I think it's no coincidence that the atheist community got overtaken by delusions related to gender specifically -- as opposed to, say, astrology, JFK conspiracy theories, ley lines or a thousand other folk beliefs. The delusions at hand had the competitive advantages of (1) coming out of the science/medicine community, which understandably has an elevated position in atheism, and (2) playing to the wishes and desires of us atheists, who generally want to see innate social roles replaced by a choose-your-own-adventure society and view sex differences as one of the major hurdles on that way. "Scientists learn to change people's sex" is an irresistible story for us, both due to its heroes and to their alleged achievement. Big if true! Much easier to call the fraud when it's coming from antivaxxers, mediums or 5G truthers.
Still shocking how long it lasted. Back in 2020 I made a bet that it would be widely seen as a medical malpractice scandal along the lines of fentanyl and thalidomide in 5 years' time; looks like I'm quite on track with that prediction now. But if someone had told me about what was going on back in 2010, I would have never expected it to last 15 years and perhaps take the US Democrats down with it.
That said, I don't believe your theory of religion creating a floor for stupid ideas. It might be true for a greatly deradicalized and institutionalized religion like Christianity, but it is hardly true for Islam in the Middle East, unless you take it rather literally and conclude that much of the region is stuck under that floor. It is also far too easy for religious apologists to pick and choose who they consider to be religious; e.g. are Russians religions by dint of going to church?
Islam has not prevented ISIS; it has spawned ISIS. As well as Hamas and the Islamic Republic of Iran, but these two at least can claim some temporary success at holding territory (I don't think for long). ISIS just burned through the population and died within 10 years (their African and East Asian offshoots are still active, but there is no chance for them to come back to the Middle East). Complete failure not merely by Western but by basic evolutionary standards.
Would the Middle East be Switzerland if not for Islam? At least Iran and Lebanon would have a chance, methinks.
I promise you I am aware of the problems Islam brings with it. I never said nor implied that religions can’t still do some very bad things.
I think you aren’t being imaginative enough, and not allowing the model any flexibility. Religions that have a badly configured floor/ceiling would suffer, as they harm the societies they inhabit.
I think your point would stand if you replaced "religion" by "modern (but not too liberal) Christianity". Maybe Islam is acting as a civilizing force in a few isolated spots of the planet, but everywhere else it *is* the kind of destructive virus a religion is meant to protect against. As to Judaism, it seems to react to heresies by splintering, so I guess there is always a sane component around, but that's shifting the goalposts. I frankly don't know enough to tell if Hinduism plays a significant role in India.
Muslims are some of the only people on earth who can still procreate at replacement levels. Europe is slowly dying. The british used to rule the world and now theyre terrified of "zombie knives" and cant even work up the guts to go arrest men who are raping their girls by the thousands. Seems to me muslims have a stronger floor than other europeans in some pretty basic ways.
I'm amused by the anecdote of the atheist who asked the monotheist how many gods are to be believed given than mankind has worshipped so many throughout the ages. The monotheist replies something to the effect of 'the one true god' to which the atheist replies that he only believes in one less. The implication is that the moral capacity of the atheist who rejects N gods is only marginally different than the monotheist who rejects N-1 gods.
One of my axioms is that absolute zero tolerance requires infinite policing. So if we consider the practical matter of tolerance of religious faith, the atheist has his work cut out for him when he professes to accept zero.
I think that it's useful to consider two camps when it comes to ideologies. There are devotees and there are shareholders. The intolerant devotees have the greatest burden. Shareholders are more flexible. I'd say shareholders, while paying attention to the fundamentals of their investments are the least likely to become fundamentalists. They'd rather switch than fight. Whereas devotees, especially fundamentalists, would rather fight than switch.
Something occurred to me when I was reading your first essay on this topic is that there are some senses in which this is nothing new. I don’t mean to pull the “old curmudgeon “ card, but here goes.
According to Wikipedia you were born in 1991, which means you missed The Cold War. From the early 20th Century until the 1990s, there was a titanic ideological struggle between communism and those who favored economic and personal liberty -- what might be called classical liberalism. Today’s historians and journalists like to downplay that struggle, but there really was an evil ideology with a powerful nation-state behind it. Up until the actual collapse of the Soviet Union, the idea it would collapse would have been considered utterly ludicrous.
Marx, as I’m sure you know, was famously anti-religious. He said that religion was “the opiate of the masses,” and both the Soviet Union and Communist China were officially atheist states. “Godless Communism” really was a Thing. It’s true that, in, say, 1984, there were plenty of atheists who were just normal people who questioned the existence of the supernatural. And it’s also true that some anti-communists were serious atheists -- Ayn Rand being the most famous and outspoken, both in her atheism and her anti-communism.
But communism was nonetheless very well-represented among atheists in that era, and there was certainly a sense that if you were a decent humane person who didn’t believe in God, of course you were a socialist of some sort.
But here’s the thing: that cluster of beliefs runs contrary to everything we know about how humans can organize themselves to produce stuff at large scale. Despite its pretensions (scientific socialism!) it is irrational, unscientific, and inherently repressive. A collectivist planned economy cannot work. And yet those ideas were popular among atheists before the Cold War ended.
