it’s really easy to become smug and annoying when it seems so many people proudly proclaim their wrong beliefs for which they have no evidence but their feelings. this is surely why the “new atheist” movement (which later became known disparagingly across the net as “Reddit atheism”—in large part because figureheads of the movement like sam harris and dick dawkins, beloved by Redditors of yore, were abrasive, graceless, ignominius cock faces, some rumored to be island-touring child molestors) wound up violently imploding under the weight of its own self-righteousness, and in the wake of one of the greatest PR disasters of my generation, we got an even worse disaster: the rehabilitation of religion.

it was well-deserved shame (cringe) that defused the Reddit atheist revolution. they acted shameful, antisocial even, and the cultural backlash was completely justified. but while cringe became the weapon of choice against Reddit atheists by the sharper culture warriors of then and thereafter, characterizing atheists not as stinky bohemians (they tried this in the past and it only made atheism cool) but as cargo shorts & triforce graphic tee wearing men, ubiquitously socially awkward and unspokenly autistic, non-ideological not in a noble sense but as toy-worshipping adult children, it strikes me in the current day as inverse to a state of things more intuitive: if we are to shame anyone, shouldn’t it be the people who think and do stupid things for no reason, and own all our governments and control all our lives? isn’t there something weird as fuck about people who get together, pretend like something that doesn’t exist is listening to them, and then kill each other over it? are you not wary of people who constantly wear symbols and carry items signalling their belief in shit that never happened? is there any positive value any religion teaches that could not be arrived at without believing in stupid, flagrantly wrong bullshit?

of course, Christianity was never in danger of not being the foundation to all dominant American ideological powers, but Christianity is fascist, and fascism plays the underdog. well, they won. it is 2026, and the absurd issue of religion is pretty much just ignored even among progressives. i guess the prevailing sense is that we should all just get along and peacefully coexist. i don’t really accept this. in my opinion, teaching your child wrong things about the world on purpose is abuse! you wouldn’t tell grandma that ai generated shrimp jesus is real… oh well haha.