One of my favourite posts here in a while. When talking with theists I find it helpful to clarify that I’m not so much against their God, rather my core problem is that I have different epistemological standards to them. Not only does this take some of the emotive heat out of the conversation, but I also think it’s the point where science/rationalism/atheism etc. is at its strongest and their system is very weak.
With respect to untheistic society, I remember when a guy I knew shifted to New Zealand from the US and was disappointed to find that relatively few people were interested in talking to him about atheism. The reason, I explained, is that most people simply aren’t sufficiently interested in religion to be bothered with atheism. This is a society where the leaders of both major parties in the last election publicly stated that they were not believers and… almost nobody cared.
I enjoyed this post very much as well as I am interested in this topic. I am not a mathmatician and only had entry level college philosophy, so 80% of the discussion is over my head. I wanted to say that your comment that “most people aren’t sufficiently interested in religion to be bothered with atheism” in New Zeland was very helpful.
This may make no logical sense, but the meaning I took away is that if that if an individual is not sufficiently interested in religion (or feel he has sufficient reason to disbelieve Christianity in my case) then that individual should not be bothered that he is an atheist. I know the point of these discussions is to discuss and not compliment, but I wanted to say that your comment helped me tremendously.
One of my favourite posts here in a while. When talking with theists I find it helpful to clarify that I’m not so much against their God, rather my core problem is that I have different epistemological standards to them. Not only does this take some of the emotive heat out of the conversation, but I also think it’s the point where science/rationalism/atheism etc. is at its strongest and their system is very weak.
With respect to untheistic society, I remember when a guy I knew shifted to New Zealand from the US and was disappointed to find that relatively few people were interested in talking to him about atheism. The reason, I explained, is that most people simply aren’t sufficiently interested in religion to be bothered with atheism. This is a society where the leaders of both major parties in the last election publicly stated that they were not believers and… almost nobody cared.
I enjoyed this post very much as well as I am interested in this topic. I am not a mathmatician and only had entry level college philosophy, so 80% of the discussion is over my head. I wanted to say that your comment that “most people aren’t sufficiently interested in religion to be bothered with atheism” in New Zeland was very helpful.
This may make no logical sense, but the meaning I took away is that if that if an individual is not sufficiently interested in religion (or feel he has sufficient reason to disbelieve Christianity in my case) then that individual should not be bothered that he is an atheist. I know the point of these discussions is to discuss and not compliment, but I wanted to say that your comment helped me tremendously.