<corruptmemory>

Almost certainly anyone who has their blogs pumped through Planet Atheism must know that direct engagement with theists is both necessary and a nearly impossible task at the same time.  I have had arguments/discussions with many people over the years on the topic of theistic-belief and I can say that, as least when addressed directly, it has always been futile – the participants in the discussion do not unseat their beliefs in the light of reason and evidence.  I can say that for the first few years this was a disheartening outcome, personally very frustrating and, in some cases, frightening.  As Sam Harris has pointed out people with theistic belief structures in their head can be downright dangerous, I was well aware of this problem long before Mr. Harris set out to write books on the subject.  Prior to the Internet I was an isolated individual, quite literally fighting a lone “battle” on this issue as I can honestly state that my concerns on this subject were not shared by family and friends.  Fortunately, the Internet and the Web did take off and I now have access to and can share ideas with many like-minded people, but still, even the combined effort of many atheists demolishing every aspect of theistic-belief structures is not enough to directly unseat such belief structures – like smoking: the evidence for the harm caused by smoking has been with us for decades but people still take up the habit.

Although my failure to directly change people’s minds on the subject of theistic belief can be a source of personal frustration, the basis of this frustration: people not changing their beliefs in light of evidence, is a well-researched area of psychology and sociology.  It turns out that, if we are Bayesian in nature, we’re not very good Bayesians. I tend to agree with Robin Hanson on this particular subject which is to say that most people choose their belief structures based on group membership signaling rather than skeptical, independent, and critical thought and analysis of evidence.  This particular view comes across as a more plausible, and simpler (Occam’s Razor) explanation: being a social animals we will prize “social points” over “intellectual points” by default, and only occasionally re-align our thinking if we perceive that such re-alignment will achieve more “social points”.

So then, if “direct” engagement is almost certainly futile (as all of the “New Atheists” [blech, what a nonsensical title] have pointed out) why do it? Predominantly, we need to have the “discussion” to create a legacy of literature for new generations to work with.  We live in an unprecedented time where the rational analysis, taming, and ultimate cure of theistic beliefs can be had comprehensively, but unlike the Polio vaccine the agent of curing humankind of the virus of theism are other humans discussing the topic directly, but the desired outcome is typically indirect.  There may be some evidence that this new “public openness” of atheism is causing those with honest doubt about theistic belief to actually embrace that doubt rather than suppress it and go along with the overwhelming theistic population (in the United States), but the real win is in seeding future generations with the tools to judge theistic belief skeptically, rationally and empirically.

Being one of the more prominent computer geeks in my extended family I get a lot of requests for “tech support”.  Recently, I replaced a hard drive for my father’s PC and recovered his XP partition from his old drive (dd is just a wonderful tool).  After getting the disk image restored on another drive and fortunately getting the new drive to boot up and run a chkdsk, I managed to get the machine booted with a minimal loss of data – the computer was merciful this time.  Once booted I took the opportunity to do some much needed house-cleaning: updated FireFox to 3.5, installed Google Chrome so my Dad can play around with it, updated flash and OpenOffice, updated to IE 8 (blech, but needed if going to minimize security problems and to access Windows Update), finally I started Windows Update.  For me, since this has become somewhat routine I understand all the jargon that gets thrown at me during all these crazy uninstall/update marathons, but it is amazing how intractably and irreducibly obtuse computers are for the average person.  The average person thinks of computers like a TV – turn it on and choose a channel and everything just works from there.  But computers, like life, are a sublime combination of possibility, power, wonder, frustration, and heartbreak – computers don’t work like the TV, there is no program schedule to tell you what’s up next.  Every time I have to jump into XP, or Vista, or even OS X to do computer surgery I’m constantly reminded as to how intimidating these devices must be to the average person.