And so now many atheists seem to have fallen for something else: gender ideology, which is ultimately both unscientific and repressive. Like I said, in a sense this is nothing new.
I'm looking forward to your conversation with Anna, where I think y'all talk about this! It dropped earlier today, so here's a link for anyone reading this comment who might also want to listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d80ztpgYXEA
This came out after Ayaan converted to Christianity, but just before she clarified her reasons for doing so in conversation with Dawkins. Re: him scoffing at the god shaped hole, I think his attachment to the "poetry of reality" is one way of filling it -- at least, that is what I filled my own with upon losing faith in god. Like you, I have never been tempted to believe in god again, and I have always been much more satisfied as an atheist... so maybe I'm just using the phrase differently (wrong?), because I have always taken it to simply mean the need to search for meaning once a religion no longer provides it.
If you like that Quillette piece and have any interest in reading another, I also tackled the trans ideology as a new incarnation of science denialism (and propose Camus' version of stoicism as a better reaction to the inevitability of sex differences): https://www.fashionablylatetakes.com/p/amor-fati?r=2vr1o
Edit to add: It's interesting that the issue of trans in sports has less support from atheists/agnostics than the other questions. Perhaps because sex differences are particularly obvious in that arena, and it's hard to watch a biological man punch a woman in the face, fewer nonbelievers can stomach it.
My hopefully somewhat honed intuition tells me that
without secularism being able in some sense to tell religion off, religion becomes dangerous. (And that any religion can.)
That’s one concern I have with where your reasoning is taking you. It seems to imply a specific hushed respect, that thing past the null point along the continuum towards Danish Cartoon riots.
But maybe it’s more compatible to me than I’m seeing? Or religion is really capable of existing as a positive force with less fear of being called out or embarrassed. I’d rather not take that bet if I could avoid it.
Sarah, it's always a pleasure to get your thoughts in long form. Please spend more time over here and less on the other place!
Your exploration of the floor/ceiling framework raises a critical question: can meaning-making be aligned more closely with truth seeking? As you know, while some myths may act as a floor against some irrationalities, they enable many others. Being on the right side of an issue for bad reasons is better than being wrong, but it's hardly optimal.
Given the accelerating pace of societal and cultural change, I'm not confident that we should take comfort in beliefs that were historically stabilising. Dogma, whether religious or secular, remains the true enemy, as it resists the adaptability crucial for navigating a rapidly changing world.
It’s also worth noting that when reality-denial isn’t codified as an unquestionable virtue within a moral system, it tends to dissipate much faster. Woke-atheists will lose the battle over gender-related irrationality in less than a decade. Culturally sanctified myths, deeply embedded within the moral fabric of society, resist error correction far more stubbornly than secular errors, which lack the same historical and sacred veneer.
The word of God is not self-correcting, but human words are. Perhaps this is reason enough to remain hopeful.
Ceilings? Floors? I no longer know which way is up or down.
On a more serious note, Western Universities, as we know them today, were very much birthed from Catholic monasteries where Science and Law was the examination of God's work. All of the most famous Western Universities today still have seminaries from which they initially began. Religion and Science don't have to be mutually exclusive. The Galileo dispute with the Pope was pretty much a one off. Even Islam, back in its Golden Age, had no problem tying the two together when Baghdad was at one time the center of all learning. Note: Apologies in advance for my overly broad and simple summation of history.
Now Reason, that's a whole different kettle of fish. Being a simple man who wants to keep his life simple, I pretty much stick with Common Sense.
If you are the well-read person that I am sure you are, then you have already read Tom Hollands' book Dominion. If not, you may want to, if for nothing more than to get a broader historical perspective of where we are today in the culture of the Western world.
“Are atheists only rational when the religious are irrational?”
Not all atheists, but probably most atheists. Your graphic suggests that some atheists are not in favor of letting male-to-female mimics into women’s spaces.
I realized long ago that the only thing we atheists have in common is our atheism. As it turns out, we really aren’t so special. Sorry if I popped anyone’s bubble.
I’m still not convinced that we need deity worship. I think it is safe to say that increasing levels of irreligiousness or atheism, which has been the global trend, has, in general, not been a bad thing when it comes to per capita GDP (for what that is worth).
Google “pew research the-global-god-divide” and look at the Wikipedia article on the “List of countries by irreligion.”
So, I’m not sure we need more religion, or more atheists. What we could use are more critical thinkers, skeptics, a whole tribe of them.
The real question is why the irreligious show significantly more support for gender ideology than the religionists. I have a hypothesis.
Are you familiar with the popular atheist PZ Myers and his blog “Pharyngula, evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal?” It was a huge shock to many of his fans when he began rigorously defending trans ideology. Some suspect he’s autogynephilic.
However, that certainly would not explain the irreligious poll results ; )
Note that he boasts about being a member of the Democrat tribe (Democrat and liberal now essentially describe each other). About 70% of atheists are Democrat and about 60% of Evangelical protestants are Republican which correlates with higher percentages in the poll for both groups.
