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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.
I didn't miss that line, but I can't follow it.
The central claim of Christians is that Jesus is LORD, therefore his teachings and code of behavior ought to be privileged. When that code conflicts with material concerns, religion takes precedence. The central claim of atheism is that the Christians (or other theists) are wrong, therefore their teachings, and Jesus' teachings, are not worthy of privilege. It does not construct its own code.
Goodguy asked why the Motte doesn't pounce on this whenever someone makes decisions based on those teachings. By analogy, you could ask why the Motte doesn't pounce on us every time we make decisions...not based on those teachings? But there's a trivial answer to that one, because atheism just says to fall back on material reasoning, which allows actual evidence. If you want to know why a Western Internet forum is willing to tolerate the classical-liberal concept of evidence, I'll wave vaguely in the direction of the sidebar and mutter something about Descartes.
I mean, this is a part of it. They generally have significantly more at the core. It takes about two questions of asking "why is that" to get to it. (Hint, they're usually appealing to methodological constraints, which they're sneakily confusing for a metaphysical theory.)
Actually, he didn't. Not a word about making decisions. Just about Christians being Christians in general.
You keep citing a difference between "methodological" and "metaphysical." I get that atheists tend to attack Christianity on methodological grounds, like citing the "absence of evidence." I also understand that this doesn't disprove the spiritual claims of afterlife, souls, et cetera. But Christianity does make material claims, too! I don't see the problem with atheists using Christianity's failure to deliver on such claims as evidence--not proof!--against the unfalsifiable spiritual claims.
What are the two questions you have in mind? If I'm understanding your dichotomy right, I think I can probably give answers that don't run afoul.
As for Goodguy--you are correct, and he didn't make it about decisions. I think it would have been a better argument if he had.
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