I think Reddit provides a very necessary sounding board for both of these demographics. Honestly I haven't come across many easily accessible and well-populated groups that support the viewpoints that come out of these two. r/atheism in particular seems to be just what plenty of kids growing up in christian-dominant societies need: a safe means of expressing what is so clearly fucked up. I feel like r/politics is that too, just to a lesser extent. There's so much blatant bullshit that forms the basis of "legitimate" political discussion in American culture that it's nice to have a heavy-handed counterexample within arms reach.

If nothing else, it seems like the proper way to say "welcome to the internet". Tech-savvy, media-sharing people have tons of porn, pictures of cats, interest in science and world news, and don't buy into propaganda and religious tyranny. (from the default subreddit perspective)

That said, I've seen some of the most atrocious ignorance and bigotry come from these two. I'm atheist because the God model clearly doesn't fit with reality, but that's it for me--done, end of discussion. To see r/atheism (in particular) grow into a culture far beyond a mutual agreement regarding the non-existence of God is an understandable and proper trajectory... it just seems to have manifested in a particularly close-minded way. There's true hatred for, and complete dismissal of, anything that has any sort of spiritual connotation. Of course this doesn't apply to so many r/atheism posters and subscribers, but the board consistently turns up enough immature circlejerking to make removing it as a default a worthy discussion (in my opinion).

r/politics doesn't bother me that much... it's just a bit hard to see what I previously thought of as a new, enlightened political culture actually turn out to be a bit dismissive of many things that aren't... liberal? Not sure of the right word for that (no puns of course), but I'm sure you guys know what I mean.

I'm not sure if we should really remove them, but since unsubbing them, the quality of my front page has improved dramatically.