Is Atheism a failure to distinguish Near and Far?

Is Atheism a failure to distinguish Near and Far?

See Reason as memetic immune disorder.

I was reading a fairly convincing article linked from a comment here about how theistic beliefs are so scantly supported, when not outright contradictory, that it's a doubtful whether anyone truly holds them at all.

See No, Really, I've Deceived Myself, Belief in Self-Deception.

Robin Hanson greatly overuses the "less/far" model. It's his hammer, and so he starts seeing the whole world like nails.

But given that most people are happy living productive lives while simultaneously nominally carrying around massively conflicted worldviews, what is it that makes certain individuals not capable of this fairly common human feat?

I do think this is a bit of self-flattery. All people carry massively conflicted worldviews, not just most. And thus there are no individuals incapable of this feat. I would argue that the only people who don't carry conflicted worldviews are those who are incapable of carrying worldviews at all. The question should be: what causes some people to focus on correcting this particular conflict, while others let it pass and focus on some other conflict (or, in some cases, don't bother resolving conflicts at all).

Is Atheism a failure to distinguish Near and Far?

Very crudely speaking that depends on whether professing Atheisim helps or hinders you in getting laid. Slightly less crudely, whether it would increase or decrease your status in your tribe.

Whether or not the near/far distinction is A Real Thing, it doesn't seem to me that atheists are, on any other matter, less far-oriented on average. If anything I suspect that they're significantly more likely to hold (e.g.) strong abstract political beliefs, though that correlation might disappear if you control for education and maybe a few other variables.

Maybe I'll take a look at the GSS later today. Can anyone think of variables that would serve as an especially good proxy for Hansonian far-thinking?

Very serious Christians (e.g. those who deny science on the grounds that it contradicts the Bible) and very serious atheists (e.g. those who deny religion on the grounds that religious books contradict science) both tend toward the high end of the Buxton Index. The people who ignore the contradiction and are only religious on Sundays tend toward the low end.

Hanson seems to tend to think that humans have disparate near and far modes because they're rewarded for the hypocrisy. Are there other (less social?) hypotheses for the origin of near/far? Would there be any way to find near/far differences in chimps?

It seems to me that there are a lot of examples where belief diverges from belief-in-belief and when that happens, one should say so. This may be because of near-far divergence, but that is additional detail and one should treat it as such. There certainly are near-far issues that do not involve belief-in-belief failures. Maybe the opposite situation is rare. If so, then it is reasonable to jump from belief-in-belief to near-far. But first one should establish this. Until then, when one has a belief-in-belief situation in hand, one should distinguish between the hypothesis that it is the result of near-far divergence and the hypothesis that it is not. And one should ask how these hypotheses differ.