Both groups are likely largely captured by tribalism.
In this poll, only a small percentage of the responses are the result of careful, informed, reasoned, thought. But that is true for almost any poll.
The depressing conclusion is that the vast majority of all politicized opinions are based on adherence to subconscious tribal narrative, not the result of careful, informed, reasoned, thought.
That is the reality of human nature.
Tribalism trumps truth, even for atheists.
Also consider Googling the terms “Psychology Today Here's Why Tribalism Trumps Truth” and Psychology Today Compelled to Conform: When Tribal Ties Trump Truth.”
The scientific method was developed in an attempt to ameliorate our powerful, innate, Pleistocene-evolved proclivity for subconscious (and conscious) bias. Tribalism is essentially my-side bias writ large.
Tribalism (the proclivity to see other tribes as evil, to avoid ejection from the tribe at all costs) evolved as a survival instinct. It’s in our wiring. It’s as much a part of us as our propensity to walk on two legs.
One might argue that, although still functional with other social primates (baboons, chimpanzees) battling over food resources, tribalism has become largely maladaptive behavior with our species.
Tribalism binds and blinds (atheist or not).
Most atheists are just normal, instinctively tribal human beings who just happen to have overcome (for whatever reason) the pull to be a member of a religious tribe, and having their blinders removed, they can now see the logical flaws in religion. However, they are still members of other tribes (Republican, Democrat, etc.) and being members of those tribes, they still have their tribal blinders on. Democrats and Republicans have a hard time seeing the flaws in their respective tribal narratives but can easily detect them in the other tribe.
I watched the same thing happen to the use of nuclear energy to combat climate change. Every single major environmental organization has, for decades, been against the use of nuclear energy.
Why?
The answer is antinuclear energy propaganda which became part of Democratic tribal narrative. The organizations are indoctrination victims. You, dear reader, are likely one as well.
How did that happen? Organizational takeover by ideologues. The Union of Concerned Scientists started out as a small group of physicists lobbying for Détente with nuclear weapons stockpiles. When their job was done, they went back to doing their thing, however, the organization with the amazing name morphed into one without any scientists, lobbying for an end to nuclear power stations, which have no more to do with nuclear weapons than an X-ray machine. And, like a snowball rolling down a mountain, more and more people were indoctrinated, each believing they had the truth, eventually capturing all major environmental organizations and most Democrats as well.
A book titled “The Myth of the Left and Right” posits how we end up in one political tribe or another and why we tend to stick to it even though its narratives change and even migrate back and forth between warring tribes (Harris owning a Glock). They argue that we need to stop labeling each other as Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative and just look at each issue regardless of which tribe champions it.
Tribal capture is a matter of degree. A test of one’s degree of political tribal capture might be to list all of your tribe’s (Republican/Democrat, conservative/liberal) narratives then cross off the ones you disagree with.
For example, are you for or against:
Abortion (none, restricted, no restrictions)?
Teaching religious ideology (creationism or intelligent design etc. etc.) in public schools?
Teaching woke ideology (male-to-female mimics allowed in women’s spaces and sports, gender bread dolls, childhood sex reassignment, DEI training, critical race theory, and on and on) in public schools?
Israel’s right to defend itself?
Censorship of competing ideas?
Restricting illegal border crossings?
The BLM riots?
And on, and on.
If one thinks all of one’s political tribal narratives are valid, one would be a ten on the tribal capture scale that starts at one and ends at ten. Nobody wants to believe that, in reality, more often than not, if your tribe’s leadership happens to get something right, they just got lucky.
Rational thought and evidence is the best chance to find reality, but that is often and easily overridden by tribal instinct.
I resonate especially with it because im 40M, and my wife was a hardcore feminist who delayed having children until the last possible moment. She even confessed to me not so long ago (after 15 years together) that she doesnt want kids because she hates humanity and, basically, that shes consumed by SJW guilt over her own continued existence. Between me & her therapist shes back to sanity now and we're doing IVF, but our odds dont seem great and im utterly convinced that this was precisely the kind of psychotic nonsense that religion guards against. Im trying to move on with grace but this has permanently planted in me a hatred of wokeness even deeper than my former disdain for religion.
I think that your theory has merit, and that the ceiling/floor dichotomy builds constructively upon the well-known notion of a religious ceiling. That said, I’m not sure how to proceed. Like yourself and Richard, adult me is simply not built for superstition. It seems we have a kind of uncorruptible logical core that might be rarer and at the same time more detached from IQ, eloquence, humanitarian instincts and ideals of science and reason, than we could imagine.
My Substack is called «Integrity» with the tagline «It shall be: Scientific, critical and ethical.». The concept of this apparently (relatively) rare scientific integrity I have borrowed from the autobiography of physicist Richard Feynman:
«The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.»
This also offers an explanation for the apparent detachment between IQ and the willingness to accept nonsense: IQ seems to be able to attack itself like an autoimmune disease, and the smarter you are, the more eloquently you may be able to fool yourself!
