Eugine_Nier comments on The Irrationality Game - Less Wrong

38 Post author: Will_Newsome 03 October 2010 02:43AM

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Comment author: Eugine_Nier 04 October 2010 02:35:45AM 4 points [-]

I'd be curious to know when you think the crossover point was.

Comment author: orthonormal 04 October 2010 02:55:55AM *  12 points [-]

Around the time of J. S. Mill, I think. The Industrial Revolution helped crystallize an elite political and academic movement which had the germs of scientific and quantitative thinking; but this movement has been far too busy fighting for its life each time it conflicts with religious mores, instead of being able to examine and improve itself. It should have developed far more productively by now if atheism had really caught on in Victorian England.

Anyway, I'm not as confident of the above as I am that we've passed the crossover point now. (Aside from the obvious political effects, the persistence of religion creates mental antibodies in atheists that make them extremely wary of anything reminiscent of some aspect of religion; this too is a source of bias that wouldn't exist were it not for religion's ubiquity.)