Good news from the Barna Group, a Christian polling organization:
Atheism on the Rise
For Gen Z, “atheist” is no longer a dirty word: The percentage of teens who identify as such is double that of the general population (13% vs. 6% of all adults). The proportion that identifies as Christian likewise drops from generation to generation. Three out of four Boomers are Protestant or Catholic Christians (75%), while just three in five 13- to 18-year-olds say they are some kind of Christian (59%).
This was particularly interesting…
Teens, along with young adults, are more likely than older Americans to say the problem of evil and suffering is a deal breaker for them.
…as was this:
Nearly half of teens, on par with Millennials, say “I need factual evidence to support my beliefs” (46%)—which helps to explain their uneasiness with the relationship between science and the Bible. Significantly fewer teens and young adults (28% and 25%) than Gen X and Boomers (36% and 45%) see the two as complementary.
walto,
Many arguments for the existence of God have been made here: From VJT, FMM, Salvador, Phodoo etc. I asked you about you’re understanding of the arguments and you said you don’t understand them and that that you have given them more time then they deserve.
I asked you your criteria for determining what they deserve and you did not support your comment.
You claim every theist is making a burden shift because your worldview does not require support. The stance you are taking here shows weakness in your position. Although there is no inductive evidence for the flying spaghetti monster, there is lots of evidence we are in a created universe. There is historical evidence of who that creator is.
What ever the arguments for God are they have attracted the majority of the worlds population. Its up to you when to open up your ears.
Robin,
I respect this honesty and discussion. If you sincerely explore the arguments thats all you can do.
Just beware of the arguments that try and make you discount an argument upfront by using spin words like “magical” or labels like “flying spaghetti monster”.
That the majority of Earth’s human population express belief in some deity or deities is probably true. But I doubt they express those beliefs due to argument. Religion is reinforced culturally, emotionally, socially. Arguments aren’t necessary for belief.
Alan Fox,
I think this claim needs support. Although it is likely partially true.
People I have talked to who believe in God based on the observation of the cosmos and life on earth as requiring creation. Look at the story of Job in the bible.
Ahh, argumentum ad populum. Another creotard fan favorite fallacy
Perfectly horrible “arguments” based on a presumed but unfounded supernatural being who supposedly is responsible for creating the cosmos and life on earth are accepted in large part due to upbringing and culture.
Certainly the evidence and logic are pathetic, as Bill reveals again and again.
Glen Davidson
I don’t think it is a controversial claim. Most people follow the lead of the culture they know and grew up in. Where is Islam followed? Where is Hinduism followed? Where is Buddhism followed?
I agree we lack an explanation for why the universe and everything in it is the way it is. Personally, I’m not satisfied with any current religious explanation.
OK I had a look at Sparknotes. I’m seeing a story with a moral. I have to say God comes out badly. Allowing himself to be provoked into a bet with Satan? How ungodly!
I think there’s a difference between mocking/sarcasm and argument, but I take your point.
The thing is, as you note above to Walto, arguments have been made for the existence of God, but they are just that…arguments. Logic alone does not illuminate much about or validate such an entity; it merely gives some support to those who already believe in it.
But further, as I noted, I have not found much in the sources that gives me much confidence in the arguments or provides me a reason to trust the arguments. All the arguments I’ve seen thus far suffer from numerous logical fallacies, most notably question begging, double standards, cherry picking, and fallacy of the general rule. These are all dead ends for me.
On top of all that, I see far too much deceit and disingenuous approaches to propping up such concepts in order to establish a basis for a “God fearing society” or whatever. The most egregious example that comes to mind is Ken Ham and his various “works”, but there are countless other examples that indicate, at least to me, that a good portion of the “God arguments” are nothing more than ends to a means of control. So that too provides me a reason not to trust such sources.
This right here is a good example of what I’m talking about. Your statement above is inaccurate to say the least. The actual fact is, few, if any arguments for God have attracted the majority of the world’s population. Some people (I would guess, based on the research I’ve seen, that it’s on the order of less than 3%) are or have been persuaded by arguments, but the vast majority of folk believe in some form of God or gods because that’s the society/social structure they were born into.
And on top of that, as I noted about Plantinga’s arguments, the vast majority of the world’s population don’t have any concept of “God” in general, let alone the Christian concept. While it might be true that the vast majority of the world’s population have and continue to believe in something more than the material world, that’s a far cry from being any kind of support for any argument for the Christian God.
Alan Fox,
Valid point but where the rubber meets the road in understand where the cultural ideas came from.
Again, a valid point. The religious explanation is non detailed and we are now sophisticated enough scientifically to understand some of the details.
All that being said lets not assume we understand completely what it is to be Godly. How God convinces Job of the rational of is actions is interesting.
Robin,
The Judea Christian God has attracted greater then 50% or the worlds population and the Christian God about 30%
I think your point is valid that some of that population does not have a strong intellectual basis for that belief.
