Frank the Financially Savvy Atheist - The F.S.A.

Why did you come to this blog? What brought you here? I would venture that you are either a.) a fellow atheist who desires to read about what another atheist is doing, b.) a theist who came to deride/debate this atheist on why god, or allah, or some other deity is good and just and most certainly exists, or 3.) it was a random occurrence and you clicked on the wrong link.

I would surmise that the vast majority of people who come to this blog (all 5 of you) fall into category "a" and category "b". Of those two categories, more fall into "a" than "b". Why is that? Simply put, this is an atheistic blog and therefore it's mainly going to draw other atheist. Ok, I buy that simplistic explanation.
But there is another reason why mostly atheists come to this blog. It is the same reason why Christians and other theists go to church, attend bible
schools, attend bible camps, and etc, etc. This is the idea of social proof, or to phrase it more simplistically, hopping on the bandwagon. (Note: in this post I will be using social proof rather loosely in terms of meaning. Think of it along the lines of peer pressure and the bandwagon effect and it will make more sense).

I have posted about social proof before but I wanted to delve more deeply into this issue. Social proof isn't by itself automatically a bad or good thing. It can be both. On the one hand it can be quite helpful. By watching what the majority of other people are doing, we can garner how to behave in certain situations. We visit India and notice that everyone drives around the cows in the streets and we know that we should do the same. There is no need for us to know that India's population is mostly Hindu and Hindu's consider cows to be holy. We watch other drivers and know how to behave. In that instance, social proof is helpful. On the other hand, if we notice that all the cool kids smoke and don't study, we might surmise that in order to be cool we would have to do as such. This is as aspect of social proof that is negative.

How does that idea pertain to theists and atheists? For both atheists and theist, there is a tendency to stick to your own kind. You mostly read blogs about atheism or your respective theism. You occasionally venture over to the other side but only to disagree with them and point out how they are wrong.

These actions can be explained in the context of social proof. By sticking to others that think/act/believe what you do, your own perceptions are reinforced and become more "true". To sum it up simplistically, "if all of these people more or less agree with me, I must be right". This type of mentality explains why Christians go to church, Jews go to synagogue, and atheists form blogs and blog carnivals. We are all seeking reassurance and support for our ideas and opinions about how the world works. It's simply human nature, and I have to admit that I am guilty of it as much as the next person. When I first became an atheist, I sought out (online) other atheists. I started reading blogs by atheist and started this blog as a result.

That's one of the things that we atheists and theists have in common. It is a fundamental aspect of human nature that cannot be avoided. That's why we as atheists and theists are more alike than we realize.

So what does this all? It means we are all human. On some fundamental level, we are all the same. We all thirst, we all hunger, we all love, we all hurt, and we all die. Not necessarily in that order of course. We have all found ways to cope with the world and what it brings on a daily basis. For the theist, there is god, that big father figure in the sky. For the atheist, there is our friends and our families and our loved ones, that we can turn to when we need to for whatever purpose. So please, lets all be civil with one another. Argue with conviction for our ideas, argue with every scrap of intellect you can muster, but don't call each other names. Theist, don't just say we're going to burn in hell, we've all heard it before, and it hasn't fazed us since. My fellow atheist, engage with other theists and have a spirited debate, don't just call them stupid.

That's why I like the God or Not Carnival. It's a wonderful opportunity to engage the other side and argue our respective points. Utilize carnivals like that for what they are, but don't trivialize them by being uncivil.

Thanks so much for stopping by and I hope that this post engenders some love for your fellow human beings today. Have a great day.