Look, I’m not going to snow you: I’m as scathing and unyielding an atheist as you get. You think the diaries that have been floating around here lately are harsh? Stand near me when I read that some church sued the state for access to taxpayer money and won, or when parents pray their kid to death instead of using actual medicine, or when the money you give to your nice, liberal church gets kicked upstairs to the organization it belongs to, then back downstairs on another channel that funds anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. Or, I dunno, when the blatantly religious Supreme Court takes away women’s bodily autonomy for blatantly religious reasons.
But having said that, I don’t get this sudden spurt of hardcore sport-atheism diaries. Seems fishy to me I’ve been here 20 years, and I’ve never seen a sudden fusillade of secular anger-management ads like we’ve had lately, and while I understand being secular and angry — Christians folk have been especially Christian of late — these diaries don’t seem to have a target. They just pop up and spray the Junior-Varsity Atheist Argument hose indiscriminately, having no point other than, y’know, being kinda right about religion in general. They don’t seem to be reacting to anything specific, or making any specific proposals.
Now, I’m not gonna point fingers at anyone, or name names, or call anyone out or even claim these diaries are right-wing psy-ops — not that you could tell the difference with a couple of them. I’m just going to start treating them like they are. In other words, I’m going to just shrug and move on.
It’s not like wingers don’t deliberately set liberals against each other. Hell, they are, as we speak, conducting an unceasing campaign of trying to trigger lefties on social media to cancel some ally or another, with no small amount of success. A depressing number of liberal commentators have been run off social media by the harassment of other liberals, and it’s often traced back to right-wing sources, feigning outrage at some seriously reimagined, wholly-perceived sleight.
Point being, it’s possible some part of this is a psy-op. But don’t start fitting me for a tin foil hat just yet. To repeat: I’m not saying any of them are. They can just as easily be explained by a rash of young atheists who just got a good, long look at the extent of the damage religion has done to the human race, and charged off to fix everyone with a good talking to, because clearly, nobody has tried that before (or, as the blithe self-importance of youth would have it, “Well, nobody has heard me tell it like it is yet!”).
But since I can’t prove anything, and frankly don’t have the energy to try, I’m just going to start treating these diaries as psy-ops, unless and until one of them has a point that hasn’t been made a dozen times, now. This is not to say I don’t think the diaries should be written — or that I agree with some of the hilariously obtuse responses from certain commenters — just that I’m not going to bother reading them or reacting to them anymore, unless it’s evident the diary has something new to say.
Anyone else?