April 9, 2009

In another place, I’m told that in my postings here I seem more interested in annoying Christians than in genuine dialogue (if you happen to know where the other place is, don’t harass the management there, comment here instead: this post is not calling in an air strike from the United Atheist Alliance).

In this blog, when I’m writing about religion, I try for a mix of serious discussion posts and cheerleading for atheism (“give me a D, give me an A, give me a W” etc. etc). The last couple of posts are examples of a serious discussion post. Comparing EvangelicalGod with Cthulhu and the Bishops Gone Wild series are examples of cheerleading. The recent stuff on C.S. Lewis is a mixture of the two.

What’s the value of the cheerleading? It’s light relief from the serious stuff, seeing other people doing the “theists do the funniest things” stuff gives others permission to doubt, and it’s cathartic for me when I’ve just read about some bishop saying something stupid.

I don’t believe that someone’s religious opinions are morally worthy of more respect than, say, their politics (another reason for the cheerleading is to promote this idea: would people be bothered if I were laying into Gordon Brown?) However, religion is currently a more sensitive subject than politics and this is not going to change overnight. As a matter of tactics, I don’t want to annoy people so much that they don’t bother reading the serious stuff, and as a matter of empathy, I don’t want to actually upset people.

So, I’m interested in what the people reading this think of my postings on religion. Here’s a poll about it (if you’re not an LJ user, you’ll need to login in with OpenID or create an account to fill it in). Let me know what you think:

[ LJ Poll 1380432 ]