The phantom menace of militant atheism [Archive]

mal4mac

09-07-2014, 06:16 AM

"My family went into central London last week. After they'd gone, I found myself checking the web for reports of bomb blasts. Absurd and paranoid of me, of course. Rationally, I know that a motorist is more likely to kill you than a terrorist. Ever since Iraq, I have also known that the intelligence services' "threats" can be imaginary. But I know this, too, and so does everyone else: if a bomb explodes, no one will think that a "militant atheist" has attacked his or her country. No one will mutter: "I wonder if someone has taken this god delusion argument too far." Or: "Atheists should have known that violent words lead to violent deeds."

"Across left and right, in the BBC, academia and the supposedly serious press, atheism and "aggressive secularism" are attacked as a matter of course. When they are at their crudest, intellectuals (and I am using that term crudely too) uphold moral equivalence by claiming that atheists and humanists mirror the behaviour of religious believers. As atheists have nothing in common beyond an inability to believe in a god or an assortment of gods, the argument comes down to a critique of the minority of atheists who decided that, what with 9/11, Hindu nationalism and genuinely militant strains of Christianity and Judaism, the times required us to dispense with politeness."

"Since 9/11, western intellectuals have had a choice. They could have taken on militant religion, exposed its texts, decried its doctrines and found arguments to persuade young British men not to go to Syria and slaughter "heretics". But religious fanatics might have retaliated. Instead, they chose the safe option of attacking the phantom menace of militant atheists, who would never harm them. Leaving all philosophical and moral objections aside, they have been the most awful cowards."

- Nick Cohen http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/07/militant-atheism-religious-apologists-intellectuals

YesNo

09-07-2014, 09:22 AM

Regarding whether militant atheists can attack their own country just consider the Khmer Rouge.

I think the current threat from militant atheists comes not in bombs but it undermining secular, liberal society by moving it toward state atheism where civil liberties are restricted by the state on the grounds of child abuse or threats of terrorism.

Poetaster

09-07-2014, 10:18 AM

Militant atheists can annoy other atheists like me just as much as they annoy the rest of the world.

mortalterror

09-07-2014, 06:10 PM

I think if you check the hate crime statistics the 7.6 percent which are against multiple religions are likely perpetrated by atheists who are roughly 2 percent of the population.

Hate crimes motivated by religion accounted for 1,166 of the reported offenses, with 56.7 percent identified as anti-Jewish cases. Another 12.8 percent were anti-Islamic, 7.6 percent were classified as anti-multiple religions, 6.8 percent were anti-Catholic, and 2.9 percent were anti-Protestant. Only one percent of religious-related hate crimes were aimed at Atheists/Agnostics.
It's hard to pick out atheists when they do anything because they are such a small minority that most researchers don't even study them or put them in a category to track their violence. Nevertheless, there are ways to show definitively that their violence was motivated by their atheist beliefs. You just have to narrow the focus to anti-clericalism, when they bomb or burn down churches, or attack priests. When they attack normal religious people, the data is often never collected, and it rarely makes headlines. It's not as salacious as black on white or white on black crime, anti-semitism, or gay bashing, but it does happen.

Dec. 1997 Michael Carneal shoots up a high school prayer circle killing three and wounding five. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heath_High_School_shooting

Dec 1998 Richard D. White bombs two churches killing 1 and wounding 33. http://www.worldmag.com/1998/06/out_of_the_rubble

June 2013 Joseph Fretti burns two churches in the UK. http://www.inquisitr.com/937080/atheist-jailed-for-church-arson-in-uk/

You also have to consider that atheist violence is rarely directed at their own society right now. Where it is focused most, at the moment, seems to be on Islamophobia. Guys like Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris tend to be big supporters of the wars in the middle east.

mal4mac

09-08-2014, 04:39 AM

I think if you check the hate crime statistics the 7.6 percent which are against multiple religions are likely perpetrated by atheists...

That's a ridiculous statement. Religious fanatics are happy to attack multiple religions, it happens all the time! I know from nightly news that it's nearly always religious types attacking multiple other religions. In the last few weeks, ISIS have given us hundreds of religious fanatics killing hundreds of people a day, of a variety of religions.

You also have to consider that atheist violence is rarely directed at their own society right now. Where it is focused most, at the moment, seems to be on Islamophobia. Guys like Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris tend to be big supporters of the wars in the middle east.

Richard Dawkins opposed the invasion of Iraq. George W. Bush and Tony Blair actually led the invasion of Iraq and they are both devout Christians. OK, I'll give you that Christopher Hitchens supported the invasion of Iraq. But I think the main reasons for invading Iraq, for Christians or atheists, have have had nothing to do with islamophobia. The reasons are political - "defuse the weapons of mass destruction", "kill the tyrant to make the world a better place", "grab the oil", ...

Poetaster

09-08-2014, 08:58 AM

Atheists are 2% of which population?

mal4mac

09-08-2014, 01:17 PM

Atheists are 2% of which population?

There's a dodgy wikipedia page that quotes that figure, so dodgy I'm not giving it a link! This WIN/Gallup poll is the best I could dig up, short notice:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/05/23/a-surprising-map-of-where-the-worlds-atheists-live/

That map is rather lacking - why is the UK not on it?

"The poll concluded that roughly 13 percent of global respondents identified as atheists, more than double the percentage in the U.S."

Poetaster

09-08-2014, 01:59 PM

I was going to say, I'm pretty sure in some of the Nordic countries, atheists represent just slightly less than half of the population.

mortalterror

09-08-2014, 11:44 PM

I was going to say, I'm pretty sure in some of the Nordic countries, atheists represent just slightly less than half of the population.

No. You are thinking of the unaffiliated. Not the same as an atheist. Most of those people are spiritual but not into organized religion, or they are agnostics. Atheists usually aren't that big a portion of the unaffiliated. I doubt they are more than 20% even in the most secular countries, excepting maybe former Communist enclaves where religion was nearly eradicated through hostile purges like Czechoslovakia or China.

108 fountains

09-08-2014, 11:46 PM

I also noticed that mortalterror likes to use the statistic that only 2 percent of the world population is atheist. I also saw the Wikipedia page that states that 2.01percent of the world population is atheist.

The CIA factbook, which I generally regard as a pretty good source of information, also states that atheists comprise 2.01percent of the world’s population and the non-religious comprise a further 9.66 percent. (The CIA, apparently, likes its figures exact.)

It comes down in part to a question of definitions. The Wikipedia page, for example, goes on to say that 16 percent of the world is non-religious, and it makes mention of the “irreligious” and of nonreligious beliefs, and nontheistic religious and spiritual beliefs. I’m not really sure what the difference is between atheist, non-religious, irreligious, etc.

