I have real issues with this idea, actually, as much as I appreciated finding a group of friends with similar views (these sort of statements are apparently guaranteed to bring Jordan and me out of the woodwork; I await Alexey's participation :) ).
It seems like the more you encourage people to define their own communities, the more you can end up with insular self-supporting groups made up of people with too much confidence in their world view... to caricature this problem: for every 'enlightened atheist' group of people, there's a counterbalancing fundamentalist Christian group, and neither are forced to properly consider the others' perspectives.
This is part of why I think public education is a social good: because it forces people to interact with those from different backgrounds, at least to some extent.
no subject
It seems like the more you encourage people to define their own communities, the more you can end up with insular self-supporting groups made up of people with too much confidence in their world view... to caricature this problem: for every 'enlightened atheist' group of people, there's a counterbalancing fundamentalist Christian group, and neither are forced to properly consider the others' perspectives.
This is part of why I think public education is a social good: because it forces people to interact with those from different backgrounds, at least to some extent.
- James H