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cabalamat comments on Church vs. Taskforce - Less Wrong
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A persuasive school of thought in the economics of religion suggests that in order to build community, churches often artificially increase barriers to exit and require all sorts of crazy behaviour to signal commitment, thus preventing free-riding. Irrational belief and the accompanying ritual seems to be pretty good at this. I'm not too sure how a rationalist community would fare in this respect...
At least for now, most people are not atheists/rationalists. Atheism may seem to be a crazy behaviour to a lot of people! So maybe one can signal commitment by publically associating oneself with an atheist/rationalist organisation.
I think a lot of religious signaling works because folks can signal commitment to a particular religious community. While publicly being an atheist/rationalist may make it harder to join a religious group, thus keeping you an atheist, I doubt it commits you to a particular organization. It seems to me that part of the reason religious communities are so stable is that so much of an individual's identity is tied to believing in this particular organization, having these particular goals, or following this particular charismatic leader. Strong and unqualified loyalty to a particular group seems at odds with rationalism.