sealchan
Well-Known Member
I can't dispute you, but I think that what is in need of understanding is that two rational systems of cognition are being employed unconsciously. This is, perhaps, a remarkable claim and I have not encountered others to make it so bear with me...
Evidence in a values based vs a logic based argue has two different connotations and will typically result in mutual misunderstanding. We all generally think that rationality has one basic "operating system" to put it in terms of computers but it has two in my view. As an atheist speaks to a believer and if both buy into the idea that they are having a "nice, rational discussion" then they are likely to be making an unconscious mistake. While the believer thinks about all that is important and valuable and all those others with which he shares this sense of importance and value, the atheist is probably thinking about how many factual assumptions and literary techniques the believer is using to try and make their case. While the atheist is using logic and evidence in order to indicate that God doesn't need to be "in the picture", the believer is thinking about how empty and vacuous and impersonal that atheist is being and doesn't quite believe that the atheist can be so cold and distant.
The problem isn't with either persons rationality but with a failure to recognize that the basis of that rationality comes down to a core cognitive style difference between the two.
This is not say that all atheist are "thinking" types and all believers are "feeling" types. A single individual can successfully, inwardly validate both modes of rationality and support two overlapping but conflicting views to a large extent especially when they are aware and convinced that this is, in fact, the norm for human cognition and personality. Some might call this cognitive dissonance but there is, in the human brain, a method of reconciling disparate neural impulses coming from the same external sensory stimulus that is analogous to this and is probably also relevant to how many unconsciously or intuitively reconcile such a duality in their overall outlook on life and truth.
So to speak to your point more directly...the feeling type of rationality is less concerned about whether something is called God or Mother Nature than it is in recognizing the importance of what that word refers to. "Quibbling" about the word is merely trying to wrestle away from the believer a meaning for a specific word that he or she knows there exists a large community that understanding, just as they do, what this word refers to. With such a "clever" trick they just feel that the atheist is trying to destroy what is obviously meaningful by using some "slipperiness" of language (to borrow a term from Hofstadter) that isn't really important in and of itself.
But for the thinker the terms are vastly important! "Of course there is a distinction between Mother Nature and God and how can you, Mr. Believer, stand there and continue to believe when you can't make an argument that can distinguish between the two?!" says the logician. And they would be quite right. But the believer is still left with the deep, value-based satisfaction of the importance of God and all of the atheist-thinkers "little mental tricks" doesn't ever really address that.
Over time this gap between feeling and thinking rationality causes some alarming mutual encroachments. Consider the vacuity of Intelligent Design...that is a feeling based belief creating a pseudo thinking based "theory" in supposed opposition to and equality with the scientific theory of Evolution. Also consider the number of people who are willing to reject rational, provable truth in the political realm in favor of some groups affinity for traditional religious teachings. As hard as this is to accept, especially in the U.S., there are a lot of people who have deep value systems that are tied to inflexible religious and political attitudes.
But with all that, science, in its rapid advancement, creates a wake of meaninglessness in its mountains of truth that we, as a society, may be struggling to digest. Some reject the food, others find it hard to swallow, still others revel in it. Collectively it takes time and effort to grow out of our old sense of values and this, in some part, is a multi-generational effort. As with the #MeToo movement and rape cultures often see what is right long before they can institutionally support what is right. This is, to put it simply, because we cannot abandon our own sense of what gives life meaning once we have established a value-based rationality for what that is.
The dichotomy between "the head and the heart" is beginning to be scientifically understood in the last century. Aside from CG Jung's psychological typology (see his Psychological Types or take the familiar personality test Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or Keirsey Temperament Sorter) we have the research of Antonio Damasio made popularly accessible in his Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain for signs that this dual mode of rationality is a fact of our brain activity and psychological dispositions.
Anyway that my personal ideology on all this.
Mohsen?