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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 20, 2023

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No this is definitely not a troll. I actually sortof hate the (blatantly inverted) myth that religious people can't be scientists, but I think it illustrates my point really well, so here goes:

Yeah, but no one is actually arguing that? Not here, anyways. I'll argue that religious people engage in some level of compartmentalization when it comes to science, but not that they couldn't do it.

You can have a devout Catholic particle physicist, astronomer, biologist, etc. These things are completely compatible with each other. Consider the breadth of experience that a devout Catholic astronomer has. They are able to tap into both the beauty of the universe, as well as integrate this into a broader (in my opinion richer) understanding about how humans and our morality fit into that universe. They get the "stars are cool" side of things, but they also get the divine "this is bigger than me" philosophical side of things.

You can do all those things even without religion. You can have a sense of "this is beautiful" or "this is cool". People can, for example, experience many of the same feelings about nations instead of religion, where they get some awe or wonder from tying things to their people as opposed to God.

What you're saying just doesn't happen, and I know that because I've personally had the kind of moments where I felt many of the same things you described while also being an atheist.