Is Atheism Irrational? (NY Times)

Copied this from the articles sticky since I guess that's just for links :P

...as a matter of fact I think most of Plantinga's arguments are pretty bad. The argument Plantinga makes about (strong; to use the RGT term) atheism and agnosticism is reminiscent of our threads here about strong and weak atheism.

I broadly agree with this: (excerpted, see the article)

But, this to me was probably the most interesting thing, more about philosophy of mind and cognitive science then religion:

Gutting doesn't push back on this at all, but it seems to me that the kind of response Dennett would make is that it's impossible for the "belief" to have a different content but identical neurophysiological properties under materialism, or at least insofar as those properties are tied to an actual real instance of a human brain, i.e we're not treating them abstractly, like implementing alice's brain structure in bob. It seems like the distinction between content and structure is just begging the question. Materialism assumes the content is in the structure, the structure is a physical representation of the content and that changing the structure changes the content. Is that not right? I am assuming zumby might have a comment on this.

It sort of reminds me of the arguments about p-zombies.

I think the complaint is more about the unwarranted or unwitting conflation of brain states with mind states. Below is an excerpt from Colin McGinn’s critique of Kurzweil’s How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/arch...1/homunculism/
Here I must say something briefly about the standard language that neuroscience has come to assume in the last fifty or so years (the subject deserves extended treatment). Even in sober neuroscience textbooks we are routinely told that bits of the brain “process information,” “send signals,” and “receive messages”—as if this were as uncontroversial as electrical and chemical processes occurring in the brain. We need to scrutinize such talk with care. Why exactly is it thought that the brain can be described in these ways? It is a collection of biological cells like any bodily organ, much like the liver or the heart, which are not apt to be described in informational terms. It can hardly be claimed that we have observed information transmission in the brain, as we have observed certain chemicals; this is a purely theoretical description of what is going on. So what is the basis for the theory?

The answer must surely be that the brain is causally connected to the mind and the mind contains and processes information. That is, a conscious subject has knowledge, memory, perception, and the power of reason—I have various kinds of information at my disposal. No doubt I have this information because of activity in my brain, but it doesn’t follow that my brain also has such information, still less microscopic bits of it. Why do we say that telephone lines convey information? Not because they are intrinsically informational, but because conscious subjects are at either end of them, exchanging information in the ordinary sense. Without the conscious subjects and their informational states, wires and neurons would not warrant being described in informational terms.

The mistake is to suppose that wires and neurons are homunculi that somehow mimic human subjects in their information-processing powers; instead they are simply the causal background to genuinely informational transactions. The brain considered in itself, independently of the mind, does not process information or send signals or receive messages, any more than the heart does; people do, and the brain is the underlying mechanism that enables them to do so. It is simply false to say that one neuron literally “sends a signal” to another; what it does is engage in certain chemical and electrical activities that are causally connected to genuine informational activities.

Contemporary brain science is thus rife with unwarranted homunculus talk, presented as if it were sober established science. We have discovered that nerve fibers transmit electricity. We have not, in the same way, discovered that they transmit information. We have simply postulated this conclusion by falsely modeling neurons on persons. To put the point a little more formally: states of neurons do not have propositional content in the way states of mind have propositional content. The belief that London is rainy intrinsically and literally contains the propositional content that London is rainy, but no state of neurons contains that content in that way—as opposed to metaphorically or derivatively (this kind of point has been forcibly urged by John Searle for a long time).

And there is theoretical danger in such loose talk, because it fosters the illusion that we understand how the brain can give rise to the mind. One of the central attributes of mind is information (propositional content) and there is a difficult question about how informational states can come to exist in physical organisms. We are deluded if we think we can make progress on this question by attributing informational states to the brain. To be sure, if the brain were to process information, in the full-blooded sense, then it would be apt for producing states like belief; but it is simply not literally true that it processes information. We are accordingly left wondering how electrochemical activity can give rise to genuine informational states like knowledge, memory, and perception. As so often, surreptitious homunculus talk generates an illusion of theoretical understanding.

The entire objection is paradoxal, as the exact same criticism applies to mind states. It is no "better" to speak of a mind than it is to speak of a synapse, and to pretend otherwise is dishonesty of the worst caliber.

Philosophical skepticism is important, but it is also important to apply it to everything.

