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in reply to @camfusedly's post:

Thanks for commenting! As an ex-evangelical, hard same in a lot of hard ways. I wrote this thinking of friends and other acquaintances who weren’t raised Christian or maybe even their parents weren’t raised Christian, who think Christianity doesn’t affect them at all, but I could see it because of my background. (My post wasn’t clear 😣) I wonder if you had similar experiences?

I can't remember ever being a believer, and most of my peers throughout college had either similarly grown up doubting in an American Christian environment or were practicing from an entirely different tradition (Pakistani Muslim, Russian Judaism, etc).

In my adult life, I've predominately lived with first generation Vietnamese and Chinese immigrants, and that's made me appreciate how narrow the difference between American Christians and seculars are. For example, wealth/food from an American POV is either regarded as a blessing bestowed by God to His faithful, or a product of a well-designed system of functional government and the honest work of civilized people. Not difficult to tie that to your correct belief ideas.

My Vietnamese mother in law on the other hand would say we have abundance because we fought for it and won it. There's a finite amount of stuff to be had in the world, and wolves are always at the gate, so you've got to keep your claws sharp.

my two main opinions on new atheism are:

  1. it's main failing was that it acted like bookish upper-middle class white kids were the true victims of American Christian hegemony
  2. way too many new atheists, especially ex-Protestants, retained their evangelizing ways without analyzing that too deeply, and in some ways got a certain zealousness similar to Zeal of the Convert

As an exvangelical, cosigned.

It's kinda funny, because the cultural Christianity that you point out was something that I would have seen as a deep problem when I was a Christian. I think the main problem I'd have with that sort of cultural Christianity now is that it tends to not be especially examined, which means it can get bundled up in the "Things We Do Because We Do Them" bundle that lashes out against change.

(Of course, the benefit of it not being especially examined is that when it is examined, it isn't necessarily tied on super strongly)

Thanks for your comment and your co-sign! Yeah, that’s a good point, that hopefully if people’s identity/sense of in-group isn’t tied up in Christianity, then it’s easier for them to hopefully separate what they want to keep from what is harmful.