It seems to me there is plenty of lively debate on topics related to politics, economics, and technology issues in the same nerd niches that used to debate atheism. I really do think that debate about new atheism has declined far more than debate around these other topics.
Do you have examples? I do think much of the time such debates come down to name-calling & ganging up on the one person in the server/forum who has different beliefs than everyone else. This seems in contrast to (what I remember of) religious debates, where you were much less likely to just be written off as eg a heartless asshole or naive no-nothing. I think nowadays people take it more personally when you don’t immediately change your mind in light of their arguments too.
I also haven’t heard of any large argument trees (like what existed for religion) people can use to fight about eg capitalism vs communism. These seemed silly to me at the time, but in retrospect I think they were very useful for having conversations between the two sides building on top of each other, instead of constantly starting at square one.
I am vibing this, but I feel like the only guy keeping it alive at this point is unironically jordan peterson— the final postmodernist boss— who’s declining as other parts of political right ascend to power, yet he manages to go viral from time to time thanks to his idiosyncratic use of language . The other new atheist tubers have mostly receded into doing general political commentary or philosophy, maybe few of them are still doing full time anti-theism, but what do I know, I am not part of the generation which got to experience new atheism first hand.
It seems to me there is plenty of lively debate on topics related to politics, economics, and technology issues in the same nerd niches that used to debate atheism. I really do think that debate about new atheism has declined far more than debate around these other topics.
Do you have examples? I do think much of the time such debates come down to name-calling & ganging up on the one person in the server/forum who has different beliefs than everyone else. This seems in contrast to (what I remember of) religious debates, where you were much less likely to just be written off as eg a heartless asshole or naive no-nothing. I think nowadays people take it more personally when you don’t immediately change your mind in light of their arguments too.
I also haven’t heard of any large argument trees (like what existed for religion) people can use to fight about eg capitalism vs communism. These seemed silly to me at the time, but in retrospect I think they were very useful for having conversations between the two sides building on top of each other, instead of constantly starting at square one.
I am vibing this, but I feel like the only guy keeping it alive at this point is unironically jordan peterson— the final postmodernist boss— who’s declining as other parts of political right ascend to power, yet he manages to go viral from time to time thanks to his idiosyncratic use of language . The other new atheist tubers have mostly receded into doing general political commentary or philosophy, maybe few of them are still doing full time anti-theism, but what do I know, I am not part of the generation which got to experience new atheism first hand.