Really great piece! I have no doubts we will both be fighting to rid the world of wokeness while preserving atheism. I think this is going to be a major issue in the next 5+ years as the Right begins to amass more cultural power. The religious purity tests are coming, and we will be exiled from the Right just like we were from the Left.
Jun 20, 2023Liked by Colin Wright, David Silverman
You may have assumed that all those who subscribe to Colin's substack are atheists like he is, but that's wrong. Many reasonable truth seekers are religious, including Christians like me. You now see us as less threatening than you once did, and I feel the same about atheists like you, that is, the rational, non-woke variety. I have met and befriended more such people in my past two years of fighting gender ideology alongside them than in my previous fifty or so years. While I can appreciate atheists more than I used to, I can't help but disagree with this author seems to still see us as preachers of fire and brimstone (not a common topic in most evangelical churches I've attended). And while you are welcome in our churches, I strongly disagree with you trying to turn them secular. I think you probably would feel the same if I advocated that my fellow believers should infiltrate Athiests for Liberty in an attempt to turn it Christian. How about you treat us as intelligent human being worthy of respect instead? Visit our churches, let us know your stand on God, and then engage in respectful discussions with us. You might just find that there's more common ground than just our mutual fight against wokeness. At the very least, you might make some new friends and expand your viewpoint about what it means to be a religious believer.
As an evangelical Christian(sorry!) I find this development fascinating, encouraging. I realize my position is probably anathema to many, but I think wokeism is bad Calvinism, so what we need is an updated version of a heresy trial? I also admire the writer's outreach towards communities of faith, I believe that ultimately false religion can perhaps only be effectively countered by true religion (religion structured by objective truth/reality)? Problem is that wokeism is in the church, too, so we're fighting these trends in our own camps now. But evangelicals - like them or not - understand what it means or be marginalized by institutions, countering with their own K-12 education programs while needing to not give up on institutions altogether because that's the elite minority voices that drives the culture.
This is a big topic. Just rambling. In short, to really fight wokeism, you're gonna need genuine believers, I feel.
"Indoctrinating a child with beliefs you know to be false (how does one know these are false), with the intent of controlling their actions and thoughts (It's morally reprehensible that the atheists want to control the thoughts and actions of other people's children)...Scaring your children with tales of Hell and eternal damnation (caricature of religion)...to deter them from becoming woke is nothing short of child abuse (label beliefs you don't like as child abuse)." Then there's this nugget. "I envisioned a Scandinavian-style atheistic utopia taking shape in a post-religious country. I pictured a society where critical thought was prevalent, truth was prioritized (whose truth?)." You are admitting to trying to indoctrinate people into accepting your version of utopia. The admission "we failed to eradicate religion," and not seeing the lack of critical thinking in this goal (your way or the highway) is astounding. By the way, I'm not especially religious but I will go down in a ball of flames to protect the right of parents to raise their children according to their beliefs and values, whether that be atheism or an organized religion.
Jun 20, 2023·edited Jun 20, 2023Liked by David Silverman
I think we atheists/skeptics/nonbelievers on the left (there ARE some of us on the right, too, btw*) need to do some honest internal analysis of (among other things) WHY we didn't apply our skepticism to the T of the LGBT stuff.
The dominant narrative on transgenderism clearly, at its very foundation, isn't logical or rational (none of postmodernism/queer theory is). I think there are at least a few reasons, including (actual) gender and the disproportionate number of males that made up "new" (and old) atheism, but we (not me, personally, but us as a group/movement) obviously really, really missed the warning signs on that one. Let's talk about why.
*Another at least part of the problem is our tendency, as humans even when we're presumably committed to logic and reason, to paint with broad brushes and to feel superior to whoever we've decided is "evil" (hahaha). Now that I've admitted the part that I also played in creating the "woke" monster, I have to admit that there are tenets of conservative political philosophy that are logical, rational, reasonable, pragmatic, etc. And that I, allegedly reasonable and rational, dismissed it all in the name of my own non-believer (left and yes, "woke") political ideology.
As a liberal Christian who was raised in a version of the faith that was free of dogma and respected reason, I've been watching my many atheist artist friends get sucked into something that I recognize as fundamentalism -- as another commenter has put it, "bad Calvinism". These are people who consider themselves to be too Enlightened and too Clever for Christianity, which they consider to be an absolute disgusting force in the world (while holding Judaism, Islam and any other religious belief to be sacrosanct). I appreciate this article but am also disappointed that Silverman seems to think the only way of being a Christian is to feed your children simplistic, frightening narratives about Heaven and Hell as a way of controlling their behaviour. I assure you, I was raised in a traditional church that never fed such narratives, and I teach Sunday School now without such narratives. I am careful to distinguish for the children between fact and belief. My community doesn't see critical thinking as diametrically opposed to faith in what we call God.
