genderbitch:

ribenaandxmas:

genderbitch:

lovebelikeawhirlwind:

onceuponanotsolongago:

religiousragings:

Different people have different ways of expressing their anger.  O.o

I feel like there is a couple bullet points that I would add… but it mostly pretains to the “New Atheist” crowd a la Hitchens and Dawkins….

• Decries religion without a through understanding their own (usually white, Western, intellectual) privilege
• Upholds racist stereotypes, especially when discussing Islam

• These things, though they may not seem like a big deal, uphold the violence already in the power structures in our world already.

Atheism, as a personal belief system and life structure, whatever. I couldn’t care less about what somebody thinks about God or Not God.

But atheism, as it plays out in media/internet debate and discussion, blech.

• employs a ton of sexism and condescending bullshit towards women (I really don’t think it is any coincidence that the most prominent voices of the New Atheist movement were all men privileged along other axises as well, despite the fact that there are women atheists, now and historically—the women of the early 20th century anarchist movement wrote a lot about religious oppression, for example)
• employs a lot of ‘we must save the women (oftentimes WOC) from their men (oftentimes MOC)’ rhetoric, tokenizing religious women and portraying them all as weak and without agency or the ability to choose for themselves the path they want their lives to go along
• ignores the voices of queer people or communities of color or in fact any marginalized group within a religious label to create a homogenized experience of religion that always equates oppression for certain people (and as a queer person who for complicated reasons also identifies as Catholic, I know quite well about the oppression I face as a Christian…I navigate that daily, thanks). ignores the fact that religion has also traditionally sprouted in poorer communities, where the belief in God can be sometimes all a person has.
• equates all believers with fundamentalists, which is why a graphic like this can imply voice for the entirety of 2.6 billion Christians and set up a false image of us all as the worst kinds of people our religion have to offer, when such a huge part of religion is the process of interpretation and actualization and no two people do that in the same way. see also graphics about Islam, which portray the entirety of 1.5 billion people as fanatics and oppressors/oppressed in the making
• ignores the complexity and diversity of movements and traditions within these larger labels, such as liberation theology in Central and South America, or the communal Christian movements of the 15 and 1600s, or the fact that religious traditions are not monolithic and unchanging from their conception to the modern era but that upheavals and reformations (Reformations?) have been going on since forever and that communities are talking to one another and making changes in religious practice still.
  

yes, religion is oftentimes fucked up and people do fucked up things in the name of religion. this is not news. historically, religion and religious practice were used to justify a lot of bullshit. this is also not news. the fact that people with a lot of money and influence in the American political system subscribe to the worst kind of Christianity and then attempt to make it national is a fact. the Vatican. oh boy.  i will never, ever deny any of this.

but to insinuate that the only thing ‘bad’ an atheist did on the internet was yell at you is not true. there are reasons why people have issues with Atheism as it is presented to them. these personally are mine. 

Also equating religion with Abrahamic monotheism, erasing tons of other religions throughout the world.

Not to mention the fact that so many ‘angry athiests’ tend to base most of their arguments on IQ (e.g. that ‘studies’ have ‘shown’ that people with higher IQs are more likely to be athiests) and intelligence and are therefore at their core pretty much extremely ableist. 

Further commentary^

Reblogged for commentary.