I think science, rationality, and critical thinking need better marketing. Atheism is merely a by-product of those.

One thing I will agree is that there needs to be better marketing of atheists, due to the negative stereotyping of atheists by theists of all stripes. A kind of counter-marketing, I suppose. Things like the atheist bus campaign are a good example.

I agree we need to market atheists as not being evil.  The more we do this the more we draw attention to atheism as a whole in a positive manner.  The big plus side to this strategy is that if anyone complains they come of as being complete jerks.   Most theists have some atheist friends or family whom they generally like and appreciate so they probably aren't willing to just right all of us of as evil.  Our best strategy is to target the real fundamentalists, and when they attack us unreasonable it will make the more moderate believers more sympathetic to our message. 

Hi RatDog,

First I want to say that your post touches on a large number of issues which prompted me to start developing my own philosophy, so I'm glad you got into a drunken ranting mode.

This is exactly the reasoning that brought me to the conclusion that I need a positive name that defines an actual philosophy, rather than the mere label of 'atheism'. It is not atheism per se that I want to promote. Rather, it's a certain way of thinking and perceiving the world, using certain cognitive tools, such as the obvious example of the scientific method. Taking many cues from people like Carl Sagan, I came up with the root concept of 'wonder'. Hence, wonderism.

It is that, but it is not *just* that. People see science as inhuman, machine-like, cold, empty, and nihilistic. They think rational people 'think too much'. There is a meme going around that you cannot be happy or enjoy life without mystery and unanswerable questions. This is the meme of the mysterians. They don't *want* to know the answers to certain questions, because they feel that by knowing, or by merely contemplating, they will lose something important. They will lose their sense of mystery and awe. The 'religious' sense.

This is why it is important to me to focus on the concept of wonder. The mysterian argument is the last refuge of religion. There is this idea that there is something that religion/mystical thought has that 'science' cannot have. This is why people argue "Well, sure it may be nonsense, but people *need* religion/mysticism."

Wonderism directly argues against this fallacy, known as the Argument from Wonder, or the Argument from Personal Religious Experience. What wonderism argues is that "Hey, wait a minute! I have a sense of the wonder of the universe too! You don't have a monopoly on that. In fact, my understanding of the universe is so much greater, due to my study of science and reason, that I actually experience a greater sense of wonder than those shallow religious stories and that self-deception-masked-as-mystery you get from mysticism."

So, we swipe the whole argument away from them. We knock out that last column holding up religion/mysticism. If you want real wonder, the place to get it is in a science lab, looking through a telescope, or a microscope, or reading some science news, or investigating history with a critical thinking mindset, or whatever.

This is where I get my ideas about The Unknown and 'questions' from. The mysterian looks at a question, gets this sense of awe from not knowing the answer, the awe of The Unknown, and stops there, afraid to go further. The wonderist looks at the same question, and instead of fearing the answer, seeks out the answer. What the wonderist finds is that, when you answer an unknown, you don't lose that sense of awe, because The Unknown does not disappear. Instead, you end up with some little nugget of truth, some 'known', plus a whole bunch of *new* questions, new unknowns. So in fact your sense of awe (or wonder) grows as you seek and answer questions.

I have been thinking on this problem for years. Part of my work here at RRS has been to come up with more intuitive ways of explaining complex technical topics. Most people do not think rationally most of the time. Most of the time, they think intuitively.

It is the relationship between intuition and rationality that has given me the most insight about how to promote science and critical thinking. We need to present an intuitive defense of rationality, for those who think intuitively. And, we need to present a rational defense of intuition, for those who think rationally.

The way to do this may be through an organization, but only if there is a solid foundational philosophy that underlies it. That's why I've spent the last few years puzzling through my philosophy. You see, the core problem is that people look to authorities to give them the truth. So, they pick one authority or another, as you mention later. They choose sides. But that's not where *actual* truth comes from. *Actual* truth can only be assessed by evidence outside of our own biased minds.

And how do we assess evidence? I've come up with only one answer that makes sense and is totally reliable: Prediction. This is why I say that truth is like an arrow. If you fire an arrow and it strikes its target, the arrow is 'true'. If not, then it is not true. This is an intuitive arguement for the idea that truth is determined by 'what makes the best predictions'.

So, the intermediary between the general public and the scientific community should be a community that promotes intuitive understanding of a philosophy of truth based on prediction. That's what wonderists do. Carl Sagan being the best example.

Examples of how to do this kind of promotion: Use the same media that the general public uses (TV, radio, books, movies, internet, theatre, art) to portray understanding of the universe (science) in an intuitive and interesting way.

My personal media of choice is science fiction. I am not published, but I'm currently working on several stories which I hope will promote both science and wonderism.

I think the RRS is largely in support of the general ideas I'm talking about, if not necessarily in the name I give it. That's why I continue to actively post and participate here.

I also have ideas to start websites which would collect these kinds of ideas, such as a wiki of wonderism, but I'm not currently in the position to start such a project, as I'm currently busy with work and other commitments.