Didn't Richard Dawkins say, "The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference."
This is where I don't understand athiesm. I'm grateful for Athiest who speak of morals and telling the truth, but it was only a matter of time for this thought of coming from nothing for nothing would break down to living for me - what works best for me. The powerful get that and are using the confused youth and non-practicing atheist to spread their deception so they can financially cash in. I am grateful for this group of readers who don't do that. That is why I read Colin Wright and will continue to read substack, but God is not dead. He is very much a live.
I am reading "Return to the God Hypothesis" by Stephen C. Meyer. It is well thought out. There is an intelligence that wrote the DNA for our lives. It might be a good practice to try and find out about this Creator. (yes, capitol "C")
I’m a former evangelical Christian who left the church a few years ago because I was convinced it was false. I was tired of the group think that I thought only religion provided to society. Long story short, I was very naive. I never considered myself to be an atheist but had a huge respect for people like Sam Harris. I shared, for a season, the same frustration with organized religion as the new atheists did. I’ve changed my mind. People like Jordan Peterson and secular historian Tom Holland have a great impact on my life in the past couple of years. Tom Holland, again a secular historian, wrote an incredible book defending the legacy of Christianity and its impact on the Western world called Dominion. Holland makes the case that the values we take for granted in the west, (like equality, human dignity, charity, purpose), come from a Judeo Christian worldview. In my view, Holland makes a compelling case. Holland also debated AC Grayling on this very subject, and in my opinion won. Anyways, after serious consideration I might be returning to Christianity. I’m not sure what’s that going to look like, but it’s something I’m considering. I’m in my early thirties and wanting to start a family someday, and I think a loving Christian home might be the ticket. Not sure yet, I have a lot to think about.
I made a similar journey to the author but reached a different conclusion. Atheism (which I embraced) gave birth to a woke religion that is far worse than the Christianity it replaced. Wokeism and its works are so completely evil that it suggests the existence of something infinitely good that we we used to call God who kept our world in equipoise. This empirical evidence of recent years shows that a world bereft of belief in the divine is a world that wallows in degeneracy and madness. Quibbling about the provable truth of that divinity seems self-destructive when the benefits of acknowledging it are now self-evident in view of recent events. Even if God is only a metaphor it is still a powerful constructive force that should be embraced and not discarded.
Jun 20, 2023Liked by Colin Wright, David Silverman
I love the idea of "secular Christianity". I have been toying with the idea of going back to Church as a way to help fight back against the insidious takeover of all society (and especially children) by the current "woke" culture, but I can't be a hypocrite having left the church 20 years ago as I couldn't accept many of the core tenets. This may be a way forward for those of us who were brought up with Christian values but no longer go along with all the dogma surrounding Christianity.
I fear David Silverman has as much difficulty defining "Left" as transcultists have with defining the word "woman." Compare and contrast the ample corporate and Millionaire/Billionaire support for "LGBTQ+", "Pride," etc, with their tooth-and-nail opposition to unionization drives at the companies they own and control. The first has nothing to do with class opposition to ownership and control by a tiny elite, the other - actual, real, material world "leftism" - has everything to do with it. All this "woke," and "queer" nonsense has little to anything to do with class-based leftism.
"Scaring your children with tales of Hell and eternal damnation—which you know to be false—to deter them from becoming woke is nothing short of child abuse."
Few will be wanting to do that tho. The author betrays himself as a fundamentalist and he projects his rigidity onto Christians -- most of whom, he would find, are more welcoming and open minded than he is. All fundamentalists are equally dangerous, be they Christian, woke, Muslim or atheist. But one can find reasonable people in any religion especially among Christians and Buddhists. The author is a good example of the difference between the atheist who does not believe in God, and the atheist who believes there is no God.
Ah yes, semantics. Just below the appeal to authority on the scale of valid arguments.
Didn't the Stoics say you don't have to have an opinion? The righeousness of the atheist (skeptic/whatever), trans, vax, or BLM movements is no different and (honestly much more) hypocritical than what I hear and see about organized traditional religion.
I am here because I beleive in the cause this Substack chooses to address: the mutilation of children. I really don't give a rat's ass what you do or don't beleive or what Colin does and does not beleive...except for one issue. And this article really makes me regret my donation.
You don’t have to be a Christian to reject wokism. Common sense and education should suffice. Our civilizations failure to give people a meaningful purpose beyond consumerism is partly at fault. I am an agnostic in the sense that I don’t subscribe to a god but I also find the universe mysterious and can’t rule out some force of creation. I find these concerns with personal sexuality solipsistic and the inability to accept any difference of opinion childish. Our species seems to have reached the limits of its development and is de- evolving.
