Too few people know that they know an atheist, redux

[rug]

Posted on: November 30, 2011 3:40 AM, by Josh Rosenau

Last April, I blogged a paper by Will Gervais, that showed you could increase people's trust of atheists by simply telling them about how prevalent atheists are in their community. As I said at the time, the result isn't surprising and I didn't think it had any bearing on the debates over New Atheism per se. There were those who disagreed, and insisted that the study validated New Atheist-style "out" campaigns.

In a commentary on his research, Mr. Gervais weighs in on those implications of his work:

I think the simplest way for atheists to be perceived as more trustworthy is to be open about their lack of belief in God. There’s a wealth of social psychological evidence that shows contact with members of disliked groups can reduce prejudice. … simply knowing that there are lots of atheists in the world makes atheists seem more trustworthy. … Ara Norenzayan and I have some research (forthcoming in the journal Psychological Science) demonstrating that reminding people of other institutions that help keep people cooperative—secular institutions like police, contracts, and courts—also reduces distrust of atheists. And open atheists might be able to help remind people that there are lots of solid, nonreligious motivations for moral behavior.

That said, being an open atheist isn’t necessarily the same thing as being a strident, “in your face” atheist. Nobody really likes having their core beliefs attacked. My hunch is that “I’m here, I’m an atheist, and it’s really not that big of a deal” would be a more effective approach than a Dawkinsian “I’m here, I’m an atheist, and religions are mass delusions” approach, in terms of increasing acceptance and trust of people who don’t believe in God.

Skepticism means caring about evidence, and that last paragraph by Gervais is what the evidence consistently tells us. What does one call empiricists who ignore the evidence before them?

http://scienceblogs.com/tfk/2011/11/too_few_people_know_that_they_1.php

[edhopper]

1. Have you ever talked to an atheist?

I say this because I would count myself as a so called "New Atheist" (hate that term, but using it in context). When Dawkins, Hitchens et al write, debate or lecture publicly about atheism, they are doing it as advocates. They are no more strident that Al Gore was about Global Warming, or Billy Graham about Christ. In private conversations the discussion is pretty much how the article describes. I don't recall ever seeing an atheist be "in your face' in a social setting.
Something I have seen untold times from religious folks I know.

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

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[rug]

4. Many times over many years.

In college, a Catholic college, I had a very good friend of mine who had also gone to Catholic high school. We were staying late working on the school paper one night when he started to go off about the Sacred Heart. More or less it went like this. "Sacred Heart! What about the Sacred Foreskin? This is all bullshit!" Then he got up and took the crucifix off the wall and threw it in the trash can. I'm pretty sure this was my reaction. :eyes: He's a good guy and we keep in touch. He's a personal chef in LA and still an atheist. Every so often i remind him he wouldn't be if he wasn't circumcised.

I'll spare the stories about the Communists I hung with. Stone cold dialectical materialists who rarely mentioned religion but hated capitalism with a righteous anger. Good comrades.

More recently I've been good friends with a clown who's an atheist. I met him a few years ago on Kids Night at Perkins. On Tuesdays kids eat free and the clown makes balloons. My daughters watched his son's hermit crabs last week while the family went to Guatemala to see the boy's birth mother. It's an open adoption. Here's his picture.



He's pretty funny but his balloons suck. They all look like dogs.

I really don't understand the shadowboxing that goes on in here. Life's too short and people too interesting for this.

[Old and In the Way]

3. I never bring it up the subject of God/atheism, but will respond when asked..

It's been my observation that these conversations happen in 2 basic social circumstance-

(1) the ones who actively try to engage in dialogue - I call them the God proselytizers - who feel compelled to visit my home twice a year to try and save me (and earn valuable salvation points for themselves, apparently). Can't say that I've ever had an atheist cold call me on the subject.

(2) in social conversations when someone/society is being prejudged, "xxxx is going to hell" or "Our problems today is God's way of dealing with xxxx in our society". I'm not unopposed to challenging the person making these kind of unfounded editorial comments. Interesting enough, the instigator usually defines himself as a religious conservative.