So when you call upon «safeguarding certain precepts with extra-rational support», it certainly sounds good, but a solution can, as far as I can see, never call upon extrarationality, as this opens a can of extrarational calls for «compassion» and relativism, that in the case of gender, undermines logic itself.
Instead, I think we need to unveil the underlying axioms of rationality, and at the same time unveil the dangers of relying uncritically on the positive effects of eloquence, compassion and IQ. By building a floor based on positive axioms of logic and rationality combined with roof warnings that acknowledges the limitations of humans—all too ready to fool themselves—we may indeed approach Pharrell Williams’ vision of being «a room without a roof» from the song Happy.
I beg to differ in the same sense that I don’t subscribe to the Christian notion that we’re all sinners. All can potentially make mistakes, but only a few are passionate about not fooling themselves, acknowledging that most people are indifferent and oblivious to this as a core problem.
Such awareness is of course not a 100% foolproof antidote to fooling yourself, but it is a very good start, and as close to an uncorruptible logical core as any man could strife for. Feynman talks about this as a principle, and a serious core problem, not as a receipt to cure all human fallibility once and for all!
I prefer the Hitchens formulation: atheism is a necessary condition for reason to triumph, but it is not a sufficient condition. I think the same could be said about a commitment to not fooling yourself.
A commitment to not fool yourself is important, but even then most of us are not particularly transparent to ourselves, and we all come wired up with a predilection for motivated reasoning and self flattery. Dont you notice that your ego gets a boost from imagining yourself to be an perceiver of uncorrupted reason? Dont you think that is itself a mechanism by which you might fool yourself? Nobody believes they are decieving themselves. We are all under the impression that theres something about us that explains why we are woke to the truth/redpilled/uncorruptible and the masses are decieved.
Im not advocating epistemic relativism. But i would say that epistemic humility is a journey not a destination. Its like being in an alcoholics recovery program. You are never really cured of alcoholism, you just have to manage it best you can every day.
This suggests that faith, not evolution, can lead us dangerously close to creationism.
Even more irrationally, her second sentence below would subtly lay the foundation for all kinds of new faiths purportedly based on real biological facts but imbued with new and unknown powers besides that of evolution. Why do we need an entirely new entity when evolution gives us all the answers? Natural selection itself plays the role of a new faith by facilitating the continuation of those who live a life adapted to fundamental physical and biological conditions. If there is any valid doctrine in the world that conforms to reality, it is natural selection. If you want a new faith, then it is the evolutionary process itself that needs protection.
Why do we have to grant “the power of the sacred” to fundamental truths and risk creating a new supposedly valid true faith? In fact Hinduism already does this!
Why does acknowledging the fundamental validity of evolution have to create something “sacred” ? Respect for and adaptation to our environment is equally powerful. We don’t need any meta-faith to live an adaptive life in the existing environment. What was that about “false gods” ?
All we have to do is recognize and understand the fundamental truths and cease to violate them or transfigure them. This can be done in any biology lesson in school, followed by laws or practices to reinforce them. Today almost everything is ultimately counter adaptive to protecting humans and nature but so far those promote the “faith” of ecology and evolution are losing the battle.
Sacralization may be an aberrant human tendency rather than a support though it may have short term immediate value. Organized religion tells us a lot about it and how it spreads. Hinduism in fact, with its many gods taking care of all human actions, is a kind of sacralization but one that puts human understanding in the form of worship of aspects of the real world. If you worship a goddess of the kitchen or the garden or wisdom, you are submitting to the constraints of nature and evolution, not transforming them into something mysterious or controlling. In the end Haider has scrambled some eggs instead of making a neat omelet.
LS
Sarah Haider:
In the past, I had mostly thought about the “ceiling” that faith created–the ways in which religion hindered progress, scientific achievement and understanding. But now I think much more about the “floor” it creates, too. Perhaps without certain myths granting the power of the sacred to some fundamental truths (like the fact that there are two sexes), we would drift away from reality altogether.
This view does not contend that, on the whole, religion is a “better way of knowing the world” than reason or science–the floor exists, but so does the ceiling. Instead, it recognizes the vulnerabilities of reason to other pressures, and proposes a value in safeguarding certain precepts with extra-rational support.
This is way simpler than you might think. You, yes, you, Sarah, are God!! You,(and everyone else, for that matter), are on a path to realize your inherent, eternal, loving, peaceful divinity. This is referred to as “Enlightenment”, “Ascension”, “Awakening” or “Self-realization” in the various spiritual circles throughout history. I’m guessing you’ll let us know when it happens. ✝️❤️🙏 All Blessings and Gratitude!!
I think it's no coincidence that the atheist community got overtaken by delusions related to gender specifically -- as opposed to, say, astrology, JFK conspiracy theories, ley lines or a thousand other folk beliefs. The delusions at hand had the competitive advantages of (1) coming out of the science/medicine community, which understandably has an elevated position in atheism, and (2) playing to the wishes and desires of us atheists, who generally want to see innate social roles replaced by a choose-your-own-adventure society and view sex differences as one of the major hurdles on that way. "Scientists learn to change people's sex" is an irresistible story for us, both due to its heroes and to their alleged achievement. Big if true! Much easier to call the fraud when it's coming from antivaxxers, mediums or 5G truthers.