More importantly, it comes down to a matter of judgment and assumptions. The CIA World Factbook, for example, says that Buddhists make up 9.3 percent of the population of Vietnam and that 80.8 percent of Vietnam’s population falls under the religious category of “none.” The U.S. State Department takes a different approach. It states in the Vietnam section of its 2013 International Freedom of Religion Report, “More than half of the population is Buddhist…” It does not attempt to put a number on the atheists or the non-religious. It simply says, “Other citizens consider themselves nonreligious, or practice animism or the veneration of ancestors, tutelary and protective saints, national heroes, or local, respected persons. Followers of these traditional forms of worship may or may not term themselves religious.”

The 1999 State Department report says, “Of the country's 80 million citizens, 14 million or more reportedly do not appear to practice any organized religion. Some sources define strictly those considered to be practicing Buddhists, excluding those whose activities are limited to visiting pagodas on ceremonial holidays; using this definition, the number of nonreligious persons would be much higher--perhaps up to 50 million persons.” I was involved in writing the reports in those years, and we had lengthy discussions about the best way to characterize these types of statistics. We decided to take a realistic approach making general estimates and explaining the difficulties of compiling statistics when definitions were not clear cut (although for some religions such as Catholicism and the indigenous Cao Dai and Hoa Hao religions, we were able to make more precise estimates).

There are places on earth, such as the Philippines, where the lines are more clear-cut. The Philippines is about 83 percent Catholic, about 10 percent other Christian denominations, about 5 percent Muslim, and about 2 percent atheist or non-religious. But my guess is that there are a lot of places like Vietnam where the lines are not so clear. And then you have questions such as “Is Confucianism a religion?” And there also is a huge difference between the Buddhist and Hindu concept of God and the Western (Jewish/Christian/Muslim) concept.

Statistics can be used and manipulated to fit anyone’s agenda. To say that only 2 percent of the world’s population is atheist, to me, is not being completely honest. It hides the complexities and places the non-religious and the “irreligious” in the category of theists. No one really knows what percent of the world’s population is atheist or theist or religious or non-religious. A more honest and realistic approach, I think, would be to state that various sources put the percent of the world’s non-theist population somewhere between 8 and 18 percent, and then follow that statistic up with an explanatory statement on definitions and assumptions.

mortalterror

09-08-2014, 11:51 PM

There's a dodgy wikipedia page that quotes that figure, so dodgy I'm not giving it a link! This WIN/Gallup poll is the best I could dig up, short notice:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/05/23/a-surprising-map-of-where-the-worlds-atheists-live/

That map is rather lacking - why is the UK not on it?

"The poll concluded that roughly 13 percent of global respondents identified as atheists, more than double the percentage in the U.S."
I don't know, mal. Some of the data seems spot on, but it looks like they didn't investigate roughly half of the world. See all those gray areas on the map? Africa, South America, Mexico, a bunch of Middle Eastern countries. I'd say that 13% figure probably applies to Europe, which they mostly got, but even there they left out England. I think the figure in the US is somewhere around 5%, but globally it's probably about 2%.

mal4mac

09-09-2014, 04:07 AM

No. You are thinking of the unaffiliated. Not the same as an atheist. Most of those people are spiritual ...

You can be spiritual and still be an atheist, in the sense of being "concerned with the higher qualities of the mind". You can even believe "the soul lives on" and be an atheist, like Oprah's atheist sparring partner Diana Nyad (short video worth watching...):

http://www.ibtimes.com/can-atheists-still-be-spiritual-oprah-prompts-debate-1441106

Poetaster

09-09-2014, 04:21 AM

No. You are thinking of the unaffiliated. Not the same as an atheist. Most of those people are spiritual but not into organized religion, or they are agnostics. Atheists usually aren't that big a portion of the unaffiliated. I doubt they are more than 20% even in the most secular countries, excepting maybe former Communist enclaves where religion was nearly eradicated through hostile purges like Czechoslovakia or China.

There is no reliable data on the number of atheists. I'm sorry, but I am very suspicious of your 2% figure, especially when you do not supply a source for it. And no, I'm not going to accept Wikipedia, even if it happens to be right in this case. Also, your personal feelings on the subject are irreverent unless you have a professional background in this sort of thing. Do you?

mal4mac

09-09-2014, 05:23 AM

YesNo

09-09-2014, 06:21 AM

I would like to know how many of those unaffiliated with any organized religion are actually militant atheists. I can imagine some of them, with the appropriate questioning, would consider themselves to be militantly anti-atheists.

In this sense they would be even more atheist than the militant atheists recognizing militant atheism as one more fundamentalist religion to reject.

mortalterror

09-09-2014, 06:36 AM

I'm sorry, but I am very suspicious of your 2% figure, especially when you do not supply a source for it. And no, I'm not going to accept Wikipedia, even if it happens to be right in this case. Also, your personal feelings on the subject are irreverent unless you have a professional background in this sort of thing. Do you?
Sure, I'm the pope.

Hows the Pew Research forum? Global:
http://www.pewforum.org/2012/12/18/global-religious-landscape-unaffiliated/

The religiously unaffiliated number 1.1 billion, accounting for about one-in-six (16%) people worldwide. The religiously unaffiliated include atheists, agnostics and people who do not identify with any particular religion in surveys. However, many of the religiously unaffiliated have some religious beliefs. For example, belief in God or a higher power is shared by 7% of Chinese unaffiliated adults, 30% of French unaffiliated adults and 68% of unaffiliated U.S. adults. Some of the unaffiliated also engage in certain kinds of religious practices. For example, 7% of unaffiliated adults in France and 2 7% of those in the United States say they attend religious serv ices at least once a year. And in China, 44% of unaffiliated adults say they have worshiped at a graveside or tomb in the past year.

And for the US:
http://www.pewforum.org/2012/10/09/nones-on-the-rise/

the unaffiliated have increased from just over 15% to just under 20% of all U.S. adults. Their ranks now include more than 13 million self-described atheists and agnostics (nearly 6% of the U.S. public), as well as nearly 33 million people who say they have no particular religious affiliation (14%)

CIA world factbook
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2122.html#xx

atheists 2.01% (2010 est.)

By the way, I find your wikiskepticism quaint. It seems old fashioned and hubristic. When someone tells me they don't trust wikipedia they remind me of those people who are always boasting that they don't own a television. Wikipedia is a hell of a resource.

But back to the discussion at hand, atheism and violence. Requoting from the OP:
if a bomb explodes, no one will think that a "militant atheist" has attacked his or her country. No one will mutter: "I wonder if someone has taken this god delusion argument too far." Or: "Atheists should have known that violent words lead to violent deeds."

I was thinking about this at the library this weekend and it occurred to me that this fit the description of fin de siecle Europe and it's fear of anarchists. I was especially thinking of Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent which features major themes of anarchism and terrorism, bomb throwers, assassins and what not. And it occurred to me that before communism became the major water carrier for atheists, the irreligious flocked to the banner of anarchism. I'm thinking of Auguste Blanqui, William Godwin, Max Stirner, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Mikhail Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin, Sebastien Faure, Johann Most, etc.

