Wildcardjack - John Allen Paulos is an atheist. He has a home page. He wrote the book Innumeracy. You're (jawdroppingly) right about the book "Innumeracy" by John Allen Paulos. It is harmonious with atheism. And John Allen Paulos' book entitled Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up.
Innumeracy - the author is trying to point out how the failure to understand chance phenomena, statistics, and probability leads to belief in nonsense. Sh*t happens. The author also wants people to understand that some statistics are meaningless.
That kind of ignorance lead to an increase in pseudoscience - Like "Of Pandas And People" But, actually the more subtle influence of this type of ignorance is more interesting than the obvious consequence of illiteracy or general cultural ignorance.
I don't have a problem with people who find it necessary to keep their non-belief to themselves. Especially anyone living in Tyler TX., but some people denounce those who do not hide the fact that they are non-believers. I don't know how they think this helps them.
For instance just the fact that so many people write to this message board and state that they have to hide the fact that they are atheists. And state what would happen if they didn't hide that fact. It let's a lot of people see what's going on. What's the problem?
When you realize that nothing has changed in this country concerning the attitudes toward non-believers you start to get the picture, and I think it's getting worse. Some "non-believer" groups have "church" in their title. Frankly, I think it's seriously apropos.
Atheist Alliance International has a lot of good information.
