What you (maybe) don’t understand about anti-theism

So I was watching Genetically Modified Skeptic’s video on why there are atheists on the right. And I can’t applaud how incredible of a voice of reason he is and how many people he has helped with his channel. He’s truly a light for many people, atheist or not. And what’s more, he’s a former anti-theist. However, therein lies the point I’d like to discuss.

I’m just slightly surprised by his characterization of anti-theism in the video. I would think that, as someone who currently identifies as a religious pluralist, he would understand the pluralism of such a position instead of writing off the entire thing. I can only assume that because he once held the position, there’s perhaps an egocentric bias there (egocentric in the sense that he believed his view was the predominant one, not that he’s selfish or narcissistic). The issue is that just like theism and even atheism, as he discusses in the video he must understand that anti-theism has different positions and is by no means a monolith. When he invites his eloquent cohort on to strawman the subject I found it a bit disingenuous. I want to extend goodwill here. At the end of the day I understand some assumptions must be made in order to make any comment about anything and that they would hopefully be open to reason if someone called this out (Ahem!).

For example, if you take a look at what is essentially my anti-theist manifesto within it while I leave such a scathing critique of all kinds of theism, I say unequivocly that when I advocate for anti-theism, I am talking about no government support for religious organizations. I don’t practice religious discrimination and think that being militant about such a thing is ridiculous. But something else I want to do is go deeper into this divide between religious pluralism and anti-theism and what I make it.

This can be summed up as a distinction between ideals and realism. Pluralism is the former. To be fair, ideals are important and have their place. I should explain what I mean here. This belief that religion is ultimately not harming anyone, or that anyone can have their truth, or that we should just let people believe what they want to think is perfectly fine. I support this, even though I’ll give my two cents on specific issues I see as problematic as anyone else has the right to do. But when you consider the realistic aspects of how each of these groups has vast, complex political needs from which they will demand funding or special privileges, how these things have a history of not being able to tolerate each other and being a breeding ground for philosophical and religious discrimination. I’m still researching this, but I have a growing hunch that Drew of Genetically Modified Skeptic may be overlooking the source of most religious discrimination. Religious people themselves.

What do I mean by that? Well, it’s simply the fact that when you factor in inter-religious conflicts like Seventh Day Adventists vs. Those who go to church on Sunday for instance (Seriously, if you drive up the I-95 down to Georgia, you can even see billboards paid for by both sides of the conflict damning each other to Hell) as well as religious conflicts between different religions (I was taught that Wiccans were Satan worshippers for instance) the discrimination is not typically coming from Atheists or even Anti-theists in massive numbers. It’s theists doing it to themselves. So this whole get-together and sing kumbaya thing, while an ideal I like, needs to be affixed with a massive asterisk. “This is what we wish would happen.” Not “If we try hard enough, this will make us happy, and we have proof.” As far as I saw in that video, not only was there no proof, but there was a lack of solid reasoning throughout. For instance (and please tell me if I’m mistaken), he brought up an anti-theist early in the video who made many points about religiosity. I can’t corroborate if they’re true or not, but for the sake of the conversation, that’s not even the point. He essentially used that person’s conversion to anti-woke ideology as some disproof of his argument. This is incredibly fallacious. The most scumbag person you know is still correct if they say 1+1=2. Why was this used as some “Gotcha!” then?

Again, I could be misinterpreting this and will need to rewatch several times because Drew is a paragon of sound reasoning, but my trust in his logic can’t override his illogic if it does, in fact, exist in this situation. But that’s just my quick rant. I didn’t want to do anything too intensive in this post, what with me dealing with college shit. Please watch his video and tell me what you think. Because I’d love to be the one who’s just overreacting here. But being called “edgy” for my political beliefs seems no different than the exact thing he supposedly stands against. I can only assume he does this because appearing as a middle ground or neutral force is supposedly the default position of maturity in most people’s minds. I swear the middle-ground fallacy is a straight-up menace.