Open thread, May 17-31 2013

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

I'm thinking of making a Discussion post about this, but I'm not sure if it has already been mentioned.

We're not atheists - we're rationalists.

I think it's worth distinguishing ourselves from the "atheist" label. On the internet, and in society (what I've seen of it, which is limited), the label includes a certain kind of "militant atheist" who love to pick fights with the religious and crusade against religion whenever possible. The arguments are, obviously, the sames ones being used over and over again, and even people who would identify as atheists don't want to associate themselves to this vocal minority that systematically makes everyone uncomfortable.

I think most LessWrongers aren't like that, and don't want to attach a label to themselves that will sneak in those connotations. Personally, I identify as a rationalist, not an atheist. The two things that distinguish me from them:

Social consequentialism. I know conversations about religion are often not productive, so I'm quick to tap out of such discussions. Unlike a lot of atheists, I could, in principle, be persuaded to believe otherwise (given sufficient evidence). If judgement day comes and I see the world burning around me, I will probably first think that I've gone insane; but the probability I assign to theism will increase, as per Bayes' Theorem.

Note that this feeling is dependent on who you know, so I might be a minority in the label I see attached to atheism.

What do people think? I wrote this pretty quickly, and could take the time to a more coherent text to post in discussion.

If judgement day comes and I see the world burning around me, I will probably first think that I've gone insane; but the probability I assign to theism will increase, as per Bayes' Theorem.

Where the probability at the moment? How high would it rise for experiencing 1 hour of judgment day, the world burning around you?

2CAE_Jones13y

Living in rural America, where Atheism is still technically illegal in some places even though no one would dare enforce it, I think distinguishing the labels "rational thinkers" from "atheists" is a very good idea. I don't think someone who considers themselves rational and theist would be particularly proud to associate with the label that best fits their particular brand of theism (Roman Catholicism and Mormonism seem to spawn subverters of this expectation, but reducing to the common category of "christian" seems to invoke way more cultural baggage). Or rather, I wouldn't dare call myself a christian or an atheist anywhere anyone could possibly find out about. Smart people would dismiss me as inferior for the former, 90% of people within a 200mi radius would start hurling crosses at me for the latter. Probably will need allies in both groups, so I'm kinda concerned about this whole labels thing.

2Nornagest13y

I'm comfortable calling myself an atheist (though I rarely need to), but only because I believe in zero gods and that qualifies me for the label in the eyes of almost everyone. In other words, I treat "atheist" as a feature of my worldview, not as an identity. Sure, these evangelical atheists people are so concerned over might share that feature with me, but we also share opposable thumbs and a well-developed prefrontal cortex, and I'm not too worried about that. This seems like a common enough take on the word that I don't risk misunderstandings unless I'm dealing with people from highly religious subcultures who've never met an atheist in the wild. Inadvertent identity pollution might be an issue if the set of atheists was more narrowly defined, but there's no agenda attached to atheism and precious little in the way of unifying features besides the obvious. On the other hand, I'm distinctly uncomfortable calling myself a rationalist. Partly because the term has a philosophical meaning which is quite unlike that common here, but mostly because it implies adopting a subcultural identity, and that's playing with fire: ingroup biases are so pervasive, and so easy to accidentally fall into, that you should generally only do that when you have a positive reason to. Even if that weren't the case, LW is such a small group, and in many ways such a strong outlier, that dressing up a in LW-specific identity is going to carry far more baggage in the outside world than a term as broad as "atheist" would.

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Open thread, May 17-31 2013

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Open thread, May 17-31 2013

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