I do not know all the reasons people migrate in this direction but I personally and recently have come to the conclusion that there is reasonable support for this explanation.
Even this is not accurate. It’s possible that the Christian presentation of God has attracted more than 50% of the current world’s population, but the human population and belief in the supernatural go back long before Christianity or any concept of gods that would be recognizably related to the Christian God.
So I’ll stick with my previous point: arguments for God or gods haven’t done much, not even in modern times. Christianity, by all polls, is not growing by any realistic standards currently, so I don’t see arguments having much of an effect.
Have at it. If it brings you comfort, that’s great. But if you think (and begin insisting) it will bring me comfort, that’s where something more than mere arguments are needed.
The latter I don’t doubt.
I have yet to see any evidence for God from colewd or anyone else. I have seen a lot of “this isn’t explained” (whether true or not), so the fictive being imagined by people to be able to do it must have done it.
Glen Davidson
no I’m saying that stipulating that those who accept God’s existence are the ones with the burden of proof is the same as setting up atheism as the default intellectual position?
I have no problem with looking at arguments supporting God’s existence. In this very thread I linked to a paper with two dozen of them.
I do have a problem with folks taking the stance of the grand decider who perched on a mythical thrown of intellectual neutrality presume to judge the warrant of the other side’s position while never once bothering to offer any sort of defense for their own.
peace
I agree that my assumption is wrong. The question is why is it wrong.
No atheist here has explained why empirically valid beliefs are better than those that produce the most genetic progeny.
Given the atheist perspective I don’t see why that should be the case
peace
That is a good question.
I presume that the law of non-contradiction is universally valid because reasoning would not be possible if it were not. While using my reasoning I am pleased to find that my assumption is correct everyplace I look.
At that point I can say I know that the the law of non-contradiction is universally valid. However as with the case of most things I know there is always a possibility that I might be mistaken. The only way to find out for sure is by reasoning.
In order to do this I must continue to assume that the law of non-contradiction is universally valid
world with out end amen
hope that makes sense
peace
Has it occurred to you that perhaps you don’t actually understand what atheists think?
You’re always going on about how atheists who rejected the idea of God they had when they were children have simply not moved onto a more mature understanding of what God is. But your understanding of atheism looks like just as much a simplistic caricature.
This is an interesting insight.
Since population growth and the spread of Christianity is exponential I wonder if we have reached a point when it can be said that the majority of people who ever lived can be classed in some sense as “Christian”?
If we haven’t reached that point yet I’m sure that it wont be too far in the future.
It might be an interesting research project.
peace
Of course it has. That is why I ask the questions I do. I want to know why you think the way you do. I’m very interested in that sort of thing.
You never bothered to answer the question the first time I asked it so I’ll ask again.
Given your perspective why is it better that beliefs be empirically valid or justified?
peace
Arguments for the existence of god work right up to the point where they imply that god does something.
Something tangible or specific. Interacts with history. changes history.
When you believe it’s safe to cross a road, what do you base that belief on? do you put your life in god’s hands and go or do you check if there’s a truck speeding up your way before you get going?
The question is not a lack of evidence for god; the question is how one categorizes and frames the available evidence.
Let’s take for example so-called “natural” laws and forces. IMO there is a huge disconnect in understanding what these things are. They are not explanatory; they are behavior descriptions and models. We simply do not know how it is that these patterns exist, nor how it is that these patterns behave precisely the way they do – which we can measure and predict to a very fine degree.
Calling these behaviors “natural” is a metaphysical misnomer as far as whether or not “naturalism” or “materialism” or “atheism” can assert that whatever causes these behaviors can truly fit into such perspectives.
Just as a description of a rock or a painting does not explain the existence of either, descriptions of patterned causal relationships neither explain their existence or their origin. IT seems to me that naturalism, being a set of descriptions of causal relationships, is necessarily insufficient in explaining itself.
There’s a difference between “there being no evidence for God” and simply claiming that the evidence which does exist supports some other view without defending that premise. Hidden behind the set of behaviors we call “the natural world” is something causing those behaviors; in a fair debate, neither side gets to preemptively assign the evidence (physics) to any metaphysical kind of cause; the burden is upon both sides to argue why the evidence of the patterns of physics should be considered as being caused by “mindless chance,” “an intelligent creator”, or something else.
Arguments towards the validity of any metaphysical assignment of how those patterns exist and how causal relationships began must first be made prior to any metaphysical categorization of those patterns. You don’t just get to claim it’s metaphysically “natural” without any work defending that premise, and you don’t get to discount it being evidence for Theism unless one can make the case that the physical facts contraindicate that premise or more favor another premise – naturalism, for example, which is facing a steep uphill climb since one cannot use “behavioral patterns” to explain behavioral patterns.
