Some apparently contrarian views are probably actually contrarian values.
It doesn’t help that a lot of people conflate beliefs and values. That issue has come up enough that I now almost instinctively respond to “how in hell can you believe that??!” by double-checking whether we’re even talking about the same thing.
It also does not help that “believing” and “believing in” are syntactically similar but have radically different meanings.
Is my atheism a contrarian view? It’s definitely a world model, not a value judgment
Is it, though? I suspect that to most people discussing the subject, it’s actually a disguised value judgement.
Most people discussing the subject from which side? If you think those who profess atheism are mostly expressing disguised value judgments, I’d like to know which ones you suspect they’re expressing; the theory doesn’t sound very plausible to me. I do grant that I find it more plausible that religious claims are mostly disguised value judgments, no doubt including religious objections to atheism, but I don’t think it’s the case that atheists are commonly taking the other side of those value questions; rather, I’m inclined to take them at face value as rejecting the factual disguise. Do you have reasons for thinking otherwise? Or did you just mean to comment on the value judgment aspect of the religious majority side of the dispute?
I’d say atheism correlates strongly with various value judgements. For example, almost everyone who doesn’t believe in a god, also doesn’t approve of that god’s morality. Few people believe that a given god has excellent morals but does not exist. And many people lose their religion when they get upset at their god/gods. Part of this is likely to be because said god is used as the source or justification for a morality, so that rejecting one will result in rejecting the other. I believe there was also research indicating that whatever a person believes, they’re likely to believe their god believes the same.
It doesn’t help that a lot of people conflate beliefs and values. That issue has come up enough that I now almost instinctively respond to “how in hell can you believe that??!” by double-checking whether we’re even talking about the same thing.
It also does not help that “believing” and “believing in” are syntactically similar but have radically different meanings.
Is it, though? I suspect that to most people discussing the subject, it’s actually a disguised value judgement.
Most people discussing the subject from which side? If you think those who profess atheism are mostly expressing disguised value judgments, I’d like to know which ones you suspect they’re expressing; the theory doesn’t sound very plausible to me. I do grant that I find it more plausible that religious claims are mostly disguised value judgments, no doubt including religious objections to atheism, but I don’t think it’s the case that atheists are commonly taking the other side of those value questions; rather, I’m inclined to take them at face value as rejecting the factual disguise. Do you have reasons for thinking otherwise? Or did you just mean to comment on the value judgment aspect of the religious majority side of the dispute?
I’d say atheism correlates strongly with various value judgements. For example, almost everyone who doesn’t believe in a god, also doesn’t approve of that god’s morality. Few people believe that a given god has excellent morals but does not exist. And many people lose their religion when they get upset at their god/gods. Part of this is likely to be because said god is used as the source or justification for a morality, so that rejecting one will result in rejecting the other. I believe there was also research indicating that whatever a person believes, they’re likely to believe their god believes the same.