Still shocking how long it lasted. Back in 2020 I made a bet that it would be widely seen as a medical malpractice scandal along the lines of fentanyl and thalidomide in 5 years' time; looks like I'm quite on track with that prediction now. But if someone had told me about what was going on back in 2010, I would have never expected it to last 15 years and perhaps take the US Democrats down with it.
That said, I don't believe your theory of religion creating a floor for stupid ideas. It might be true for a greatly deradicalized and institutionalized religion like Christianity, but it is hardly true for Islam in the Middle East, unless you take it rather literally and conclude that much of the region is stuck under that floor. It is also far too easy for religious apologists to pick and choose who they consider to be religious; e.g. are Russians religions by dint of going to church?
//but it is hardly true for Islam in the Middle East//
I have no doubt that it is true of Islam--the difference is that the ceiling is much lower.
Islam has not prevented ISIS; it has spawned ISIS. As well as Hamas and the Islamic Republic of Iran, but these two at least can claim some temporary success at holding territory (I don't think for long). ISIS just burned through the population and died within 10 years (their African and East Asian offshoots are still active, but there is no chance for them to come back to the Middle East). Complete failure not merely by Western but by basic evolutionary standards.
Would the Middle East be Switzerland if not for Islam? At least Iran and Lebanon would have a chance, methinks.
I promise you I am aware of the problems Islam brings with it. I never said nor implied that religions can’t still do some very bad things.
I think you aren’t being imaginative enough, and not allowing the model any flexibility. Religions that have a badly configured floor/ceiling would suffer, as they harm the societies they inhabit.
I think your point would stand if you replaced "religion" by "modern (but not too liberal) Christianity". Maybe Islam is acting as a civilizing force in a few isolated spots of the planet, but everywhere else it *is* the kind of destructive virus a religion is meant to protect against. As to Judaism, it seems to react to heresies by splintering, so I guess there is always a sane component around, but that's shifting the goalposts. I frankly don't know enough to tell if Hinduism plays a significant role in India.
India’s caste system is a social disaster, and letting cows wander around like stray cats is an environmental disaster. Both are rooted in Hinduism.
Muslims are some of the only people on earth who can still procreate at replacement levels. Europe is slowly dying. The british used to rule the world and now theyre terrified of "zombie knives" and cant even work up the guts to go arrest men who are raping their girls by the thousands. Seems to me muslims have a stronger floor than other europeans in some pretty basic ways.
I'm amused by the anecdote of the atheist who asked the monotheist how many gods are to be believed given than mankind has worshipped so many throughout the ages. The monotheist replies something to the effect of 'the one true god' to which the atheist replies that he only believes in one less. The implication is that the moral capacity of the atheist who rejects N gods is only marginally different than the monotheist who rejects N-1 gods.
One of my axioms is that absolute zero tolerance requires infinite policing. So if we consider the practical matter of tolerance of religious faith, the atheist has his work cut out for him when he professes to accept zero.
I think that it's useful to consider two camps when it comes to ideologies. There are devotees and there are shareholders. The intolerant devotees have the greatest burden. Shareholders are more flexible. I'd say shareholders, while paying attention to the fundamentals of their investments are the least likely to become fundamentalists. They'd rather switch than fight. Whereas devotees, especially fundamentalists, would rather fight than switch.
Something occurred to me when I was reading your first essay on this topic is that there are some senses in which this is nothing new. I don’t mean to pull the “old curmudgeon “ card, but here goes.
According to Wikipedia you were born in 1991, which means you missed The Cold War. From the early 20th Century until the 1990s, there was a titanic ideological struggle between communism and those who favored economic and personal liberty -- what might be called classical liberalism. Today’s historians and journalists like to downplay that struggle, but there really was an evil ideology with a powerful nation-state behind it. Up until the actual collapse of the Soviet Union, the idea it would collapse would have been considered utterly ludicrous.
Marx, as I’m sure you know, was famously anti-religious. He said that religion was “the opiate of the masses,” and both the Soviet Union and Communist China were officially atheist states. “Godless Communism” really was a Thing. It’s true that, in, say, 1984, there were plenty of atheists who were just normal people who questioned the existence of the supernatural. And it’s also true that some anti-communists were serious atheists -- Ayn Rand being the most famous and outspoken, both in her atheism and her anti-communism.
But communism was nonetheless very well-represented among atheists in that era, and there was certainly a sense that if you were a decent humane person who didn’t believe in God, of course you were a socialist of some sort.
But here’s the thing: that cluster of beliefs runs contrary to everything we know about how humans can organize themselves to produce stuff at large scale. Despite its pretensions (scientific socialism!) it is irrational, unscientific, and inherently repressive. A collectivist planned economy cannot work. And yet those ideas were popular among atheists before the Cold War ended.
