Hope you're doing well in 2026. I appreciate your comment; however, I must note that I find your perspective absurdly far away from mine.
In my experience, "science" is less a religion and more a means of truth-finding. There are and have almost always been scientists of different faiths. Scientists investigate empirical realities by testing hypotheses. That's all. I agree that if people treat science as their religion, they are unlikely to find religious truths, as that's not really what science provides.
However, I think there are reasonable philosophies that can arise from an empirical assessment of reality that leads to atheism. Based on my knowledge of how the world works, it seems improbable to me that there are supernatural beings who interact with humans in observable or meaningful ways.
From there, philosophies such as absurdism, existentialism, and maybe some forms of positive nihilism make some sense to me, and can provide answers to the big questions. Not necessarily pleasant answers, but we are trying to find the truth above all here, aren't we?
"Who am I?" A collection of atoms whose particular self-sustaining form descended from a long line of atomic self-sustaining forms known as cell-based terrestrial life.
"Why am I here?" Just because. The universe has laws of physics that permitted life, which then evolved to form the happy accident of humanity.
"Where am I going?" Eventually, back to dust, entirely, with no surviving soul. Before then, wherever you choose, constrained by a wide variety of limitations.
"What is good?" Arbitrary and subjective, influenced by the evolutionary fitness of certain emotions and methods of reasoning. No one answer that is objectively correct, but it is worth trying to convince people of your views in most cases. I prefer to construct a morality that advocates for the flourishing of all life, with a particular emphasis on humans.
(Whether these are actually plausible is up for debate, but there are quite a few smart people who believe they are, so I wouldn't dismiss the possibility out of hand.)
It's true that science doesn't understand subjective consciousness yet, but scientific understanding progresses and there is no reason to believe strongly that we will never know. And for the record, I find religious dualism to usually be almost as unsatisfactory as our current empirical knowledge gap.
Not sure you'll see this or respond, but I feel obligated to try to broaden perspectives whenever possible, especially where misconceptions about the paucity of atheist worldviews are concerned.
Personally, I'm not sure about "doesn't-matter-ism" being a bad or problematically anti-truth stance. I think it is perfectly valid to believe that the religious truth of the world is that being kind to people is what matters. It's not that far from Christianity to reduce all the teachings to "love thy neighbor" and treat the rest as optional commentary—it's not *at all* Christian, but it is a belief system. If that belief system helps explain the world better than alternatives, then it is reasonable to believe it is probably correct.
And there's no law of physics stating that you have to believe the official doctrine(s) of a religion to want to belong to it; if you do not believe that Catholic doctrine is actually correct, there is nothing objectively wrong with viewing Catholicism as a cultural movement in which some people have weird beliefs about how to be Catholic (specifically, those "weird ones" in this case are the adherents to the official faith).
Or in other words, nothing stops you from believing that "Catholic" describes a group of people with shared lifestyle choices who like the advice of the Pope; that is a worldview that is just as valid as the view that Catholic doctrine expresses what is objectively correct.
Of course, if you believe in Catholic doctrine, you would not consider these people to be following the true faith that God intended, but as the name "Catholic" was not, to my knowledge, ordained by God Himself, no one has a monopoly on what is really "Catholic".
For context, I say this as an agnostic atheist who thinks that any belief in God is almost certainly wrong. I also wish that people interrogated and lived by the truth more fully. But many forms of "doesn't-matter-ism" have the potential to be genuine answers to the big questions.
EDIT: Upon reflection, this kind of boils down to "doesn't-matter-ism isn't necessarily just a lack of reflection on truth; it's just a different religion of the MTD sort." Which is still objectively incorrect, from a Catholic or atheist perspective, but potentially only as incorrect as other genuine truth-seekers.
Hi, Allan! Thanks for reading, and, likewise, for sharing your view!
I'm not sure we're all that far apart, although I might be misunderstanding you. If someone doggedly pursues the truth and, having done so, concludes something like:
1. The truth about God is unknowable and
2. The only important things in life are enjoyment and being nice
...then I disagree with their conclusions, but they are still fundamentally oriented toward the truth. Thus, this is not Doesn't Matterism, even though it shares some of its tenets.
One fairly reliable tell that someone has *not* arrived at these conclusions through dogged pursuit of the truth is when they assert that the third tenet I suggested for Doesn't-Matterism: "all religions are equally valid paths to God." This violates the law of non-contradiction. Different religions (including agnosticism and atheism) make different, conflicting claims about God. Those claims are either true, or they are not. They cannot be equally valid. Someone's closer to the truth, and someone's further away! So it seems hard to embrace this tenet without abandoning the orientation to truth and adopting Doesn't-Matterism instead. That, I do think, is poisonous.
Sorry for my slow response; I am apparently quite absent-minded. I think your analysis of my view seems largely accurate.
