Why Aren't Atheists Trad?
I know the actual answer to this. The actual answer is that belief in the supernatural is part of almost every human tradition. The personality type that likes trying new things is obviously more likely to be atheist, but it doesn’t seem like “trying new things is good” follows from atheism at all.
I feel like it should seem more weird to more people that belief in the supernatural is associated with following existing traditions, and lack of belief in the supernatural is associated with trying weird new things.
To me it seems like, if there is nothing outside of the nature, then the only information we have about what works is history, tradition, whatever you want to call “what has worked for people so far.”
But if there is something outside of nature, then “the history of what has worked so far” is not the only possible source of information about what you should do. If something exists outside of nature/history, then that outside thing could contain information about human behavior that isn’t contained in the history of human behavior that has been tried so far.
You actually do see a lot of weird cults, “God said I could do [x weird thing].” This is why I asked “Why aren’t atheists trad?” instead of asking “Why aren’t religious people radical?” Mostly [x weird thing] does not work. Sometimes it does. Early Christianity is an example of people with supernatural beliefs doing the unprecedented things that their outside information told them would work. A lot of the things that early Christians thought God had told them to do….didn’t work. But compared to other cults, a lot more of their divine revelations did work. Now those things are trad.
But I’m not that interested in religious people being radical or religious people beiing trad, because I’ve seen both. I’m surprised by how many atheists I see who seem fundamentally interested in trying new things, and how few atheists I see who are desperately clinging to tradition as the only raft in the sea of an uncaring world, where no outside help is coming.
I’m tempted to dispute the premise. Do atheists really do a bunch of weird stuff? I’m a second-generation atheist married to a second-generation atheist, pretty much everyone I have ever been close to has been an atheist, I just sorta assume by default that everyone I encounter is an atheist, and I’m rarely hit over the head by turning out to be wrong. All these people seem pretty boring and normal, “phenotypically” trad in the sense of doing the done thing (going to school, graduating, getting jobs, showing up on time to things, maybe having kids), even if they would not characterize themselves as self-consciously trad or self-consciously anything. Isn’t the whole “PMC” just kinda ambiently atheist and non-radical? Maybe there’s a poll or something that could resolve this empirically.
the actual answer is that 'trad' is a conservative aesthetic, and one that implicitly defines itself contrary to atheism by donning Catholic symbols, which is a rich vein. But because it dons the mantle of christianity, it cannot ever, really, be atheist as well, aesthetically speaking. the two streams are contradictory!
it doesnt help that 'trad atheism' has less aethetica to work with, having only existed, really, since the founding of classical liberalism, but it certainly still exists! One might argue that the Soviets and their cultural outputs were the closest thing we have to what could be called 'trad atheism'.
The reason you dont see 'trad atheists' in america in particular is because America has spent enormous amounts of time, money, and energy discrediting its former adversary through its propaganda outreach. (not hyperbole, im not using the word propaganda here morally, only descriptively)