FWIW, the New Atheists were and are important to me and my friends who grew up and went to school in the South. I get that you might be tired of hearing their “obvious” schtick if you live in San Francisco, but for a young person in epistically hostile territory, it can be very valuable to hear somebody loudly and clearly speaking common sense from far away.
Also, Sam Harris’ podcast is quite popular (#93 on iTunes at this moment), and his Patreon is one of the most lucrative. His books sell pretty well. I don’t think it’s accurate to cast him as a thinker who has been rejected by the mainstream. I suspect there are a lot of people who listen to his podcast but worry about broadcasting that fact.
Or a lot of people who listen to his podcast and don’t pay much attention to what the Baffler has to say about things. I have literally never heard of the Baffler before this. They describe themselves as writing articles about “Silicon Valley snake-oil, the deadening weight of consumer capitalism, our faithless media, and the redemptive promise of people claiming control of their own lives”, so I imagine the average Sam Harris fan has never heard of them either.
Like, “there exists at least one magazine in which people are publishing negative articles about New Atheists” does not mean that society has rejected a particular viewpoint; there exists at least one magazine in which people are publishing negative articles about literally every ideological group. You might as well assume that feminists are rejected by all of society because Christina Hoff Sommers exists.
FWIW, the New Atheists were and are important to me and my friends who grew up and went to school in the South. I get that you might be tired of hearing their “obvious” schtick if you live in San Francisco, but for a young person in epistically hostile territory, it can be very valuable to hear somebody loudly and clearly speaking common sense from far away.
Also, Sam Harris’ podcast is quite popular (#93 on iTunes at this moment), and his Patreon is one of the most lucrative. His books sell pretty well. I don’t think it’s accurate to cast him as a thinker who has been rejected by the mainstream. I suspect there are a lot of people who listen to his podcast but worry about broadcasting that fact.
Or a lot of people who listen to his podcast and don’t pay much attention to what the Baffler has to say about things. I have literally never heard of the Baffler before this. They describe themselves as writing articles about “Silicon Valley snake-oil, the deadening weight of consumer capitalism, our faithless media, and the redemptive promise of people claiming control of their own lives”, so I imagine the average Sam Harris fan has never heard of them either.
Like, “there exists at least one magazine in which people are publishing negative articles about New Atheists” does not mean that society has rejected a particular viewpoint; there exists at least one magazine in which people are publishing negative articles about literally every ideological group. You might as well assume that feminists are rejected by all of society because Christina Hoff Sommers exists.