I think "all religions are equally valid paths to God" still can work if we treat religions as localized cultural phenomena with aspects of metaphysical and moral philosophy. Certainly religious fundamentalists are necessarily in conflict with one another, but I think there is a logically-sound view through which a cultural Catholic, a cultural Muslim, a cultural Jew, a cultural Hindu, a cultural Buddhist, a cultural animist, a cultural atheist, and a cultural neopagan *can*, though not necessarily do, arrive at the same philosophy on the "important matters" (of being nice and tolerant and such) while still retaining different cultural practices. Such a view is not that all religious views are equally valid, but that one can arrive at the limited number of conclusions that actually matter from any religious background. (In such a view, some religions might be better at inducing this arrival better than others, but each of the religions is 100% valid as a cultural practice with subjective anthropological value.)
Ironically, such a view would more or less require viewing all fundamentalists of any religion as fundamentally wrong.
Where I certainly agree with you is that it seems slightly improbable to specifically believe that "all religions are equally valid paths to God" in the manner described above when compared to the probability of "I don't want to fight about religion and tolerance is good or whatever". That is, I think most people of the "don't-matter-ist" sort, if given the chance, would agree with the description in the first paragraph of their views, but I don't think they would be equally quick to embrace the last part about all fundamentalists being wrong. (Then again, I might be surprised. I can think of at least one cultural catholic who is very strongly fundamentalist catholic/muslim/atheist/jew etc. and might actually fit my description perfectly.)
In any case, I intend to assume that people's views make logical sense until they show otherwise, which admittedly happens quite frequently.
I hope this response is at all useful or interesting!
P.S. I use "fundamentalist" to describe people who interpret the rules and beliefs of their religion as genuine truths about the universe, rather than useful cultural artifacts. That's probably not the only definition ever used, and I don't mean to associate such people with any negative connotations of "fundamentalism".
P.P.S. If we wanted to test our views empirically, I think checking whether potential "don't-matter-ists" are opposed to religious fundamentalism of all sorts on the grounds that such fundamentalism is factually wrong and/or harmful would be a good way of seeing whether their views are truly illogical and "don't-matter-ist" as opposed to just very broadly non-demoninationally spiritual.
And it's amazing that the religion of "science" (really scientism) has no plausible answer to any of those questions.
Hi Richard,
Hope you're doing well in 2026. I appreciate your comment; however, I must note that I find your perspective absurdly far away from mine.
In my experience, "science" is less a religion and more a means of truth-finding. There are and have almost always been scientists of different faiths. Scientists investigate empirical realities by testing hypotheses. That's all. I agree that if people treat science as their religion, they are unlikely to find religious truths, as that's not really what science provides.
However, I think there are reasonable philosophies that can arise from an empirical assessment of reality that leads to atheism. Based on my knowledge of how the world works, it seems improbable to me that there are supernatural beings who interact with humans in observable or meaningful ways.
From there, philosophies such as absurdism, existentialism, and maybe some forms of positive nihilism make some sense to me, and can provide answers to the big questions. Not necessarily pleasant answers, but we are trying to find the truth above all here, aren't we?
"Who am I?" A collection of atoms whose particular self-sustaining form descended from a long line of atomic self-sustaining forms known as cell-based terrestrial life.
"Why am I here?" Just because. The universe has laws of physics that permitted life, which then evolved to form the happy accident of humanity.
"Where am I going?" Eventually, back to dust, entirely, with no surviving soul. Before then, wherever you choose, constrained by a wide variety of limitations.
"What is good?" Arbitrary and subjective, influenced by the evolutionary fitness of certain emotions and methods of reasoning. No one answer that is objectively correct, but it is worth trying to convince people of your views in most cases. I prefer to construct a morality that advocates for the flourishing of all life, with a particular emphasis on humans.
(Whether these are actually plausible is up for debate, but there are quite a few smart people who believe they are, so I wouldn't dismiss the possibility out of hand.)
It's true that science doesn't understand subjective consciousness yet, but scientific understanding progresses and there is no reason to believe strongly that we will never know. And for the record, I find religious dualism to usually be almost as unsatisfactory as our current empirical knowledge gap.
Not sure you'll see this or respond, but I feel obligated to try to broaden perspectives whenever possible, especially where misconceptions about the paucity of atheist worldviews are concerned.
Hi James,
Thanks, as always, for sharing your perspective.
Personally, I'm not sure about "doesn't-matter-ism" being a bad or problematically anti-truth stance. I think it is perfectly valid to believe that the religious truth of the world is that being kind to people is what matters. It's not that far from Christianity to reduce all the teachings to "love thy neighbor" and treat the rest as optional commentary—it's not *at all* Christian, but it is a belief system. If that belief system helps explain the world better than alternatives, then it is reasonable to believe it is probably correct.