My objection would be far simpler; as this is what I reacted to:

I can't see any good reasons why this should hold true? Creation ex hylis might not be the popular theistic paradigm these days, but it is certainly no "worse" than creation ex nihilo.

I think Plantinga was careful to clarify earlier on that he was speaking of a particular kind of personal God in talking about theism and atheism, and the definition of that God that he has in mind is an immaterial one, which probably explains what he said

haven't had time to really read what duffee posted yet with sufficient attention, so apologies if I say this too quickly, but I note:

I'm pretty sure that in stating this you've already rejected materialism though. In other words you seem to be mostly restating the same argument Plantinga was making, which assumes explicitly that content is something irreducible to physical states. That information is somehow ontologically distinct from its underlying representation, but materialism as I understand it rejects that necessarily. See for example Dennett's writing about qualia. Which is perhaps not exactly the same but seems directly analogous

Which is not to say that materialism is right, but Plantinga (in my reading) was not so much arguing that materialism was internally inconsistent with evolution, as he seemed to be trying to say, but in effect was just assuming that it was wrong by declaring it to be so by virtue of making content separate and irreducible to physical states, as a matter of assumption.

On the other hand, nor have we discovered that information is something distinct and irreducible to the electrical impulses that neurons transmit. If anything, we've definitely proved that electrical tranmission is a very rich substrate for representing information. (i.e computers)

It may not be justified to assume that information is no more than such complex states (materialism), but it's probably equally unjustified to assume that it must be more than those states. I'm fairly sure materialism in general is more of an abductive argument anyway. it's not that there is a logical proof that there must be no more than the material, but materialists arrive at the conclusion because they see no reason or necessity for the "something more" and apply a principle of parsimony.

So I ended up writing a somewhat long response without actually really trying too hard to read everything. Probably a mistake.

I don't think materialism relies on modeling neurons as humunculi though. I think that analogy is a bit pained. I think the reductionism mainly relies on the success of physical representation of complex information as in computing and the math/logic computing is based on. More than anything else. Which isn't to say that this is historically how materialism came about, but I think it is the primary driver of the conclusion that it is true, along with the "lack of evidence" for something above the physical

Whether we're talking about propositional content or the phenomenological "what-it-is-like" of consciousness (or qualia), Plantinga or McGinn, or Searle or Chalmers or pretty much anyone who rejects materialism (including me!) rely on essentially an intuition that there is something irreducible there, but that assumption is rejected by materialism, and so Plantinga's argument that materialism is incompatible with evolution due to a problem dealing with the probability of beliefs being true is not really a problem within materialism

Well the tl;dr to this is that yeah, Plantinga is begging the question here.

But it's worth elucidating some of the background philosophy of cognitive science here, especially in light of Duffee's post.

Our folk psychology (sometimes called "propositional attitude psychology") explains behaviour by pairing mental states (such as beliefs, desires etc) with propositions (such as "it is cold outside", "the cat is on the mat" etc). A sentence like "zumby believes that there is no god" introduces a proposition "there is no god" and a mental state - in this case a belief - that zumby holds towards that proposition. I could also hypothetical hold other mental states in relation to that proposition, like "zumby hopes that there is no god" or "zumby fears that there is no god".

This sort of folk psychology helps us explain and predict behaviour really rather well. For example, my absence from the local church can be both explained and predicted fairly accurately from that original proposition. This folk psychology is also very much a scientific theory, even so far as to postulate unobservables and law-like relations in order to provide explanation. By that I mean that no-one has ever seen a desire or a belief. Of course, there is nothing wrong with postulating unobservables in science, but it's worth stepping back and noting the assumptions implicit in such mentalistic language.

OK, so now let's look at how materialists approach the relation between propositional attitudes and the underlying neurophysiology:

• Reductive materialism -> our folk psychological concepts will be illuminated, but not changed, by a full understanding of the brain.
  
• Revisionary materalism -> our folk psychological concepts may have to be modified following a full understanding of the brain.
  
• Eliminative materialism -> our folk psychological concepts will have to be thrown away once we have a full understanding of the brain.

Now, I think it's fair to say that eliminative materalism is not the most popular approach of the three among scientists, but has been around since at least the 1970s. Personally, I lean more towards revisionary materalism. Interestingly, Patricia Churchland is eliminative about propositional attitudes, but revisionary about qualia, while Dennett is the other way around.

