Which religious ID group is more left-wing?

[James Monroe]

If we take the ideologue taken between the two movements and it's followers, which group do you think is more to the left on average?

[_.]

I don't know if they're necessarily left or right, but they're definitely cringe.

[James Monroe]

I don't know if they're necessarily left or right, but they're definitely cringe.

The hardcore man from Minnesota will insert you that one group is the most liberal group in America. 

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

"New Atheist" as an identity group makes very little sense except as applied to the specific clique of public intellectuals with whom it's normally associated, and a few oddballs such as OP who identify strongly with their contributions from ten or fifteen years ago. It's a group that ranges from vaguely-iconoclastic center-left-liberal (Bill Maher, Daniel Dennett, again OP himself) to alt-right-fellow-traveler (Sam Harris has been discussed recently but Ayaan Hirsi Ali might be a better example) to iconic Weird Twitter figure (THE DAWK, Lord love him). Christopher Hitchens was a neocon enabler but also has been dead for a decade and probably would have drifted back towards the center-left when people like Bill Kristol began to, or slightly earlier. "Hipster Christian" in the BRTDian sense is almost uniformly center-left-liberal to DSA-ecosystem. That's my read, anyway.

[James Monroe]

"New Atheist" as an identity group makes very little sense except as applied to the specific clique of public intellectuals with whom it's normally associated, and a few oddballs such as OP who identify strongly with their contributions from ten or fifteen years ago. It's a group that ranges from vaguely-iconoclastic center-left-liberals (Bill Maher, Daniel Dennett, again OP himself) to alt-right-fellow-traveler (Sam Harris has been discussed recently but Ayaan Hirsi Ali might be a better example) to iconic Weird Twitter figure (THE DAWK, Lord love him). Christopher Hitchens was a neocon enabler but also has been dead for a decade and probably would have drifted back towards the center-left when people like Bill Kristol began to, or slightly earlier. "Hipster Christian" in the BRTDian sense is almost uniformly center-left-liberal to DSA-ecosystem. That's my read, anyway.

The thread was triggered by the mention of "New Atheist" in the BRTD threads where he separate the group from plain old "atheist." You're right, it was just a movement of prominent public figures who wanted to speak out against the religious fundamentalism polarizing two sides across the globe, in the time when the Christian Right was at it's most prominence. You could say the movement leaders were diverse in viewpoints which makes the voting question harder to pin down. In the American political context being an outspoken anti-religious  person would lead one to assume left-wing beliefs due to the Christian Right hold over politics and liberals/left-wingers being traditionally more secular on average.  The Iraq War shows a ideologue split here with the two most prominent spokespeople of the movement, Hitchens being for the invasion, Dawkins on the other hand opposing the invasion. Closest thing uniting the "New Atheists" would be overwhelmingly social liberal positions as LGBT rights.

[Ferguson97]

Aren't atheists are like the second most Democratic voting block, in-between Black Protestants and Jews?

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

Aren't atheists are like the second most Democratic voting block, in-between Black Protestants and Jews?

They are (although Buddhists might be up there too), but "hipster Christian" the way BRTD uses the term is almost mutually exclusive with being right-of-center. I'm trying to picture a Trump voter who's a "hipster Christian" stricto sensu and I genuinely can't, whereas I know one or two crassly-antireligious Trump voters in real life.

[Kuumo]

Hipster Christian identity is more directly tied to partisan politics than New Atheist identity. The average Hipster Christian would care a lot about being on the right side of the hot button issues of the day in contrast to who they believe to be the backward, bigoted Christians of the Religious Right. This would almost require voting Democratic or Green in major elections. By contrast, New Atheists are only united by their opposition to the concept of religion. New Atheism requires believing that religion has a negative effect on the world and, by extension, religious people stand in the way of progress but doesn't indicate specific positions on any political issues. This would include a lot of people who would support Democrats out of opposition to the Religious Right but also leave much more room for adherents outside the political left, such as John Dule-esque libertarians and far-right adjacent people who focus most of their anti-religion sentiment on Muslims rather than conservative Christians.

[If my soul was made of stone]

This would include a lot of people who would support Democrats out of opposition to the Religious Right but also leave much more room for adherents outside the political left, such as John Dule-esque libertarians and far-right adjacent people who focus most of their anti-religion sentiment on Muslims rather than conservative Christians.

There are plenty on the far-right, especially the online far-right, who vehemently criticize Christianity; the pipeline from the Extremely Online "skeptic" scene to the Extremely Online far-right was fairly natural for many people, and fringe ideologues of all stripes like to blame certain qualities of Christianity for perceived failings of "the West". Of course, then you also have the fringe online far-right types like Varg Vikernes who hate Christianity for being a foreign imposition on True Indigenous Evropean Peoples or whatever and thus shill for their bastardized and racist versions of Germanic/Norse paganism, who I'm constantly trying to define myself in opposition to. We pagans are certainly among the most polarized religious demographics, given that the same blanket term houses people like them and, well, people like me.

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

This would include a lot of people who would support Democrats out of opposition to the Religious Right but also leave much more room for adherents outside the political left, such as John Dule-esque libertarians and far-right adjacent people who focus most of their anti-religion sentiment on Muslims rather than conservative Christians.

There are plenty on the far-right, especially the online far-right, who vehemently criticize Christianity; the pipeline from the Extremely Online "skeptic" scene to the Extremely Online far-right was fairly natural for many people, and fringe ideologues of all stripes like to blame certain qualities of Christianity for perceived failings of "the West". Of course, then you also have the fringe online far-right types like Varg Vikernes who hate Christianity for being a foreign imposition on True Indigenous Evropean Peoples or whatever and thus shill for their bastardized and racist versions of Germanic/Norse paganism, who I'm constantly trying to define myself in opposition to. We pagans are certainly among the most polarized religious demographics, given that the same blanket term houses people like them and, well, people like me.

