Exactly.

That's just so cool...?

@TheMiddleWay I understand what your argument for friendly and unfriendly is, but that is a redefining of the word friendly, and the word unfriendly, that I don't agree with. An atheist who could see religion as justified, and see their own position as possibly wrong, could colloquially be understood to be an agnostic.

@TheMiddleWay Ok sorry, what I mean to say is the presented argument. No need to be hateful.

@TheMiddleWay wha... the...??? for real...? you For Real forgot us? you must be... joking...

Yes, there are. It's part of the spectrum.

Very few, but I have come across a couple.

@evidentialist Yeah, now that I think about it, that makes sense. There are agnostic theists just like there are agnostic atheists.

@SallyMc -- The varying shades of human existence.

@SallyMc -- Where in the site's literature does it say, "No theists allowed?" There is even provision for the varying shades of belief/unbelief built right into the questions asked to provide information about members. But even if that were not the case and NO THEISTS ALLOWED was printed in giant red letters on the site's home page, there would be no guarantee that theists wouldn't be here.

Nope.

@TheMiddleWay -- Did I say "...artificial limit..."? What was intended was that there is rarely taken into account the spectrum that occupies the space between one extreme and the other. No allowance for 'friendly on condition' or 'moderately friendly', only friendly or unfriendly. This is the sort of thing that is taught in debate classes and is the foundation of legal sparring. The door to door salesman is adept in this way as well.

2 x 2 does indeed equal 4. If the answer one gets is 11, then something is wrong and a reassessment of one's operations/logic should be made. What happens more often than not when dealing with the devoutly religious is something like your little math play. They say, "Everyone knows that 2 x 2 is 11." I ask them if it is possible what they believe is wrong and their response is, in effect, "The bible says it is 11, and the bible is the infallible word of What'shisname." From past experience, I know that walking them through the mathematical process that leads to 4 is most likely not going to bear fruit.

If I drop it right there and walk away, they feel rejected which reinforces what they already believe about atheists. We are unfriendly. We are terse. We are unfeeling. We are rude. We can't stand up to their 'truth'. We are cowardly. So, instead, I try to exit this conversation that cannot take place with some sort of kind/gentle parting commentary. That doesn't work, either. We are condescending. We are unable to comprehend their 'truth'.

So, I have a question for you. What exactly do you mean by friendly and unfriendly? You, not some definition taken from somewhere else.

@TheMiddleWay -- I know the paper from which it was taken. I wander in the IEP regularly. I also understand fallibilism. As you can see from the range of responses, it is not commonly understood what you mean. Too esoteric, my friend.

@TheMiddleWay I understand the concept that it seems rational to them, based on their failed epistemology. That does not make it rational definitionally (i.e., does not make it based on or in accordance with reason and logic). To make a distasteful but accurate parallel, it seems rational and reasonable and permissible to a pedophile to groom and molest children for their own gratification, but that doesn't mean it's actually rational, reasonable or permissible, or even deserving of understanding and sympathy.

I understand many of the other reasons they believe, too. The fear of loss of community and approval; the fear of eternal perdition; the fear of temporal punishment from on high; genuine enjoyment of and comfort taken from ritual and tradition and perceived and real continuity with past generations, and a whole lot more.

None of that makes it definitionally rational either. It certainly explains the enduring appeal of religious ideology and practice; it does not substantiate its truth claims.

I respect the right of people to choose their beliefs, though not to choose or cherry-pick their facts, or to impose their beliefs on others.

All of this controversy goes away if they allow me my own beliefs, and treat me with the respect they want for themselves. And by extension, allow our secular society to flourish without demanding special accommodations for themselves and adherence to their special restrictions and proscriptions for people outside their belief-system.

I would hasten to say that in practice, in real life, on a direct personal basis they almost entirely do let me be (disclaimer: I don't live in the Bible Belt). My malfunction is mostly with people who voluntarily come to public discussion fora such as this and many others, and then complain that everyone doesn't fall all over themselves to affirm and admire their beliefs. And back in Real Life, it's with those who enable dysfunction and human suffering with their ideology (Trumpism, the whole Roy Moore affair, the vanishing of the middle class through wealth transfer to the elites, etc). In the US, fundamentalist ideology has outsized influence on these things, and they ultimately impact me, and especially, my children and grandchildren. So yes I take that rather personally.

@TheMiddleWay -- @mordant has made several solid and valid points. The rigor of philosophical pursuit is best left to academia because it doesn't play well to the masses, nor does it make much sense on the street. Again -- too esoteric for general consumption.

This is why I asked you to provide your definition of 'friendly'/'unfriendly'. I would be willing to wager that if you went into the halls of any fine university and asked random students all the way up through post grads, you'd not find one who would give you the definition being used in the post unless you chose some who were majoring in philosophy.

@TheMiddleWay I can find someone's thinking irrational and still be friendly / polite / respectful (of the person, not the misbelief). It is the behavior of others that, if sufficiently egregiously rude or inappropriate, might engender pushback on my part.

I am heading out in a few minutes for my weekly social with several other men. One of them is xenophobic and one is a Trump supporter. I am affable with them both, because they don't proselytize or preach or in some other way be an ass about it. I think their beliefs and ideology are in large part irrational, but it doesn't stop me from liking them as a human being, at least at the level we are relating.

