I'm not sure it's anything to do with the internet. A lot of this stuff is taking place offline - shouting people down at lectures and things like that.

My own theory is it's due to the decline of religion. I say that as a non religious person who has lately started wondering if I'm so right to be that way (I never used to question the righteousness of scientific atheism).

Religion can be defined as a moral framework. We have agency and we must act. Religion helps answer the question "how must I act" in a thorough and formalised way: it tells us what right and wrong is, and it does so from a position of pseudo-authority (God says it, so it must be moral).

The common thread between all these conservatives-get-censored stories we're seeing is that leadership, whether it be corporate political or academic, is staggeringly weak in the face of moral outrage. Even when that outrage is coming from people who are barely adults, people far more senior and more experienced than them fold immediately - even if they actually disagree.

I think this is because without any kind of rigorous moral framework, people don't have any footing on which to push back. Someone pops up and says "that person is the devil because they don't respect women" or whatever, and maybe that's a total pastiche of their position but it's a position anchored in the moral framework of identity politics/femininism. Without any equivalent grounding in an alternative moral framework, the leadership doesn't know how to respond, they are desperate to see themselves as a "good person" and so they're left scrambling to obey the demands of the assembled mob. If they already felt like they were good people, they'd be much more capable of resisting such attacks.

Organised religion crops up in every human society throughout history except this one - I believe we're really the first to be widely atheist. But it seems all we've done is replace one set of gods with another: now instead of worshipping invisible deities of peace, love, war, etc, we worship at the deities of minority intersections ... and crusade against heretics who deny the sanctity of that worship.

Everyone worships something. You can worship deity, the State, or yourself.

Those working tirelessly to shut down contrary thoughts and opinions and playing semantics games are doing so with a religious fervor and to redefine social norms to their own worldview.

> Everyone worships something.

I don’t think someone following the tenets of Buddhism would worship anything. Correct if me I’m wrong.

It depends on your definition of "worship". It's not particularly well defined.

Yeah, for particular sects of Buddhism, such as Pure Land, one can observe practices that are more akin what we would call worship.

Heh, yeah, it depends on your definition of "Buddhism", too. It's probably somewhat better defined than "worship" in some sense, but still a broad target. Between the two fuzzy words you can craft significant overlap or make then virtual opposites.

Agreed. What we're seeing from the thought police is a resurgence of puritanism. With various degrees of success, religions can put guard rails on puritanism with 'love the sinner hate the sin' messages, it's not apparent whether any of that exists for puritanical ideologues - the Pope washed the feet of Muslim refugees, when's the last time you saw someone woke AF go out of their way to affirm the humanity of someone who holds opposing views? Ask hollywoods liberals if they'd shake Trump's hand.

> Religion helps answer the question "how must I act" in a thorough and formalised way

Most religions condone murder in the name of their "religion", this is not how people should act.

Most religions teach their "morals" with parables that can be interpreted in different ways, not what I would call formalised or thorough.

The fact that christianity is so divided while claiming to believe the same thing should be all the proof you need of this, and its not just christianity.

Do they? The 5th commandment is "thou shalt not murder".

Parables: yes, that's certainly true. But can you create an adaptable moral framework without a lot of ambiguity? Even the law is ambiguous and it's far too large for the widespread adoption a moral framework requires.

The fact that christianity is so divided while claiming to believe the same thing should be all the proof you need of this, and its not just christianity.

There are a billion different religions when you break them down, but, they all agree on the basics. Every branch of Christianity agrees with principles like "thou shalt not murder", "feeding the poor is virtuous", "love thy neighbour", "care for the sick" etc.

I'm not saying Christianity is an awesome moral framework mind you. That's not my argument. My argument is that the vast majority of people no longer have any framework that guides them in how to act. When faced with the outrage of people who do, they crumble as a consequence.

The definition of murder changes with societies laws. Much of the prescribed killing in the Christian bible would be classified as murder today. Working on the sabbath for instance.

Successful religions follow the golden rule and the like. People don't need a religion to evaluate how their actions impact others.

deus vult

I don't think it's religion, personally, because in Christianity for instance you see the pro-lifers and the people at the border protesting to give refuge to Honduran asylum-seekers in accordance with the teachings of Jesus and they often seem to have essentially no common ground, frankly. On a personal level they do, but on a political level, nah.

Ah but I'm not arguing that this dispute is religious in nature or that religious people all agree (the bible has nothing to say on the topic of mass immigration anyway, AFAIK).

Rather that the people protesting for or against something because of their religious views are much less likely to suddenly change those views or crumble in the face of pressure from opposing activists. They have some sort of concrete belief system that they've thought about and are invested in - it doesn't have to make sense, but they aren't going to turn around and say, "ok ok I promise I won't be pro-life anymore" because some angry Google engineers tweeted that they must hate women's rights. Their views are more robustly grounded than that.

Exodus is the story of a mass immigration

>Where might militant atheists and religious fundamentalists find common ground?

Postmodern atheism and postmodern theism converge.

> Where might militant atheists and religious fundamentalists find common ground?

It turns out that the answer to this is transphobia, sadly.