Some thoughts
I have recently attended two or three Cyber gatherings in the on-line 3D virtual world of Second Life.
(This is my avatar prescence in SL)
I am a member of several groups in SL (an initialism utilized a great deal by most anyone that has ever experienced SL for any length of time). Two of the groups I am associated with are SL Humanism currently with 266 members, and Atheists United enrolling 462 members (as of this post). SL Humanism has weekly meetings held in Roma, a dedicated public meeting space with exceptionally nice Cyber surroundings, and a veritable cornucopia of information on Humanism. The United Atheists group is still attempting to organize a regular meeting time and place to date.
During the meetings I was able to attend, most of the discussion involved how to get more people to listen to rationality in general. It was widely accepted by both groups that the majority of people are just simply not well educated. As I listened to the discussion I began to think about all the conversations I have had with, shall we say, people of the faith. This is not to say that all believers are uneducated only that a large part of them seem to be. Or perhaps they just suffer from temporary loss of rational faculties when making the leap into this kind of discussion.
In every conversation I’ve ever had, I run up against people that will fight until they are literally blue in the face trying to prove to you that you are wrong and there “is” a God. Yet, in the course of the conversation the debate becomes null because everything they are using as proof has already been decidedly proven to an be an allegory. When a rational person begins to point out the holes in their arguments and the source of the same, the conversation degrades to something along the lines of a threat on your immortal soul. I am sorry but that does not seem to be a very educated or informed approach to any subject, be it Humanism or Atheism.
This thought was born from a recently posted comment on a blog I regularly watch. You can check it out for yourself on the lower half of my page under Ironwolf. The comment posted to an earlier entry from Ironwolf regarding the “Blasphemy Challenge”. Just read it for yourself. Either this commenter is very bad at typing, or they really need a bit more education. Without knowing them personally I can not make a valid assumption, but I can wager it seems very likely the commenter could use a bit more education.