Anyway, I think we can immediately say that this part of Plantinga's argument is going to hit a brick wall with eliminative materalists, as they are just going to deny that beliefs exist - or at the very least, that brains/minds are not proposition-crunching machines of the sort to which Plantinga is asserting materalists are committed.

However, even with reductive or revisionary reductionism, the problem you identified about begging the question stands: if we believe that the content of the belief "I have a beer in the fridge" is what motivates the act of going to the fridge, there is no reason (given in this interview, anyway) to assert that that content is not a representation in some neural network. But I think what I said above is going to be relevant as the thread progresses, particularly if the stronger parts of Plantinga's argument come up.

Well, I might be the wrong person to comment. I have never understood the fuss about "the immaterial" and "the material".

It would seem to me that we have phenomena, and any subsequent classifications can reasonably be argued to be extrinsic rather than intrinsic.

zumby, thanks for that. I'll have to keep in mind the nuance about types of materialism.

To clarify a point (or maybe belabor it), it seems to me though that at least insofar as materialism reacts to Plantinga's argument, all forms of materialism would reject the implicit dualism about the propositional content of beliefs that the argument with regard to evolution assumes. Is that right? Reductive or Revisionary materialism may hold onto the concepts used in folk psychology but in both cases will understand them in a way that contradicts his usage.

Do you think the "stronger part" of his argument is essentially an argument against eliminative materialism? I'm curious what you were referring to

tame_deuces: I could see it being proper to reject the distinction between "material" and "immaterial" in a certain sense, maybe analogously to how the distinction between "supernatural" and "natural" in a naive sense sort of break down if you're trying to understand some phenomena observable with the senses, like evaluating a supposed miracle. It's not clear what constitutes "supernaturality" if you draw a hard ontological separation.

But, I'm supposing in Plantinga's usage that he is referring to a more or less classical theological position that God is not observable with the senses. There is not a "phenomena" to speak of in that way. When he talks about religious experience, I don't believe he is referring to an experience mediated by the senses. There is the reference to sensus divinitatus, a kind of other faculty for experiencing the Divine. Faith is sometimes referred to in this way, or the spirit. The distinction isn't really intended as a classification of phenomena mediated by the same faculty, but a distinction between the faculties and their respective fields themselves.

I don't think many atheists describe themselves as materialists, but I do see that term used very frequently by theists ("how do you explain X in a materialistic worldview? ").

Rather, I generally hear atheists describe themselves as naturalists.

Materialism as a general term seems to have some problems (at least in a more lay usage) - is an idea material?

That doesn't make any sense.

Bad jokes and dry puns aside, I see why the debate is there but I don't sympathize with those reasons. I mean, we can go back and forth on the merits of qualia, phenomena, ontology, epistemology and sprinkle it all with enough philosophical skepticism to stall any debate into oblivion.

But at the end of the day, even Platinga will have to concede that he needs to language to express his idea of "belief without senses". The mere act of arguing it through books and debate belies an implicit assumption that the notion is one that can be symbolically represented.

And once you accept symbolic representation, it is very hard to argue against materialistic reductionism.

Yes, but I think this terse interview is making Plantinga's point look more obviously flawed than it is. That section of the interview (and a bit beyond where you finished quoting) is a very brief version of his Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism. IIRC, particular the bit you quoted is supposed to be setting up a situation where he argues that a) the probability of content epiphenominalism is high (given naturalism) which entails b) that the probability that our beliefs are reliable is also low or inscrutable. Content epiphoneminalism = the fact that a propositional-attitude state causes the behaviour that it does is not explained by its content.

But there's a lot of assumptions here:

1. That 'beliefs' are reconcilable with a finished neuroscientific account (I think this is likely, but not a done deal).
2. That 'beliefs' in the brain are strongly equivalent to propositions and/or propositional attitudes (very questionable). For example, your belief that an elephant has greater mass that three koala bears (which I have just invoked in you, Derren Brown style ) was presumably not already stored in some neural network as a proposition. Nor is it clear that this belief was created and verified internally by some system of recalling and checking various other propositions such as "an elephant weighs 1.5 tons", "a koala weigh 9 stone" etc.
3. That content epiphenominalism is probable given naturalism (seems to beg the question in favour of dualism, as you note).
4. That content epiphenominalism makes the probability of the reliability of our belief to be low or inscrutable. More on this point later.


