On Sep 28, 2007, at 5:26 PM, Dennis Claxton wrote:
> ravi wrote:
>
>
>
>> The truth is more probably that atheism is a luxury of over-educated
>> comparatively wealthy intellectual brats
>
>
> I don't know. If you're raised with religion it takes a lot of work
> to shake it off. It took me years and I began trying long before I
> became over-educated. And if I am comparatively wealthy then lord
> help my child.
Besides, this pseudo-populism annoys me. In this society, there are advantages to being rich. Is atheism, or freedom from superstition, one of those advantages? And what's wrong with being educated? It also annoys me when highly educated people doubt the value of education. I just don't believe them. It's a faux populist pose.
C. Wright Mills: "The idea that the millionaire finds nothing but a sad, empty place at the top of this society; the idea that the rich do not know what to do with their money; the idea that the successful become filled up with futility, and that those born successful are poor and little as well as rich - the idea, in short, of the disconsolateness of the rich - is, in the main, merely a way by which those who are not rich reconcile themselves to the fact. Wealth in America is directly gratifying and directly leads to many further gratifications. To be truly rich is to possess the means of realizing in big ways one's little whims and fantasies and sicknesses...."