all-is-for-all:

There was a preacher group at my university today trying to spout their anti-LGBT hate. And while I’m thrilled that people shat all over them with memes and loud music and all, I noticed a lot of atheists trying to engage with them using all the early 2010s youtube talking points. “God is just Space Santa! Theists are stupid! Problem of Evil, checkmate idiots!” It’s a pretty tired debate and really not particularly interesting. We’ve heard all of it before, and honestly it just feels like a debate for petty-bourgeois liberals to congratulate themselves and overlook how the overwhelming majority of the world’s working poor is religious for very valid reasons. “We only have one life and that’s beautiful enough” is an argument for comfortable people, for well-off people who don’t have to deal with crushing poverty and exploitation. Not in every case, sure, but you’re lying to yourself if you think “one life is enough” is a sentiment that people could actually get behind, especially in this hell timeline of global inequality and fascism and such.

I’d much rather see a debate between a Christian socialist and a reactionary fundamentalist, if I’m being honest. Religion probably isn’t going anywhere for a while, so it’s a better use of your time to radicalize it. There are undeniably left-wing elements to religion and spirituality (even as the institutions that presume to speak for them support the right-wing status quo): selflessness, solidarity, lots of anti-capitalist and anti-rich sentiment if you know where to look. Besides, much of new atheism has been center-right for a long time anyway, fueled by the elitist xenophobic rhetoric of Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins.

I’m definitely not trying to say that atheism in itself is reactionary; it’s absolutely not and there are still all kinds of injustices associated with religion and religious institutions. I’m just super wary of atheists who turn the conversation into a contest that just reinforces the liberal capitalist/imperialist rationale and condescends to people throughout the world whose religions are inseparable from their cultures (often cultures which have historically been persecuted and oppressed, I might add). The worst aspects of religion are social outgrowths of class inequality and harsh conditions, and new atheists don’t ever really want to acknowledge this fact; it’s always just faith and mysticism in and of themselves being the regressive force. They ignore how both religions and secularism have each been progressive forces, just as they’ve also been reinforcements of the status quo. Who’s using them and for what endgoal are usually the more relevant questions.

TLDR: Etymological debates between theists and atheists about the existence of a higher power are usually just examples of running-in-place liberalism. The juicy conversations are about how society is structured and how we can ground philosophies of all stripes in a revolutionary potential that seeks justice for all people. Socialism is philosophically- and spiritually-diverse or it’s nothing.