Trust and distrust are social emotions. To feel either of them toward nature is to anthropomorphize it. In that sense, “deep atheism” is closer to theism than “shallow atheism,” in some cases no more than a valence-swap away.
An actually-deeply-atheistic form of atheism would involve stripping away anthropomorphization instead of trust. It would start with the observation that nature is alien and inhuman and would extend that observation to more places, acting as a kind of inverse of animism. This form of atheism would remove attributions of properties such as thought, desire, and free will from more types of entities: governments, corporations, ideas, and AI. At its maximum extent, it would even be applied to the processes that make up our own minds, with the recognition that such processes don’t come with any inherent essence of humanness attached. To really deepen atheism, make it illusionist.
Trust and distrust are social emotions. To feel either of them toward nature is to anthropomorphize it. In that sense, “deep atheism” is closer to theism than “shallow atheism,” in some cases no more than a valence-swap away.
An actually-deeply-atheistic form of atheism would involve stripping away anthropomorphization instead of trust. It would start with the observation that nature is alien and inhuman and would extend that observation to more places, acting as a kind of inverse of animism. This form of atheism would remove attributions of properties such as thought, desire, and free will from more types of entities: governments, corporations, ideas, and AI. At its maximum extent, it would even be applied to the processes that make up our own minds, with the recognition that such processes don’t come with any inherent essence of humanness attached. To really deepen atheism, make it illusionist.