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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)?
I think it's just an age thing. Atheism forces you to remain ignorant of substantial parts of human experience. It would be difficult to hold that level of ignorance for a very long time, especially with the internet. I think it's just hard to enforce that level of blindness in the age of the internet.
There do seem to be a few people in my life that never grew out of their atheism phase, but they seem generally uncurious.
Maybe I'm just way off? My suspicion is that there are very, very few atheist rationalists. I don't think that the curiosity involved in rationalism would be able to also support being an atheist. The cognitive dissonance would be too strong.
To expand on this: a religious person asks the question "what if there is no god" and spends a life exploring it. An atheist asks that question when they're a teenager (usually), figures that they know the answer, and then refuses to explore further.
Is...is this a troll? It pattern matches way too well to what an atheist might say about Christians if you replaced the term in your post. Like, down to the actual words and sentences.
No this is definitely not a troll. I actually sortof hate the (blatantly inverted) myth that religious people can't be scientists, but I think it illustrates my point really well, so here goes:
You can have a devout Catholic particle physicist, astronomer, biologist, etc. These things are completely compatible with each other. Consider the breadth of experience that a devout Catholic astronomer has. They are able to tap into both the beauty of the universe, as well as integrate this into a broader (in my opinion richer) understanding about how humans and our morality fit into that universe. They get the "stars are cool" side of things, but they also get the divine "this is bigger than me" philosophical side of things.
To a devout Atheist, only part of this is available. You certainly get the "stars are cool" part, but you have to remain intentionally ignorant of the rest of the human experience.
Another example could be: I am a musician, and because of my understanding of music, I hear a drastically different thing when listening to it than somebody who isn't. Things which are "clever" in music just aren't apparent to a person who doesn't understand what is happening. Because I am willing to explore the idea that music is more than just patterned noise, my experience is richer. It's why the listening experience is richer for a musician than it is for a non-musician.
The same is true for cooking, painting, sculpting, etc. If you're a chef, you get to tap into a better understanding of what another chef is making for you and why it is interesting.
An atheist sees thousands of years of human history, art, and philosophy and (to stay in my metaphor) they just see the patterned noise that a non-musician hears when listening to music. It's pretty colors on a canvas, but that's kindof it.
A Catholic visiting Saint Peters Basilica sees something more than an atheist.
But the Catholic misses out on nothing.
The Atheist retort to this is, of course: but what if its all fake? Okay that's a fine question, but that starts driving into a question that I think causes the snake to sort of eat its own tail: what's real? Is the love I feel for my wife and children "real"? etc. etc. (this is a well trodden discussion that I don't think I need to remap)
If it's fake though, your better understanding is at best just noise. If you think you are psychic and can see auras, you will think you have more to say about people's words and truthfulness and the multi colored auras may even add beauty to their speech. But if you have a brain tumour then none of that information is true. If you call the FBI and tell them you know Bob Smith is going to kill someone, whether you have true or fake information is critical.
The same for an astronomer, if you think the reason for some phenomena is God and it is not, then you are further away from the actual truth.
You are correct that the Catholic has additional context and information, but that is only a good thing if they are actually correct. If not it may well be actively harmful. If it was only taken within the aesthetic context than that isn't really a problem. But I would argue that history shows that people are really very bad at keeping their beliefs in that sphere.
If Catholicism is wrong that gay sex is sinful and instead Gay God thinks it is the most virtuous act and gets you into Heaven, then that additional information being taught may have doomed hundreds of thousands of people to Hell. Whether your additional information is accurate or not is basically the whole point, if you are going to try to teach and pressure people into following it.
Catholics can certainly be scientists however no question, the ones that are generally focus on the fact that God created a universe that He wants to be explored with reason. So while God might be the ultimate cause of a super nova, the proximate cause was running out of hydrogen or whatever. Whether the sense of wonder of Godly creation outweighs the materialistic sense of wonder about a vast universe of chaos and beauty does not seem to be proven though.
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