When being an atheist was actually cool

So today's atheism, which we call the "New Atheism", because it is devoid of all the wicked awesome temptations that the old atheism was filled with and possesses an intellectual black hole in modern discourse as the movement has become quite a crass group of buffoons who sit behind their computers like I do and type on their internet blogs about how Christianity is evil, has come to a point where the stuff they repeat is the same gibberish that the Democrat party seems to repeat. Or the Labour Party in the U.K. Etc. They really seem to favor big governments, probably ever since they learned that Stalin and Lenin could use it to quash and slaughter Christians while blaming it on government policies instead of their barbaric buffoonery. They hate being called "New Atheists" because they assert that "atheism is nothing new!" but they are quite New Atheists because the Old Atheists would have found their lunacy to be laughable.

Believe it or not, being an atheist way back actually used to mean something. I'm not talking about the fictional "moral atheist" that exists today. Precisely how can a group claiming no dogma even begin to be moral when the very principles they maintain is that they are "without dogma". That's why a moral atheist can never exist. He has no dogma and therefore no moral dogma. That's why atheists typically support abortion and transgenderism and gay marriage. Divorce, adultery, fornication, threesomes, foursomes, etc. They really are quite the pigs. So I am not talking about the so-called moral atheist who is really immoral. I am talking about the actual atheist who understood that being an atheist meant that one was negating the theistic belief. One negated the belief of God/gods to such a degree that the only being that remained to consider was himself.

Atheists used to get this. It soon became reflected in their interest in the defense of libertarian politics and radical individualism. Atheists used to oppose the collective society. The collective brain. These were actually pretty interesting intellectuals despite the fact that their reason was damaged by their refusal to believe in God. Often times images and symbols in culture tend to define how a movement thinks toward God and "the image of God as a powerful guardian of the status quo has led to 'un athéisme politique'" (Deity and Domination, 196). David Nichols, attempting to grasp how to define atheism, lays out three thinkers who he describes more as anti-theists "[a]t times they even seemed to have assumed his existence, seeing themselves as rebelling against his tyranny, just as did Prometheus or Milton's Satan....Shelley, Proudhon, and Bakunin saw themselves as leaders of a moral crusade against a cruel and ruthless heavenly power" (197).

He starts with Mikhail Bakunin. Bakunin saw politics and theology closely connected and stated that "State is a terrestrial Church...just as every Church with its Heaven...is nothingbut a celestial State" (199). Nailed it! Isn't that what the State is? It's nothing more than a sacramental vessel of political theater, military processionals, and kingdoms, whereas the Church is a kingdom, with a military processional, and the unity of a nation! He had three aspects of freedom which included positive freedom where a person cannot be free unless they have their essential needs met, freedom from tyrannical deity, and freedom the collectivism of man (201). Most of all, Bakunin hated the State. He attacked the State with vigorous ferocity. "All political power, whatever its origin or form, 'necessarily tends toward despotism' and the best men are easily corrupted by power." (201) "Bakunin ascribed religion to a sense of absolute or unqualified dependence by the ephemeral individual upon eternal and omnipotent nature" (203). How can a God who is infinite and perfect in being need man to actually love him? Bakunin's assessment was that God could not possibly need man to love him. Man was dependent on God and too dependent on God. "God must therefore be killed by scientific criticism." (205)

Proudhon is really one of my own favorites. Possibly because he recognized democracy as being a collectivist system that was an enemy against man. I am highly sympathetic toward Proudhon. Proudhon initially saw the reformed church as the best guarantor of freedom but as he developed in thought and toward anti-statism, he began to criticize all aspects of religion as "unquestionably the oldest manifestation of government and authority" (207). "To be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated at, regulated, docketed, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, assessed, weighed, censored, ordered about, by men who have neither the right nor the knowledge nor the virtue." (207) While Proudhon believed the idea of God to be necessary, he also was intent on attacking God for the very "role he played in human life, as a providence depriving human beings of freedom and as a tyrant issuing arbitrary commands" (209). Proudhon embraced a low view of human nature. As a radical individualist, he could not embrace democracy. "Left to themselves or led by their tribunes, the masses will never create anything....The advent of democracy would begin an era of decadence." (213) How very right he was!

Shelley, yet another avowed opponent of God, admitted to being "a devoted enemy to religious, political, and domestic oppression" (216). Shelley wrote critically of excesses in the French Revolution as he saw the Revolution bring in confusion leading to tyrants filling in the voids (218-219). Interestingly enough, not quite wrong. When one demon leaves, one much worse comes in and brings in his friends. Shelley was inspired by the individualist philosopher William Godwin, rejected the idea of an omnipotent being as the source of moral law "regarded Milton's Satan as possessing virtue because of his resistance to divine despotism" though Prometheus was a "more admirable" character than Satan (219-221). Both Satan and Prometheus rebel against God, and for Prometheus, a pantheon of gods.

Serene in his unconquerable might

Endued, the Almighty King, his steadfast throne

Encompassed unapproachably with power

And darkness and deep solitude and awe

Stood like a black cloud on some acry cliff

Embossing its lightening - in his sight

Unnumbered glorious spirits trembling stood

Like slaves before their Lord - prostrate around

Heaven's multitudes hymned everlasting praise.

Fragment: Pater Omnipotens, Shelley

So how exactly did atheism become the submissive mess that it is right now? Probably traceable back to Karl Marx and the Bolsheviks. These modern day atheists really seem to love authority. They seem to love and be infatuated with stampeding on other people. Not just against the practices. They want religion stamped out. They don't find themselves at war with God. They find themselves at war with religion. To seize power is what they want. They cannot have power to seize if there is none to seize it from. So they put themselves into this infantile state where they suck their thumbs like little babies to increase the power of a state they one day hope to run. They're crass, father-hating, obedient zombies.