And so now many atheists seem to have fallen for something else: gender ideology, which is ultimately both unscientific and repressive. Like I said, in a sense this is nothing new.
I'm looking forward to your conversation with Anna, where I think y'all talk about this! It dropped earlier today, so here's a link for anyone reading this comment who might also want to listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d80ztpgYXEA
If you have time, I would love it if you looked at a visual essay I drew/wrote for Quillette back in May, where I address this problem from a different angle: https://quillette.com/2024/05/09/the-religious-instinct-in-a-godless-world-atheism-dawkins-ayaan-hirsi-ali/
This came out after Ayaan converted to Christianity, but just before she clarified her reasons for doing so in conversation with Dawkins. Re: him scoffing at the god shaped hole, I think his attachment to the "poetry of reality" is one way of filling it -- at least, that is what I filled my own with upon losing faith in god. Like you, I have never been tempted to believe in god again, and I have always been much more satisfied as an atheist... so maybe I'm just using the phrase differently (wrong?), because I have always taken it to simply mean the need to search for meaning once a religion no longer provides it.
If you like that Quillette piece and have any interest in reading another, I also tackled the trans ideology as a new incarnation of science denialism (and propose Camus' version of stoicism as a better reaction to the inevitability of sex differences): https://www.fashionablylatetakes.com/p/amor-fati?r=2vr1o
Edit to add: It's interesting that the issue of trans in sports has less support from atheists/agnostics than the other questions. Perhaps because sex differences are particularly obvious in that arena, and it's hard to watch a biological man punch a woman in the face, fewer nonbelievers can stomach it.
My hopefully somewhat honed intuition tells me that
without secularism being able in some sense to tell religion off, religion becomes dangerous. (And that any religion can.)
That’s one concern I have with where your reasoning is taking you. It seems to imply a specific hushed respect, that thing past the null point along the continuum towards Danish Cartoon riots.
But maybe it’s more compatible to me than I’m seeing? Or religion is really capable of existing as a positive force with less fear of being called out or embarrassed. I’d rather not take that bet if I could avoid it.
"reality is giving us feedback"
- this is the closest I'm getting to observing scripture!
Sarah, it's always a pleasure to get your thoughts in long form. Please spend more time over here and less on the other place!
Your exploration of the floor/ceiling framework raises a critical question: can meaning-making be aligned more closely with truth seeking? As you know, while some myths may act as a floor against some irrationalities, they enable many others. Being on the right side of an issue for bad reasons is better than being wrong, but it's hardly optimal.
Given the accelerating pace of societal and cultural change, I'm not confident that we should take comfort in beliefs that were historically stabilising. Dogma, whether religious or secular, remains the true enemy, as it resists the adaptability crucial for navigating a rapidly changing world.
It’s also worth noting that when reality-denial isn’t codified as an unquestionable virtue within a moral system, it tends to dissipate much faster. Woke-atheists will lose the battle over gender-related irrationality in less than a decade. Culturally sanctified myths, deeply embedded within the moral fabric of society, resist error correction far more stubbornly than secular errors, which lack the same historical and sacred veneer.
The word of God is not self-correcting, but human words are. Perhaps this is reason enough to remain hopeful.
Ceilings? Floors? I no longer know which way is up or down.
On a more serious note, Western Universities, as we know them today, were very much birthed from Catholic monasteries where Science and Law was the examination of God's work. All of the most famous Western Universities today still have seminaries from which they initially began. Religion and Science don't have to be mutually exclusive. The Galileo dispute with the Pope was pretty much a one off. Even Islam, back in its Golden Age, had no problem tying the two together when Baghdad was at one time the center of all learning. Note: Apologies in advance for my overly broad and simple summation of history.
Now Reason, that's a whole different kettle of fish. Being a simple man who wants to keep his life simple, I pretty much stick with Common Sense.
If you are the well-read person that I am sure you are, then you have already read Tom Hollands' book Dominion. If not, you may want to, if for nothing more than to get a broader historical perspective of where we are today in the culture of the Western world.
Cheers!
A little late to the party, but...
“Are atheists only rational when the religious are irrational?”
Not all atheists, but probably most atheists. Your graphic suggests that some atheists are not in favor of letting male-to-female mimics into women’s spaces.
I realized long ago that the only thing we atheists have in common is our atheism. As it turns out, we really aren’t so special. Sorry if I popped anyone’s bubble.
I’m still not convinced that we need deity worship. I think it is safe to say that increasing levels of irreligiousness or atheism, which has been the global trend, has, in general, not been a bad thing when it comes to per capita GDP (for what that is worth).
Google “pew research the-global-god-divide” and look at the Wikipedia article on the “List of countries by irreligion.”
So, I’m not sure we need more religion, or more atheists. What we could use are more critical thinkers, skeptics, a whole tribe of them.
The real question is why the irreligious show significantly more support for gender ideology than the religionists. I have a hypothesis.
Are you familiar with the popular atheist PZ Myers and his blog “Pharyngula, evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal?” It was a huge shock to many of his fans when he began rigorously defending trans ideology. Some suspect he’s autogynephilic.
