I vaguely remember, somewhere on LW or SSC probably, a discussion of Richard Dawkins and the New Atheists—as absurd and risible as their screeds and juvenile mockery of Judeochristian religion were, one could point out that it seemed to work on a lot of people. Apparently there were a lot of people who saw the mockery, saw that there was even semi-plausible arguments against religion, saw that you could be a perfectly successful normal person like Dawkins without being smote by lightning (or ostracization) for saying that God doesn’t exist, and that was enough to trigger deconversion; theism was taken so for granted in their local environment that they hadn’t really thought about it meaningfully, or they had had growing doubts but no awareness of the debate, or thought they were alone etc, and seeing the New Atheists be a thing mocking religion was enough.
Almost certainly. And of course, Scott doesn’t mention “Richard Dawkins” (the example was /r/atheism) so no wonder my keyword search didn’t turn it up… Oh well.
I vaguely remember, somewhere on LW or SSC probably, a discussion of Richard Dawkins and the New Atheists—as absurd and risible as their screeds and juvenile mockery of Judeochristian religion were, one could point out that it seemed to work on a lot of people. Apparently there were a lot of people who saw the mockery, saw that there was even semi-plausible arguments against religion, saw that you could be a perfectly successful normal person like Dawkins without being smote by lightning (or ostracization) for saying that God doesn’t exist, and that was enough to trigger deconversion; theism was taken so for granted in their local environment that they hadn’t really thought about it meaningfully, or they had had growing doubts but no awareness of the debate, or thought they were alone etc, and seeing the New Atheists be a thing mocking religion was enough.
All Debates are Bravery Debates?
Almost certainly. And of course, Scott doesn’t mention “Richard Dawkins” (the example was /r/atheism) so no wonder my keyword search didn’t turn it up… Oh well.
I also remember this! (And also cannot recall the link.)