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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.
I'm an atheist, and I wouldn't say I'm "ignorant" of anything. I've been highly interested in religion and mythology since middle school, and I've done a lot of reading in this area. I've never really stopped reading about religion. I've read the Bible as well as religious and secular Bible commentaries, the Quran and several biographies of Muhammed, studied Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism in college, read pagan apologia like Sallust's On the Gods and the World and what remains of Julian the Apostate's Against the Galileans, and recently I've been reading through some important Vaishnavite Hindu texts, like the Srimad Bhagavatam. I've attended services everywhere from Eastern Orthodox churches to Hare Krishna temples.
I'm not convinced of the metaphysical truth claims of any revealed religion I've investigated, and I'm not compelled by watered down forms of religion like deism or "spiritual but not religious."
I'm very curious. I've constantly investigated religious texts and rituals around the world. I like to think I have an open mind.
The most I can say is that the concepts of metis and signalling have given me grounds to believe that religion could have some place in society to make large social groups function well. But other than that pragmatic argument, I don't think I've been convinced by any particular religious claim.
What do you consider the place I should have ended up in after I had done all my investigations?
I'd say that if you diligently investigate the merit of classical philosophical theism then you should arrive at a place where you consider it philosophically formidable and worthy of respect if not actually true. The best introduction to this tradition that doesn't require you spending an inordinate amount of time reading Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas is probably Edward Feser, who has a couple books that distill a lot of the classical argumentation into a more approachable format.
I minored in philosophy with a focus on classical philosophy. Granted, I've always found ethics more interesting than metaphysics, but I am at least familiar with Plato and Aristotle's metaphysics. Certainly, I think there's a lot to respect in both of their philosophies, though I think I'm more impressed with their ability to find the right questions to ask, rather than their ability to arrive at the correct answers.
I'll admit that Aquinas is a gap in my studies, since he's quite a bit later than I'm usually interested in when it comes to philosophy. What little I have seen of Thomism has generally impressed me, though it hasn't really swayed me much. Catholicism does have a lot of smart people in its stable, but so do other religions. Buddhist Abhidharma literature and the works of Nāgārjuna are also philosophically formidable, and I still don't believe in reincarnation and Nirvana in an "orthodox" Buddhist fashion.
I might check out Edward Feser. If you had to pick one book of his that you think I would benefit most from, which would you recommend?
Re. Feser:
"The Last Superstition" is a polemic against New Atheism that, while technically correct about how laughably ignorant many New Atheist arguments were of philosophy, isn't going to convince the unconvinced simply due to how angry it is.
"Scholastic Metaphysics" looks very good. I'm ashamed to say I've owned a copy for two years and have yet to start it. He is good at making tricky, subtle philosophical concepts accessable even to a dumb ox like yours truly, though.
You could also check out his blog archives for a taste. Many posts are topical and/or polemical so look for ones where he addresses particular concept.
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