There is a book I'm quite fond of called The Official Slacker Handbook. And among it's numerous amusing chapters is a section called Slacking Throughout History, which features the defining characteristics of a slacker in various epochs. Slackers go from smoking opium, wearing rumpled ascots, dropping out of Cambridge in 1797, to being high school drop outs, smoking weed, wearing black turtlenecks in 1967, etc. Each era has it's own table reading, it's own sexual mores broken, it's own basic philosophical conflict. I was thinking the same sort of thing might be said about the atheist. You just dress him up a little different, put a different book in his hand depending on the period. In the 1950s he's a Communist. In the 1890s he's an Anarchist. In the 1790s he's a French Revolutionary. I wonder if he just moves from one radical counterculture movement to another. Surely, there have always been uprisings, revolutions, and insurrection from society's malcontents. The fringe seems to be a natural ideological home for atheists, who draw so much of their self-identity from being in opposition to the majority.

mortalterror

09-09-2014, 06:56 AM

In regards to Mal thinking that 70% of the United Kingdom is atheist, I find that idea unlikely and wishful thinking on his part. Here are a few different studies which got different numbers depending on their methodology and questions asked.

Norris and Inglehart (2004) found that 39% of those in Britain do not believe in God. According to a 2004 survey commissioned by the BBC, 44% of the British do not believe in God. According to Greeley (2003), 31% of the British do not believe in God, although only 10% self-identify as “atheist.” According to Bruce (2002), 10% of the British self-identify as an “agnostic person” and 8% as a “convinced atheist,” with an additional 21% choosing “not a religious person.” According to Froese (2001), 32% of the British are atheist or agnostic. According to Gallup and Lindsay (1999:121), 39% of the British do not believe in God or a “Higher Power. https://www.pitzer.edu/academics/faculty/zuckerman/Ath-Chap-under-7000.pdf
Based on those statistics, it looks like the amount of atheists in the UK are between 10% on the low end and 30% on the high end. Most of the people who "aren't religious" are going to fall into the same categories as the "unaffiliated" in the US and believe in something. It's wishy washy and disorganized, but they tend to believe in "something." I think a lot of the break with religion has to do with a lack of faith in the institutions rather than a lack of faith in the principles, so the non-attendance of churches can be read as a decentralization of spirituality and a return to a more personalized relationship with the divine.

In illustration of my point, here's an interesting article about how for the last fifty years religion has been declining in the UK and belief in life after death has been rising.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2012/apr/26/persistence-superstition-irreligious-britain

Another rather lazy assumption was dynamited later in the day by David Voas, the sociologist behind the informative British Religion in Numbers. He showed us any number of graphs showing a steady falling off of religious belief in England over the past 50 or 60 years, but ended with one in the shape of a shallow X. One line, sloping down from left to right, showed the familiar decline in religious belief. The other, sloping up over the same decades, showed the corresponding rise in a faith in life after death.

Poetaster

09-09-2014, 07:25 AM

Sure, I'm the pope.

Very mature. By the way, I've worked with statistics, I have seen how amazingly easy it is for them not represent what is actually going on. I don't understand your condensation, and it doesn't give me a good impression of you as a person.

Your first link only deals with people unaffiliated with religion.

Your second only relates to the US, and the accuracy of these statistics are very questionable due to a wide number of factors.

And the third, I'd like to know where they got that figure from. Again, the accuracy of these things are always very questionable, especially when it just presents a number with no evidence.

None of them are later than 2011, either.

By the way, I find your wikiskepticism quaint. It seems old fashioned and hubristic. When someone tells me they don't trust wikipedia they remind me of those people who are always boasting that they don't own a television. Wikipedia is a hell of a resource.

Why? It's a good resource, but you can't use it in an academic paper. Why should I accept Wikipedia, then, as an authority? If it was, it would be accepted as a reference.

Ecurb

09-09-2014, 01:11 PM

A Washington Post poll found that 13% of the world's people were "convinced atheists".

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/05/23/a-surprising-map-of-where-the-worlds-atheists-live/

I imagine that if pollsters asked whether people were "convinced Christians", a great many of those who list themselves as "Christians" would fall into the category of "undecided". I'm an atheist, for all practical purposes, but I might answer a poll by saying I'm agnostic, just out of modesty and respect for others.

The notion that only 2% of the World's population is atheist is ludicrous, since China constitutes 20% of the world's population, and has purged religion for many decades now. (The Post poll lists China as 47% atheist, which would be 650 million people, or 8% of the World's population right there.)

mal4mac

09-09-2014, 01:30 PM

I would like to know how many of those unaffiliated with any organized religion are actually militant atheists.

"Militant" is such a vague word, it should hardly ever be used, and only with great caution! I guess a sentence like "The militant amarchists were out in force at the G7 summit" would be a good use- capturing a range of anarchists from violent to noisy.

militant
adjective
1.favouring confrontational or violent methods in support of a political or social cause.
synonyms: aggressive, violent, belligerent, bellicose, assertive, pushy, vigorous, forceful, active, ultra-active, fierce, combative, pugnacious;

Dawkins is forceful, but he's not violent. "Militant atheism" is really a phantom phrase. I wish I hadn't posted that title now :)

mal4mac

09-09-2014, 01:41 PM

In regards to Mal thinking that 70% [actually 65%...] of the United Kingdom is atheist, I find that idea unlikely and wishful thinking on his part.

OK I'll keep to the strict wording of the 2011 YouGov poll - that's 65% who said they weren't religious. That's actually a stronger anti-religious stance than atheism as it does away with non-theist religions like Buddhism.

Based on those statistics, it looks like the amount of atheists in the UK are between 10% on the low end and 30% on the high end.

"Those statistics" are ten years out of date and the "low end" probably suffers from the same flaw as the 2011 Census, by being based on a leading question. Any figures from 2011 or after?

Only 2% of Brits go to church on Sunday:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/peter-g-tatchell/david-cameron-christianity_b_5190047.html

mortalterror

09-09-2014, 02:34 PM

Anyone want to question Mal's statistical acumen, sources, or interpretation? He pretty much considers anyone who can spell the word an atheist.

Poetaster

09-09-2014, 02:43 PM

Anyone want to question Mal's statistical acumen, sources, or interpretation? He pretty much considers anyone who can spell the word an atheist.

So 45% of the British public cannot spell a simple word? O.o

mortalterror

09-09-2014, 03:21 PM

OK I'll keep to the strict wording of the 2011 YouGov poll - that's 65% who said they weren't religious. That's actually a stronger anti-religious stance than atheism as it does away with non-theist religions like Buddhism.

I'm afraid your 2011 statistics are a little out of date, Mal. According to the 2012 YouGov poll question How religious, if at all, would you say you are?:
Very Religious 5%
Fairly Religious 19%
Not Very Religious 37%
Not Religious at All 39%
http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/pe06bnkf18/YG-Archives-YouGov-ChristianCountryPrayers-160212.pdf

Wait a second. I'm looking at the 2011 poll now. Q: How religious would you say you are now?
Very Religious 6%
Fairly Religious 29%
Not Very Religious 46%
Not Religious at All 17%
Don't know 1%

How'd they get a 10% swing on some of these answers in just a year?

