I remembered how I thought she had a confused conception of meta-ethics and that she often seemed skeptical of reductionism, which in retrospect should have been a major red flag for purported atheists.
From my view, reductionism is the basic question. If someone is right on evolution but wrong on reductionism, that really doesn’t buy them much- and I would wonder how deeply they grasp evolution.
As to how to navigate this: suppose that she has a psychological need to profess a belief in some sort of deity, such that she could not fully thrive without professing that belief. Would you want her to be an atheist then? How can you tell if she has that need or not?
The main reason I’ve seen for people professing belief (and actually believing) is that there is a community of like-minded individuals that think the same way. This changes when you’re talking about people with very little social cognition, but that’s not the majority.
As to how to navigate this: suppose that she has a psychological need to profess a belief in some sort of deity, such that she could not fully thrive without professing that belief. Would you want her to be an atheist then? How can you tell if she has that need or not?
“How can you tell if she has that need?” is a little silly—you do what humans do all the time and make your best guess, mostly based on what humans are like on average. Being careful, of course, not to privilege the hypothesis just because it’s in the rhetorical question.
From my view, reductionism is the basic question. If someone is right on evolution but wrong on reductionism, that really doesn’t buy them much- and I would wonder how deeply they grasp evolution.
As to how to navigate this: suppose that she has a psychological need to profess a belief in some sort of deity, such that she could not fully thrive without professing that belief. Would you want her to be an atheist then? How can you tell if she has that need or not?
The main reason I’ve seen for people professing belief (and actually believing) is that there is a community of like-minded individuals that think the same way. This changes when you’re talking about people with very little social cognition, but that’s not the majority.
“How can you tell if she has that need?” is a little silly—you do what humans do all the time and make your best guess, mostly based on what humans are like on average. Being careful, of course, not to privilege the hypothesis just because it’s in the rhetorical question.