Well, I think that the preceding argument about what exactly a belief is and whether its content is causally efficacious is firstly not really my area (though I've outlined what I believe is the standard cogsci approach), and secondly not as interesting as this part of the interview, which is the meatier part of the EAAN:

Massimo Pigliucci gives this summary of Plantinga's (originally extremely wordy) EAAN:

If you've not seen this argument before I strongly recommend thinking about it for at least 5 minutes before reading on, because I think it's one of the more innovative arguments against naturalism anyone has come up with, even if I think it's wrong.

OK.

You can see why I find this argument more interesting than the first: Bayesian probability, evolution, and the brain, oh my. And I agree with Massimo that the premises appear to be true. As a side-note, in one version Plantinga suggests that by "consistently[...] true beliefs" he would allow for ~67% of our beliefs to be true.

I'll ignore C2 for now because it will probably come up later and it just isn't very compelling imo.

P1 seems true to me. Here I'm assuming a broad sense of 'belief', but yeah, if my belief that "there is a tiger over there" doesn't cause my running away then it is whatever causes the running away that is adaptive and therefore acted upon by natural selection.

P2 also seems true. Let's say that we have two cavemen, Bob and Fred. When Bob hears a rustle in the bushes near the water-hole, he assumes it is nothing important, and carries on getting water (this is called a Type 2 error). When Fred hears a rustle in the bushes, he assumes it is a tiger and runs away (a Type 1 error).

Now, the cost of making a type 2 error is huge - you get eaten by the tiger. The cost of making a type 1 error is small, perhaps you get a bit thirsty but you are probably going to live to return to the watering-hole. This suggests that natural selection will favour brains that make type 1 errors. I was initially a bit skeptical about this, and thought that correctly identifying the rustle in the bushes most of the time should be more adaptive. Here let's assume that 90% of the time, it really is nothing, and 10% of the time it is a tiger (therefore Bob has true beliefs far more often than Fred). So I coded up a little simulator and gosh-darn-it, for reasonable parameters of costs vs benefits, an organism that is holds false beliefs most of the time, but with type 1 errors, will outcompete an organism that holds true beliefs most of the type, but with type 2 errors. Again, this is because the evolutionary cost of being eaten by a tiger is essentially infinite (you might consider this a evolutionary form of Pascal's Wager ).

What we might say, however, is that what would really be best would be to never make either type of error. Then we never get eaten by the tiger, and never run even the very small risk of dying of thirst. But an important point here (and one that will come up again in a bit) is availability. Sure, if our hapless cavemen could evolve x-ray eyes, or clairvoyance, or infra-red sensor pits, they could have perfect knowledge of what is in the bushes and outcompete lesser cavemen. But evolution can't just rustle up any old ability out of whole cloth, and it is was easier to evolve a cognitive architecture that favours type 1 errors than to evolve x-ray vision.

P3 is similar to P2, but it's worth using one of Plantinga's examples. Plantinga proposes a caveman, Paul, who wants to cuddle tigers, but believes that the best way to cuddle a tiger is to run away from it. Therefore his false belief (that the best way to cuddle a tiger is to run away from it) is adaptive, as it causes him to run away from the tiger and therefore not get eaten. Natural selection, therefore, couldn't prevent this belief from spreading among the population.

Ok, so that's the points of agreement out the way: here's why C1 doesn't follow, and why I brought up some of the things I did earlier.

The availability argument

As mentioned above, natural selection can only operate on what it has to work with. Plantinga seems to think that brains are random-proposition generators. But this is pretty implausible. Our cognitive structures have an evolutionary path leading from e.g. simple worm-like structures with photon-detecting cells that initiate movement 'decisions'. It would take an entire book to trace a speculative evolutionary path from the 'brains' (using the term veryyyy loosely) of simple multi-cellular organism up to the human brain, but we can at once see that, if we accept evolution, human brains just aren't the sort of thing that Plantinga needs them to be. The types of cognitive architecture that can evolve (and therefore the types and conjunctions of beliefs that can produced) are constrained by the cognitive architectures that preceded them in evolutionary history. While we can explain and predict certain types of false belief from evolutionary theory, we can't just make up random conjunction of beliefs willy-nilly. To borrow an amusing example, it would be adaptive for zebras to evolve machine-guns to fight off lions, but it's not a realistic option. Leads me on to...