Another idea I had was to start an Academy of some sort, a private school or something, which would provide a supplemental educational curriculum for kids. I don't see any reason why a 7 or 8 year-old can't be learning the basics of symbolic logic at the same age they are learning the basics of mathematics. I think it's a no-brainer to start teaching the concepts of evolution (mutation, selection, inheritance) as young as 8 years old. Computer science as young as 8 or 9.

Not just particular facts, but also instilling a sense of wonder and a desire to learn, which today's schools tend to *kill* in children. I personally despised school. It was too rigid, too institutional, too competitive. I far more enjoy learning on my own than in a school setting. Why not have an academy that teaches kids at their own pace, but presents learning as something fun and to be pursued for the sake of learning itself?

Again, people are accustomed to getting their answers from an authority. They don't know *why* they should trust a particular authority. Instead, we should promote the idea that knowledge is possible independent of any particular authority, through the ability to make accurate predictions about the universe. Whichever authority makes the best predictions is the one that can be reliably trusted. Science being the best example of this.

Part of the problem is to combat the relativistic and post-modernistic philosophies that dominate the general public. I have met so many people that think that it is *not possible* to know anything. Everything is just opinion, and one person's opinion is no better than any other person's. They have no concept that there is one reality that we all share. They say things like, "Perception *is* reality" (their emphasis), "That's just *your* reality", and "You can't argue with someone else's reality."

Wonderism argues directly against this, with its emphasis on pragmatic epistemology. We *do* know some things, even if absolute knowledge is not possible. We know things because we can make accurate predictions, and we know these predictions are real because we all share one reality and therefore we can share and agree upon the same evidences. For example, the sun is real, and we know this because we can all point to the sun, and we are all pointing in the same direction, and we can predict things about the sun, such as where it will be in the sky at a particular time, how its light affects us, etc.

This is the theme of most of my science fiction stories. I suggest that essays and stories are the way to promote this idea.

This requires an understanding of intuition. Intuition is our brain's natural ability to make pretty good guesses. It is the foundation of our ability to make predictions about the world around us.

Most people think intuitively, which means that they use their raw intuition, without refinement from corrective methodologies such as rationality and the scientific method.

The problem is that intuition is not perfect, and in fact has numerous systematic flaws, which, when expressed, are known as inuitive fallacies.

However, at the foundation, everything we understand at a deep level must be understood intuitively. When you first learn logic, you must follow the logical principles by rote, or you will make mistakes. But after a while, you start to 'think' logically. Your intuition has absorbed the rules of logic, and you no longer have to follow memorized rules, you can just 'see' or 'feel' that some argument is illogical. (Again, this intuition will remain flawed and make mistakes, but it is better than untrained raw intuition.)

So, the 'science of people' topic can be addressed in two ways: First, to have rational people understand the nature (and the power) of intuition and intuitive modes of thinking. Second, for rational people to *use* intuitive modes of expression to express ideas about rationality.

As Carl Sagan has shown, it is possible to express complex scientific ideas in intuitive ways. Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett are also pretty good at doing this. Neil de Grasse Tyson and Michio Kaku are also good examples. For that matter, the Infidel Guy, Brian Sapient, and Hambydammit are also good examples. Deludedgod tends to super-saturated his stuff with enormous numbers of facts, which can be overwhelming, but nevertheless is also pretty good at bringing complex ideas into more-intuitive formats.

As far as who to trust? Again, it comes down to who makes the best predictions. At some level, you have to assess this for yourself. But if you use predictive power as a guide, you will be steered right far more than you'll be steered wrong.

I suppose the only way is to provide links to trusted references and to have a peer-review process that can act as a proxy for individual authority.

The way to do this is to present it intuitively and in an interesting/entertaining fashion.

Show them the wonder of the truth, not just the truth itself. The fact that we are descended from apes is not particularly wonderous. But the implication that this means we are cousins to all life on Earth, and that a chimpanzee's life is just as rich and interesting as a human's life, can be an inspiring and wonderful thing to contemplate.

It all depends on how you present it, and what intuitive connections you can draw which connect the person you are talking to with the ideas you are presenting. The idea that the elements of the Periodic Table are generated in stars is not particularly interesting except to physicists and chemists. But the implication that this means *we* are made of 'star stuff' (as Sagan called it), and that we are intimately connected to the rest of the universe through this intuitive relationship, is something that can bring tears to people's eyes.

Same fact, different effect.

The idea of faith, trust, and conflict. This was one of my first realizations after seriously adopting wonderism. The answer is 'evidence'. When we look at the conflicts of ideals in the world, what do we see? When two people disagree, the more 'faith' you put into the scenario, the *more* the people will disagree, vehemently, and often leading to violence. But when we add more 'evidence' to the scenario, the more people will *agree* and come to a consensus.

So, faith leads to conflict, and evidence leads to agreement. This is where my insistence on prediction came from. The reason we trust evidence is because of the predictions they create and confirm.

