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I find it interesting that The Motte tends to treat atheism with kid gloves that are not reserved for other belief systems. For example, the idea that there is no difference in intelligence between different genetic groups of humans is widely called out here as being simply wrong. Which it almost certainly is, in my opinion. But consider the idea that methodological constraints actually are a metaphysical theory, or further implying that shoes are atheists. These ideas are, I think, even less likely to be true than the idea that there is no difference in intelligence between different genetic groups of humans (at least the latter can be empirically shown true or false; the former is just a category error). But atheism on The Motte is usually not met with accusations that it is as absurd, indeed perhaps more absurd, as any flavor of wokeism. Nor is the history acknowledged that New/Internet Atheists almost certainly led to a willingness to embrace relativism everywhere and ultimately wokeism by the masses of "laypeople". Wokeism gets often and in my opinion properly pilloried on here for being nonsensical on the level of correspondence to objective reality, but atheism typically gets a free pass. Even the philosophers on here mostly refuse to really call it out as being absurd when the topic comes up.
Does this happen because atheism is largely not viewed as a threat anymore (since its birth of wokeism is already in the past) and because since wokeism is this community's main out-group and atheism is vaguely internet-weirdo-aligned in the modern West, people here tend to follow the principle of "the enemy of an enemy is my friend"? Or, to be more charitable, maybe it is because wokeism can fairly easily be criticized on the level of normal scientific investigation, whereas the claims that atheism makes go so far beyond typical constraints of the scientific method that one actually does just quietly make an exception for it because its claims are fundamentally viewed as being orthogonal to scientific investigation (and people just fail to ever mention such)?
Because the atheists are right. /thread.
It took me longer than I'd like to realize this wasn't a copy of @Goodguy's post, and I still can't tell how sincere it is. So I guess I'm left resorting to honest engagement.
I think the analogy falls apart when you pick examples. Atheist shoes aren't exactly the central claim. Sure, '00s atheism built up a bunch of weird cruft, universalized arguments, etc. But Goodguy wasn't attacking the cruft. He was clumsily mocking the big, central point of doctrine that Christians agree on. That allows dodging your version by saying "yeah, that whole shoes thing is weird, isn't it?" Or, in my case, "what? shoes?"
Likewise, you're off base with "acknowledging the history" of atheism -> progressive politics. I assume the social-justice framing is intentional, but it's also absent from last week's post. There's also a gap in the causal chain, since a lot of old-school atheists got really uncomfortable about "atheism+" or "New Atheism", and those are the steps that really defined the transition. I could also argue that this confuses correlation and causation if 2010s atheism was really just a corpse piloted by SJWs.
You might have missed the line about mistaking methodological constraints for a metaphysical theory. That's pretty darn close to the central claim of most atheists, especially the ones 'round the internets who would be most apt for not-kid-gloves treatment.
But that's kind of the whole point. They created the corpse! They knew what they were doing when they killed it. But like any social fad, they shrugged it off, thinking that nothing could possibly go wrong. Only after they saw the fruits of their labor did they start feeling uncomfortable about the whole thing. Let's put it this way, I've seen arguments that Christianity is to blame for wokeness, and some of those arguments are actually not all that bad. But if you look at, like, a random Protestant 'barely believer' church that is now headed toward wokeness, you probably wouldn't say that they caused the rise of wokeness. You certainly wouldn't use that in particular to claim that Christianity in general caused the rise of wokeness. But you might say something like, "Look at these churches who have basically abandoned any real faith, are honestly basically agnostic already, don't even really believe in any sort of real morality. Those choices have left a corpse of a church which was just too vulnerable to 'woke mind virus'." In a sense, those choices caused wokeness to rise up in those churches rather than in others. In the same sense, that's what a lot of the 2010s atheism did to large portions of the masses.
What does this mean?
Why would it matter? The truth value of a statement or belief stands independent of whatever it may engender.
Science has methodological constraints; it makes certain assumptions and speaks only to things within the constraints of those assumptions. But instead, folks want to claim that those are not constraints on the method; they're constraints on reality. Rather than building an actual metaphysical theory, they just declare that their constraints handwave the whole problem away.
To be as flippant as the commenter two posts up in this thread, because the atheists are wrong. /thread
It's only bonus badness that their wrongness led to one of the very things the OP was complaining about.
Are you sure the constraints on science are not actually constraints of reality? How could you tell from the inside? You say thats what they do, but you haven't made that argument.
Are you sure that in a world with magick, science could not quantify the heat of a fireball and trace where the energy came from? and in a world with djinn, science could not measure how many wishes they can give and when?
And are you sure that in a world with a God, science could not see Him? Perhaps Hubble would see His face in the sky or microscopes would indeed see angels dancing on the head of a pin?
Can we not prove God because He is unprovable or because He does not exist? What evidence (scientific or "other") would sway you?
I'm sure that the irrational confidence in the converse is irrational.
Given how incredibly low-effort and standoffish nearly every one of your comments in this thread have been, why should any of us engage more charitably with you? Do you believe that you’re presenting the best possible face for your position right now, given that - as you correctly identified - your position is a minority one in this space? Or did you just want to use this whole thread to indulge your smug and petty side, since you seem to perceive that this is the way many people here treat your beliefs, and you want to have a “two can play at that game” kind of lark?
I mean, I'm mostly gathering comparative data, and I can now include the way you've responded here as part of that data set.
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But you haven't made any arguments it is irrational? You are assuming it is. Is it irrational to focus on the measurable and observable?
It MIGHT be but i think you have to make that argument.
There's a difference between "focusing on" and "mistaking it for a metaphysical theory".
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