(October 11, 2017 at 8:49 pm)causal code Wrote:Well someday hopefully we'll have a world in which religion isn't dominant or even prevalent, in which case atheism will not be a useful or relevant concept, which was in fact my entire point.mordant Wrote:We need to promote rational thinking -- if we do, atheism and theism will sort themselves out.
Yes, and a non trivial portion of rational thinking, deals with rejecting deities, (i.e. atheism) especially in our unfortunately God-ridden / Plentifully religious world.
Maybe in another world, where some required flavour of rational thinking was hypothetically needed to oppose some other large (but non-religious) foolishness... atheism would not be relevant in that world.
However that hypothetical world is not our highly religious world, and this is why atheism is important.
My contention that atheism isn't important was meant only in an absolute / inherent sense. It's important / necessary at present and for the foreseeable future because a particular situation obtains, namely, that religion and religious memes are dominant in our societies.
I think the distinction is worth keeping in mind because in my experience many of my fellow atheists could use a bit of humility. They do have some tendency to treat atheism like some kind of savior on a white horse when in fact it's just a concept or even more accurately the RESULT of a concept (skepticism). No wonder some theists, who are accustomed to striving with other religions, are tempted to see atheism as just another religion. They get the same condescension and even hostility from our anti-dogma as from any other. Mind you, I'm not talking about their tendency to confuse simple matter-of-fact disagreement with condescension or hostility. I'm just saying that there is some ACTUAL condescension and hostility when you assume every believer is a believer purely because they're stupid or dishonest, rather than because they're themselves the victims of operant conditioning from purveyors of superficially comforting lies.
