No one is free from criticism. Harmful ideas should be condemned, when they are demonstrably harmful. But theist beliefs are such a vast range and diversity of ideas, some harmful, some useful, some healing, some vivifying, and still others having served as potent drivers of movements for justice; that to lump all theist religious belief into one category and attack the whole of it, only demonstrates your ignorance of theology, and is in fact bigotry.
By saying that religious and superstitious beliefs should be disrespected, or otherwise belittling, or stigmatizing religion and supernatural beliefs as a whole, you have already established the first level on the “Pyramid of Hate”, as well as the first of the “10 Stages of Genocide.”
If your religion is atheism, that’s perfectly valid. If someone is doing something harmful with a religious belief as justification, that specific belief should be challenged. But if you’re crossing the line into bigotry, you’re as bad as the very people you’re condemning.
Antitheism is a form of supremacy in and of itself.
"In other words, it is quite clear from the writings of the “four horsemen” that “new atheism” has little to do with atheism or any serious intellectual examination of the belief in God and everything to do with hatred and power.
Indeed, “new atheism” is the ideological foregrounding of liberal imperialism whose fanatical secularism extends the racist logic of white supremacy. It purports to be areligious, but it is not. It is, in fact, the twin brother of the rabid Christian conservatism which currently feeds the Trump administration’s destructive policies at home and abroad – minus all the biblical references."
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/5/4/the-resurrection-of-new-atheism/
Upvoted for actually posting an unpopular opinion on here.
Atheist activists (r/atheism is a good example) are as toxic as your average religious activist group, but atheism isn’t a religion in itself. Agnosticism is a more balanced take on the issue, but atheism isn’t a bad take either. If any reproducible proof of any kind of divine being or intervention will be found, most atheists will probably convert. So far, we’ve found nothing, though there are some theories about the origin of theism involving either (ritualistic) drugs or a second “personality” in our brains that our ancestors may have been in contact with.
I’m not sure what secularism constitutes “fanatical secularism”. You’re either secularist or you’re not. “Secularism but only in the places I like it” is what Christian “secular” countries have been doing and that causes problems for Muslims and other major religions.
I find the two opinions you linked utterly unconvincing. Connecting white supremacy to secularism and colonialism is a ridiculous stretch. I feel like both articles were written by a religious person who felt attacked and wanted to attack back, an intellectual fight-or-flight of sorts.
If your take on atheism ends up as “white people bad”, you either lack understanding of what atheism is, or you’re arguing in bad faith.