Birds of a feather

Still on the topic of atheism in college philosophy departments, I could not help noticing that there was very little camaraderie among the faculty. Every faculty member and teaching assistant seemed to have only a kind of murky peripheral interest in their colleagues' ideas. Perhaps they were all too absorbed in their own thought processes? Or perhaps there is a lot of pressure to publish or perish, and ideas are too valuable to spread around? More likely it is a natural response to the tendency of people of faith to congregate. I cannot help feeling that on some level atheists are uncomfortable being "joiners". They wouldn't want (as Groucho said) to belong to any club that would accept them as members. Group activity of any kind is a sign of some kind of community between souls: something an atheist cannot subscribe to. Previously I used the term "church" in relation to critical thinking because I do see it as a kind of blind faith. But adherents to that "faith" all vigorously deny any element of faith in their thinking, so they are obliged not to congregate. It would smell of church-worship or some faith-based activity. It is a fact that the philosophy department in a college is often a sort of poor orphan-child. There are doubtless a number of good reasons for this; in particular this is an age where degrees in "air conditioning and heating," or "criminology" are considered valuable, and liberal-arts is seen as superfluous. (that pendulum is starting to swing back again, though.) But perhaps a more basic and inescapable reason is the self-isolating nature of secularity. Great critical-thinking minds, even if they think alike, apparently can't discuss it, and without cohesiveness or group-spirit, departments seem destined to languish.