What is Reddit's opinion of Against the Gods?: A Concise Guide to Atheism and Agnosticism?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

He was an associate professor from Portland State University who wanted to get fired so he could say he had been cancelled, and when they didn't do it he resigned from his job and still called the faculty too woke to work with last September. Which might also hint at when he had received word that the IDW wanted to set up the university.

He is also a friend of Stefan Molyneux who is a ~~holocaust denier~~ holocaust defender and he wrote the preface to his book while lavishing praise on him as a truth-speaker just because he happens to be an atheist. In short, he's someone who realized he could make more money and have more readers from a career of sanitizing far-right pundits and culture war topics. His career is about brandishing his degree in philosophy and then saying that in his professional opinion extremely reactionary gurus are just rational "philosophers." Just like Sam Harris, he'll then attack liberal critics in the media and label them as hysterical, too woke, or too uncharitable to see the forbidden philosophical truths, and will pontificate a thousand times about the need to earnestly look at and believe in race science or transphobia. Because normalizing bigotry and making fun of scholars and publications that don't agree with his views are Peter's most pressing issues and he uses many tactics to accomplish those goals.

(I'd guess that much of this behavior comes from deep frustration at never having being promoted to a higher position and given more title and respect, because his first book went on an unnecessary rant about how he was denied advancement at his university for unexplained "political reasons.")

They are not left-wing academics. In fact, I made a comment addressing this a month ago. The relevant part is this:

But here's the thing... they're not on the Left. Boghossian is a "classical liberal" who wrote the foreward in known white supremacist Stephen Molyneux's book and has appeared on his channel to discuss the "issue" of feminism in atheist circles. He, like Jordan Peterson and so many other "classical liberals", make a boogeyman out of Postmodernism and tie it into social justice issues in order to attack the Left.

Pluckrose is a weird case, but she very much seems interested in the same anti-progressive agenda as her peers. Her self-described "best known essays" read as follows: ‘How French Intellectuals Ruined the West: Postmodernism and its Impact, Explained’; ‘Why I No Longer Identify as a Feminist’; ‘The Problem with Intersectional Feminism’ and, with James. A. Lindsay, ‘A Manifesto Against the Enemies of Modernity’.

She, like all the other classical liberals I've described thus far, has a very familiar political pedigree:

>She is currently writing a book about the impact of postmodern thought on academia and the impact of this on social-justice movements and wider culture.

Now, a possible counter to this is that she claims to be left-leaning (second source here). I'd have to know more to figure out exactly how much of this is accurate, but I'll take her at her word. Despite this, she has the same anti-progressive slant as her fellows and the IDW, all of which follow the "classical liberal" label. So I'll call her a Left-winger, but she's certainly an unorthodox one.

So what about James Lindsay? Does he follow the same trend? Oh shit yea. Who can forget such instant classic essays as "Are Academics Cowards? The Grip of Grievance Studies and the Sunk Costs of Academic Pursuit", "Postmodern Religion and the Faith of Social Justice", and "The Guru Appeal of Jordan Peterson in our Post-Everything World". Lindsay doesn't even call himself someone on the Left, as he insistently calls himself just a "liberal".

So no. Only one of these people is a leftist, and Pluckrose's body of work seems to consist mainly of shitting on modern feminism and, surprise surprise, using "Postmodernism" as a boogeyman to attack Leftists with. These people aren't the left attacking the left; they're part of the stupidly-named "intellectual dark web", the dweebs that swap platforms between Joe Rogan and Dave Rubin so they can jerk themselves into a frenzy about how much of a threat protesting college kids and "Postmodern Neomarxist" academics are.

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So when you say stuff like this:

>. Its kind of amazing the (apparent) lack of self examination and instead the focus on punishing the hoaxers.

I don't think you've actually looked into this. These people are politically motivated, capitalizing on the trend of anti-left sentiment and hiding behind a veneer of their own "leftism" to hide their history of very clear anti-left sentiments.

Don't think someone (Peter Boghossian, scroll to bottom) who worked closely with Stefan Molyneux should be considered a reliable scholar or investigator. Boghossian even contributed a foreword for Molyneux's book (2011) and joined one of his podcast in 2013 to condemn religion in its entirety. Yet, there has not been a single condemnation by Boghossian against Molyneux, despite Boghossian's multiple tweets daily. For someone who is so concerned about free speech, he is awfully silent about white nationalism or white supremacy.

For such a free-speech advocate, why is he complaining about the focus on BLM as opposed to climate change right now? Cause there hasn't been plenty of reports on climate change already, including today? Or his complete lack of tweet to any police violence since BLM protest started. He made no tweet about police militarization or over-policing or racial disparity from arrest through imprisonment. Instead he zeroed in on Antifa and the most surface reading of "defund the police", spending no time discussing the actual proposal to shift resources and rebuild the departments.

Or just look at his complete lack of response to Trump's prosecution against free speech. Where was his outrage when Trump threats against Twitter for fact-checking his tweets? Or threatening universities for opposing him with federal funding?

In the end, Boghossian is just another Dave Rubin, self-espoused 'liberal' who is nothing more than a megaphone for alt-right talking points on social issues. To excuse his behavior as just "twitter antics" while ignoring his single-minded focus on "wokeness" in all his recent works says more about your own bias than anything else.