Well, here's an interesting fact to chew on. The church attendance is only 39% when you exclude weddings, funerals, and social functions but only 29% say they never pray. That goes toward what I said about worship moving from the public sector to the private sector.
http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/2l6avzlerp/Religion.pdf

mortalterror

09-09-2014, 03:22 PM

So 45% of the British public cannot spell a simple word? O.o
100-65 doesn't equal 45, Poetaster.

Poetaster

09-09-2014, 03:40 PM

100-65 doesn't equal 45, Poetaster.

Yeah, 35%. Sorry, that was a brain fart. Good thing I'm not a math teacher. But still, saying 35% of the British population cannot spell the word 'atheist' is ... well, it's not a very serious comment is it?

How'd they get a 10% swing on some of these answers in just a year?

Makes more sense if you know what went on in the UK between those years. Like, say, the Humanist Association making a certain campaign over that year.

mortalterror

09-09-2014, 04:21 PM

Yeah, 35%. Sorry, that was a brain fart. Good thing I'm not a math teacher. But still, saying 35% of the British population cannot spell the word 'atheist' is ... well, it's not a very serious comment is it?
No. It wasn't a serious comment. I just found it odd that my figures were being held up to greater scrutiny than Mal4mac's who's figures are wildly off target. Seriously, only 2% go to church? The Gallup and BBC surveys I just looked up say 10% and 13% weekly attendance. The Yougov poll I cited above said 2% go multiple times a week. I think the 2% figure he's quoting might only represent Church of England attendance levels.

Also, I've noted the gap between church attendance and belief. There ought to be a different question to see if people are actually practicing their religion, like the question about prayer. In a related note, I was just looking up an article about church attendance and a Swiss study found that you are 50 times as likely to attend regularly if your father did as if he didn't. The dads had a way bigger impact than the mothers on their children's church attendance in later life. It got me wondering what the typical family composition was like in those more secular European countries, if there were a lot of absentee fathers, and could there be a correlation?

I'd also like to see the figures on church attendance with the social occasions (weddings, funerals) left in. It may be biased in favor of believers, but leaving them out is biased in favor of disbelievers. I think it's probably wrong to forget the social component of religion, or to suggest that isn't a big part of being religious. I also think that if you follow your societies rituals like funerals, weddings, you are admitting a need for the social component of religion if not the spiritual/supernatural side of it.

Makes more sense if you know what went on in the UK between those years. Like, say, the Humanist Association making a certain campaign over that year.
Oh yeah, I heard about that. Sort of begs the question, "If the C of E did a similar campaign, could they push the numbers 10% in the opposite direction?"

Poetaster

09-09-2014, 04:34 PM

No. It wasn't a serious comment. I just found it odd that my figures were being held up to greater scrutiny than Mal4mac's who's figures are wildly off target. Seriously, only 2% go to church? The Gallup and BBC surveys I just looked up say 10% and 13% weekly attendance. The Yougov poll I cited above said 2% go multiple times a week. I think the 2% figure he's quoting might only represent Church of England attendance levels.

I (obviously) find quoted statistics hard to believe. Mal4mac's figures I'll need to look in to more, but only 2% of the world's population I found very difficult to believe, purely because of societies that demand religious unity, and even places that demand non-religious unity. To just quote a statistic about that is very misleading. If it was just about the US - fine, I was merely looking for clarification. The wildly different statistics you can bring up about just those two days also show why I am suspicious of comments and arguments based on them.

The UK is a very secular country despite having an official state religion. It's like anything under a constitutional monarchy, you'll not really understand it unless you live under it. No one expects the crown to do anything for them, most people are completely ignorant of anything the crown does in official state business. It may seem like antiquated tradition on the outside, but to British people the crown is seen as something more. (I say that as a British Republican).

Also, I've noted the gap between church attendance and belief. There ought to be a different question to see if people are actually practicing their religion, like the question about prayer. In a related note, I was just looking up an article about church attendance and a Swiss study found that you are 50 times as likely to attend regularly if your father did as if he didn't. The dads had a way bigger impact than the mothers on their children's church attendance in later life. It got me wondering what the typical family composition was like in those more secular European countries, if there were a lot of absentee fathers, and could there be a correlation?

That's a good question. This is another problem with such servery as the one you two are discussing now, they are never detailed enough.

I'd also like to see the figures on church attendance with the social occasions (weddings, funerals) left in. It may be biased in favor of believers, but leaving them out is biased in favor of disbelievers. I think it's probably wrong to forget the social component of religion, or to suggest that isn't a big part of being religious. I also think that if you follow your societies rituals like funerals, weddings, you are admitting a need for the social component of religion if not the spiritual/supernatural side of it.

Upholding religiously dominated ceremonies like marriage has nothing to do with actually believing and practicing. It may be interesting from curiosity, but would not have anything to do with what we are talking about here. Marriages, funerals and so on can be secular.

Oh yeah, I heard about that. Sort of begs the question, "If the C of E did a similar campaign, could they push the numbers 10% in the opposite direction?"

I'm not sure, but to be honest I doubt it. Given my first hand experiences across the British isles. My experiences is of course essentially irreverent, but it does lead me to suspect it isn't the case. I'd be very surprised anyway. The Pope called the UK a nation of Atheists a few years, ago - was ridiculed for it by Richard Dawkins (like the prick he is) but the act of saying that should tell you something about what is going on here. Or at least, what was. Anti-religious feeling has short of died down now Dawkins seems to have gone insane and posting rubbish on Twitter.

mortalterror

09-09-2014, 05:18 PM

Marriages, funerals and so on can be secular.
Yes, they are secular religion. It's the ritualistic side of religion. I don't think that religion can be defined purely from the supernatural side of things. That leaves out the major social functions.

Plus, like you say, there are secular ways to get married. I have an atheist friend who married his wife at a courthouse. But even that implies the need for organized societal rituals and he's replacing one set of vows for another one building for another, rather than going without rituals or bowing to social mores at all. He could have just lived with his girlfriend without any need to formalize or solemnize his union. People do that now. If you are a pure materialist who doesn't believe in an afterlife, then why would you pay respects to a dead hunk of meat, unless you recognize that rituals and rites of passage have a social component and perform a necessary function in life? I think there is more than a little reason to believe that those rituals are the actual basis of religion, rather than a tacit belief in afterlives or deities.

Poetaster

09-09-2014, 05:29 PM

Yes, they are secular religion. It's the ritualistic side of religion. I don't think that religion can be defined purely from the supernatural side of things. That leaves out the major social functions.

I certainly think they can be defined purely by the supernatural side of things. What, then, is the difference between a Christian marriage and a Pagan marriage, and just because they are done in a different way, how are they really any different from a secular marriage? It doesn't really make sense to me, religion seems to be all about the supernatural - if it's not then it would be a philosophy, isn't it?