The genetic argument

It's also not very good science to assume that specific propositions are coded for by genes. Plantinga doesn't claim this directly, but I think it's entailed if you take genetics, evolution and neuroscience seriously. For example, the type 1 vs type 2 error example I gave (for reference, this tendency to make false-positive mistakes about agents is called hyperactive agency detection) is a broad bias in the cognitive architecture: it doesn't depend on having specific beliefs about tigers or bushes. Conversely, Plantinga's example of Paul the tiger-whisperer does depend on being a specific belief. If it was broader he may end up running away from food ("things I want I should run away from") and starving to death, or running into the arms of bears ("I want to cuddle bears and I should run towards them").

This is why I think it's important to be aware of the assumptions built into propositional attitude psychology... particularly Plantinga's extremely strict version. It's one thing to believe that the human brain stores or processes beliefs as propositions - though that hypothesis is speculative - but another to see the brain directly being a proposition crunching machine where propositions are direct units of evolutionary selection.

I'm pretty sure I've forgotten stuff or explained some things poorly, but RSI is a bitch so I'm gonna leave it here for now.

[edit: knew I'd forgotten some things]

The varieties of belief argument

Something else important is that not all beliefs are the same. For example, beliefs about direct sensory input ("my cat is jumping on my computer desk") are more likely to be true than beliefs about, say, abstract objects or the nature of infinity etc. Will expand on this if necessary.

Intuition and instinct is not the be-all-end-all of belief

Plantinga also fails to address the fact that, even if our native beliefs/intuitions are mostly mistaken, we can correct false beliefs through science, math, experience, culture etc. It is to his credit that he is not making an argument to global skepticism, but I don't think any naturalist would contest that we should be skeptical of our a priori beliefs until empirically tested. Really, if the EAAN is successful at all it should lead us to be skeptical about beliefs that are not empirically demonstrated, which is bad news for certain types of theism. Indeed, those theists should be slightly shifting in their chairs at the hyperactive agency detection example for Plantinga's argument, as it really tells us that we have good scientific reasons to doubt our intuition that an intelligent agent is responsible for phenomena in our world

No way I'm letting this thread run without questioning where you've found such giant koalas.

Replace 'stone' with 'kg'

Or 'koala' with 'wolf'

Zumby, that was such an interesting post! If it was more well known, I suspect EAAN would have topped the list in the thread "Best argument against atheism", even if it was perhaps only somewhat loosely acceptable as fitting.

There seems to be an oversimplification built into the argument, I find it difficult to follow through. How often do such fatal outcomes to individual beliefs about events happen, versus needing to hold a generally accurate view of the world to navigate it successfully just in performing daily life-sustaining activities? And incorrectly identifying a threat is considered a false belief, but the subject implemented the correct action if there was a threat ('run the other way to avoid danger' is a true belief).

Much more interesting stuff than "But what about sunsets?"!

zumby: awesome, thank you for that. I have to think more about this (work making me actually work today :P) but my initial reaction was similar to your conclusion, i.e "wouldn't a naturalist simply accept that skepticism about the accuracy of our beliefs was warranted?" It's interesting stuff though.

BeaucoupFish: I agree that typically it's more useful to talk about naturalism than materialism, but at least so far I was just following along with the article.

tame_deuces: I'd like to follow up more about whether or not "sensus divinitatus" (or something along the same lines) makes any sense, and specifically the necessity of language is something Pannikar talks about (who I've read more of than Plantinga), but it might have to wait a day or so.

This is mostly over my head, but I was going to ask something similar. I'm not understanding how AP's arguments incorporate belief in possibility/probability as a motivating factor (or instinctive reaction based on probability), rather than belief something is actually true as a motivating factor.

If there's a tiger in the bushes 1% of the time, couldn't belief you should run 100% of the time whether there is or not be "true" (or selectively beneficial) - without the necessity of falsely believing there actually IS a tiger there in order to run?

Cheers well named and zumby really interesting

If we ran away any time the bushes moved, we would be running away from all the bushes all the time (because of the wind, other persons, animals that we're actually hunting...).

So on its own, bushes moving does not give us a sufficient reason to run. In order to have a meaningful model of behavior in this scenario, there must be a perceived threat.