When Neil Shubin and his colleague decided to look for fossils of the link between fish and tetrapod, they used evolutionary theory and geological theory to predict that a certain kind of fossilization environment (river delta sedimentation) at a certain age (about 375 milliion years ago, between the ages of lobe-finned fish ancestors and amphibian descendants) would hold the fossils they were looking for.

They looked in one formation in the US and didn't find them, but then they discovered that there's another formation in the cold Canadian arctic which could also hold the fossils. They invested time and money in an expedition and lo and behold, they discovered Tiktaalik, at exactly the right depth they predicted.

That is how evidence works. You make a prediction, you find evidence to confirm the prediction, and this evidence lends credence to the theory that allowed the initial prediction. This works just the same in our everyday lives. We listen to people and we hear what they say. When we later discover they were telling the truth, or lying, we adjust our estimation of their reliability as witnesses.

Faith, on the other hand, eschews evidence altogether. You believe because you already believe, and fear being wrong. Evidence directly conflicts with faith. Faith is intuition gone awry. It is one of the systematic flaws in intuition that I mentioned earlier, which needs to be corrected by reliable methodologies like rationality and science.

The core argument boils down to this: If you are trying to reach agreement with someone, you must rely on evidence, not faith. Otherwise, your disagreement will get worse, not better. Evidence is the foundation of discourse.

Actually, there is a second philosophy which I'm working on which addresses this exact issue you bring up. Notice above I used the word 'foundation' to say that evidence is the basis of discourse.

My use of the word 'foundation' was not accidental, but deliberate. Wonderism will not be for everyone. It will be for people who pretty much agree with me that science and rationality and logic and reason should be promoted with intuitive arguments such as the argument from wonder.

However, even if someone disagrees with me, we can still have a conversation without resorting to violence or some other unconstructive stand-off. All we have to do is agree on a few basic principles.

This is what I call foundationism. Foundationism is the idea that, whatever our disagreements, we *can* reach some basic agreement about reality. There *is* a foundation of understanding that we can all share.

The stuff I was talking about above about evidence is actually an argument about foundationism, not strictly wonderism.

Imagine a tree. The trunk of the tree is what we agree on. Every branch in the tree is where some people have a disagreement. So, you and I might agree that we need to promote science, but we may disagree with the specifics of how to do that. This, we share the trunk of 'promoting science', but we sit on different branches of that tree.

However, even if you and I are on the same tree, doesn't mean that we cannot have a conversation with someone who is not even on the same tree we are. Foundationism is not the tree, but the ground that the tree is planted in. This common ground can support any number of various trees, various philosophies.

The idea of foundationism is twofold: First, find the minimal concepts which we can all agree on. Second, raise that minimum up as high as possible.

Thus, we find a common ground that we can agree on, and then we try to negotiate as much common ground as possible, to try to learn as much as possible from each other, to come to as much true knowledge as possible.

Imgaine a skyscraper. It starts by digging out the ground and finding a firm supporting ground. Then we build a solid foundation on which we will build our building. But we don't stop at the foundation. We move to step two, which is to build as much on the foundation as possible. Each storey of the skyscraper becomes the 'foundation' for the next level, and so on.

It is a philosophy of discourse and understanding, but also of progressive learning and cooperation. Wonderism is built on top of foundationism, but anybody can build their own philosophy based on the minimal principles of foundationism. For example, I'm sure that even theists such as Eloise, possibly Cpt Pineapple, and others, could agree with the principles of foundationism. If they couldn't, then as a foundationist, I would try to find an even more-minimal set of principles that we could agree on, and then try to build up our common understanding from there.

Imagine two people on top of different mountains. One yells to the other, "My mountain is better than yours, it is solid beneath my feet." The other yells, "My mountain is better than yours. It is much higher than yours and I can see farther."

These two could go on arguing forever, each feeling justified and self-righteous. The idea of foundationism is for one of them to realize that of course they share a common ground between them, and to go 'down' to that common ground, walk over to the other mountain bringing a rope. Once he gets to the top of the other mountain (understands the other's position), he ties the rope to a rock on the other guy's mountain, and then uses this connection to 'build a bridge' from the top of one mountain to the other.

Essentially, you try to find a common ground, understand the other's beliefs/worldview, and then 'build a bridge' of understanding between your worldview and theirs. This requires explaining your concepts in terms of their language, and explaining their concepts in terms of your language. I call this a language bridge. It takes some effort, but understanding intuition can help a lot here.

For example, to explain wonderism to a Christian, I might study Christianity from their perspective, listen to their personal experiences with Christianity, and then explain their experiences with my terminology. For example, I might say, "Well, you know that religious experience you had? I have the same kind of experience when I experience wonder at contemplating the universe." Etc.

My tactic is to explain that everything religion can do, I can do without the dogma. I can have the same or better 'religious' experiences, which I call my sense of wonder. I can have community (although this is a current weak point). I can have mental health. I can be good and moral. Etc.

I was bored so I went through some old topics.

To be more precise, we all come from the same star. Not just us, but all the terrestrial planets in our solar system. A star which undergoes a supernovae (i.e all stars in which the Chandrasekhar limit is exceeded) is large enough to provide sufficient material for a solar system.