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3 AM Philosophy

No Idea is Sacred

In preparation for being a guest speaker (Q and A) with the Atheist Community of Austin on their discord on the 13th (2 PM PDT (4 CDT)) they sent me ACA guidelines and this part stood out to me…in a great way.

“No idea is sacred.”

I constantly notice that many atheist have knee-jerk Pavlovian type responses when they are confronted with bold ideas which go against their ideas. They merely parrot off what they think is a correct answer rather than take the time to even take pause to see if what is being presented has merit, evidence, reasoned argumentation or is logical.

Part of NonSequitur Show’s ideology is “bold Ideas are righteous, unique perspectives are gospel and your strong opinions are sacred. ” and yet sometimes when those ideas are presented people merely just recoil and suffer from the entrenchment effect. This unfortunately presents them from acquiring new information which may actually be correct…and they never learn anything new. Creationists suffer from this frequently.

It is easy to parrot things you have gleaned off watching Atheist Experience or Talk Heathen, but it is quite a bit more difficult formulating your own unique arguments and views which challenge existing ideas.

If you think it is easy…give it a try. Challenge yourself to come up with a unique and novel (or derivative argument as most if not all are derivative in some way or another.) and present it to the group for evaluation. See what it is like to have people dismiss it outright by fiat or simply that someone does not understand the argument so therefore they assume it must be “world salad” or flawed.

Let’s see if we start to hear some new ideas.

-Steve McRae
(Co-host of the NonSequitur Show)

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