It’s frustrating for sure. Prominent western atheists seem to suffer from much the same problems as other western “thinkers” who don’t have any political education in liberation, in that they tunnel vision on a narrow lens (in this case, atheism) and think they’re deriving everything from it, when they’re really just doing imperialism, colonization, racism, etc., “with atheist characteristics.” And they don’t see it because the other parts are so normal to them and they’re so unaware of any alternative that it simply doesn’t occur to them their thinking is 90% the propaganda they are immersed in and only 10% atheism (to put it roughly, I’m not saying the percentages are exact). This is not to give them an out though, some of them probably are at least partly aware and are grifters and ghouls in their own right, but I don’t get the impression they are all aware enough to be malicious; I think some of them are just really overly focused on atheism as a lens in itself.
I know one of the main takeaways I had in becoming more politically educated, was realizing that I need to make a distinction on colonizer religion vs. the religion of the colonized. That I’ve been almost exclusively exposed to colonizer religion and although it’s likely nothing would change whether I believe in a god or gods at this point, I don’t need to have any opinions about any particular religion I don’t understand, especially among peoples who are being vilified by empire. And I am consciously more open-minded to the religions of colonized peoples, knowing I’m going to be dealing with a lot of lies to get through to the heart of how they are actually practiced and by who, and what factions and sects they have now or historically.
It’s frustrating for sure. Prominent western atheists seem to suffer from much the same problems as other western “thinkers” who don’t have any political education in liberation, in that they tunnel vision on a narrow lens (in this case, atheism) and think they’re deriving everything from it, when they’re really just doing imperialism, colonization, racism, etc., “with atheist characteristics.” And they don’t see it because the other parts are so normal to them and they’re so unaware of any alternative that it simply doesn’t occur to them their thinking is 90% the propaganda they are immersed in and only 10% atheism (to put it roughly, I’m not saying the percentages are exact). This is not to give them an out though, some of them probably are at least partly aware and are grifters and ghouls in their own right, but I don’t get the impression they are all aware enough to be malicious; I think some of them are just really overly focused on atheism as a lens in itself.
I know one of the main takeaways I had in becoming more politically educated, was realizing that I need to make a distinction on colonizer religion vs. the religion of the colonized. That I’ve been almost exclusively exposed to colonizer religion and although it’s likely nothing would change whether I believe in a god or gods at this point, I don’t need to have any opinions about any particular religion I don’t understand, especially among peoples who are being vilified by empire. And I am consciously more open-minded to the religions of colonized peoples, knowing I’m going to be dealing with a lot of lies to get through to the heart of how they are actually practiced and by who, and what factions and sects they have now or historically.