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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026

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It probably makes more sense if you view the phrase "intra-atheist squabble" as similar to "intra-bald-people squabble". Atheism isn't a faction with a unifying dogma or rules or structure, it's literally just "all the people who don't think there are any gods. It's a mistake to model atheists as a group that can, I don't know, have some kind of sedevacantist schism as to who's the real atheism pope with authority over atheism.

And I struggle to understand the second half of your bingo card: "intelligent life may be extremely improbable" isn't some crazy position, neither among atheists nor in general. From the way you're presenting it (and I may be misreading it), you seem to be saying something like: "huh, it's interesting and fun how, in arguing amongst themselves, these atheists have unintentionally generated a strong argument against atheism".

But that's not what that is!

Handwavy BigNum arguments are a typical part of the arsenal. Isn't the entire point of the unfalsifiable multiverse idea to construct a handwavy BigNum argument?

Depends which multiverse idea you're talking about, but I don't think so. When you say "arsenal", do you mean the arsenal of atheists? Because I don't think that's true either.

There's a pretty long history of dirty theists making arguments along the lines of, "Let's compute how inconceivably improbable it is for intelligent life to spontaneously develop out of simple dead matter." I don't really subscribe to such arguments, but that is neither here nor there. It may be the case that you are unaware of the typical battle lines that have been drawn when they do so. Not being aware of such would be a reasonable explanation for your confusion.