To other atheists: How can I relate honestly, and respectfully, with persons of faith, while at the same time being confident that their object of worship is an internally imagined construct (Out of respect, I have kept this idea private)?

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I’ve been trying to answer this question for years, trying to hack at the fundamental disconnect between the two kinds of worldview. I can isolate several basic cognitive differences, but I can’t drill down to a fine enough understanding of how to communicate in a manner that’s both general enough to be acceptable by both types of people, yet expressive enough to be able to actually communicate concepts that matter to the individual.

Invariably, someone winds up feeling attacked. An atheist and a theist can communicate civilly on matters of all sorts, except their fundamental differences.

We can talk about sports, about non-scriptural stories with ease. Start drifting towards the morals of those stories, particularly those of a religious bent, and extreme care has to be taken.

I’ve been able to dive about as deep as basic philosophy, monism vs. dualism, with an atheist. I haven’t been able to drill any deeper concerning the merits of each way of looking at things, and I certainly haven’t been able to get as far as relating them back to the theism-atheism debate.

I have a cynical explanation and an earnest one for this failure to overcome the barrier. The cynical explanation is simply that atheists just don’t think deeply enough about the philosophy underlying their worldview and as such it can’t be separated from a theistic-type dogma.

The earnest explanation is that I just haven’t been able to think deeply enough about them myself in order to come up with lucid discussion. Atheists seem to most often identify as physical monists, whereas theists consider themselves either dualist or as idealistic monists. (we all exist inside the mind of God) The bridge between the two is the idea of supervenience, but I haven’t run into an atheist with more than a passing understanding of the term in order to have a discussion about it. When I try, they view my rejection of the materialist stance that “all things supervene on the physical” as nonsensical in and of itself, shutting down all progress.

Rarely do I get a chance to dive this deep because the debate usually gets stuck somewhere in the weeds of semantics, i.e. arguing over what words mean. I have had success in the past with simply accepting the atheists definition of words, but without the ability to precisely define terms, all sense of progress is lost. So while civility is preserved, progress isn’t. I just don’t have the time or inclination to argue the finer points of what the word “belief” means. So to make a real argument that yes, atheists in fact form beliefs concerning their position, rather than just ‘not believe’ in things, well that’s a non-starter. I can try to expand the meaning of ‘belief’ to include not just the supernatural, which is how the whole world uses it but not atheists for some reason, but that direction is just off-putting for some reason. They reserve their ‘non-belief’ for specific concepts and trying to get any further never goes anywhere.

Semantics thus becomes the chasm that frames the debate. I would love for it to be philosophy, that to me seems a much more fertile ground to plant a discussion, but, well, it’s just too hard to think about usefully. Both for me and others.

If I even get as far as semantics. Ideological issues can prove insurmountable with some atheists as well. Atheists often simply refuse to be categorized. I can deal with atheists as ‘just’ those that don’t believe in God, or as those who don’t believe in God and are also materialists. But I wish they’d just pick one so I can form an argument. If you start using materialist reasoning immediately after you try to tell me, “atheism is just lack of belief in God,” then I’m going to stop taking you seriously. It’s an example of a motte-and-bailey tactic. Figure out your actual position and get back to me.

I am thus stymied in my quest to have real discussion with atheists. I used to be one, a long, long, long time ago, but as I deeply considered each of these issues I outlined above, I slowly came to the realization that materialism doesn’t work, and my mystical journey eventually made non-belief impossible for me as well. Try to communicate how that happened to people, well it just doesn’t work.