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AspiringRationalist comments on The Problem Of Apostasy - Less Wrong
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We probably could distance ourselves from atheism very easily. We just have someone who is high status post about how "religious/anti-religious discussion is the mindkiller" and encourage people not to talk about it.
We've already done this with a topic. At risk of breaking the taboo (I'll try to stay meta), I would like to remind people that that for the vast majority of LW readers there are at least two major political parties they can support and choose from. These parties do not base their platforms on reality equally nor do their platforms give equal expected utility towards LWers should they be voted into power. A sequence saying "<x> political party is the rational choice and this is why" could be done, yet we choose not to. Not only that, but we actively prevent discussion on it.
We could do it for religion as well if we really wanted to. I don't think the trade-off would be worth it and I think our current system of 'not talk about politics, talk about athiesm' is fine. However, we shouldn't pretend it's something immutable. These things are within our control. We choose the trade-offs we make, and we accept this trade-off.
Not discussing religion would be a lot more difficult than not discussing politics, because religion is much closer to the main topic of discussion. Unless you work in politics, your political views probably have very little impact on your day-to-day life, nor on most major decisions you make (barring extreme views). On the other hand, for most people, religion has a major impact on both their daily lives and on their epistemology.
What do you mean with respect to daily lives? Attendance at religious services? Restricting marriage prospects to candidates within the religion? In the US, and moreso in Europe, most people don't attend services very often and there is a lot of intermarriage. On a global scale, the impact of religion is higher, and there are subcultures where it is of quite high importance, but I'm not sure what you had in mind.