Interesting term


I wouldn’t have thought this possible, but it’s happening: the rise of the I-Love-Jesus atheist. I’d qualify it a bit, though, because this isn’t the generic benign Jesus, but the immigrant-hating white Jesus of American evangelical Christianity, and it’s also a Jesus divorced from any religious tradition. They’re accepting one religious figure to spite women and people of color. It’s revealing that many atheists weren’t in the movement for freethought or a rejection of dogma, but for the anti-feminism, anti-Muslim side of atheism, and they’re now enthusiastically joining forces with the regressive right, no matter their views on gods, to exercise that hatred further.

Not surprising. None of the chaos within atheism has been about our beliefs (or lack thereof) in gods, but about our beliefs about how other human beings should be treated.

Comments

  1. gmcard says

    I think many people here, myself included, have expressed that we’d rather partner with left-leaning religious folks to work on social justice issues than hang out with the regressive dudebros and pat ourselves on the back for being so clever to be atheists. So I guess it’s not surprising the wingnuts feel the same, though it must be a little odd given that while our partners generally promote is secular government and religious (and areligious) freedom, their partners aren’t so open minded.

  2. monad says

    So I saw the term, and thought “well, I recognize that there’s more problematic aspects to the whole thing, but right now the whole help-the-poor, love-the-stranger, whip-the-money-changers Jesus seems decent enough to be worth reminding Christians about”. Ha ha! It’s funny because I should know by now it’s always the rich white privilege version.

  3. Porivil Sorrens says

    gmcard pretty much nailed my opinions on the matter.

    While there are good members of the atheist community – I count most regulars here as at least being on the “good” side – the term has been co-opted so heavily by regressives that in most people it conjures up the image of an MRA tipping his hat as he oh-so-logically explains that brown people are genetically inferior and that women should be barefoot and pregnant.

    By this point, this is pretty much the only place I call myself an atheist. If anyone asks IRL, I just say that I’m “Not particularly religious”, because by this point the word is well and thoroughly poisoned.

  4. Onamission5 says

    Power hungry people go wherever the power is, is kind of a dog bites man story.

    The hatetheist and religious reich branches of society have shared pretty much the same basic premise and goals for as long as I’ve been aware of them, but slightly different justifications. Enough overlap that it would be expected at some point they’d fully merge.

  5. F.O. says

    I happily join forces with liberal, progressive Christians.
    And Muslims and Jews.
    And Buddhists who actually took a strong stance against the Rohingya genocide.

    Religious affiliation, or lack thereof, is irrelevant.

  6. billyjoe says

    Interesting read but…

    The author is actually as bad as her subject, albeit in a different way. It’s a bad move to continually mischaracterise what your opponent says when there’s plenty of real stuff to complain about. Peterson is much too serious, has no sense of humour, is dogmatic and authoritarian, and seems to like provoking with his phraseology – all the more reason not to get sucked in! And why mention his earnings (not once but twice!)

  7. KG says

    It’s a bad move to continually mischaracterise what your opponent says when there’s plenty of real stuff to complain about. – billyjoe@7

    Have you noticed that you’re behaving pretty much as Einyah describes Peterson’s cult followers behaving? Because I think everyone else will.

  8. billyjoe says

    KG,

    Yeah, she has all possible comebacks covered, I did notice that. That doesn’t, of course, mean that those comebacks aren’t legitimate. And, of course, many of her charges are demonstrably untrue, even to the point of self-contradiction on many occasions. I suppose she is not doing this deliberately, and I assume she is not deliberately misrepresenting him. If so, that just leaves a combination of poor logic, poor analysis, and poor argument. As I say, a pity, because there is so much she could have legitimately criticised him for.

    Chigau,

    Scotch on the rocks. Why?

  9. thirdmill says

    I object on principle to the word atheist. We do not have a special word for someone who disbelieves astrology, or phrenology, or palm reading, or weather predictions from groundhogs. Why are deities so special that they get a special word for people who disbelieve them? Plus I object to defining a person’s beliefs negatively — by what they don’t believe. I think people should be defined by what they do believe. So I call myself a rationalist. If someone wants to convince me that God exists, show me some evidence, then we’ll talk.

  10. rietpluim says

    Scotch on the rocks. Why?

    Because you’re being a heretic. The Ecumenic Church of True Scotch Lovers decrees that Scotch be drank straight or with a drop of water at most.

  11. rietpluim says

    Re: the OP. I think Hirsi Ali qualifies as an I-Love-Jesus atheist, and so do most nonreligious on the right nowadays.

  12. quotetheunquote says

    I had never heard of this Douglas Murray character before (and, in the famous words of E. Scrooge, “I wish the pleasure had been indefinitely postponed”) but he appears to be just about as vacuous a dunderhead as JP himself. They’re bloody made for each other, those two.

    Speaking of Peterson (*hurl* must we?), I’m glad to see there’s a some opposition showing up in the “lamestream” media. As, for example, an opinion piece published in the Globe and Mail on January 31. Titled “The Jordan Peterson paradox: high intellect, or just another angry white guy?, it is a good summing-up of the problem (along the lines of one of John Oliver’s “Why is _________ still a thing?” pieces), if a bit lacking in solutions. An excerpt:

    If psychology has always been the smorgasbord of soft sciences, Peterson’s brand of profundity is the sprawling, all-you-can-eat Mandarin buffet – a medley of undercooked ideas warmed under the heat lamp of his own faintly flickering intellect.

    “the”
    (An embarrassed Canadian)

  13. says

    I object on principle to the word atheist. We do not have a special word for someone who disbelieves astrology, or phrenology, or palm reading, or weather predictions from groundhogs.

    We would have if either of those kinds of non-believers were singled out, demonized, or otherwise persecuted as a group.

  14. thirdmill says

    Raging Bee, true, but that makes my point: The only reason we have a special word for people who don’t believe in God, is so that people who do believe in God can use it as a tool of oppression. We should stop cooperating.

  15. Rich Woods says

    The only reason we have a special word for people who don’t believe in God, is so that people who do believe in God can use it as a tool of oppression.

    I, for one, am proud of being an anti-Fascist. I am also afascistic by definition. They can call me antifa if they like; to my mind that’s the least of their shortcomings.

    I’ll leave it to you to think through the parallels. And also to consider some wider history.

  16. Azkyroth, B*Cos[F(u)]==Y says

    We do not have a special word for someone who disbelieves astrology, or phrenology, or palm reading, or weather predictions from groundhogs

    Well, no, “smarter than a turnip” is four words. There’s probably a single word in German…

    Re the OP: I find a fair number of atheists still seem to believe that “the common people” Can’t Handle The Truth and need religion to give them hope/keep them in line/provide a moral code. I-Love-Jesus atheism seems like a metastatic form of that.

  17. KG says

    And, of course, many of her charges are demonstrably untrue, – billyjoe@10

    I notice you don’t actually provide any examples. I’m not claiming there are none – I don’t know whether there are or not. But if you’re making such a claim, you should be prepared to back it up at least to that extent, and if “of course” is really justified, that should be very easy.