And almost nobody in between! Not many apolitical-normie or I-love-being-a-centrist pagans out there. Maybe Doreen Valiente came close after drifting away from, then narcing on (girlboss behavior!), the National Front, but I'm not familiar enough with her later life to say for sure.

[afleitch]

The way BRTD has defined 'hipster Christian' over the years with it's elder millennial cringe, basically includes just him. So the question is a bit moot!

[If my soul was made of stone]

This would include a lot of people who would support Democrats out of opposition to the Religious Right but also leave much more room for adherents outside the political left, such as John Dule-esque libertarians and far-right adjacent people who focus most of their anti-religion sentiment on Muslims rather than conservative Christians.

There are plenty on the far-right, especially the online far-right, who vehemently criticize Christianity; the pipeline from the Extremely Online "skeptic" scene to the Extremely Online far-right was fairly natural for many people, and fringe ideologues of all stripes like to blame certain qualities of Christianity for perceived failings of "the West". Of course, then you also have the fringe online far-right types like Varg Vikernes who hate Christianity for being a foreign imposition on True Indigenous Evropean Peoples or whatever and thus shill for their bastardized and racist versions of Germanic/Norse paganism, who I'm constantly trying to define myself in opposition to. We pagans are certainly among the most polarized religious demographics, given that the same blanket term houses people like them and, well, people like me.

And almost nobody in between! Not many apolitical-normie or I-love-being-a-centrist pagans out there. Maybe Doreen Valiente came close after drifting away from, then narcing on (girlboss behavior!), the National Front, but I'm not familiar enough with her later life to say for sure.

The problem is that apolitical normies are fundamentally well-adjusted people, and fundamentally well-adjusted people tend not to be interested in voluntarily becoming a member of an extreme minority with next to no institutional power or mainstream acceptance. More power to them, frankly; I'm not exactly proud of a lot of what led me to my present system of beliefs, as glad as I am that I'm here now in the transcendent love of the Great Mother, and I prefer to share this space with people more like me anyway. There's a beauty to that, though, that even in an increasingly spiritually vacuous era those who need faith can still find themselves in spaces that the world at large has rejected for the same reasons that they've rejected us, and gods grateful to know our love again after all these centuries.

I-love-being-a-centrist people are contrarians, and admittedly mine is a very contrarian religious identity, but their identity is also predicated on the rejection-through-equivocation of anything fringe, so they wouldn't care for me/us.

[Ferguson97]

Aren't atheists are like the second most Democratic voting block, in-between Black Protestants and Jews?

They are (although Buddhists might be up there too), but "hipster Christian" the way BRTD uses the term is almost mutually exclusive with being right-of-center. I'm trying to picture a Trump voter who's a "hipster Christian" stricto sensu and I genuinely can't, whereas I know one or two crassly-antireligious Trump voters in real life.

... Chris Pratt, maybe?

[afleitch]

Aren't atheists are like the second most Democratic voting block, in-between Black Protestants and Jews?

They are (although Buddhists might be up there too), but "hipster Christian" the way BRTD uses the term is almost mutually exclusive with being right-of-center. I'm trying to picture a Trump voter who's a "hipster Christian" stricto sensu and I genuinely can't, whereas I know one or two crassly-antireligious Trump voters in real life.

... Chris Pratt, maybe?

I would like to add that there certainly is a huge swathe of churches that have a 'hipster aesthetic' but are in no way socially or economically left wing. Queer evangelical Twitter is pretty full of the pitfalls people have trying to navigate them or even get a straight answer on whether they are affirming.

[Torie]

OK "new atheist" seems to be an anti-theist as opposed to a non-theist. I wish people would define their terms, particularly if it is just a catchy term for an old idea, that some academic came up with to keep up with the academic's publishing quota.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Atheism

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

The way BRTD has defined 'hipster Christian' over the years with it's elder millennial cringe, basically includes just him. So the question is a bit moot!

Uh, no? Like how does it exclude my tattoo-sleeved emo fan pastor whose wedding was presided over by the guy who wrote "I don't worship a concept, I follow a King", who is one of her husband's best friends? Or anyone in a Spirit-filled hardcore band?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Hipster Christian identity is more directly tied to partisan politics than New Atheist identity. The average Hipster Christian would care a lot about being on the right side of the hot button issues of the day in contrast to who they believe to be the backward, bigoted Christians of the Religious Right. This would almost require voting Democratic or Green in major elections. By contrast, New Atheists are only united by their opposition to the concept of religion. New Atheism requires believing that religion has a negative effect on the world and, by extension, religious people stand in the way of progress but doesn't indicate specific positions on any political issues. This would include a lot of people who would support Democrats out of opposition to the Religious Right but also leave much more room for adherents outside the political left, such as John Dule-esque libertarians and far-right adjacent people who focus most of their anti-religion sentiment on Muslims rather than conservative Christians.

This is pretty much dead on. Worth noting that when he was President and before that as a candidate my church bashed Trump all the time (using the very gaping loophole to avoid violating the Jones Act of simply making it very blatantly obvious that they were talking about him without mentioning him by name.) In some ways it's the liberal equivalent of those fringe churches that preach QAnon-like stuff. And we're not the only one, I know of plenty of others just in the Twin Cities. I even went to one once where the pastor quoted AOC...and that was just the one time I attended.

I'll also note that Joe Rogan is kind of New Atheist-adjacent if you want an example of one who actually promotes right-wing politics.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

There are plenty of somewhat conservative people who are Christian and could be called hipsters, but I'm not sure that qualifies as "Hipster Christian"?

[Mr. Smith]

Still not convinced the second is real, and definitely not Christian.