Inspired by some of the discussion in this thread. I don’t think it’s appropriate place for that discussion there, but hey why not have a separate thread for it
If I think religion is not good in general, am I Reddit and cringe and basically Richard Dawkins?
This comment isn’t incorrect, but the context that you’re speaking of is a bit categorically different than what OP’s question seems to be getting at.
What I mean by this is that the difference between so-called “Reddit atheism” and “regular old atheism” is being observed here less as how both group’s views as atheists differs from Eastern atheism and more as a sociopolitical difference instead, with the former being seen as far more reactionary, smug, and what people would even call a more “militant” form of atheism, depending on how you use that word. The latter, on the other hand, may refer to “I really just don’t give a shit” kind of atheism or, seeing as how we are on Hexbear, atheism applied to leftist, more specifically Marxist and materialist, schools of thought.
To give a goofy analogy, I find that this would be like a person asking, “What’s the difference between vegetarianism and veganism?” and someone responding, “I don’t see a real separation between those two because if you compare it to something like fruitarianism [a fringe diet only consisting of fruit], both vegetarians and vegans still allow for the consumption of things that aren’t fruit, so there’s no real difference between the two.”
I suppose the point of my comment was to say that when people here say “atheism,” they don’t just mean “disbelief in gods,” and that a lot of the extra stuff is related to Western epistemology in general. I didn’t even go over various Indigenous belief systems, which could be seen or is at least compatible with atheism-as-in-disbelief-in-gods-and-disbelief-in-gods-only that is dissimilar to Western or Eastern atheism. A lot of their so-called deities aren’t actually deities as understood by Western religion but purposeful mistranslations by Christian missionaries who tried to shove their creation myths and cosmology into a Christian hole. When some Indigenous elder say something like “Creation gives us mouths to speak the truth” and characterizes Creation-with-a-capital-C as a self-directed process instead of a Creator god, is his religious and spiritual beliefs compatible with atheism-as-in-disbelief-in-gods-and-disbelief-in-gods-only?
It’s like how when people here say “philosophy,” they’re not actually talking about the entire sum of philosophy that encompasses very different philosophical traditions like Chinese philosophy or Islamic philosophy but more specifically Western philosophy or even more specifically, Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment Western philosophy because no one has time to deal with Christian apologia by some French bishop from the 10th century. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that on one hand, you have people who think atheism fits in a particular Western box and on the other hand, you have Western chauvinists who think Muslims are savages who must be civilized by their Western superiors.