However, that certainly would not explain the irreligious poll results ; )
Note that he boasts about being a member of the Democrat tribe (Democrat and liberal now essentially describe each other). About 70% of atheists are Democrat and about 60% of Evangelical protestants are Republican which correlates with higher percentages in the poll for both groups.
Both groups are likely largely captured by tribalism.
In this poll, only a small percentage of the responses are the result of careful, informed, reasoned, thought. But that is true for almost any poll.
The depressing conclusion is that the vast majority of all politicized opinions are based on adherence to subconscious tribal narrative, not the result of careful, informed, reasoned, thought.
That is the reality of human nature.
Tribalism trumps truth, even for atheists.
Also consider Googling the terms “Psychology Today Here's Why Tribalism Trumps Truth” and Psychology Today Compelled to Conform: When Tribal Ties Trump Truth.”
The scientific method was developed in an attempt to ameliorate our powerful, innate, Pleistocene-evolved proclivity for subconscious (and conscious) bias. Tribalism is essentially my-side bias writ large.
Tribalism (the proclivity to see other tribes as evil, to avoid ejection from the tribe at all costs) evolved as a survival instinct. It’s in our wiring. It’s as much a part of us as our propensity to walk on two legs.
One might argue that, although still functional with other social primates (baboons, chimpanzees) battling over food resources, tribalism has become largely maladaptive behavior with our species.
Tribalism binds and blinds (atheist or not).
Most atheists are just normal, instinctively tribal human beings who just happen to have overcome (for whatever reason) the pull to be a member of a religious tribe, and having their blinders removed, they can now see the logical flaws in religion. However, they are still members of other tribes (Republican, Democrat, etc.) and being members of those tribes, they still have their tribal blinders on. Democrats and Republicans have a hard time seeing the flaws in their respective tribal narratives but can easily detect them in the other tribe.
I watched the same thing happen to the use of nuclear energy to combat climate change. Every single major environmental organization has, for decades, been against the use of nuclear energy.
Why?
The answer is antinuclear energy propaganda which became part of Democratic tribal narrative. The organizations are indoctrination victims. You, dear reader, are likely one as well.
How did that happen? Organizational takeover by ideologues. The Union of Concerned Scientists started out as a small group of physicists lobbying for Détente with nuclear weapons stockpiles. When their job was done, they went back to doing their thing, however, the organization with the amazing name morphed into one without any scientists, lobbying for an end to nuclear power stations, which have no more to do with nuclear weapons than an X-ray machine. And, like a snowball rolling down a mountain, more and more people were indoctrinated, each believing they had the truth, eventually capturing all major environmental organizations and most Democrats as well.
A book titled “The Myth of the Left and Right” posits how we end up in one political tribe or another and why we tend to stick to it even though its narratives change and even migrate back and forth between warring tribes (Harris owning a Glock). They argue that we need to stop labeling each other as Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative and just look at each issue regardless of which tribe champions it.
Tribal capture is a matter of degree. A test of one’s degree of political tribal capture might be to list all of your tribe’s (Republican/Democrat, conservative/liberal) narratives then cross off the ones you disagree with.
For example, are you for or against:
Abortion (none, restricted, no restrictions)?
Teaching religious ideology (creationism or intelligent design etc. etc.) in public schools?
Teaching woke ideology (male-to-female mimics allowed in women’s spaces and sports, gender bread dolls, childhood sex reassignment, DEI training, critical race theory, and on and on) in public schools?
Israel’s right to defend itself?
Censorship of competing ideas?
Restricting illegal border crossings?
The BLM riots?
And on, and on.
If one thinks all of one’s political tribal narratives are valid, one would be a ten on the tribal capture scale that starts at one and ends at ten. Nobody wants to believe that, in reality, more often than not, if your tribe’s leadership happens to get something right, they just got lucky.
Rational thought and evidence is the best chance to find reality, but that is often and easily overridden by tribal instinct.
I resonate especially with it because im 40M, and my wife was a hardcore feminist who delayed having children until the last possible moment. She even confessed to me not so long ago (after 15 years together) that she doesnt want kids because she hates humanity and, basically, that shes consumed by SJW guilt over her own continued existence. Between me & her therapist shes back to sanity now and we're doing IVF, but our odds dont seem great and im utterly convinced that this was precisely the kind of psychotic nonsense that religion guards against. Im trying to move on with grace but this has permanently planted in me a hatred of wokeness even deeper than my former disdain for religion.
I think that your theory has merit, and that the ceiling/floor dichotomy builds constructively upon the well-known notion of a religious ceiling. That said, I’m not sure how to proceed. Like yourself and Richard, adult me is simply not built for superstition. It seems we have a kind of uncorruptible logical core that might be rarer and at the same time more detached from IQ, eloquence, humanitarian instincts and ideals of science and reason, than we could imagine.
My Substack is called «Integrity» with the tagline «It shall be: Scientific, critical and ethical.». The concept of this apparently (relatively) rare scientific integrity I have borrowed from the autobiography of physicist Richard Feynman:
«The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.»
