That's a large part of it. Even Andrew/Legal Mindset eventually come around to this POV. If you're not genuine, people will resent you. That was Nick's biggest mistake, and the biggest cause of his downfall.
Another part of it is, I think, even the atheists and agnostics here can appreciate the fact that Nick's rebellion against his religious upbringing is cringe AF.
There was that whole fedora tipping skeptic movement in the early 2010s that people like Cult of Dusty and the Amazing Atheist were part of. They too were all about as funny as a root canal.
I suspect militant atheism tends to be just as reviled as overzealous proselytization. Even among non-believers.
I think PPP is gonna have a field day with this next Kino Casino. He was around, and conversing with Nick, back when Nick trying to pretend he was a Christian. He'll certainly comprehend what a 180 this is.
I'm agnostic, I think there's a god and I think our attempts to understand god are all reaching out blindly in a dark room, but I am happy for people who have religion as a positive influence on their lives. I wish I could believe. So seeing this so called man who has revealed himself to be lower than a worm trying to tear it down while he throws away every blessing in his life is beyond contemptable.
As the institutional influence of Christian conservatism died off it basically took militant atheism with it, and then leftism had a massive surge and leftism is extremely pro-Islam so online atheists got squeezed back into the fringes because atheists often lean left and scolding Muslims was forbidden.
But even then I think average people still recognise that at least religious organisations feed the needy and build hospitals and schools. Militant atheists contributed fuck all during their relevance besides circlejerking about bearded sky man, milking Kent Hovind for clicks and shoving bananas up their assholes.
Nick is the right age to have experienced and absorbed the popular anti-religious sentiment during the 2000s. If his life shook out a little differently I think he would've never adopted the Christian veneer.
I thought YouTube atheists were cringe back when they were in style, I even thought Penn and Teller were cringe. I remember being 10 when their Bullshit show came out and already thinking they were lame despite being atheist even back then.
The problem with militant atheists is that they always had a big pompous “we’re smart, you’re stupid” quality to them, and they always seemed like the way wanted nothing more in life then to get into a debate with a Christian. Add that with the often disingenuous hyper literal Bible interpretations that they knew literally no demonination followed, or Richard Dawkins with his retarded “atheist are the most prosecuted group in America” victim playing and it put a sour taste in my mouth.
But on the flipped side. The constant preaching didn’t help Christians, and it’s frankly annoying to see all these right wing grifters Like Nick, Crowder, Dave Rubin, Ralph, Fuentes etc going all ham on the Bible thumping. I’ve always felt the right’s biggest issue is that they’ve never not sold conservatives without Christianity, which was why so many atheists felt obligated to go left.
Penn Jillette was the closest to a conservative atheist and he was a full blown lefty in disguise with his whole “gays and atheists belong together” crap from 2010 which helped start the atheism+
All of that is why frankly I don’t tell people about my religious beliefs. The whole concept has been tainted even worse than picking a political side.
Every kind of church I've been to has taught the answer to that, usually by quoting Romans 6. It's not exactly deep lore or very hard to understand, even some 8 year old children can explain it.
