The point is not that there’s a dichotomy between Iron Age beliefs and atheism, but that moderate religious belief has its own issues.
If you allow yourself to identify with particular claims without regard to the actual evidence for them, you’re liable to end up accepting ridiculous claims out of affiliation. Modes of thought are habit forming; if you insist on finding some way to interpret biblical passages that will allow you to continue to affiliate as Christian, for example, you’re liable to also insist on finding ways to interpret data that will allow you to continue to affiliate as Liberal, Conservative, Libertarian or whatever, regardless of whether that interpretation is a rational response to the data. This can lead to anything from lost lives due to poorly considered legislation to getting yourself injured practicing bad martial arts techniques.
Moderate theists rarely manage to sacrifice every factual belief attached to their religion required by actual deference to evidence, leading to positions like rejection of cryonics on the basis that it prevents access to the afterlife, or can’t work because it won’t preserve the soul. If they rejected every unsupported empirical claim, they wouldn’t be able to preserve their affiliation.
It’s unclear how much epistemic harm is caused directly by moderate religion, but moderate religion as well as fundamentalism is killed off by the sort of epistemic hygiene necessary to consistently make sound decisions conditioned on evidence.
The point is not that there’s a dichotomy between Iron Age beliefs and atheism, but that moderate religious belief has its own issues.
If you allow yourself to identify with particular claims without regard to the actual evidence for them, you’re liable to end up accepting ridiculous claims out of affiliation. Modes of thought are habit forming; if you insist on finding some way to interpret biblical passages that will allow you to continue to affiliate as Christian, for example, you’re liable to also insist on finding ways to interpret data that will allow you to continue to affiliate as Liberal, Conservative, Libertarian or whatever, regardless of whether that interpretation is a rational response to the data. This can lead to anything from lost lives due to poorly considered legislation to getting yourself injured practicing bad martial arts techniques. Moderate theists rarely manage to sacrifice every factual belief attached to their religion required by actual deference to evidence, leading to positions like rejection of cryonics on the basis that it prevents access to the afterlife, or can’t work because it won’t preserve the soul. If they rejected every unsupported empirical claim, they wouldn’t be able to preserve their affiliation.
Further, moderate theists, as much as fundamentalists if not more so, form beliefs which don’t pay rent in anticipated experiences. This leads to fake understanding, and fake understanding cannot inform good decisions.
It’s unclear how much epistemic harm is caused directly by moderate religion, but moderate religion as well as fundamentalism is killed off by the sort of epistemic hygiene necessary to consistently make sound decisions conditioned on evidence.