Is it really essential that, as a community, we exclude or dismiss or reflexively criticize theists who are good at partitioning, who like and are good at rational reasoning in every other sphere—and who just have higher priorities than being right?
I think many theists criticized are not quite as immersed as Wednesday will be. Believing what you thinking is right doesn’t require going out and alienating all your friends with it (though I’ve had some pretty heated discussions with friends). I agree that being a closet atheist in Wednesday’s case would be very hard, but it might not be so hard for other theists.
The way I understand rationality is that at least cognitively, there is no higher priority than being right. For various reasons, such as those that you observe in this post, this ideal is difficult for humans to achieve. Consequently, rationality is better seen as a virtue that humans embody on a continuum (though there may be qualitative and categorical differences at some points on that continuum, such as engaging in a certain logical fallacy vs. not engaging in it, or whether you question the views of people on your “side,” ever).
When Wednesday has been born and has learned to read, it would be nice if there were a place for her here.
I hope there is a place here for anyone interested in rational discourse, regardless of whether 100% of their beliefs are rational. There are many other other failures of rationality besides theism. Anyone coming here holding ideological beliefs (whether theistic or not) should not be surprised when those beliefs are met with skepticism, however.
The case of Wednesday an excellent example of why I argued that religious belief can be perfectly sane.
I think many theists criticized are not quite as immersed as Wednesday will be. Believing what you thinking is right doesn’t require going out and alienating all your friends with it (though I’ve had some pretty heated discussions with friends). I agree that being a closet atheist in Wednesday’s case would be very hard, but it might not be so hard for other theists.
The way I understand rationality is that at least cognitively, there is no higher priority than being right. For various reasons, such as those that you observe in this post, this ideal is difficult for humans to achieve. Consequently, rationality is better seen as a virtue that humans embody on a continuum (though there may be qualitative and categorical differences at some points on that continuum, such as engaging in a certain logical fallacy vs. not engaging in it, or whether you question the views of people on your “side,” ever).
I hope there is a place here for anyone interested in rational discourse, regardless of whether 100% of their beliefs are rational. There are many other other failures of rationality besides theism. Anyone coming here holding ideological beliefs (whether theistic or not) should not be surprised when those beliefs are met with skepticism, however.