1. Have been thinking about the four horsemen of atheism, who were my entry into twitter. These guys stood for rationality, critical thinking, and honesty. They rejected religious belief because that belief requires “other ways of knowing.”

2. “Other ways of knowing” requires rejection of evidence, of mainstream professional sources of information, and of scientific fact. In practice it almost always involves some gathering around cult figures who promote “real truth” hidden by a vast conspiracy of enemies.

3. While the FH promoted the values of rationality, they consistently opposed religious extremism, which is the worst-case end result of religious belief. They pointed out that extremism is surrounded by concentric circles of participation in the unreality of religion.

4. The FH opposed all concentric circles of unfounded belief and all forms of the center circle of radicalism, whether it was Christianity in history, Islamic terrorism, RW American extremism, woke cancel ideology and its recent outbreaks of violence…

5. And now, the remaining 3 horsemen stand unequivocally against the newest big threat of religious radicalization - the cult of Trumpism and its Q religious texts.

6. The through-line of this form of atheism doesn’t just reject one religion or one level of religious belief, but rather all forms of belief that require rejection of evidence. These men have been consistent -

7. many of the people who read them and were seemingly inspired by their rationality have not. It turns out that a lot of people were in it for the tribal membership to oppose whichever group was most out of favor at the moment. In short, they were just religious themselves.
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