@TheMiddleWay I do not see the utility in Rowe's notion that a thing is rational based on what information a person possesses or admits, even if the person is ignoring evidence or evidentiary standards or claiming something as evidence that does not actually qualify as such. Maybe he has a technical / philosophical sense in which he's deploying this but it runs afoul of the wee problem that "rational" has an accepted meaning to most people: that a thing is objectively or at least intersubjectively rational according to certain accepted criteria and methods that counter the tendency of human thought towards logical fallacies, particularly but not limited to confirmation bias.

I have always been, and still am, a person biased toward seeing agency in or behind reality. It would, if true, and said agency were somewhat consistent, render existence less absurd and more predictable, and relieve us of some rather scary responsibility to make our own way amidst the indifferent vagaries of the natural world. I am not asking anything of theists that I'm unwilling to take on myself: to simply honor the real rather than the preferred.

I also reject that I must necessarily be disrespectful or caustic with people who reach different conclusions than I about what is rational or actual. Selfishly I do not give a fig what conclusions they hold or whether I share them, so long as they practice "live and let live". Sadly, they often do not.

As soon as we start saying "idea or conclusion X is rational to person Y based on their arbitrary personal standards of what is rational" then the term "rational" ceases to have any real meaning. Sure, any relatively sane person seeks to rationalize their thinking in between their own ears so as to not think of themselves in a negative light, but that's not equivalent to having supportable / substantiated ideas or beliefs.

I think it's fine, though not terribly interesting or insightful or useful, to point out that most people are legends in their own mind -- they believe they are reasonable and thoughtful and right, pretty much regardless of what they think or why they think it.

But if we are interested in nudging humanity in a better direction -- one that is TRULY reasonable and thoughtful and helpful, one that truly helps people have in their minds a more intersubjectively accurate model of reality and a way of assessing reality that overcomes their hopes, dreams, preferences and fears where they conflict with bare-metal reality ... then I think we need to unapologetically advocate for better ways of thinking, call out poorer ways, and understand that if people become upset over a lack of unquestioning acceptance of everything that proceeds out of their mouths or thought processes, that is their problem.

Atheism is, at bottom a call for epistemological humility -- we can't help it that theists furiously project on us their own arrogance in claiming to have the One True Belief, endorsed by the mightiest superhero conceivable who promises to annihilate all who oppose him and his.

@TheMiddleWay This is a stimulating conversation which I appreciate.

I suppose it comes down to nothing being 100% objective.

As a former evangelical Christian, I certainly have a deep acquaintance (albeit, after all these years, fading a bit) with the lens through which they perceive themselves, each other, and outsiders -- as well as reality itself. I understand how and why they compartmentalize.

Because of this I not only have a good deal of empathy and compassion for their intentions if not their actions and attitudes -- the flip side of that is that I understand how their perception of outsiders makes people like me the Hated Other.

I do not think that I have fallen into the same error with them. I have very respectful and cordial relations with a number of religious fundamentalists and political conservatives. I understand the gap between their carefully cultivated virtuous self-image and the unkind and uncharitable way they come across in certain contexts. I also understand how I can seem unkind and uncharitable to them (how passive disagreement, or non-conformity if you will to their dogma, becomes, in their mind, "persecution" ).

None of this changes the fact that I discarded their epistemology as dysfunctional and unhelpful and that I simply cannot affirm their reality anymore.

In 99% of practical living this does not mean I have to be "unfriendly". In online discussion formats like this, though, where no one holds a gun to their head to come here, they are going to come face to face with the simple fact that I don't and can't agree with them, and they are going to be very upset with me about it pretty much matter how I try to finesse the situation or soften the blow for them. They are accustomed to intellectually dishonest gambits that I have come to the conclusion there's no percentage (for me OR them) in abiding.

Sometimes in these discussions we tend to forget things like, not all Christians are fundamentalists, and most contact between Christians and atheists are very different from the special case scenario of an online discussion forum, and for the most part, members of these two groups aren't even very aware -- sometimes not AT ALL aware -- that the people they are interacting with are members of this other group.

To my mind, the value of these sometimes difficult online interactions is that both parties come willingly and freely to them with at least the nominal goal of formally presenting and defending their views. Oddly, in my experience it is not so much the actual interlocutors, but the lurkers, who benefit most from this. These are people with doubts about their views of reality, doubts they often don't want to admit even to themselves. It is a big step (and often, a secret shame) to them to even hang out here, much less to interact. It is these people I am trying to help, because I was once one of them. I try to provide the sort of content that would have made my transition out of Christianity less fraught.

So I think that as long as our objective is not to otherize and browbeat and self-aggrandize, some good can come of all this, even if we manage quite often to irritate the bejesus out of each other in the process.

@TheMiddleWay Yeah I noticed that sentence.

I said previously that I consider lurkers my primary audience, but secondarily my fellow atheists as my particular association with theism (some formal theological training) fits me to render some of what atheists see, more explicable and humanized. For example there's another thread right now about a letter to the editor by a fundamentalist who opines that all atheists should be cast out of the US. The usual "dafuq?!" responses are understandable and I really think we should be free to vent a little bit, we're amongst friends. But I took on the explainer role there and walked them through the thought process that a fundamentalist would go through to decide that atheists are an existential threat to America even in those instances where they are law-abiding. It has to do with things even many deconverts may not be fully aware of, like the notion of corporate guilt and punishment. Hopefully this makes the editorializer more human and less a caricature, and clarifies the problem as something a little more nuanced than some "hater" being "stupid".