https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=adpIT_FzHAg
So, our commentator says, quote, I am an atheist because my pure and honest desire to understand the universe led me to answers from biology, physics, and other scientific fields. These answers are more sublime and precious than anything I know. Notice she says these answers are more sublime and precious. Now, what is that word sublime? It’s an interesting word because something sublime is something which is elevated. The source of the notion of sublimation was the change of a solid into a vapor. So, is that what she means? That the scientific answers are literally like changing a solid into a vapor? Of course not. What she means is that scientific answers are more precious. She said it. Rarer. Something like the move from the large quantity at the base of the mountain to the rarer and rarer and more sought after summit. What sublime means is that scientific answers are more like heaven, i.e. vapor, and less like earth, i.e. solid. Quote, I believe religions and symbolism can confirm meaning in one’s personal subjective life because I’ve been on that path before. You could say that is enough because all we have in our existence is our subjective point of view, but I believe it’s a noble act to care less about that and to desire to know what happens with the universe outside your own personal life. Then how could anyone judge you for being an atheist when science, as imperfect as it is, brought you knowledge about distant stars and galaxies, the small world of atoms, and much more? Now, this is where we need to pay attention. That mysticism and religion did not enlighten us about matters above subjective and social aspects. Now, notice again that she uses the word above. Now, does she mean that, for example, if I had a stack of scientific data, like a pile of paper, let’s say, that I would place it on top of a stack of subjective and social matters? No, obviously not. What she’s saying is that there is a hierarchy of value, a mountain of meaning, and scientific knowledge is, in her opinion, closer to heaven, closer to the oneness of the summit. And that’s really interesting, because the scientific method is, by its own admission, by its own process, a removal of all hierarchies of value. It is the leveling of the world into measurable phenomena, the removal of all meaning. Yet in order to express the superiority of science, our commentator must resort to the same language, the same structure we use to say that God, the absolute, the one, the origin of all multiplicity, is in heaven. So what is fascinating is that she can use that structure of heaven and hierarchy unconsciously. Exactly because the scientific method does not include it in its worldview, does not take it into consideration how we exist and how we encounter the world. She said it herself, It is a noble act to care less about our subjective point of view and to desire to know what happens in the universe outside your own world. And to desire to know what happens in the universe outside your own personal life. She is criticizing symbolic language while using the symbolic language to elevate, to magnify, and submit herself to science and its precious, sublime answers. But the language of elevation, of hierarchy, being indeed the manner in which we ascribe value to things, is the religious hierarchy that we find in Dante, or in Jacob’s ladder, or in Moses’ descent of the mountain, the great chain of being as it has been called. It goes unnoticed even as it is being used, creating a form of cognitive dissonance, an unconsciousness of language and of one’s own embodied human existence.