Where does Atheism belong on an ideological scale

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

[President of the great nation of 🏳️‍⚧️]

This is a Solid threaf

[Sestak]

Preferably as far away from Maryland as possible

[buritobr]

Atheism and religions don't belong to any specific side of the political spectrum. There are atheist and religious people from the far left to the far right.

There are many leftist atheists. Most of the marxists are atheists. But I think that the 2000s militant atheism of Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens are usually supported by people of the center and center-right.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

It's not a political ideology, so a completely irrelevant classification. It's like if I asked this about emo.

[Skill and Chance]

None of the above.

However, there's an interesting example of horseshoe theory where super committed atheists resemble devoutly religious people more than they resemble either agnostics or moderately religious people in their psychology. 

[Kleine Scheiße]

let the states decide

[RINO Tom]

Atheism and religions don't belong to any specific side of the political spectrum. There are atheist and religious people from the far left to the far right.

There are many leftist atheists. Most of the marxists are atheists. But I think that the 2000s militant atheism of Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens are usually supported by people of the center and center-right.

(I am obviously ignoring the ridiculousness of this thread to respond to your post directly, lol...)

You might have a point with Hitchens and his outspoken opinions RE: Bush Era politics, but I don't know about the other two.  The most "right wing" thing I have seen Richard Dawkins say is that there are two biological sexes and that is all there is to it ... this is just considered a basic fact by 99.9% of people and does not really speak to ideology.  Meanwhile, Sam Harris has openly said that to lie and conceal information if it prevents Donald Trump from being elected is an unambiguous moral good, lol.  And he supports a "science-based morality" that would be so far past Marxism's tearing down of Western cultural norms that I don't even know how we could classify it.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Cutting against the grain, I would classify atheism with the left-wing in that atheism as it exists as a mainstream phenomenon fights for overturning traditional ways of thinking about the relationship between man and society. It's true that atheism is not directly political and it is very possible in principle to be a right-wing atheist, but I cannot think of an example of atheism intersecting with politics where the result hasn't been an active effort to push the Overton Window to the left.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

     Cutting against the grain, I would classify atheism with the left-wing in that atheism as it exists as a mainstream phenomenon fights for overturning traditional ways of thinking about the relationship between man and society. It's true that atheism is not directly political and it is very possible in principle to be a right-wing atheist, but I cannot think of an example of atheism intersecting with politics where the result hasn't been an active effort to push the Overton Window to the left.

Randism/Objectivism

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Cutting against the grain, I would classify atheism with the left-wing in that atheism as it exists as a mainstream phenomenon fights for overturning traditional ways of thinking about the relationship between man and society. It's true that atheism is not directly political and it is very possible in principle to be a right-wing atheist, but I cannot think of an example of atheism intersecting with politics where the result hasn't been an active effort to push the Overton Window to the left.

Randism/Objectivism

     Not a bad example, though I will note in my first sentence I did specify "mainstream". At the risk of being pedantic, Rand has largely gotten serious backing (outside of crank bookworm circles) only from conservative leaders who considered themselves to be Christian. This phenomenon is quite different from something like the October Revolution or New Atheism where the intellectual leaders and footsoldiers of the movement are all atheists.

[RINO Tom]

     Cutting against the grain, I would classify atheism with the left-wing in that atheism as it exists as a mainstream phenomenon fights for overturning traditional ways of thinking about the relationship between man and society. It's true that atheism is not directly political and it is very possible in principle to be a right-wing atheist, but I cannot think of an example of atheism intersecting with politics where the result hasn't been an active effort to push the Overton Window to the left.

Randism/Objectivism

     Not a bad example, though I will note in my first sentence I did specify "mainstream". At the risk of being pedantic, Rand has largely gotten serious backing (outside of crank bookworm circles) only from conservative leaders who considered themselves to be Christian. This phenomenon is quite different from something like the October Revolution or New Atheism where the intellectual leaders and footsoldiers of the movement are all atheists.

You could certainly argue many of the Nazis fit your view.  While their views are considered ridiculous, many saw Christianity as a "Jewish religion" that invaded Europe and dampened a previously strong and warrior-like "Aryan" (i.e., Indo-European) spirit.  Many of the Nazis like Göring saw religion as useless and yet saw what they were advocating for as a return to some type of cultural paradigm that even predated Christianity ... arguably, that is extremely culturally reactionary.

