(November 18, 2013 at 11:11 am)Jacob(smooth) Wrote: Is there quite satisfaction? Complete indifference? Desire to set people free, morpheus style? The feeling that the world would be a better place without religion (which of course means you would be improving the world by converting or deprograming a theist)?
I think that there is a sense that the world would be in better shape without religion, but I think most atheists would also recognize that it's not likely to work that way. Religion is one of the many ways in which humans separate themselves into social groups that allow them to identify friends and enemies. We use things as important as politics and social ideals and as unimportant as sports teams to create those groups and define those boundaries. My fear is that in a world without religion, we'd find something else to take its place as a great and terrible divider of people.
In my day-to-day life I make no effort to convert anyone, but even as a Christian I was careful to respect people's desire not to be preached to outside of the organized activity (yes, I was one of those annoying JWs who always managed to ring the doorbell when it was most inconvenient to do so). Since I don't go door-to-door for atheism, it's not a subject that comes up very often.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
