In the evangelical community, especially the more fundamentalist regions of it, one is taught from a very young age that the “spiritual world” is more real than the real world and that everyone knows this fact, at least subconsciously. People who treat Christianity as a reasonable thing that they just happen not to believe in are, of course, merely in denial.
Dawkins was the first writer I came across who expected other people to actually be reasonable if they wanted to be taken seriously, rather than spiraling off into a cloud of nonsense about only God being certain and being tested by Satan. He presented plenty of evidence for his position too, but attitude and evidence are separate things and both are important when you’re dealing with someone who’s convinced that faith is more meaningful than evidence.
In the evangelical community, especially the more fundamentalist regions of it, one is taught from a very young age that the “spiritual world” is more real than the real world and that everyone knows this fact, at least subconsciously. People who treat Christianity as a reasonable thing that they just happen not to believe in are, of course, merely in denial.
That’s probably one of those things that I always forget, not having been raised in a fundamentalist evangelical community. But you’re right, attitude (and what is counted as “evidence”) is very important, and maybe more important than whether mere facts are for/against a given hypothesis.
In the evangelical community, especially the more fundamentalist regions of it, one is taught from a very young age that the “spiritual world” is more real than the real world and that everyone knows this fact, at least subconsciously. People who treat Christianity as a reasonable thing that they just happen not to believe in are, of course, merely in denial.
Dawkins was the first writer I came across who expected other people to actually be reasonable if they wanted to be taken seriously, rather than spiraling off into a cloud of nonsense about only God being certain and being tested by Satan. He presented plenty of evidence for his position too, but attitude and evidence are separate things and both are important when you’re dealing with someone who’s convinced that faith is more meaningful than evidence.
That’s probably one of those things that I always forget, not having been raised in a fundamentalist evangelical community. But you’re right, attitude (and what is counted as “evidence”) is very important, and maybe more important than whether mere facts are for/against a given hypothesis.