It's my opinion, that too many Atheists are wary of analyzing emotion, experience, and relationships, because these are messy, not straightforward, and seem to defy being put into an equation.
And this is true about emotion, experience, and relationships!
The dilemma is,
because the Atheist is wary of approaching these issues, because of the Atheist's concern of the reality of irrationally approaching them, the Atheist ends up not really reflecting on these topics at all...
The problem is,
the mind still wants to make conclusions and even if a conclusion isn't sound, the mind has this amazing ability to rationalize why this can remain the conclusion nevertheless.
All of us harbor unfounded conclusions and we preserve those unchallenged conclusions for years..
So...the Atheist will still naturally make subtle conclusions about these issues and when those conclusions are brought to the surface from a conversation with someone who brings up the topic of emotion, experience, or relationships.. it's very unlikely the Atheist will say,
"Sorry, I've suspended my judgements on these things, so I really don't have any thoughts on that topic." Of course not!
The Atheist will comment, because we have an opinion, and the mind naturally makes judgements whether we want it to or not.
So it is better for the Atheist to face these topics that defy mathematical precision and therefore air out his/her own biases and limited knowledge on these topics than to avoid these issues and therefore miss opportunities to grow through the experience of learning.
Emotion, experience, and relationships are just as valid of realities as logic, reason, and the objective world and if we are free inquirers we will inquire wherever there is knowledge to be found.
I think a big reason why we limit our inquiry into emotion, experience, and relationships, is because we are limit our investigation into human nature by only investigating through
the hard sciences, such as biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, neurology, geology, etc.
and not also
the soft sciences, such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, cognitive science, etc.
And we also limit our investigation into human nature by only discussing and investigating safe topics that are popular to talk about and that won't stir up too much discomfort or complexity.
These unpopular and or controversial topics include:
our feelings and emotions, our subconscious mind, natural spirituality, natural spiritual experiences, sex, death, euthanasia, relationships, art, cussing, pornography, nudity, sexual fetishes, aggression, violence, transparency, radical honesty, community, accountability, family, music's deep impact on us, and the like...
I'm sure there are some of you who don't have a problem with talking about some of these topics, but, nevertheless, you don't because you know few people will talk about these topics or feel comfortable talking about these topics. And that in itself is another problem..
....It's my opinion, that the majority of Atheists are not as rational as they would like to think they are, simply because of the lack of inquiry into topics 1) that they have a negative reaction to, topics 2) that they think have an irrational basis and so are unnecessary, and therefore topics 3) they think are not worthy of inquiry. BUT THE RAMIFICATIONS OF THIS DILEMMA FOR THIS CATEGORY OF ATHEIST IS: TO REMAIN BIASED AND TO BE CLOSED-MINDED, AND SO TO CONTINUE TO BE IRRATIONAL IN THESE AREAS, yes irrationality: the very thing Atheists claim to want to move away from and to not promote...
Simply put:
-There are atheists who tend to unfairly characterize Christians as this or that
and
there are Christians who tend to unfairly characterize Atheists as this or that.
-Christians don't like it when we do this to them
and
we don't like it when they do this to us.
-What remains in this situation is who will have the strongest values of free inquiry:
to not just stop at what we think we understand of those of differing view points, but to fully inquire into the lives of those of opposing view points so we don't incorrectly presume things about them..
That is intellectual integrity, that is free inquiry. (Addressing the Atheist here) And if you are not willing to do this, for whatever reason(s) that is, at least admit to yourself that you probably have some unfounded information that you have gathered about Christians over the years and that people should not see you as a reliable source on the context of Christians..
And I would say the same thing to the Christian who has not spent time with Atheists and who does not freely inquiry into why/how Atheists are the way they are, but comes and goes with this unchallenged, preconceived conception of Atheists...
It goes both ways..
So back to the original point for this essay:
-Are you, the Atheist, willing to continue to follow the evidence wherever it leads in the areas of emotion, experience, and relationships?
-Are you willing to continue the free inquiry that lead you to Atheism in the first place?