Really great piece! I have no doubts we will both be fighting to rid the world of wokeness while preserving atheism. I think this is going to be a major issue in the next 5+ years as the Right begins to amass more cultural power. The religious purity tests are coming, and we will be exiled from the Right just like we were from the Left.
You may have assumed that all those who subscribe to Colin's substack are atheists like he is, but that's wrong. Many reasonable truth seekers are religious, including Christians like me. You now see us as less threatening than you once did, and I feel the same about atheists like you, that is, the rational, non-woke variety. I have met and befriended more such people in my past two years of fighting gender ideology alongside them than in my previous fifty or so years. While I can appreciate atheists more than I used to, I can't help but disagree with this author seems to still see us as preachers of fire and brimstone (not a common topic in most evangelical churches I've attended). And while you are welcome in our churches, I strongly disagree with you trying to turn them secular. I think you probably would feel the same if I advocated that my fellow believers should infiltrate Athiests for Liberty in an attempt to turn it Christian. How about you treat us as intelligent human being worthy of respect instead? Visit our churches, let us know your stand on God, and then engage in respectful discussions with us. You might just find that there's more common ground than just our mutual fight against wokeness. At the very least, you might make some new friends and expand your viewpoint about what it means to be a religious believer.
As an evangelical Christian(sorry!) I find this development fascinating, encouraging. I realize my position is probably anathema to many, but I think wokeism is bad Calvinism, so what we need is an updated version of a heresy trial? I also admire the writer's outreach towards communities of faith, I believe that ultimately false religion can perhaps only be effectively countered by true religion (religion structured by objective truth/reality)? Problem is that wokeism is in the church, too, so we're fighting these trends in our own camps now. But evangelicals - like them or not - understand what it means or be marginalized by institutions, countering with their own K-12 education programs while needing to not give up on institutions altogether because that's the elite minority voices that drives the culture.
This is a big topic. Just rambling. In short, to really fight wokeism, you're gonna need genuine believers, I feel.
"Indoctrinating a child with beliefs you know to be false (how does one know these are false), with the intent of controlling their actions and thoughts (It's morally reprehensible that the atheists want to control the thoughts and actions of other people's children)...Scaring your children with tales of Hell and eternal damnation (caricature of religion)...to deter them from becoming woke is nothing short of child abuse (label beliefs you don't like as child abuse)." Then there's this nugget. "I envisioned a Scandinavian-style atheistic utopia taking shape in a post-religious country. I pictured a society where critical thought was prevalent, truth was prioritized (whose truth?)." You are admitting to trying to indoctrinate people into accepting your version of utopia. The admission "we failed to eradicate religion," and not seeing the lack of critical thinking in this goal (your way or the highway) is astounding. By the way, I'm not especially religious but I will go down in a ball of flames to protect the right of parents to raise their children according to their beliefs and values, whether that be atheism or an organized religion.
I think we atheists/skeptics/nonbelievers on the left (there ARE some of us on the right, too, btw*) need to do some honest internal analysis of (among other things) WHY we didn't apply our skepticism to the T of the LGBT stuff.
The dominant narrative on transgenderism clearly, at its very foundation, isn't logical or rational (none of postmodernism/queer theory is). I think there are at least a few reasons, including (actual) gender and the disproportionate number of males that made up "new" (and old) atheism, but we (not me, personally, but us as a group/movement) obviously really, really missed the warning signs on that one. Let's talk about why.
*Another at least part of the problem is our tendency, as humans even when we're presumably committed to logic and reason, to paint with broad brushes and to feel superior to whoever we've decided is "evil" (hahaha). Now that I've admitted the part that I also played in creating the "woke" monster, I have to admit that there are tenets of conservative political philosophy that are logical, rational, reasonable, pragmatic, etc. And that I, allegedly reasonable and rational, dismissed it all in the name of my own non-believer (left and yes, "woke") political ideology.
As a liberal Christian who was raised in a version of the faith that was free of dogma and respected reason, I've been watching my many atheist artist friends get sucked into something that I recognize as fundamentalism -- as another commenter has put it, "bad Calvinism". These are people who consider themselves to be too Enlightened and too Clever for Christianity, which they consider to be an absolute disgusting force in the world (while holding Judaism, Islam and any other religious belief to be sacrosanct). I appreciate this article but am also disappointed that Silverman seems to think the only way of being a Christian is to feed your children simplistic, frightening narratives about Heaven and Hell as a way of controlling their behaviour. I assure you, I was raised in a traditional church that never fed such narratives, and I teach Sunday School now without such narratives. I am careful to distinguish for the children between fact and belief. My community doesn't see critical thinking as diametrically opposed to faith in what we call God.
Didn't Richard Dawkins say, "The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference."
