I've been thinking about the remnants of religion ever since I ended up talking with some secular humanists last Friday night. They were complete skeptics, and according to them, humans can never be certain about anything. These people believe in gravity, in evolution, in God's non-existence, yet they cannot say for certain. I've been pondering why they have this attitude ever since, and here's what I've got.
These humanists have gotten rid of God, but they are still left with altruism, a religious morality. I've decided their epistemology is also a leftover. Skepticism is basically the desire for knowledge to exist without context. They want to know something without sensing it and without forming any concepts about it. These folks will only admit they know something if they know it in the way God knows stuff, by no means at all. They have a religious epistemology, without the religion. Weird.
