The question in the tiltle has been bothering me for some time already. Is there any hard data on it?
My observation communicating with the english-speaking part of these circles it seems to me that for every libertarian or classical liberal guy/girl you get twenty rabid progressives who think that we simply need TOP MEN (and/or women if also feminist) in goverment to fix all the worlds problems and whose critical-thinking abilities come to a screeching halt when it comes to stuff like criticising regulatory bodies (regulatory capture, barriers to entry etc) or gasp revisionist history.
The german ones seem to be way worse. For example atheism gets turned into some sort of package deal: Either you are also for a guaranteed basic income, animal rights and vegitarianism or you can’t be an atheist.
tl:dr: Are a large part of these people rabidly statist (esp. on their pet issues) or is it just me?
Could you explain some more? Are you asking whether atheists tend to be statists?
I think it’s hard to tell, since the word is often misused. But it seems that state schools do indoctrinate kids to believe that being atheist (along with being statist) is some sort of requirement for being an enlightened person.
I’d say that the German ones simply define “atheist” differently.
Nah, not all of them support these policies. Some of them only want to criticise things like church priviliege or political influence.
EmperorNero
Are you asking whether atheists tend to be statists?
Basically yes. Maybe it’s just my imagination but people who identify as sceptic / atheist / secular humanist (I know these positions are very different beasts but at the same time there is significant overlap between the people/organisations who promote them) tend to be more statist than say Joe Average.
Which is why I am asking for “hard data” e.g. political surveys, stuff like that.
btw: Are blockquotes done with html or does the forum use bbcode or something like that? The editor seems a little bit strange to me…
Okay, let me rephrase: obviously those who consider it impossible for one to be an atheist without also supporting a guaranteed basic income, animal rights, and vegetarianism are using a different definition of “atheism”.
in short, yes, majority of outspoken atheists (on the internet especially) are statists and hardcore ones. But atheism doesn’t imply skepticism. Atheists believe in all kinds of woo, including state religion for sure. I have a problem with skeptics though. To me, a skeptic is someone, who do not only critically inspects all sciences and pseudoscience, but all philosophy discourse in general, including politics and being SKEPTICAL about authority. So personally, I love showing to my fellow statist skeptics that they are in fact not so critical when it comes to questioning their own worldview. I became skeptic and only THEN I came to anarchist conclusion. So it’s at the same sad and funny that skeptics (who are by default atheists too) still believe in a state religion and unquestionable authority.
Humanism is just a substitute of a religion for atheists who drop their previous one (christianity, islam etc.). Even though I am partly humanist too, in a sense that I share many ideas, but not all of them.. just the libertarian ones.