The difference that atheism makes to the world is it requires an acceptance of this world as all there is. It requires a rejection of all beliefs that if we commit moral crimes we can be forgiven by accepting a Jewish zombie on our death bed or holding a belief in a circle of endless rebirth that will give us a second chance. It requires compassion for humanity in the here and now because there is no belief in an abstract entity that will provide compassion for us. (Notice that this does not occur in the current world because the compassion of gods have been passed on to the compassion of the state, and it did not happen in past worlds because child-raising was so brutal the compassion was crushed out of the culture before anyone reached adulthood.)
But most of all, it is important because it is a rejection of belief structures that require lying to and terrifying children for the sake of abstract entities. Only with this fundamental rejection of violence against children will we have a world with peace.
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A couple of weeks ago I got to talk to a rather brilliant Computer Engineering student from Iowa State University. We got to compare notes of disrupting professors' world views by describing life, existence, and the very nature of the universe as wave functions. In his case it was a religion professor whereas mine was a philosophy professor.
In both cases the outcome was the same: the professor didn't talk to the student unnecessarily for the rest of the semester.
The CE student and I had a good laugh. The CS professor listening to us did not.
Sounds to me a bit like the "perception" ("do you see the same 'red' as I see?") debate. Still, always good fun to get into...
But a Computer Engineering student taking religion? The mind does a quiet boggle on that one!
You've got to take a certain number of electives.
Agreed Al, but there must be something that might prove more interesting - like English, or geography, or a science unit. Even aeronautics! That would be my pick! Or Fluid Dynamics which my son said he might take, until he let me in on the pun.
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