“Nice” is important for atheists, for one reason: we can not convince religious people to be logical by using logic.<\/p>\n
I recently saw Dan Barker speak in person. He’s so nice! You can’t help liking him, unless there’s something really wrong with your personality. He is a positive, helpful representative for reason, and should probably be sainted,\u00c2\u00a0 if that weren’t such a contradiction. And it gave me some insight into the most difficult question for me: how do you reason with people who have decided to live a reason-free existence?<\/p>\n
Well of course, the answer should have been obvious: illogical people need to be “convinced.” You will never convince them with logic, not until they embrace logic once again as a useful basis for living. You have to convince them using the tools that religion uses! Do I mean fear of death, empty promises, and social pressure? I’m sure those techniques would work, but\u00c2\u00a0 I mean things like charm, your good character, and friendliness. It’s like any sales pitch. If the consumer is convinced that you are of good character, they will listen to what you have to say, regardless of its truthfulness.<\/p>\n
So, all I’m saying is that niceness helps because it’s an essential part of a good sales pitch. Advertising agencies know: you don’t convince people with logic, but by making them feel good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“Nice” is important for atheists, for one reason: we can not convince religious people to be logical by using logic. I recently saw Dan Barker speak in person. He’s so nice! You can’t help liking him, unless there’s something really wrong with your personality. He is a positive, helpful representative for reason, and should probably […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=884"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":886,"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884\/revisions\/886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}