(March 26, 2015 at 11:40 am)whateverist Wrote: The reason it is hard to be an atheist in the US today is that those who do believe take non-belief so personally. As a teacher, I've made it a conscious decision not to be disclosive about my religious status so as not to derail instruction. I'm not in teaching for the sake of influencing the content of young people's ideas, only their ability to think critically (for which math has no equal in the education of the young).
Yes, that is a wise policy. If you told your students that you were an atheist, many would not listen to you, and consequently would not learn as much. And really, whether you believe in a god or not is irrelevant to the solution to any purely mathematical problem.
"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