Plus, like you say, there are secular ways to get married. I have an atheist friend who married his wife at a courthouse. But even that implies the need for organized societal rituals and he's replacing one set of vows for another one building for another, rather than going without rituals or bowing to social mores at all. He could have just lived with his girlfriend without any need to formalize or solemnize his union. People do that now. If you are a pure materialist who doesn't believe in an afterlife, then why would you pay respects to a dead hunk of meat, unless you recognize that rituals and rites of passage have a social component and perform a necessary function in life? I think there is more than a little reason to believe that those rituals are the actual basis of religion, rather than a tacit belief in afterlives or deities.

At the risk of making myself completely undatable, I don't believe marriages are a good thing personally. I don't think I would do it. Of course religion's influence is pervasive in our society, but that is the way our society has developed. Marriage, too, is evident in all human cultures, so the actual act of marriage doesn't seem to be for any one religion, which to my mind means religion isn't really the point of such rituals.

Society is reinforced by these rituals, to me that is no secret, but to equate social rituals with religion and spiritual rituals seems to me naive. Many people have private social rituals, like friends in a pub playing a particular card game. What really is the difference between that selected card game and marriage? Both are just ways of affirming yourself in the society you keep.

mortalterror

09-10-2014, 12:55 AM

That's the difference between individual religions and religion in general, Poetaster. That's basically what they boil down to. The essence of religion is ritual from a sociological or anthropological perspective. There is a philosophical component too. By defining religion as purely supernatural, you are basically just defining the parts of religion you don't like, taking one layer off the onion, and keeping the rest while calling it something else.

I once had a discussion on a thread like this, where atheists denied that doing yoga or meditating was religious, as though the intent behind the action defined it completely. But if intent was all that mattered, you could be the pope, the dalai lama, or an imam and not be religious. The truth is, meditation and yoga are akin to praying. They just come from a foreign tradition and so atheists don't have their guard up against them the way they would Christian practice. But it's all religious. Atheists can't just declare the religious acts they like to be secular.

Oh, and in regards to my quoting the 2% figure from the CIA world factbook earlier, I see that's incorrect now. If the atheists in China make up 8% of the world's population, I can see how the total could be 13%. Although, it's worth noting that the world is a lot less atheistic than it was in 1970 when atheists made up about 20% of the world. With all the ex-communist countries converting back to their old religions, and the population booms in the most religious countries along with the population decline in the least religious, one has to wonder if things aren't resetting to their pre-twentieth century levels.

A new study says the world is more religious now than it was four decades ago, and this trend will continue to 2020 and perhaps beyond even as the global share of the nonreligious is likely to witness a sustained decrease.

The percentage of the world that is religious continues to increase, according to the study titled "Christianity In Its Global Context, 1970-2010," conducted by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts.

In 1970, nearly 80 percent of the world's population was religious, and by 2010 this had grown to around 88 percent, with a projected increase to almost 90 percent by 2020, the report states. The growth of religious adherence can largely be attributed to the continuing resurgence of religion in China, it notes.

In 1970, agnostic and atheist populations together claimed 19.2 percent of the world's total population, largely due to communism in Eastern Europe and China. However, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, large numbers of the nonreligious returned to religion.

According to the report, projections to 2020 indicate a sustained decrease of the global share of the nonreligious, mostly because China is witnessing a resurgence of Buddhism, Christianity, and other religions, and Christianity is also growing in Eastern Europe.

"If this trend continues, agnostics and atheists will be a smaller portion of the world's population in 2020 than they were in 2010," says the report. "Although the number of atheists and agnostics continues to rise in the Western world, the current growth of a variety of religions in China in particular (where the vast majority of the nonreligious live today) suggests continued future demographic growth of religion."

Christianity and Islam dominate religious demographics and are expected to continue that dominance in the future, according to the report, which notes that the two religions represented 48.8 percent of the global population in 1970, and by 2020 they will likely represent 57.2 percent. The study also predicts that there will be 2.6 billion Christians by 2020.

However, the fastest-growing religions over the next decade are likely to be the Baha'i faith which is growing by 1.7 percent yearly, Islam at 1.6 percent, Sikhism at 1.4 percent, Jainism at 1.3 percent, Christianity at 1.2 percent, and Hinduism at 1.2 percent. Each of these is growing faster than the world's population at 1.1 percent.

The study also found that the global North is becoming more religiously diverse, with more countries becoming home to a greater number of the world's religions, while religious diversity is decreasing in many countries in the global South with the growth of mostly one religion, either Christianity or Islam.

The report also takes note of the great shift of Christianity to the global South in the twentieth century, a trend that is expected to continue into the future. While 41.3 percent of all Christians were from Africa, Asia, or Latin America in 1970, the figure is expected to increase to 64.7 percent in 2020.

Between 1970 and 2020, all major Christian traditions are likely to grow more rapidly than the general population in the global South, according to the report. However, at the same time, Christianity is declining as a percentage of the population in the global North "at a dramatic rate." This can be attributed to birth rates in many European countries in particular being below replacement level, and aging populations. The global shift was reflected in the election of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, Argentina, as Pope Francis, the first Latin American head of the Roman Catholic Church, the study points out.
http://www.christianpost.com/news/study-world-is-turning-more-religious-atheism-declining-100518/

When Mal4mac makes claims like 70 percent of Britain is atheist, I can tell without checking the source that isn't true. Humans have a biological preset for religion, and saying that 70 percent of a population is atheist is akin to saying that 70 percent of the population is gay. I know some members of the gay community might wish it, but it flies in the face of all scientific evidence. A certain minority of people are likely born atheists, with their brains working somewhat differently, and they are even able to convert a part of the religiously inclined population toward their way of thinking, but even when people lose formal religion they retain religious habits of thinking or acting such as beliefs in an afterlife, prayer, higher powers. Without the stabilizing force of institutional religion, people's personal beliefs become esoteric, eclectic, and idiosyncratic. They conform less with the public's but they don't go away any more than reason and logic would vanish if we knocked down every school.

mal4mac

09-10-2014, 03:01 AM

If you are a pure materialist who doesn't believe in an afterlife, then why would you pay respects to a dead hunk of meat...

Because it's the only thing you've got! The religious are most likely to despise the body as 'just a lump of meat'. They can't wait to get to heaven, where everything is so perfect. Hence the strong tendencies to asceticism, whipping oneself, and suicide bombing.

“By aiming for paradise, we lose sight of earth. Hope of a beyond and aspiration to an afterlife engender a sense of futility in the present.” - Michael Onfray, In Defence of Atheism

mal4mac

09-10-2014, 03:44 AM

I once had a discussion on a thread like this, where atheists denied that doing yoga or meditating was religious, as though the intent behind the action defined it completely. But if intent was all that mattered, you could be the pope, the dalai lama, or an imam and not be religious. The truth is, meditation and yoga are akin to praying.

