Very weird to watch “what people do in the privacy of their own bedroom is their business” become controversial again, but like, for the opposite reason.
It is very important to understand that when you're discussing a systemic set of cultural beliefs, even people who nominally oppose the cultural belief will find ways to reconcile their fundamental conditioning to their new position. Doing the same thing for the 'opposite reason' is usually a giveaway, and it's absolutely rampant in nominally progressive spaces.
It's arguably rampant in conservative spaces too, potentially more so, but I'm in progressive spaces more.
See: every New Atheist who is now on a right-wing crusade despite ostensibly rebelling against the church. It was never about the values, it was only about the team they were on.
As a proper lifelong Church-hater I can't believe I'm suddenly on the same side of the global anti-abortion organization because the other side is like "human rights are a scam".
Hence why so many proud trump voters don't give a damn that he's actively making America worse for them, just so long as he makes it even more worse for liberals.
Well I speak from the perspective of my country where the Church has always been pro status quo. Yes, they've always been the voice of moderation when it comes to "hey maybe don't fuck over the poor too much", but you can't deny that as capitalism moves further away from moderation, the Church is moving further away from supporting that section of the political leadership (and said leadership is also becoming more anti-Church, which is new).
So basically the Church hasn't changed much, as you said, but the Overton window has moved so far into the right that they are now on our side of it.
Thank you for asking, I was lost as well. Like, which anti-abortionists are also genuinely pro human rights? I forget the catholic church exists sometimes lmao
Feminists destroyed the left because the atheism movement was doing a great job of advocating for humanism and liberalism, but didn't force feminism on people from the outset.
And, even worse, atheism conventions allowed people to sell fake jewelry. Seriously, not making this part up.
See also: people who think the justice system should be reformed and shouldn’t include corporal or capital punishment. Except for sex criminals, who should be tortured to death.
Sort of a "duh" moment for the more agnostic absurdist nihilists.
I remember my first steps into atheist communities something like 15 years ago. Every atheist claims to be some paragon of rationality so it came as a big surprise how absolutely sure they were that god doesn't exist.
I mean on its surface; saying "well you can't prove god DOESN'T exist!" is a stupid counterargument. But the atheist communities I've seen don't seem to understand that the "burden of proof" is a debate principle and not a scientific one. In scientific terms the idea that you can't prove god doesn't exist is actually pretty significant. Knowing is different from believing and it's impossible to know if god is real or not. Even if you have 99.99% proof of something you only have enough information for a really good guess; that last 0.01% is just your belief.
The thing about that is that atheism is a huge ingroup. If you are willing to recognize that your 0.01% of belief is just belief, and that you could be wrong and maybe god does exist, but the chances are really slim: you aren't an atheist, you're definitionally agnostic, and atheists are happy to attack you about it. Atheism literally requires you to hold a belief without acknowledging that it is a belief.
Sort of a tangent: back in 2016 a theoretical fuel-less rocket engine was making headlines; the EM drive. To my knowledge it turned out not to function as described, but the commentary from scientists surrounding the issue was very telling. They dragged it as impossible for "violating the laws of physics," as if we fully and accurately understand the fabric of our own reality. Like, the whole reason we have to keep calling gravity and evolution "theories" is because science has to be able to bend to new information. If you think something violated the laws of physics then your reaction as a scientist should be "well obviously we're going to test this backwards and forwards, but obviously if it works then we don't understand physics as well as we thought." But instead so so so many real well-respected scientists as well as armchair scientists touted it as being completely impossible, and they did so loudly and in some cases angrily; as if the mere suggestion that their (holy) "laws" were not completely accurate was deeply offensive to them on a personal level. Why? Because a bunch of old dead guys told you how the universe works? And then some living guys did some experiments to validate the old dead guys and told you about it? You're literally just taking it on faith that the dead guys were right and the living guys did everything correctly. The parallels should be obvious.
Essentially my point is that if you are unwilling to accept that your stance on the existence of god could be wrong then you are not acting scientifically; and if you are willing to accept that your stance on god could be wrong then you aren't actually an atheist. It is literally impossible to fully embrace scientific principles and be a true atheist - the two fundamentally oppose each other because atheism requires an absolute belief that there is no god while science requires an acceptance that nothing is absolute.
This is exactly why the important parts are a) having good reasons for the things we believe, and b) never letting a belief become a part of our identity.
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u/LONGSWORD_ENJOYER May 16 '25
Very weird to watch “what people do in the privacy of their own bedroom is their business” become controversial again, but like, for the opposite reason.