This also offers an explanation for the apparent detachment between IQ and the willingness to accept nonsense: IQ seems to be able to attack itself like an autoimmune disease, and the smarter you are, the more eloquently you may be able to fool yourself!
So when you call upon «safeguarding certain precepts with extra-rational support», it certainly sounds good, but a solution can, as far as I can see, never call upon extrarationality, as this opens a can of extrarational calls for «compassion» and relativism, that in the case of gender, undermines logic itself.
Instead, I think we need to unveil the underlying axioms of rationality, and at the same time unveil the dangers of relying uncritically on the positive effects of eloquence, compassion and IQ. By building a floor based on positive axioms of logic and rationality combined with roof warnings that acknowledges the limitations of humans—all too ready to fool themselves—we may indeed approach Pharrell Williams’ vision of being «a room without a roof» from the song Happy.
I promise you none of us have an uncorruptible logical core. Thats the whole point of that Feynman quote.
I beg to differ in the same sense that I don’t subscribe to the Christian notion that we’re all sinners. All can potentially make mistakes, but only a few are passionate about not fooling themselves, acknowledging that most people are indifferent and oblivious to this as a core problem.
Such awareness is of course not a 100% foolproof antidote to fooling yourself, but it is a very good start, and as close to an uncorruptible logical core as any man could strife for. Feynman talks about this as a principle, and a serious core problem, not as a receipt to cure all human fallibility once and for all!
I prefer the Hitchens formulation: atheism is a necessary condition for reason to triumph, but it is not a sufficient condition. I think the same could be said about a commitment to not fooling yourself.
A commitment to not fool yourself is important, but even then most of us are not particularly transparent to ourselves, and we all come wired up with a predilection for motivated reasoning and self flattery. Dont you notice that your ego gets a boost from imagining yourself to be an perceiver of uncorrupted reason? Dont you think that is itself a mechanism by which you might fool yourself? Nobody believes they are decieving themselves. We are all under the impression that theres something about us that explains why we are woke to the truth/redpilled/uncorruptible and the masses are decieved.
Im not advocating epistemic relativism. But i would say that epistemic humility is a journey not a destination. Its like being in an alcoholics recovery program. You are never really cured of alcoholism, you just have to manage it best you can every day.
Lorna Salzman:
This suggests that faith, not evolution, can lead us dangerously close to creationism.
Even more irrationally, her second sentence below would subtly lay the foundation for all kinds of new faiths purportedly based on real biological facts but imbued with new and unknown powers besides that of evolution. Why do we need an entirely new entity when evolution gives us all the answers? Natural selection itself plays the role of a new faith by facilitating the continuation of those who live a life adapted to fundamental physical and biological conditions. If there is any valid doctrine in the world that conforms to reality, it is natural selection. If you want a new faith, then it is the evolutionary process itself that needs protection.
Why do we have to grant “the power of the sacred” to fundamental truths and risk creating a new supposedly valid true faith? In fact Hinduism already does this!
Why does acknowledging the fundamental validity of evolution have to create something “sacred” ? Respect for and adaptation to our environment is equally powerful. We don’t need any meta-faith to live an adaptive life in the existing environment. What was that about “false gods” ?
All we have to do is recognize and understand the fundamental truths and cease to violate them or transfigure them. This can be done in any biology lesson in school, followed by laws or practices to reinforce them. Today almost everything is ultimately counter adaptive to protecting humans and nature but so far those promote the “faith” of ecology and evolution are losing the battle.
Sacralization may be an aberrant human tendency rather than a support though it may have short term immediate value. Organized religion tells us a lot about it and how it spreads. Hinduism in fact, with its many gods taking care of all human actions, is a kind of sacralization but one that puts human understanding in the form of worship of aspects of the real world. If you worship a goddess of the kitchen or the garden or wisdom, you are submitting to the constraints of nature and evolution, not transforming them into something mysterious or controlling. In the end Haider has scrambled some eggs instead of making a neat omelet.
LS
Sarah Haider:
In the past, I had mostly thought about the “ceiling” that faith created–the ways in which religion hindered progress, scientific achievement and understanding. But now I think much more about the “floor” it creates, too. Perhaps without certain myths granting the power of the sacred to some fundamental truths (like the fact that there are two sexes), we would drift away from reality altogether.
This view does not contend that, on the whole, religion is a “better way of knowing the world” than reason or science–the floor exists, but so does the ceiling. Instead, it recognizes the vulnerabilities of reason to other pressures, and proposes a value in safeguarding certain precepts with extra-rational support.
This is way simpler than you might think. You, yes, you, Sarah, are God!! You,(and everyone else, for that matter), are on a path to realize your inherent, eternal, loving, peaceful divinity. This is referred to as “Enlightenment”, “Ascension”, “Awakening” or “Self-realization” in the various spiritual circles throughout history. I’m guessing you’ll let us know when it happens. ✝️❤️🙏 All Blessings and Gratitude!!
Thou art God! Share water.