P.S.  Before someone comes at me with the tired line that the Nazi movement in any way "supported Christianity" because (A) most of its leading figures had at least some vaguely Christian upbringing in an age where nearly 90% of Europe was Christian or (B) that they attempted to cooperate or at least not outright attack the major German churches that a vast majority of the people belonged to ... that's a terrible argument.  I highly recommend the book The Nuremberg Interviews by Leon Goldensohn and Robert Gellately, which is available on Audible.  It contains hours and hours of actual interviews with all of the Nuremberg Trials defendants while they were imprisoned, as well as 14 prominent Nazis who were incarcerated as witnesses to the main war crimes trials and would be on trial themselves later.  In their OWN words, they make it quite clear their regime was tacitly hostile to religion with a plan to replace it as soon as they could at best and outright combative toward it at worst.  Additionally, while some of the men refound faith before their death sentences (they were each allowed time with either a Lutheran pastor or Catholic priest), the vast majority claimed to only have any sort of religious affiliation again once on death's door.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Cutting against the grain, I would classify atheism with the left-wing in that atheism as it exists as a mainstream phenomenon fights for overturning traditional ways of thinking about the relationship between man and society. It's true that atheism is not directly political and it is very possible in principle to be a right-wing atheist, but I cannot think of an example of atheism intersecting with politics where the result hasn't been an active effort to push the Overton Window to the left.

Randism/Objectivism

     Not a bad example, though I will note in my first sentence I did specify "mainstream". At the risk of being pedantic, Rand has largely gotten serious backing (outside of crank bookworm circles) only from conservative leaders who considered themselves to be Christian. This phenomenon is quite different from something like the October Revolution or New Atheism where the intellectual leaders and footsoldiers of the movement are all atheists.

You could certainly argue many of the Nazis fit your view.  While their views are considered ridiculous, many saw Christianity as a "Jewish religion" that invaded Europe and dampened a previously strong and warrior-like "Aryan" (i.e., Indo-European) spirit.  Many of the Nazis like Göring saw religion as useless and yet saw what they were advocating for as a return to some type of cultural paradigm that even predated Christianity ... arguably, that is extremely culturally reactionary.

P.S.  Before someone comes at me with the tired line that the Nazi movement in any way "supported Christianity" because (A) most of its leading figures had at least some vaguely Christian upbringing in an age where nearly 90% of Europe was Christian or (B) that they attempted to cooperate or at least not outright attack the major German churches that a vast majority of the people belonged to ... that's a terrible argument.  I highly recommend the book The Nuremberg Interviews by Leon Goldensohn and Robert Gellately, which is available on Audible.  It contains hours and hours of actual interviews with all of the Nuremberg Trials defendants while they were imprisoned, as well as 14 prominent Nazis who were incarcerated as witnesses to the main war crimes trials and would be on trial themselves later.  In their OWN words, they make it quite clear their regime was tacitly hostile to religion with a plan to replace it as soon as they could at best and outright combative toward it at worst.  Additionally, while some of the men refound faith before their death sentences (they were each allowed time with either a Lutheran pastor or Catholic priest), the vast majority claimed to only have any sort of religious affiliation again once on death's door.

     You definitely had Nazis who were basically atheists, but they ran a wide gamut and their religious bearings in most cases I am aware of had less to do with rejecting religion in the manner of a Nietzsche or a Dawkins and more to do with rejecting Christianity per se. A particularly interesting (and influential) case is Rosenberg, who was anti-Christian but wanted to replace it with a new religion that would be founded in a theory of German-Nordic supremacy. Perhaps he was dishonestly leveraging the concept of religion and did not believe in it one whit, but if that is the case it seems if anything to bolster the identification of atheism with the left. If we suppose he was a closeted atheist then his development of a racial mythology to replace traditional Christianity seems to be a statement that he did not believe atheism was in fact compatible with the ideological aims of the Nazi regime and that a far-right movement needed a different theological basis.

[RINO Tom]

     Cutting against the grain, I would classify atheism with the left-wing in that atheism as it exists as a mainstream phenomenon fights for overturning traditional ways of thinking about the relationship between man and society. It's true that atheism is not directly political and it is very possible in principle to be a right-wing atheist, but I cannot think of an example of atheism intersecting with politics where the result hasn't been an active effort to push the Overton Window to the left.

Randism/Objectivism

     Not a bad example, though I will note in my first sentence I did specify "mainstream". At the risk of being pedantic, Rand has largely gotten serious backing (outside of crank bookworm circles) only from conservative leaders who considered themselves to be Christian. This phenomenon is quite different from something like the October Revolution or New Atheism where the intellectual leaders and footsoldiers of the movement are all atheists.

You could certainly argue many of the Nazis fit your view.  While their views are considered ridiculous, many saw Christianity as a "Jewish religion" that invaded Europe and dampened a previously strong and warrior-like "Aryan" (i.e., Indo-European) spirit.  Many of the Nazis like Göring saw religion as useless and yet saw what they were advocating for as a return to some type of cultural paradigm that even predated Christianity ... arguably, that is extremely culturally reactionary.

