The risks of atheism

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Faith is rationalized but unproven subconscious knowledge.  The source of creativity.

I aim for, and have not yet been challenged on, philosophical coherency between types of faith.  All new philosophy, like all new creative works, starts briefly as faith.  I take care to rationalize all my faiths both from atheist and non-atheist perspectives.  Resolving to the most likely explanations of either and rationalizing the other to work around the first.

This has been completely successful.  Despite some predictions to the contrary by atheism advocates has not resulted in sudden and steadfast atheism.  Sure it could, but it seems to me that would be lazy.  A choice to throw some data away.  A poor practice with poor results.

The key for me has been the civgene theory, and it’s implications for the conscience as a risk engine overlayed over the more typical spectrum of animal behavior.  Humans (except psychopaths) are of two minds, the subconscious and the rational.  Both minds can only communicate with each other in a vague spectrum of feelings.

What does throwing data away really mean? 

For supernatural faiths that an entire society had a useless premise from the start.  This is not coherent with civgene or observable behavior.  Supernatural faiths are only successful if the contain truths.  Truth, the engine of progress, is the common goal of society.

For potentially provable faiths it means assuming all outlying data points are error.  That all aspects of observation are perfectly accurate and innate.  This makes huge assumptions about quality of data, accuracy and relevance of test parameters, the infinite nature (large or small) of at least some related numbers, and that all related scopes are holistic.  Noble but lofty goals, that function best when small in focus.

Implications

Supernatural faith has understood risks.  It creates a risk of cult.  Reasonable people know this and it has been discussed at length by the objective philosopher.  Supernatural faith inevitably results in religions as people seek it’s truths and compare rationalizations.  Comparisons can give way to programming.  Programming can be then turned against human rights, and a cult results.

Strictly political cult is possible too, as twentieth century communism laid bare.  Avoiding supernatural faith does not protect you from cult.  How is that possible?  Partly because humans change their behavior when they are studied.  Their behavior is the result of their subconscious risk assessment, and they react to the new risk, abuses of the study. (knowledge is power) The only way to make people predictable is to disable their conscience by completely reprogramming it.  A simple task against the atheist through distorted or fabricated data.  A political cult is formed, again crushing human rights (and new economies of scale).

The risks of supernatural cult are transferred to the risk of being programmed by political cult.  Why?  Supernatural faiths definite immutable moralities (right or wrong), atheist morality becomes subjective.  In organized society custody of data can be controlled by would be abusers.  Bad conclusions can form from bad data.  Authoritative secular control of data is rife with golden opportunity (for abuse).  Garbage in, garbage out.  Since data makes morality, subjective morality is only as objective as integrity of it’s data.  Not only is data integrity both very shaky and in motion, but cohesive patterns are elusive and often contradicted by the periphery.  Human beings are absurdly trusting.  Expecting other people to share their goals and means, when history is dominated by human trust betrayed.

Atheists are no different than non-atheists in waiting for faith to become fact.  A person can only propose a theory, and work toward realization of fact.  The atheist boasts their process of achieving fact is under their control, but it’s not.  Peer review only provides independent verification of an already confirmed fact.  It doesn’t make fact in a moment, it approaches consensus over time as growing scope is incorporated.  Supernatural faith is an exercise in pure patience, even after a successful realization. Control for the sake of itself is let go.  Exactly the virtue the atheist needs, to improve the quality and inclusiveness of their data, to protect against the panicked rush to conclusion encouraged by political cult.  The theorist of the provable, needs to resist pressure to rush to fact, exactly what ‘irrational’ objective morality offers.

The risk for atheists is the desperate scramble to improve humanities future.  The perpetual lust for tiny incremental hope, temporarily, when the process of fact provides none.  When endurance, patience and temperance are needed for the very scientific goal of quality of data.  Simply put, people want hope and react badly in it’s absence.  An inevitable state for an atheist pursuing pure science to it’s natural ends.  Most supernatural faith offers peace without explanation.  It seems to me as complex as it is, creating a state of philosophical coherency consisting of both supernatural and non supernatural faith is the simplest path forward.  Enjoying and utilizing the full human condition, rather than denying it.  Ultimately protecting humanity from further political cults.

Epilogue

Feedback has been interesting.  I stand by everything I have said, but I want to clarify for our society.  Full time atheism is neither superior nor inferior to individuals who can operate both with provable faiths and supernatural faiths.  They both have virtues.  The fantasy is the necessity of Antitheism, a freedom crushing edict designed to send the masses morally adrift.  Separating rights crushing cult from religion is SO TRIVIAL I can only conclude the lack will to do it is malicious.  Antitheism is an excuse.

I would expect a sceptical scientist with high EQ, a 160 IQ and self directed understanding of social history to excel at identifying objective morality, making them as durable against any cult as their dual faithed counterpart.  They could both still be vulnerable to political cult, but they’ve got the tools to beat it.   In our society, our best cases are being emulated poorly.  ‘Science’ is a branding exercise often used specifically to discourage questioning.  ‘Authority’ substituting for diligence and thought.  An abomination of the scientific method.

Political cult is here now, and it is growing.  Killing that absurdity means selecting peers by ability, not permission.  That in turn means building a scientific community of open access to source data (like journals.)  Simply choosing atheism as the only needed step toward objectivity and ability is ridiculous, and dangerous.  As one common example, supernatural faith organizations aren’t keeping important scientific papers behind a paywall, limiting participants.  Lack of objective morality is.

Edit 1/6: Major clarity improvements, please reread.

Edit 1/8: Added epilogue.

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