kind of coming to a head together it was scary.

Narcissa Deville

There were positive aspects of the New Atheism movement, especially in the early days. I was at the Reason Rally in 2012 and remember my father saying it was the first time he had been in a crowd of people and felt comfortable. But the hateful aspect was definitely there. I even had my own "angry atheist" phase where I didn't just celebrate atheism, I attacked any and all modern theism. A lot of that anger came from learning that both of my parents came from abusive households that used religion as an excuse for that abuse. I viewed (as a late teen, early 30s) religion as outdated and while it was a part of history, it no longer served a function and only caused harm. I did grow out of that thinking and have moved to a more, "You do you, just don't cause harm" mode of thinking. Luckily, I wasn't a very online person so I didn't fall into the other dark rabbit holes of New Atheism that led to anti-feminism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. And maybe being a gay trans man also helps with that. But yeah, I definitely have some cringe years of anti-theism.

Austin Luther

It's super interesting to hear your analysis on rationality, in the enlightenment sense, as a performance of masculinity. I remember you said in a previous video something to the effect of "all this explaining is giving me gender dysphoria." I'd be really interested in seeing a video exploring this interaction of rationalism and gender.

Jordan

I really like these tangents. It's cool to get a sense of your thought process

Jordan

Great vid!! We’re about the same age and I followed a similar path, minus the YouTube part. I grew up in small town WI with Catholic parents who voted for Bush twice… I was a closeted homo, but atheism was sort of my first “coming out” and leaving a copy of The God Delusion lying around as a senior in high school was liberating (and I’m sure elicited eye rolls from my poor parents). I didn’t know about any of the subsequent controversies until now. Curious the degree to which you think the movement made it acceptable to identify as an atheist or nonbeliever in polite company. That seems like meaningful progress to me. Far fewer folks attending (and funding) churches out of some social obligation.

Ulysses

Would love to hear more about "Freudian Atheism" and the avoidance of anxiety within New Atheism, as I find a lot of connection with that idea. I personally find a lot of meaning in my atheism as a source of existential freedom, especially in light of the fact that I'm exmormon. I find it very interesting (annoying, really) that New Atheism often holds the same zealotry and fixated worldview as religion, still functioning as a form of terror management and defense mechanism against fundamental uncertainties, all the while denying that it's doing that very thing. Like, sorry bud... we are all managing terror here. Also, aside from how actually harmful it is, it's very dull - congratulations boys, you found a way to maintain white, cisgender, heteronormativity as the dominant power by being "the smartest boy" in the room. Bleh. Boring. You aren't that revolutionary after all. It's just a bunch of the same men who felt superior when they were religious and haven't bothered to actually deconstruct any of the horridly harmful beliefs that are upheld by their religion of origin. Deconstruct that supremacy of thought, first.

The 2000's were a bit trilby/fedora heavy in general. I remember when trilbies were everywhere. I had a couple and I cringe at my past because I was 19 and my self image and actual image were not aligned in many ways. Regardless, I realised I was missing out on your patreon when I saw your tweet about this video. As a Buddhist I have some frustrations with what I experience with many atheists and a lot of leftists too online. Often incurious, very ignorant, confidently incorrect while combative in all the wrong ways when I'm just making an informational comment about who Guanyin/Kannon/Avalokita is with the picture of the large statue of Sendaikannon on reddit. I have no problem with atheism, I kind of am one at least with creationist ideology. Usually what they wish to challenge me about is the six realms of samsara. I don't care, it's immaterial to my faith. I question the six realms myself, the Buddha taught to not accept even what he teaches experiential value rather than face value. I do not push my religion on anyone, so my gripe comes from these repeated experiences of these classic reddit atheists, and it gives me a bad taste in my mouth. Buddhism inspired Classical Greek philosophy. Buddhism and Greece have a storied history dating back to Alexander and Ashoka. Don't come at me yelling and screaming at me about how stupid Buddhism is when I'm informing about religious iconography in the very place that would interest people. So if you don't like evangelism, which I also despise, why be an outspoken evangelist? Just because you're areligious doesn't mean you're not being antagonistically evangelistic. I could actually go hard on leftists who are areligious, sometimes I wonder if they're fucking psyops ffs. Like Communists who don't actually know about the violence in the cultural revolution, USSR; if you know all this leftist politically theory, why couldn't you read some history too? Leftists don't often understand how extraordinarily important religiosity and religious communities are to the working classes, it just ends up being elitist. Isn't that what we're trying to change? No? This video gives me a great historical framing for the obnoxious atheists that I've come across. If someone is an ally for trans liberation, I don't gaf what your faith is or that one lacks it. I push back at some atheistic/areligious comments as they're often kinda classist, chauvinistic, and racist . It's as cringe as a fucking trilby.

In retrospect it's hard to believe that "elevatorgate" was such a momentous event, but I remember living through it, and I remember that it had a huge impact on me personally to speak more with my friends who were women to understand their perspective and become a feminist.

I still thank the New Atheist movement because it helped me become a socialist (I went through a brief tankie phase in High School because I admired the USSR for its atheism, then I became a democratic socialist after I grew out of it), and then subsequently that helped me come out and accept myself as trans without as much self-baggage. I just wish we lived in a timeline where its biggest talking heads didn't all become "anti-woke" reactionaries.

I’m going to be honest, I never even realized the connection between Ben Shapiro and Atheism. I’m older (41), so some online movements and progressions are sometimes a little outside of my daily information sphere. But, I feel like I fit the demographic, am proudly openly atheist, and I understand the idea that it’s maybe a privileged way to be part of some marginalized community in the US. But it’s crazy to me that atheism and the alt right have merged in this fucked up way. Every aspect of my viewpoint looks at Ben Shapiro as someone feeding the religious right movement. It’s sad that this is how atheism is viewed right now because I think there is some validity in the argument that religion generally does more harm than good and that I wish there was more non religious community organization to compete with or replace after school programs, child recreation, large charity work, etc.. where religion has pretty much built a monopoly. Anyway. I found this very informative and realize I have to be more careful as a 40 year old straight white man that wants to convey the opposite viewpoints from NEW atheism, even as an atheist.

MazerReed