P.S.  Before someone comes at me with the tired line that the Nazi movement in any way "supported Christianity" because (A) most of its leading figures had at least some vaguely Christian upbringing in an age where nearly 90% of Europe was Christian or (B) that they attempted to cooperate or at least not outright attack the major German churches that a vast majority of the people belonged to ... that's a terrible argument.  I highly recommend the book The Nuremberg Interviews by Leon Goldensohn and Robert Gellately, which is available on Audible.  It contains hours and hours of actual interviews with all of the Nuremberg Trials defendants while they were imprisoned, as well as 14 prominent Nazis who were incarcerated as witnesses to the main war crimes trials and would be on trial themselves later.  In their OWN words, they make it quite clear their regime was tacitly hostile to religion with a plan to replace it as soon as they could at best and outright combative toward it at worst.  Additionally, while some of the men refound faith before their death sentences (they were each allowed time with either a Lutheran pastor or Catholic priest), the vast majority claimed to only have any sort of religious affiliation again once on death's door.

     You definitely had Nazis who were basically atheists, but they ran a wide gamut and their religious bearings in most cases I am aware of had less to do with rejecting religion in the manner of a Nietzsche or a Dawkins and more to do with rejecting Christianity per se. A particularly interesting (and influential) case is Rosenberg, who was anti-Christian but wanted to replace it with a new religion that would be founded in a theory of German-Nordic supremacy. Perhaps he was dishonestly leveraging the concept of religion and did not believe in it one whit, but if that is the case it seems if anything to bolster the identification of atheism with the left. If we suppose he was a closeted atheist then his development of a racial mythology to replace traditional Christianity seems to be a statement that he did not believe atheism was in fact compatible with the ideological aims of the Nazi regime and that a far-right movement needed a different theological basis.

That's all fair, I was just trying to think of a counterexample for the sake of the discussion.  I would certainly say that atheism in and of itself is a fundamental rejection of an absolutely essential component of "culture" as it has been defined for the vast majority of human history.  In this context, you would certainly think it is fundamentally culturally left wing in trying to deconstruct what has existed before and usher in something new.

[afleitch]

There was a religious census in Germany in 1939 and less than 2% identified as atheist. The 'confessional' aspect of German identity that existed prior to 1933 continued; Nazi Party members continued to register as Protestants or Catholics or as 'believers in a higher power' or Gottgläubig (which was very important to the party at that time) Hitler still paid his church taxes.

There's nothing too controversial about that, or their shouldn't be. Given time, I'm sure some syncretic form of 'Christian' inspired official church would have been established. For the people, even if not for the top party brass, but these things are hard to do. Even with full state control.

As with Franco or Salazar, fascist regimes generally reached some rapprochement with churches and exerted 'soft power.' where they could

[Alcibiades]

That's all fair, I was just trying to think of a counterexample for the sake of the discussion.  I would certainly say that atheism in and of itself is a fundamental rejection of an absolutely essential component of "culture" as it has been defined for the vast majority of human history.  In this context, you would certainly think it is fundamentally culturally left wing in trying to deconstruct what has existed before and usher in something new.

I think you're conflating one's personal beliefs regarding the existence of God with one's political beliefs regarding the appropriate role of religion in society. Until a few decades ago, there had, down the centuries, undoubtedly been many 'closet' atheists who nonetheless fully participated in religious life precisely because it was such a central part of the culture, and who may well have been politically conservative.

To give a particularly famous example, you can make a very strong argument that David Hume was an atheist, and he was also frequently held to be a Tory! (Admittedly his public commitment to Christianity was weak enough to draw the suspicion of his contemporaries, so he is perhaps not the best example of a true 'closet case'.)

[Ashley Biden's Diary]

Atheism at its root is not ideological, unfortunately as a community it's become very much so in recent years. r/atheism is basically an insane asylum for paranoid leftists.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

    Cutting against the grain, I would classify atheism with the left-wing in that atheism as it exists as a mainstream phenomenon fights for overturning traditional ways of thinking about the relationship between man and society. It's true that atheism is not directly political and it is very possible in principle to be a right-wing atheist, but I cannot think of an example of atheism intersecting with politics where the result hasn't been an active effort to push the Overton Window to the left.

This is a good post in reply to a question that's easy for us to dismiss: "there's no *logical* connection between belief in God and beliefs about how to order society, therefore the question is stupid". But I agree a strong case can be made that atheism as a whole movement would tend to the left insofar as it disbelieves in any divinely-ordered hierarchy, and divinely-ordered hierarchy has traditionally been the dominant justification for hierarchy in society. And the atheist who believes in N-1 hierarchies will ceteris paribus be more left wing than the theist who believes in N hierarchies. This is a good reason to believe that atheism will be more of the left.

But as you say, it is contingent ('atheism as it exists'). One could imagine a society some centuries hence which is thoroughly atheistic and justifications of hierarchy are exclusively on some rational economic, or biological, or Nietzschean ground, where then theism as an idea becomes opposed to those existing hierarchies and atheism is an ideological defence of them.