This is where I don't understand athiesm. I'm grateful for Athiest who speak of morals and telling the truth, but it was only a matter of time for this thought of coming from nothing for nothing would break down to living for me - what works best for me. The powerful get that and are using the confused youth and non-practicing atheist to spread their deception so they can financially cash in. I am grateful for this group of readers who don't do that. That is why I read Colin Wright and will continue to read substack, but God is not dead. He is very much a live.
I am reading "Return to the God Hypothesis" by Stephen C. Meyer. It is well thought out. There is an intelligence that wrote the DNA for our lives. It might be a good practice to try and find out about this Creator. (yes, capitol "C")
I’m a former evangelical Christian who left the church a few years ago because I was convinced it was false. I was tired of the group think that I thought only religion provided to society. Long story short, I was very naive. I never considered myself to be an atheist but had a huge respect for people like Sam Harris. I shared, for a season, the same frustration with organized religion as the new atheists did. I’ve changed my mind. People like Jordan Peterson and secular historian Tom Holland have a great impact on my life in the past couple of years. Tom Holland, again a secular historian, wrote an incredible book defending the legacy of Christianity and its impact on the Western world called Dominion. Holland makes the case that the values we take for granted in the west, (like equality, human dignity, charity, purpose), come from a Judeo Christian worldview. In my view, Holland makes a compelling case. Holland also debated AC Grayling on this very subject, and in my opinion won. Anyways, after serious consideration I might be returning to Christianity. I’m not sure what’s that going to look like, but it’s something I’m considering. I’m in my early thirties and wanting to start a family someday, and I think a loving Christian home might be the ticket. Not sure yet, I have a lot to think about.
Really happy to see Dave here. Thanks for writing, and thanks for hosting him!
I made a similar journey to the author but reached a different conclusion. Atheism (which I embraced) gave birth to a woke religion that is far worse than the Christianity it replaced. Wokeism and its works are so completely evil that it suggests the existence of something infinitely good that we we used to call God who kept our world in equipoise. This empirical evidence of recent years shows that a world bereft of belief in the divine is a world that wallows in degeneracy and madness. Quibbling about the provable truth of that divinity seems self-destructive when the benefits of acknowledging it are now self-evident in view of recent events. Even if God is only a metaphor it is still a powerful constructive force that should be embraced and not discarded.
There are no such things as non-religious societies. There can be nominally non-theistic societies, but not non-religious.
I love the idea of "secular Christianity". I have been toying with the idea of going back to Church as a way to help fight back against the insidious takeover of all society (and especially children) by the current "woke" culture, but I can't be a hypocrite having left the church 20 years ago as I couldn't accept many of the core tenets. This may be a way forward for those of us who were brought up with Christian values but no longer go along with all the dogma surrounding Christianity.
I fear David Silverman has as much difficulty defining "Left" as transcultists have with defining the word "woman." Compare and contrast the ample corporate and Millionaire/Billionaire support for "LGBTQ+", "Pride," etc, with their tooth-and-nail opposition to unionization drives at the companies they own and control. The first has nothing to do with class opposition to ownership and control by a tiny elite, the other - actual, real, material world "leftism" - has everything to do with it. All this "woke," and "queer" nonsense has little to anything to do with class-based leftism.
"Scaring your children with tales of Hell and eternal damnation—which you know to be false—to deter them from becoming woke is nothing short of child abuse."
Few will be wanting to do that tho. The author betrays himself as a fundamentalist and he projects his rigidity onto Christians -- most of whom, he would find, are more welcoming and open minded than he is. All fundamentalists are equally dangerous, be they Christian, woke, Muslim or atheist. But one can find reasonable people in any religion especially among Christians and Buddhists. The author is a good example of the difference between the atheist who does not believe in God, and the atheist who believes there is no God.
Ah yes, semantics. Just below the appeal to authority on the scale of valid arguments.
Didn't the Stoics say you don't have to have an opinion? The righeousness of the atheist (skeptic/whatever), trans, vax, or BLM movements is no different and (honestly much more) hypocritical than what I hear and see about organized traditional religion.
I am here because I beleive in the cause this Substack chooses to address: the mutilation of children. I really don't give a rat's ass what you do or don't beleive or what Colin does and does not beleive...except for one issue. And this article really makes me regret my donation.
You don’t have to be a Christian to reject wokism. Common sense and education should suffice. Our civilizations failure to give people a meaningful purpose beyond consumerism is partly at fault. I am an agnostic in the sense that I don’t subscribe to a god but I also find the universe mysterious and can’t rule out some force of creation. I find these concerns with personal sexuality solipsistic and the inability to accept any difference of opinion childish. Our species seems to have reached the limits of its development and is de- evolving.