If we take Buddhist meditation as an example of religious meditation, then there is one big difference to prayer - there is no belief in a provider God who will answer your prayer. In samatha meditation you concentrate on the breath in the hope of producing calm. This can be performed by non-Buddhists just as well as by Buddhists (in fact it was originally a Hindu practice.) Secular people can, and do, perform meditation in the hope of gaining psychological benefits - without any belief in the religious aspects. One of four horsemen, Sam Harris, is a great fan of that other main form of Buddhist meditation, vipassana meditation:

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/mindfulness-meditation

Dawkins isn't a great fan of meditation, but does grudgingly acknowledge it might have psychological benefit for some people. So you even the most militant atheists acknowledge that meditation has, or might have, purely secular applications.

Oh, and in regards to my quoting the 2% figure from the CIA world factbook earlier, I see that's incorrect now. If the atheists in China make up 8% of the world's population, I can see how the total could be 13%. Although, it's worth noting that the world is a lot less atheistic than it was in 1970 when atheists made up about 20% of the world. With all the ex-communist countries converting back to their old religions...

Hardly - the Czech Republic, for example, is the most atheistic country in Europe:

http://atheism.about.com/b/2006/02/15/czech-republic-most-atheist-country-in-europe.htm

When Mal4mac makes claims like 70 percent of Britain is atheist, I can tell without checking the source that isn't true. Humans have a biological preset for religion, and saying that 70 percent of a population is atheist...

I claimed that 65% replied to a YouGov poll that they were non religious - you did check the source, even linking to it, but just decided to ignore it! Where is the evidence for a biological preset for religion?

...when people lose formal religion they retain religious habits of thinking or acting such as beliefs in an afterlife, prayer, higher powers. Without the stabilizing force of institutional religion, people's personal beliefs become esoteric, eclectic, and idiosyncratic.

With all the zany New Age stuff around you have a point here. When religion goes, people do need to find some other meaning in their lives - but zany New Age can be avoided. For me, reading literature provides a lot of meaning, as does engaging in philosophical dialogues (!) For others, like Dawkins and Hawking, doing science provides a lot of meaning. There are many other secular activities that can add meaning to a life - from chess to rock climbing. With all these options for providing meaning, institutional religions just isn't needed. You might still go to church to sing hymns cause you like the music & the surroundings - like the atheist choir master of King's College Cambridge - but trying to believe in sky fairies is an activity you can avoid if it doesn't "hang with" your world view.

Poetaster

09-10-2014, 05:46 AM

That's the difference between individual religions and religion in general, Poetaster. That's basically what they boil down to. The essence of religion is ritual from a sociological or anthropological perspective. There is a philosophical component too. By defining religion as purely supernatural, you are basically just defining the parts of religion you don't like, taking one layer off the onion, and keeping the rest while calling it something else.

That's just the thing though, if religion is also private rituals not related to the supernatural, then religion is everything. Then you could argue that someone who has been married twice, like say Dawkins, is religious. Words lose meaning when you stretch them far enough.

I once had a discussion on a thread like this, where atheists denied that doing yoga or meditating was religious, as though the intent behind the action defined it completely. But if intent was all that mattered, you could be the pope, the dalai lama, or an imam and not be religious. The truth is, meditation and yoga are akin to praying. They just come from a foreign tradition and so atheists don't have their guard up against them the way they would Christian practice. But it's all religious. Atheists can't just declare the religious acts they like to be secular.

Nor can the religious claim what they like to be religious either. It does go both ways if you are going to think of these things without bias. To those atheists you were talking to then, they are half right and half wrong I would say. There is no secular justification for meditation or yoga (well, meditation is good for psychological detox, and yoga is good for cardio, but what 3rd century Buddhist was to know that) but just because it came from a form of prayer, doesn't mean it's supernatural. The difference between religion and ritual needs to be drawn on a line, otherwise, people who have gone through any sort of initiation rite into a friendship group are entering a religious institution. You can't confuse the two, it's either religious or it isn't. If everything is religious, then what's the point in the word itself? Be like the Ancient Greeks who didn't have a word for religion as an institution.

Oh, and in regards to my quoting the 2% figure from the CIA world factbook earlier, I see that's incorrect now. If the atheists in China make up 8% of the world's population, I can see how the total could be 13%. Although, it's worth noting that the world is a lot less atheistic than it was in 1970 when atheists made up about 20% of the world. With all the ex-communist countries converting back to their old religions, and the population booms in the most religious countries along with the population decline in the least religious, one has to wonder if things aren't resetting to their pre-twentieth century levels.

http://www.christianpost.com/news/study-world-is-turning-more-religious-atheism-declining-100518/

Have more respect for me than this. This is so very lazy. Look at the name of the site you have posted as a source, bias much? Come on, I'm obviously going to take something about the rising levels of religious belief from 'ChristianPost' seriously. ¬.¬

When Mal4mac makes claims like 70 percent of Britain is atheist, I can tell without checking the source that isn't true. Humans have a biological preset for religion, and saying that 70 percent of a population is atheist is akin to saying that 70 percent of the population is gay. I know some members of the gay community might wish it, but it flies in the face of all scientific evidence. A certain minority of people are likely born atheists, with their brains working somewhat differently, and they are even able to convert a part of the religiously inclined population toward their way of thinking, but even when people lose formal religion they retain religious habits of thinking or acting such as beliefs in an afterlife, prayer, higher powers. Without the stabilizing force of institutional religion, people's personal beliefs become esoteric, eclectic, and idiosyncratic. They conform less with the public's but they don't go away any more than reason and logic would vanish if we knocked down every school.

Humans might have a natural preset to religiosity (I don't know of a study that has utterly conformed this without factoring the willingness to believe an authority figure) so that alone might be true, but most of this paragraph only appears to be what you think. I don't think 70% of the UK is atheist either, but it might be true. I'm being honest about that.

Also, without the stabilizing force of institutional religions (basically, a majority voice) personal beliefs become esoteric and idiosyncratic? What about the esoteric and idiosyncratic beliefs of the world's major religions? Also, what is esoteric or idiosyncratic with simple unbelief in gods, and the belief the world as we experience it is almost certainly reality as it is?

I'd hate to be forceful here, but the more you believe something doesn't make it more true.

108 fountains

09-10-2014, 01:14 PM

"Militant" is such a vague word, it should hardly ever be used, and only with great caution! ... I wish I hadn't posted that title now :)

I actually think using the term "militant atheism" or "belligerent atheism" or "fanatical atheism" or some other modifier to describe behavior of the kind of atheists that engage in aggressive or violent behavior is preferable than just using the word "atheism." At least then there is a distinction between "militant atheists" and what I estimate to be the vast majority of atheists, who are ordinary decent, honest, respectable people with no desire to impose their views on others either violently or non-violently.

