re idle questions for fellow atheists acooper mac cc macalstr edu wrote i wonder how many atheists out there care to speculate on the face of the world if atheists were the majority rather than the minority group of the population i ve been thinking about this every now and then since i cut my ties with christianity it is surprising to note that a large majority of people at least in finland seem to be apatheists even though of the population are members of the lutheran church of finland religious people are actually a minority could it be possible that many people believe in god just in case it seems people do not want to seek the truth they fall prey to pascal s wager or other poor arguments a small minority of those who do believe reads the bible regularly the majority doesn t care it believes but doesn t know what or how people don t usually allow their beliefs to change their lifestyle they only want to keep the virtual gate open a christian would say that they are not born in the spirit but this does not disturb them religion is not something to think about i m afraid a society with a true atheist majority is an impossible dream religions have a strong appeal to people nevertheless a promise of life after death is something humans eagerly listen to coupled with threats of eternal torture and the idea that our morality is under constant scrutiny of some cosmic cop too many people take the poison with a smile or just pretend to swallow and unconsciously hope god wouldn t notice also how many atheists out there would actually take the stance and accor a higher value to their way of thinking over the theistic way of thinking the typical selfish argument would be that both lines of thinking evolved from the same inherent motivation so one is not intrinsically different from the other qualitatively but then again a measuring stick must be drawn somewhere and if we cannot assign value to a system of beliefs at its core than the only other alternative is to apply it to its periphery ie how it expresses its own selfishness if logic and reason are valued then i would claim that atheistic thinking is of higher value than the theistic exposition theists make unnecessary assumptions they believe in i ve yet to see good reasons to believe in gods or to take a leap of faith at all a revelation would do however why do we value logic and reasoning this questions bears some resemblance to a long disputed problem in science why mathematics works strong deep structuralists like atkins have proposed that perhaps after all everything is mathematics is usefulness any criterion petri petri pihko kem pmp mathematics is the truth pihatie c finou oulu fi physics is the rule of sf oulu kempmp the game finland phoenix oulu fi chemistry is the game
