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Consistency December 13, 2006

Posted by ocmpoma in : atheism , trackback

This is a continuation of the previous post, on stupid atheists.

People are woefully inconsistent. Especially when it comes to subjective things such as taste, preference, beliefs, and morals. Gather up a group of skeptical rationalists, and you’ll find all kinds of different preferences. Food, movies, and music, for example. Or sexual preference, or politcal party. Now then, here’s the question: if rational, skeptical, materialistic thought coupled with a penchant for abstraction and problem-solving doesn’t lead to agreement on foods, music, or politics, why would we think that it would lead to agreement on philisophical issues such as theism?

Well, first I think it’s worth noting that, as we move from the more individual preferences (food and music) to the less individual (politics and morality), we tend to get more agreement. But this is a tendency only. And I postulate that its causes are twofold:

First is the subjectivity of these issues. There is no objective measure for preferences. One cannot quantify the taste of chocolate. One can objectively discuss the neural reactions and brain-wave patterns, but the actual concept of the flavor is not rational - by this I mean it is not dealt with in quantities. It is not objective, it is personal and subjective. But this is the more minor of the two issues.

The second is consistency. People, as I said, are inconsistent. We don’t always rigorously apply the same kind of thought, systemic analysis, and level of skepticism to everything. This is probably mostly a good thing. If we did do that, we would often have trouble getting dressed.

However, I think that when topics of import are discussed (keeping in mind, of course, that import is a subjective concept), we should strive to be as consistent as possible. When the topics are those at the less individual end of the spectrum, we should then be as skeptical, rational, and personally divorced from our analysis of them as we possibly can be.

But we aren’t. So it is entirely possible for someone to be a cold-hearted, Vulcan-esque rationalist when it comes to politics, and yet be completely irrational* when it comes to something else like religion. Or human evolution. Or homosexuality. Or anything else at all - you can mix and match all you like.

Which leaves us with the answer to the question: Yes, I think that someone who is that kind of thinker, and that kind of skeptic, will be more likely to be atheistic than someone who is not. But it is not necessarily so. That person could quite easily be nowhere near as rational and skeptical in the field of religion.

The line about atheists believing in one less god than monotheists is fairly well known in the atheist corners of the internet. If I may twist the phrase a little:

We are all, to some extent, rational and skeptical thinkers. Atheists are just rational and skeptical about one more subject.

(*By irrationality I mean subjective and qualitative (like the taste of chocolate, and one’s enjoyment of it. Irrationality is not a bad thing. In fact, saying that something is bad (or good) is irrational.)

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