just plain snobbery

A redated post.

Shulamite made a comment about my reference to "just plain snobbery" as as reason why Lewis is not taken seriously amongst philosophers. It reminds me of when I was in my first year of teaching introductory philosophy at the University of Illinois. I informed my students that there were about 18 full-time teachers at the U of I, and as best as I could tell 17 of them were atheists. One student raised his hand and asked "Those atheist teachers, do they think of themselves as the supreme beings?" I didn't answer the way I should have, which would have been to say "well, not all of them."