I know it's been a while since I've been active on this blog, or any other blog that people know about. I never really explained why I went from a pretty prolific commenter to barely present, so here's a quick rundown of what's changed.
First, and most foremost, was my finally coming to accept that atheism was intellectually empty.
And I mean empty.
To put this in perspective, you have to understand: when I first (many years ago) got into philosophy and scientific and theistic discussions, I originally started from a place of ignorance and anxiety. And I mean ignorance: I had zero idea about philosophical fundamentals or most of the basic tenets of faith (other than the bare basics you get from a Catholic upbringing). Sure, I had some comfort with my beliefs, but that comfort was shaken up with the growing media chatter about how arguments against God were gaining ground, or how science had proven this or that about God's (non-)existence.
I wanted to know how right these claims were. And that meant I needed to do work.
So, I started reading to try and get a better handle on these things. Arguments for God's existence, arguments against God's existence. I was at Dangerous Idea, Bill Valicella's blog, all kinds of other places which have since vanished. And I learned a lot! About materialism and idealism and panpsychism and more, about CS Lewis, Aquinas, Augustine, Lucretius, Bacon, Descartes... and science too! On and on, arguing and learning all the while, right on to modern thinkers - Chalmers, Law, Feser (of course), Behe, Dembski, and more.
And I didn't just read a lot these guys' writings, but interacted with the living ones, more than anyone knows since I actually am the sort of guy who will flat out email questions in the hope of getting answers - and to my shock, answers often came back. From Fodor, from Behe, from Feser, from Chalmers, from Coyne, fromWoese, from more.
Philosophy of mind, metaphysics, atheism, theism, physics (quantum and classical)... I argued a lot. I read a lot. Particularly on anything that touched on questions of theism. If someone said 'Quantum physics has something to say about God!' well, that meant I was going to spend some time at least getting a grasp of Quantum physics, and eventually hanging out on physics forums, emailing physicists questions, considering what they had to say. When I was told some brain simulation project would finally put to rest questions of consciousness, well, off I went to learn what THEY were doing. (Fun fact: I was told, at the time, that this would be proven decisively in five years. I think they told me this over a decade ago. Yet here we are. Many such cases, as they say.)
The point is, I was pretty invested in all this, across a lot of disciplines. Still am, really.
Now, as I did all this, my faith and confidence in theism generally, and Christ specifically, grew. Still does, really. But at some point, something else happened.
I realized that atheism was a sham.
In fact, ATHEISTS were a sham.
As in, so intellectually empty as to barely merit taking seriously as a live option in a worldview, either held or proffered.
One reason that I dove into so many areas was because I often would run into people - RL acquaintances, online commenters - who insisted that this field or that field, this argument or that argument, torpedoed God once and for all. This was often said with confidence (confidence that Christians, conditioned to be forever self-effacing in this modern age, typically lacked). And so, interest stirred, I'd go and read up on whatever they were talking about, and then return with questions or arguments.
Over time, I noticed a pattern. Decisive declarations of the death of theism, of dualism, of idealism, were 99% bluster. Usually, the people saying these things were parroting a single article they had read and didn't even totally understand, and which referenced evidence or arguments they never checked out, and never would. So I'd go, I'd read, I'd come back to talk about what I discovered... and I'd realize they not only had no idea what they were talking about, but they didn't care. The point of the interaction was to confidently declare something and assume some authority by their confidence. They were there to push an idea, or punish others for their ideas. Actually knowing what they were talking about was a distant secondary concern to cowing people into compliance.
The point was: the most frantic zealots for atheism that I ran into personally tended to be ignorant and intellectually empty. Over time, I'd realize that this was the norm, not the exception. It wasn't about intelligence either: the main difference between the stupid, ignorant atheist and the smart, better read atheist was the complexity of the fakery. Pig ignorant 420godisdead1987 would tell me evolution proves God doesn't exist. Professor Whoever would tell me that advances in neuroscience and quantum decoherence were putting to rest the hard problem of consciousness. Both of them were bullshitting and in fact seemed to hope that their declaration would be sufficient to stop me, and anyone else, dead in their tracks.
Eventually I realized that even the atheism wasn't real, or at least, wasn't the point: most atheists were only tangentially concerned with theism/atheism, and were in fact motivated by other concerns. For most, theism was attached to Christianity, which they regarded as either a sociopolitical rival for other schools of thought they had made into their religion, or at least a foundation their enemies relied on. Others were more pathetic: some guy's crazy religious mother stormed into his room mid-masturbation at 13 and whipped his crotch with a rubber hose while calling him a dirty sinner, and being an atheist was his way of lashing out since mom was gone. Whether personal or political, the actual topic of theism/atheism didn't matter all that much.
Before I go on, I should note that I'm well aware that theists engage in similar kind of thinking. Therapeutic moral deism, or embracing belief out of a fear of death, or desperation for meaning in life, without being very aware of much arguments or evidence. A difference is that theists of that stripe tend to be way more comfortable accepting the basis on which they've set their belief. That they're taking a risk, holding out a hope, just plain like a belief, it just seems obvious to them and that's it, etc. The belief, itself, is the point. For atheists, the belief (oh I'm sorry - the lack of belief, another sham I could talk about at length) is a means to an end. It is meant to be used on others to achieve a goal that requires popular assent.
The motivations of most atheists was important to explain what I encountered purely at the impersonal, arguments-and-evidence side of things: emptiness. Meaning, naturalism - atheism's often unspoken core belief - doesn't even have much content as a worldview. It is difficult to even define, and you can check the SEP if you don't believe me. It's even more difficult to argue for. Like with the atheists themselves, a lot of its momentum trades on deception and bluff: it's assumed to be true because everyone says it is, some of them quite forcefully, and isn't that good enough? And if it's not, well, good luck. The bulk of modern atheism, insofar as it even discusses naturalism, tries to pass it off as some kind of default worldview that doesn't need an argument (and it better not need one because if it does, they're sunk before they even try, because even defining it will be an impossible job.) Ironically, this is an area where agnosticism is deadly to an atheist, because agnosticism about metaphysical naturalism means openness to theism as a possibility. It means uncomfortable questions that atheists, forever terrified of ever being on the defensive, do not want to be put on the spot to answer. Not even out of simple curiosity.
This post has gotten too long, and I've barely scratched the surface of my experience.
Someone asked why I haven't been commenting in a while. And part of the reason is what I've just said: atheism is a sham. Atheists are a sham. Naturalism is a sham. It's a proxy for a different set of concerns, and so insofar as I think about controversial things, I tend to focus on what I believe is the heart of the matter, and atheism isn't motivating much of anyone. At least not directly. There are way, way bigger fish to fry than some wannabe atheist in the comments section of Feser's blog, and I've been working on that problem, insofar as a nobody like me can. It's less appealing to argue with people who are just faking everything, especially now that it's become very easy to see the tricks and bluffs.
Also, lest anyone misunderstand: this isn't to say that I don't follow Feser and others, or that I don't believe these topics to be important. I still do, often, and I believe them to be immeasurably important. Atheists and atheism? Not so much. So when I visit Feser (or anywhere else) I tend to go there for the articles, less for the comments, which unfortunately tend to just have the latest version of stupid atheist tricks (or stupid liberal tricks) or people who find them obligatory to respond to, as opposed to meaningful conversation.
That's enough for now.