It always does.
Yeah, fair, my bad, I’ll get back on topic.
OK, back on topic, I don’t understand what atheism has to do with materialism at all. They seem to be on different conceptual axes.
Do you believe in God or gods? Please check yes or no. (Those who check no are atheists)
Do you believe in spirits, remote healing, auras, leprechauns, crystal power, ghosts, or any other pseudoscientific stuff? (Those who check yes or no tell you nothing about whether they believe in God or gods)
I remain convinced that most atheists, those who don’t argue about it on message boards, just don’t have any belief in a deity, they don’t think about it, it’s not part of their consciousness. Large swaths of the global population basically lacks that belief, completely orthogonal to whether they’re scientists, gardeners, parents, stamp collectors, mediums, mechanics, etc.
Apologists, and others, need to add things to atheism so they have something to argue against while they’re avoiding their burden of evidence.
There’s a general trend between people who are atheists and people who are materialists, skeptics, and/or critical thinkers. It correlates more highly with atheism because many people reject theism using that same toolset. People could reasonably say if you have the skeptical tools to shake off religion, you should have the skeptical tools to shake off ghosts. And that’s reasonable, but it ignores the compartmentalization that people are capable of, and that there are reasons for being an atheists that aren’t a principled skeptical rejection of religion. So they’re using a heuristic that has some truth behind it and far overgeneralizing it by demanding that people by perfect materialists, but there’s really no compelling reason they have to be. Just like not everyone who believes in ghosts believes in telepathy or vice versa, particular types of magical thought are separable.
I’ll say as an atheist I’m always a little more disappointed if a fellow atheist believes in magic or grand conspiracy theories because I expect better than them compared to religious people, because religious people have already proven they deeply internalize one type of magical thinking (thereby lowering my expectations) and it’s always a little disappointing to find out the atheist is being selective about it.
I have more respect for the intellectual integrity of a religious person that can be skeptical about every other magical claim than an atheist who doesn’t beleive in God but believes in every psuedoscience, magic, and conspiracy you throw in front of him.
All of you saying that you saying you’ve never met one? I have. He’s my best friend. He hedges it a bit, but he and his family are avowed atheists but they love to get involved in spiritual things. I let him do a tarot reading for me on my birthday.
He was skeptical of it, but did a thing with the Secret to find a girlfriend, and well, technically got it when we dated for a couple months. And he’s just mildly into some spiritual stuff.
He’s still mostly skeptical, enough that it doesn’t bother me any more than my type of Christianity bothers him. But he tends to believe there is something else there, but isn’t sure how much of it is just human cognition or how much of it is actual spiritual stuff.