And there's no law of physics stating that you have to believe the official doctrine(s) of a religion to want to belong to it; if you do not believe that Catholic doctrine is actually correct, there is nothing objectively wrong with viewing Catholicism as a cultural movement in which some people have weird beliefs about how to be Catholic (specifically, those "weird ones" in this case are the adherents to the official faith).
Or in other words, nothing stops you from believing that "Catholic" describes a group of people with shared lifestyle choices who like the advice of the Pope; that is a worldview that is just as valid as the view that Catholic doctrine expresses what is objectively correct.
Of course, if you believe in Catholic doctrine, you would not consider these people to be following the true faith that God intended, but as the name "Catholic" was not, to my knowledge, ordained by God Himself, no one has a monopoly on what is really "Catholic".
For context, I say this as an agnostic atheist who thinks that any belief in God is almost certainly wrong. I also wish that people interrogated and lived by the truth more fully. But many forms of "doesn't-matter-ism" have the potential to be genuine answers to the big questions.
EDIT: Upon reflection, this kind of boils down to "doesn't-matter-ism isn't necessarily just a lack of reflection on truth; it's just a different religion of the MTD sort." Which is still objectively incorrect, from a Catholic or atheist perspective, but potentially only as incorrect as other genuine truth-seekers.
Hi, Allan! Thanks for reading, and, likewise, for sharing your view!
I'm not sure we're all that far apart, although I might be misunderstanding you. If someone doggedly pursues the truth and, having done so, concludes something like:
1. The truth about God is unknowable and
2. The only important things in life are enjoyment and being nice
...then I disagree with their conclusions, but they are still fundamentally oriented toward the truth. Thus, this is not Doesn't Matterism, even though it shares some of its tenets.
One fairly reliable tell that someone has *not* arrived at these conclusions through dogged pursuit of the truth is when they assert that the third tenet I suggested for Doesn't-Matterism: "all religions are equally valid paths to God." This violates the law of non-contradiction. Different religions (including agnosticism and atheism) make different, conflicting claims about God. Those claims are either true, or they are not. They cannot be equally valid. Someone's closer to the truth, and someone's further away! So it seems hard to embrace this tenet without abandoning the orientation to truth and adopting Doesn't-Matterism instead. That, I do think, is poisonous.
Hi James,
Just a note that I will respond later (hopefully this evening) but am currently otherwise occupied. Thanks for your response.
Hi again,
Sorry for my slow response; I am apparently quite absent-minded. I think your analysis of my view seems largely accurate.
I think "all religions are equally valid paths to God" still can work if we treat religions as localized cultural phenomena with aspects of metaphysical and moral philosophy. Certainly religious fundamentalists are necessarily in conflict with one another, but I think there is a logically-sound view through which a cultural Catholic, a cultural Muslim, a cultural Jew, a cultural Hindu, a cultural Buddhist, a cultural animist, a cultural atheist, and a cultural neopagan *can*, though not necessarily do, arrive at the same philosophy on the "important matters" (of being nice and tolerant and such) while still retaining different cultural practices. Such a view is not that all religious views are equally valid, but that one can arrive at the limited number of conclusions that actually matter from any religious background. (In such a view, some religions might be better at inducing this arrival better than others, but each of the religions is 100% valid as a cultural practice with subjective anthropological value.)
Ironically, such a view would more or less require viewing all fundamentalists of any religion as fundamentally wrong.
Where I certainly agree with you is that it seems slightly improbable to specifically believe that "all religions are equally valid paths to God" in the manner described above when compared to the probability of "I don't want to fight about religion and tolerance is good or whatever". That is, I think most people of the "don't-matter-ist" sort, if given the chance, would agree with the description in the first paragraph of their views, but I don't think they would be equally quick to embrace the last part about all fundamentalists being wrong. (Then again, I might be surprised. I can think of at least one cultural catholic who is very strongly fundamentalist catholic/muslim/atheist/jew etc. and might actually fit my description perfectly.)
In any case, I intend to assume that people's views make logical sense until they show otherwise, which admittedly happens quite frequently.
I hope this response is at all useful or interesting!
P.S. I use "fundamentalist" to describe people who interpret the rules and beliefs of their religion as genuine truths about the universe, rather than useful cultural artifacts. That's probably not the only definition ever used, and I don't mean to associate such people with any negative connotations of "fundamentalism".
P.P.S. If we wanted to test our views empirically, I think checking whether potential "don't-matter-ists" are opposed to religious fundamentalism of all sorts on the grounds that such fundamentalism is factually wrong and/or harmful would be a good way of seeing whether their views are truly illogical and "don't-matter-ist" as opposed to just very broadly non-demoninationally spiritual.