These arguments are build around a simplified model of instinctual behaviors (maybe we can call it proto-thinking?). They aren't necessarily an accurate reflection of these beliefs really come about, just toy models to help us think about how they *might* come about.

It would be hard to justify the evolutionary adaptation of metacognition (the ability to think about our behaviors) without having developed some instinctual behaviors, first. A statement like "I should run away even if I don't believe there is a threat" is a metacognitive statement. Before we talk about that, we need to talk about the basic instinct of running away (and in the process providing a sufficient reason to run).

I think his point is that we can’t say a motion sensor is sensing anything, nor that it’s properly sending messages and information. And even if it’s connected to some additional electrical circuitry and says, “I see an intruder,” there’s really no about-ness, content or intentionality involved. It’s just a physical instrument and process, which is all the physical brain is and does per a materialist definition. In other words, describing it differently is just to anthropomorphize the physical.

So the assumption, as I see it, is the materialist claim that subjectivity emerges from and is ultimately reducible to the physical. How? By what means does a physical system transcend its physicality, come to stand apart from itself, and see itself as a physical system?

Even if we agree that an underlying physical system is a necessary condition for subjectivity, a physical system in and of itself may not prove sufficient to account for the emergence of subjectivity. For instance, we have no precedent for non-organic consciousness. So a necessary condition for consciousness may be that it only emerges from an organism’s inherent self-organization process, and hence, isn’t merely physical interactions. That’s not really compatible with a materialism that reduces the organic to the physical. So we’d need a broader definition of naturalism that allows for a teleological component to explain the emergence of consciousness from a physical system. I think we’re in need of such a thesis, anyway, to explain how life emerges from the inanimate. We seem to be in the same boat with biogenesis as we are with consciousness: properties of merely physical interactions don’t appear sufficient to explain the emergent phenomena. And again, to explain, we need to explain how. We can’t just say that life or consciousness just happens when certain physical conditions or a certain level of physical complexity is attained. Those aren’t explanations at all; they’re just observations.

Yes, but it seems like EAAN doesn't allow for the possibility that something non-threatening might be moving the bushes in a very tiger-like way, and for primitive instinct or belief to be able to account for that possibility yet still provide motivation to run. In other words it seems like EAAN is based on potential oversimplification of what constitutes a "true" belief.

Again, we're just looking at toy models. I don't think anyone really believes that fear mechanisms actually developed like this. So yes, it's a potential simplification, but so is the whole word picture that we've created.

Things learn to run away from other things that might kill it long before anything ever *thinks* that running away from something might be helpful.

Yep. It's not really a belief but a survival mechanism. This mechanism I connect with the reptilian brain and beliefs I connect with the neocortex. That survival mechanism has been around since the beginning so it is fundamental - which is why even believing there is no tiger is not sufficient to prevent the triggering feeling.

This is such an important topic you guys are discussing. I'm actually in the process of writing a rather ambitious ebook about it based on my experiences of the past few years.

Regarding the irrationality of atheism: I also agree with this idea but I tend to think there is some misunderstanding going on. Is it fair to say that most atheists are reacting to the 'angry, old man in the sky' idea of God? That they are atheists about this idea of God but otherwise agnostic to a higher power? If so, I think this is completely reasonable, but to say there is absolutely no chance of a higher power of any kind is, to me, suffering from the same emotional irrationality that they claim to be opposed to. The ego hates uncertainty especially about things that are so influential on our worldview because it causes feelings of insecurity; it will sacrifice truth just to appease this feeling. And then it will be in denial that it is doing it!

I have little hesitation in describing most of the atheists on RGT are atheists because of the lack of convincing evidence for any kind of theistic god. Regardless of whether an "angry sky god" or a "higher power god", let's evaluate the evidence. I really think it would be useful to think of atheists as primarily being skeptics, and go from there - what would it take to convince a skeptic of anything?

It's not about convincing anybody of anything or about discussing these ideas for the sake of winning an argument. It's about quality of life. There are consequences to making your default perspective based on materialism and determinism. If everything is random then living more truthfully has no impact on your quality of life.

But what if that belief system is wrong and truth is synonymous with a higher quality of life? Being an atheist would be extremely risky because you are complacent, waiting to be convinced. You are limited to seeking truth through the constraints of materialism. This is why I say it's irrational. The rational position would be uncertainty and open mindedness. This is agnosticism, not atheism.