I think reddit atheists maintain a lot of the bad of religion in their mindset, but they importantly lack any sense of community or self-sacrificing. It is like american protestantism removing all the difficult and challenging parts of faith
That’s exactly what Protestantism did, except I would actually say it’s somewhat worse; It maintained a lot of the ideas of self-sacrifice, but divorced them entirely from their material and communal base, instead making self-sacrifice in and of itself righteous. Secular asceticism, done not out of an obligation to one’s community or even to serve a spiritual nourishment, but out of obligation to an invisible god that one often believes doesn’t even exist.
I think reddit atheists maintain a lot of the bad of religion in their mindset, but they importantly lack any sense of community or self-sacrificing. It is like american protestantism removing all the difficult and challenging parts of faith
Yeah reddit atheists are just secular Calvinists.
That’s exactly what Protestantism did, except I would actually say it’s somewhat worse; It maintained a lot of the ideas of self-sacrifice, but divorced them entirely from their material and communal base, instead making self-sacrifice in and of itself righteous. Secular asceticism, done not out of an obligation to one’s community or even to serve a spiritual nourishment, but out of obligation to an invisible god that one often believes doesn’t even exist.
What sucks is there is plenty of good social change pushed for by the pre-protestant reformationists. groups like the Anabaptists