To be honest, I had never heard of the organizations that mortalterror and YesNo have posted links about in other threads. What is described in these links sounds pretty despicable, but I would suggest that groups like these no more represent atheism than the Islamic State represents Islam or the Ku Klux Klan (which calls itself a Christian organization) represents Christianity.

What bothers me is comments in this and in other threads implying that theistic or religious people are intrinsically moral and good and that atheists are morally inferior or evil because… well, because they are atheists. I think a counter-argument can be made that choice of behavior (morality) derived from a rational evaluation of one’s cultural and social environment, along with introspective self-examination, has more intrinsic value than a morality derived from a desire to obtain rewards and escape punishment from some supernatural Being.

mal4mac

09-10-2014, 02:33 PM

YesNo

09-10-2014, 11:46 PM

I actually think using the term "militant atheism" or "belligerent atheism" or "fanatical atheism" or some other modifier to describe behavior of the kind of atheists that engage in aggressive or violent behavior is preferable than just using the word "atheism." At least then there is a distinction between "militant atheists" and what I estimate to be the vast majority of atheists, who are ordinary decent, honest, respectable people with no desire to impose their views on others either violently or non-violently.

To be honest, I had never heard of the organizations that mortalterror and YesNo have posted links about in other threads. What is described in these links sounds pretty despicable, but I would suggest that groups like these no more represent atheism than the Islamic State represents Islam or the Ku Klux Klan (which calls itself a Christian organization) represents Christianity.

I consider a militant atheist to be someone who wants to undermine secular society by removing religious civil liberties in order to create state atheism.

The only atheism that bothers me is this militant sort that refuses to tolerate others.

What bothers me is comments in this and in other threads implying that theistic or religious people are intrinsically moral and good and that atheists are morally inferior or evil because… well, because they are atheists. I think a counter-argument can be made that choice of behavior (morality) derived from a rational evaluation of one’s cultural and social environment, along with introspective self-examination, has more intrinsic value than a morality derived from a desire to obtain rewards and escape punishment from some supernatural Being.

I don't think religious people claim to be intrinsically moral and good.

At one extreme, some rational evaluations by atheists have led to views that the human species should voluntarily go extinct to avoid future suffering. That seems pretty inane, but how do atheists counter that rational argument? A theist could reject it by simply claiming to do the will of God and stay alive.

In general, morality seems to be a way for theists to better relate to the deity they worship. What excuse do atheists have to be moral?

Frostball

09-11-2014, 03:04 AM

mal4mac

09-11-2014, 04:07 AM

Am I a militant atheist?

"... while millions of atheists are indeed walking our streets, it would be difficult to find even one who could accurately be described as militant. In all of American history, it is doubtful that any person has ever been killed in the name of atheism. In fact, it would be difficult to find evidence that any American has ever even been harmed in the name of atheism. It just does not happen, because the notion of "militant atheism" is entirely fantasy."

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/our-humanity-naturally/201102/the-myth-militant-atheism

Maybe "engaged atheist" would be a better description.

Poetaster

09-11-2014, 04:43 AM

I think 'Engaged atheist' would be a much better term, actually.

YesNo

09-11-2014, 10:11 PM

I am an atheist, and an anti-theist. I love to argue about religion. I don't believe there are any gods, and I also do believe that there are no gods. I will try to convince somebody of my position as long as they are a willing participant, but stop when asked to do so. I think the world would be much much better off without people believing claims on bad evidence or no evidence. I consider myself doing good in the world just by talking to people on the chance that I might get them to shift in their position just one little bit. I think religion is a very harmful force overall, but I don't think it should be outlawed by force. I think people must be convinced one person at a time, and so must freely change their mind, not be forced to do so. This is why, I admit, that I do try to deconvert people from religion, as long as they are a willing participant in the conversation, of course.

Am I a militant atheist?

I'll let you decide.

Do you consider telling your children about your religion to be child abuse? If yes, then you are a militant atheist, because you would need the state to intervene to prevent the child abuse.

Do you consider theists to be a terror threat? If yes, then you are a militant atheist, because you would need the state to stop them.

I do my best to be a theist, but I suppose what I am is really an anti-atheist. I don't think atheism has any scientific justification anymore. Without that justification, it is little more than an habitual delusion.

Why do you think religion is a "very harmful force overall"?

mal4mac

09-12-2014, 04:36 AM

Do you consider telling your children about your religion to be child abuse? If yes, then you are a militant atheist...

I would call that a split personality and would be careful about letting you close to any children :). But I'll go with what I think you mean...

If an atheist considers that you telling your children about your religion is child abuse, and tries to stop you doing that, using violent means, then I'd call him a militant atheist. But if he just argued with you, in a polite, reasonable manner, then I would not call him militant.

I guess you're trying out this argument because Dawkins is famous for saying that forcing your religion on your child is child abuse. But, note that Dawkins is against you *forcing* religion on your child, not against *telling* your children about your religion.

Poetaster

09-12-2014, 05:40 AM

Militant atheism is not aggressive atheism. Aggressive atheism is belittling the religious. Militant atheism is blowing churches us and shooting at believers. Words have meanings for a reason.

Frostball

09-12-2014, 02:26 PM

I'll let you decide.

Do you consider telling your children about your religion to be child abuse? If yes, then you are a militant atheist, because you would need the state to intervene to prevent the child abuse.
I do consider some aspects of religion to be child abuse. In particular I find teaching the belief in hell to be child abuse. I've known people who are atheists, and have been for some time, who still deal with the fear of hell today even though they admit that it's irrational for them to be afraid, since they really don't believe it exists. This is a product of childhood indoctrination, and growing up their entire lives having the belief of hell reinforced by everybody around them. However, I don't think it's bad enough abuse to justify state intervention. A comparison is the practice of spanking children. Some people see it as abusive, and unhealthy for child development, while others swear by it. A person who believed spanking was child abuse certainly wouldn't be called militant, even if you disagreed with them.

I also don't blame religious parents for teaching the doctrine of hell, since that's what they really believe. It's not actually their fault, since they were indoctrinated, as were their parents, and theirs, etc. So that's why I think the only way to solve it is to just try to convince people they are wrong just by talking to them, making arguments, and asking questions.

Do you consider theists to be a terror threat? If yes, then you are a militant atheist, because you would need the state to stop them.

I consider some theists a terrorist threat, because some of them are. And I'm pretty sure the state I live in, the US, is trying to stop some of them.

I do my best to be a theist, but I suppose what I am is really an anti-atheist. I don't think atheism has any scientific justification anymore. Without that justification, it is little more than an habitual delusion.

I really don't understand how you can think that. We basically just wake up in this world as we grow from a baby into an actual intelligent thinking agent. We look around us, and there's the world. You don't even have to care about where it came from, in which case, you're an atheist by default. So if you care, you might find out, but if none of the explanations satisfy you, you can just say "I don't know" and you're an atheist. I don't see how this can be irrational unless you purport to know what the real answer is, in which case I'd love to know. No arguments based on the fact that consciousness can't exist possibly without a god (argument from ignorance), or the fact that spooky stuff happens on the quantum level therefore god , or anything like this changes the fact that you can always just say "well, I don't know how that works" therefore you're an atheist still, and there is nothing delusional about it.

