I'm having doubts...

[Xamonas Chegwé]

A few things puzzled me about your OP, Sisifo. You finished by saying that you told her you were pulling her leg and took her to a church.

Firstly, why deny that you meant what you said? It is one thing to tread carefully around someone's religious sensibilities and quite another to pay tacit lip-service to them. By all means brush it off by saying that you are not trying to preach atheism and each to their own. But to claim that you were joking is going a little further IMO.

Secondly, did you just drop her at the church? Or did you attend the service with her?

I said I was pulling her leg, because my arguments had hurt. I had attacked like if she had been a fundamentalist, and I tried to rectify some of it; especially the anti-catholic ones. That is mainly the point. I was not advocating reason; I was attacking religion which was unfair to a person who took religion internally and silently.

I didn't attend the mass. It was clear after all, and I told her so, that I considered the religious belief an absurdity. That statement didn't bother her at all. That day I saw that I was less flexible to human diversity than I thought. As I put later, that I was/am an extremist, and I would like to fix that.

Thank you for that clarification, Sisifo. Explained like that, it makes perfect sense. I have a similar stand-off with my parents. They know I am an atheist and we tacitly agree to avoid religious discussion for want of an easy life. But they can't help "god blessing" me from time to time and I make sure that I pull them up on it when they do. Not in a nasty way - I just let them know that they will be starting a full-on religious debate if they keep it up - they get the hint!

And I am glad you didn't actually attend the service with her (that was the way I initially read it! )

[Chinaski]

Recognizing absence of knowledge is the first step in attempting to gain knowledge. Surety of knowledge, however, merely leads to dogmatism.

I'd agree with this up to a point - the point being that if the perceived lack of knowledge is only followed by faith in a person who's seen as having it then there's no drive to gain reasoning and only an alternative dogmatism.

That's the point I understood FS to be making (if a little clumsily worded) when he said:

The absence of knowledge is more desirable than the illusion of knowledge.

This. I was paraphrasing Dawkins.

[charlou]

That is mainly the point. I was not advocating reason; I was attacking religion which was unfair to a person who took religion internally and silently.

When people casually raise their personal religiosity, as distinct from the general subject of religion, if they're not raising it in order to push it as an ideal but just as a matter of offhand information about themselves, I leave it alone or mention I'm a non-believer, depending on the circumstances. Usually it's left at that. My view of that person is affected by that kind of information, though ... and I'm certainly unlikely to have an intimate relationship with a theist.

Just yesterday I was talking with the mother of one of our riding clients about the resources she uses for homeschooling her children (I homeschool intermittently as well - a subject for a different thread, perhaps) and she told me of a "really good" science program she's found ... my pen was poised to take down the name of it ... a creation 'science' program. I simply told her I wouldn't use such a program as all the evidence is in favour of evolution and against creationism. We both left it at that, though I would really like to have gone on to say that creationism is not science but doctrine ... but the circumstances of our discussion (in a service provider/client situation - just after her son's riding lesson) made further comment on my part inappropriate.

My son's very good friends' (twins) family are church goers of the liberal variety and are tolerant of our atheism, never imposing their beliefs in any way. He was invited to join them last year for a christmas service but declined, but other than that the subject doesn't come up with the parents ... The boys, on the other hand, talk about it quite a bit, with the twins thoughtlessly parroting some of what they're taught to him. My son tends to ask them if they really think those things are likely or realistic and if they really believe them. The twins response shows they're clearly capable of demonstrating skepticism about what they're being fed in church. I imagine it's rather confusing for them at their age (ten years old), being fed this type of stuff by their parents and their church community (people they want to trust and look up to) and getting divergent feedback outside that circle. Confusing, but a fact of life in a society that allows different philosophies to flourish ... and I optimistically think it's this open diversity in our culture that will lead to more and more children getting a broader view of things and drawing better informed conclusions about theism for themselves.