RE: Books regarding atheism
November 21, 2019 at 10:21 pm
(This post was last modified: November 21, 2019 at 10:52 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
What you have to say on the matter doesn't just stretch atheism beyond the remit the term covers and into the territory of other positions, it also flies in the face of much of what we know about human decision-making and belief in general. We're not rational creatures, for example, so much as rationalizers, and our memory is not a reliable timestamp for events so much as it's a system of making associations that reinforce our internal narratives.
Particular to this issue, post hoc ergo propter hoc. After this, therefore because of this. People remember having read some contradiction, for example, and they remember being or becoming or realizing that they were atheists. The latter may not actually have follow the former, but in conjunction with a desire to be "reasonable thinking atheists" there is cognitive pressure to associate them and remember them in that order, to assert a causal relationship.
In contrast with how we perceive ourselves, and events in relationship to ourselves and the causal relationship between them - we find that by the time we've created the narrative of a "decision" - the fix is already in. We were not privy to the details, the actual functional details of this "decision" - because they aren't useful to us. This is the gap that our memory fills. This is the thing we communicate to others in words, which add an extra layer of implicit and explicit bias.
There are cracks, though, in the narratives. What we might call minority reports. People commonly recall a period of doubt preceding any exploration of their faith. In fact, that period of doubt is often, as they recall, the impetus for that exploration in the first place. Was the doubt created by some thing they would later discover? No more than anything I learned long after I learned a hell of alot about a hell of alot of gods. Not unless we have a time machine, that is. If they hadn't discovered that particular thing, later, would they have continued along the path of doubt until they did find something which confirmed what was almost certainly already there, in their subconscious? Again, as people so often recall it, yes. They keep looking, until they find what they're looking for. No matter how inconsequential it may be to the larger question of a gods existence..and, in fact, even if it isn't any justification for atheism at all, they satisfy themselves with it. A contradiction in a magic book has absolutely nothing to tell us on the issue of whether gods exist. Nothing.
The TLDR version is that these things aren't usually any commitment to an external measuring stick, it isn't on account of any commitment -to them- that a person does or doesn't believe, but on account of a commitment to that self narrative and a need for it to be cohesive and positively reinforcing that we imagine ourselves to be in some sort of rational control over what we believe or feel. We are not. To use an even simpler analogy, we put on a coat after it gets cold, not before. This is all very inconvenient for any rational discussion of a state of belief, and not for a single party or side in those discussions, either. It bothers us to think of ourselves in this way, it contradicts the narrative we have fastidiously curated, but it also denies nutters the avenue of attack they require..positively insist on, even.
-and so here we are.
You need for what you have to say to apply, and no amount of "reasonable thinking"..atheist or otherwise, will dissuade you from it, because these other things you have to say, about other positions and about atheists and atheism in general, are clearly an important portion of your own self narrative. So important that in response to a request about books on atheism, you actually offered up a book on exactly those opinions...rather than atheism. I'd be willing to bet that, like our hypothetical deconvert recounting his story, you came to these opinions before you sought out anything even remotely approaching a rational basis for them, and that you've satisfied yourself with it's contents in precisely the same way. All that's left is to see how diligently you'll work to lie to yourself, or to me, in order to curate them, and insist that this simply cannot be so, just like I can't possibly exist, even as I sit here and have a very frank discussion with you about atheism.
Particular to this issue, post hoc ergo propter hoc. After this, therefore because of this. People remember having read some contradiction, for example, and they remember being or becoming or realizing that they were atheists. The latter may not actually have follow the former, but in conjunction with a desire to be "reasonable thinking atheists" there is cognitive pressure to associate them and remember them in that order, to assert a causal relationship.
In contrast with how we perceive ourselves, and events in relationship to ourselves and the causal relationship between them - we find that by the time we've created the narrative of a "decision" - the fix is already in. We were not privy to the details, the actual functional details of this "decision" - because they aren't useful to us. This is the gap that our memory fills. This is the thing we communicate to others in words, which add an extra layer of implicit and explicit bias.
There are cracks, though, in the narratives. What we might call minority reports. People commonly recall a period of doubt preceding any exploration of their faith. In fact, that period of doubt is often, as they recall, the impetus for that exploration in the first place. Was the doubt created by some thing they would later discover? No more than anything I learned long after I learned a hell of alot about a hell of alot of gods. Not unless we have a time machine, that is. If they hadn't discovered that particular thing, later, would they have continued along the path of doubt until they did find something which confirmed what was almost certainly already there, in their subconscious? Again, as people so often recall it, yes. They keep looking, until they find what they're looking for. No matter how inconsequential it may be to the larger question of a gods existence..and, in fact, even if it isn't any justification for atheism at all, they satisfy themselves with it. A contradiction in a magic book has absolutely nothing to tell us on the issue of whether gods exist. Nothing.
The TLDR version is that these things aren't usually any commitment to an external measuring stick, it isn't on account of any commitment -to them- that a person does or doesn't believe, but on account of a commitment to that self narrative and a need for it to be cohesive and positively reinforcing that we imagine ourselves to be in some sort of rational control over what we believe or feel. We are not. To use an even simpler analogy, we put on a coat after it gets cold, not before. This is all very inconvenient for any rational discussion of a state of belief, and not for a single party or side in those discussions, either. It bothers us to think of ourselves in this way, it contradicts the narrative we have fastidiously curated, but it also denies nutters the avenue of attack they require..positively insist on, even.
-and so here we are.
You need for what you have to say to apply, and no amount of "reasonable thinking"..atheist or otherwise, will dissuade you from it, because these other things you have to say, about other positions and about atheists and atheism in general, are clearly an important portion of your own self narrative. So important that in response to a request about books on atheism, you actually offered up a book on exactly those opinions...rather than atheism. I'd be willing to bet that, like our hypothetical deconvert recounting his story, you came to these opinions before you sought out anything even remotely approaching a rational basis for them, and that you've satisfied yourself with it's contents in precisely the same way. All that's left is to see how diligently you'll work to lie to yourself, or to me, in order to curate them, and insist that this simply cannot be so, just like I can't possibly exist, even as I sit here and have a very frank discussion with you about atheism.
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