Peak Atheism

Available on Patreon KMO and Olga continue the conversation with Jay Smith and Jeff Wilburn.  This week the topic moves from race in the Peak Oil narrative to the  prospects for atheistic rational materialism in a post-petroleum milieu.  The same fossil fuel windfall that has allowed industry to replace the  work of human and animal muscles with machines and thus allowed for the  emancipation of millions of people from forced labor has also allowed a  flowering of scientific rationalism and an atheistic worldview. Might  some of the moral progress of recent centuries prove ephemeral in the  wake of Peak Oil? The consolation of religion appeals to humans in times  of uncertainty and hardship. So what are the prospects for science and  atheism in the context of the industrial collapse and population  contraction?   Music by The Weal and the Woe.