374. The Difference Between Innate And Converted Atheists

The Difference Between Innate And Converted Atheists

Atheism in this context includes all refusal of any belief based upon skeptical thinking, not only in a deity, but also in any kind of higher power or entity.   

First a metaphor:  
There are two kinds of teetotalers.  

• The relaxed teetotalers are not attracted to the taste or effect of alcohol.   Additionally they are also convinced, that alcohol is unhealthy.    
• The dry alcoholics.   They rationally know, that they have to avoid all alcohol, but they are struggling permanently with self-control over temptations.  

There are also two kinds of atheists.

• The innate atheists have no personal need for a deity.   The religious upbringing is never more than skin deep.   The beliefs are abstract and are not experienced as having an impact upon the personal life.   Even though they pray in church as a ritual, it does not occur to them to pray in the expectation of achieving anything for themselves.   They do not consciously doubt the existence of an eternal soul, but when a family member dies, they experience him as perished and lost.   The belief of the soul still being out there somewhere is no consolation.   
  The innate atheist grows out of the religious belief as a part of maturation, until he gets fully aware of having become an atheist.    An innate atheist gets bored, if reading the bible or any other religious books.   There is no reason to read absurd nonsense, when there are so many more interesting books to read.  While religious people can be a nuisance and can be scary, innate atheists feel relaxed in their own complete lack of belief.  
• The converted atheists are different.   They are very rational, and therefore they are consciously not at any risk to again believe any religious nonsense, once they have overcome it.   But they feel some unspecific need, that they share with the believers and which they were fulfilling by being religious themselves, until their rationality had been fully developed. 
  In entry 348 I defined spirituality as proactive gullibility.    This has something to do with interconnectedness.   The urge to feel interconnected with some higher power or entity causes the discomfort of dishomeostasis, as long as there is no target to feel interconnected with.    The search to find a target is proactive.  
  It is the search for a claim to be believed in, because many other people share the same delusion of the existence of the target.   Interconnectedness includes the need to share the belief, thus feeling not only connected with the target, but also interconnected with the co-believers.    Sharing the belief validates it in spite of ludicrity, it may desensitize people's ability to perceive the ludicrity at all. 
  The personal and unshared delusion of the existence of any kind of a deity may lead that individual to feel connected, but not interconnected.   If someone experiences some kind of spiritual revelation, he starts to proselytize.    If he does not succeed and remains the only believer, he is considered a mental case instead of a spiritual guru.   
  People feeling the dishomeostasis of lacking a satisfactory target for interconnectedness, often experiment with different religions and new age movements, until they find the one belief system, where they feel homeostasis.
    
  Converted atheists are prone to feel the same dishomeostasis as believers, but their strong rationality has cut them off from the believers' method of homeostation by interconnectedness with any non-existent entity.   Converted atheists live in a conflict between dishomeostasis and rationality.   
  On some atheists forums I have seen fervent discussions about inconsistencies and contradictions in the bible and how to use them in arguing with christians.   But somehow it seemed to me, that they were not really attempting to convince the believers, who are anyway out of the reach of reason.   In reality, they were in a struggle with themselves, using their rationality against their own temptation to succumb to homeostation by relapsing into believing.