Why do you think religion is a "very harmful force overall"?

Because, to steal from a popular atheist Matt Dillahunty, it's best to believe as many true things and as few false things as possible. We act based on our belief. If we believe our house is on fire, we'll run out of the house screaming. If we believe strapping bombs to ourselves to blow up infidels is the quickest way to heaven, then we might go ahead and do that. There are many beliefs in this world, as there are many religions, and they all affect people's actions in different ways. Some of these beliefs could possible lead somebody to do a good action, but the thing is, if that action is good then there is already a good reason to do it. You don't need religion to tell you to do a good action; if that action is good, then it is good.

Ecurb

09-12-2014, 08:45 PM

Maybe "engaged atheist" would be a better description.

I don't think atheists should get engaged, let alone married. No "Before God and this Company...." please.

Some of these beliefs could possible lead somebody to do a good action, but the thing is, if that action is good then there is already a good reason to do it. You don't need religion to tell you to do a good action; if that action is good, then it is good.

Thank goodness we've finally got that niggling little problem of differentiating good from evil straightened out!

Frostball

09-12-2014, 10:26 PM

Thank goodness we've finally got that niggling little problem of differentiating good from evil straightened out!

I didn't mean to imply it was always easy to figure out what's moral in a given situation. I only meant to say that what's good or evil has nothing to do with what any god thinks. Some moral questions are incredibly difficult, and may actually have no clear answer. But the way to solve them is by talking about it, learning as much as we can about the situation, and over time come to a consensus. This is what the human race has been doing for thousands of years, so we lucky living people are on the shoulders of giants. We know that slavery is wrong, we know that equality is good, we know that rape is terrible. Consulting ancient holy books can provide some wisdom, there is no doubt. But these ancient people clearly were also quite ignorant of what seems so obvious to us nowadays.

YesNo

09-13-2014, 10:39 AM

I would call that a split personality and would be careful about letting you close to any children :). But I'll go with what I think you mean...

If an atheist considers that you telling your children about your religion is child abuse, and tries to stop you doing that, using violent means, then I'd call him a militant atheist. But if he just argued with you, in a polite, reasonable manner, then I would not call him militant.

I guess you're trying out this argument because Dawkins is famous for saying that forcing your religion on your child is child abuse. But, note that Dawkins is against you *forcing* religion on your child, not against *telling* your children about your religion.

Forget the "violent means" for now. Those come later after secular society is replaced with state atheism and individuals refuse to cooperate.

If you are trying to label parents telling their children about their religion as "child abuse", then you are preparing the political environment for the state to intervene. That will be the means for militant atheists to force their atheistic dogmas onto others.

Put it like this. I am not a member of your atheist religion. I don't accept your atheist dogmas. From my perspective atheism is responsible for the atrocities committed under state atheism. From my perspective atheism doesn't have any science backing it up.

For the same reason I have no desire to replace secular society with a theocracy, I have no desire to replace it with an atheocracy.

YesNo

09-13-2014, 11:23 AM

I do consider some aspects of religion to be child abuse. In particular I find teaching the belief in hell to be child abuse.

If you label it as "child abuse", you are inviting state intervention to protect the child.

Consider telling the children that they are just machines, without any free will whatsoever, or telling them that their consciousness is an epiphonomenon of some fundamental material substance? How does that compare with telling them about hell? Will they have a chance of being happier? Will they live longer? Will they be better people?

I've known people who are atheists, and have been for some time, who still deal with the fear of hell today even though they admit that it's irrational for them to be afraid, since they really don't believe it exists. This is a product of childhood indoctrination, and growing up their entire lives having the belief of hell reinforced by everybody around them. However, I don't think it's bad enough abuse to justify state intervention. A comparison is the practice of spanking children. Some people see it as abusive, and unhealthy for child development, while others swear by it. A person who believed spanking was child abuse certainly wouldn't be called militant, even if you disagreed with them.

I also don't blame religious parents for teaching the doctrine of hell, since that's what they really believe. It's not actually their fault, since they were indoctrinated, as were their parents, and theirs, etc. So that's why I think the only way to solve it is to just try to convince people they are wrong just by talking to them, making arguments, and asking questions.

What arguments would you be making? How do you know there isn't a hell? When we are talking about hell we are talking about consciousness. Without consciousness, it doesn't matter how much fire and brimstone you pile on, it doesn't matter.

Ultimately, you need to make an argument about consciousness to claim that you know more about it than traditional religion. In your metaphysics, what is consciousness?

I consider some theists a terrorist threat, because some of them are. And I'm pretty sure the state I live in, the US, is trying to stop some of them.

I would look at atheists in the same way. I don't see how atheism protects an atheist from terrorist motivations. I do see how theism might offer some resistance to self-righteousness.

I really don't understand how you can think that. We basically just wake up in this world as we grow from a baby into an actual intelligent thinking agent. We look around us, and there's the world. You don't even have to care about where it came from, in which case, you're an atheist by default.

I don't think that is how child psychologists have described children. I would need some reference from child psychologists that children are atheists by default.

So if you care, you might find out, but if none of the explanations satisfy you, you can just say "I don't know" and you're an atheist.

Let's not confuse atheism with agnosticism.

Also, along the same lines just because someone is not a member of an institutional religion, that doesn't make them an atheist. That doesn't make them a comrade in the atheists' fight against religion. For example, I would be in that religiously unaligned category, but I am not an atheist.

I don't see how this can be irrational unless you purport to know what the real answer is, in which case I'd love to know. No arguments based on the fact that consciousness can't exist possibly without a god (argument from ignorance), or the fact that spooky stuff happens on the quantum level therefore god , or anything like this changes the fact that you can always just say "well, I don't know how that works" therefore you're an atheist still, and there is nothing delusional about it.

I think materialism is a delusion after quantum physics.

If God is some transcendent Consciousness, then the existence of your own consciousness makes God a possibility. To be an atheist is to take a stand on what consciousness is. To be an agnostic is not to take a stand. I respect agnosticism, but atheists, who go further, who seem to think they are justified in criticising religious people, need to provide an explanation for their beliefs. They cannot hide behind ignorance.

Because, to steal from a popular atheist Matt Dillahunty, it's best to believe as many true things and as few false things as possible.

I agree with that. But materialism has been undermined by quantum physics. The eternity of the universe has been undermined by the big bang. The small quantity of genes available to determine us through accidental mutations has undermined neo-Darwinism.

What ground does atheism have to claim it is not a false thing that atheists believe in out of cultural habit (or indoctrination)? What is the ground for atheists to promote their beliefs? An "I don't know" attitude is not enough. That is what an agnostic relies upon, but the agnostic is not preaching against someone else's religious position.

As I see it, atheism has no ground to stand on.