I have a different perspective than you I want my beliefs to correspond to truth because I value truth.
One way to put it is, truth is what God believes.
I want my beliefs to correspond to his
I would think that an atheist would or at least should given their perspective value what ever produces the most genetic progeny regardless of whether it’s true
That would of course mean that you would avoid speeding trucks just like me but you wouldn’t do it because that choice is justified or empirically valid, you would do it ultimately because dead folks don’t have a lot of babies.
peace
We sure don’t, yet theists claim they point to god time and again. heh
One stupid, useless, way to put it.
William J. Murray,
Why are you going on about “naturalism”? It’s completely beside the point, the real issue is simply evidence.
If we go by the evidence, we simply build our understanding out of what has sufficient evidence for it. You don’t just get to make up something, or use what someone else has made up.
I know this mindless claim of “naturalism” is the usual among IDists and others who are bent on misrepresenting the issues, as well as among too many who are nonbelievers. That doesn’t change the fact that there’s nothing to “naturalism,” and those of us who have never claimed “naturalism” have no obligation to defend the baseless claims made regarding it.
Glen Davidson
Wouldn’t changing history imply that something was wrong with the original configuration?
Wouldn’t a god that produced a history that had to be changed be deficient and less than perfect? A demiurge perhaps?
On the other hand God can certainly interact with history by upholding everything that exists at every moment of existence and if he is the Christian God he can interact with history by becoming a part of it in the incarnation.
peace
Ah yes, the kind of mindless claim one hears in sermons.
If only you could demonstrate the first truth in your belief system.
Glen Davidson
LMFAO, the flood, the plagues, jeebus…
Do you think those things were a surprise to God? Or that they weren’t part of the plan from the very beginning?
You certainly have a jacked up straw-man idea of god. No wonder you reject him.
peace
I think that justification is an epistemic virtue because I respect myself and others as rational agents. Respect for rationality, in both myself and in others, leads me to care about good reasoning. An empirical belief is justified to the extent that it is supported by the best available evidence.
I trust that is sufficiently clear.
Well, obviously I can’t speak for anyone else here, but I do think of true beliefs as beliefs that correspond to reality.
As to why I want my beliefs to be true, it’s because of two things.
Firstly, what I believe guides what I do, and my actions are more likely to be successful if they are informed by an accurate conception of what is actually the case. I can’t know if it’s time to buy milk if I don’t know whether or not there’s any milk in the fridge or if it’s gone bad.
Secondly, what we believe, collectively, determines whether our collective actions are likely to be successful. And since most of human life depends on successful cooperation, between friends and even amongst strangers, we should all want our beliefs to be informed by an accurate conception of what is actually the case.
I don’t think this is obvious. What leads you to believe that accurate conceptions lead to successful behavior?
I would think that successful behavior could just as easily result from no conceptions at all.
Darwinian evolution after all has no conceptions and I assume you think it’s a successful strategy.
By the same token it’s possible that inaccurate conceptions might lead to successful behavior. Optimism can be thought of as a form of mild self-deception and we all know that optimism can be a successful strategy.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2894461/
This seems to be just an extension of your first reason. It seems to me that when speaking of cooperation among individuals shared conceptions are more important than true conceptions.
regardless
Am I correct that instead of saying that “it’s better when our beliefs are justified” it would be more accurate from your perspective to say that “it’s better when our beliefs lead to successful behavior”?
Would I also be correct to assume that for someone with your perspective successful behavior is behavior that tends to lead to more
genetic progeny?
peace
No it’s not
I don’t understand why given your perspective respect for yourself and others as rational agents is a virtue.
What is it that leads you to hold that this kind of respect is better than something like contempt or indifference?
peace
Because behavior, to be successful, must engage with the causal structure of the world in such a way that the organism can satisfy its needs. If the organism doesn’t have an adequate representation of its environment, sensory stimuli won’t connect up with motor output in the required ways.
Darwinian evolution is a process that results from what organisms do; it’s not itself an action or a behavioral routine. (Compare: what do to earn money and how you spend that money is not itself the economy. The economy is the collective results of lots of different people making money in different ways and spending it in different ways.)
Not at all. It’s better that our beliefs are justified because, among other things, justified beliefs are more conducive to successful cooperation.
I put the emphasis on cooperation here because I understand reasoning itself as a social activity. There’s a nice argument for this idea in Sperber and Mercier’s The Enigma of Reason and a related account can be found in Reasoning: A Social Account.
It’s crucial to keep justification and truth distinct here: truth is about having beliefs that correspond with reality, and justification is having good reasons for those beliefs.
No, that is completely and totally mistaken and quite frankly bizarre. When have I ever mentioned “genetic progeny” in anything I’ve said here?
Kantian Naturalist,
There are some pretty questionable statements in this post:
i.e:
Huh?
And:
Is that true for wild hunting dogs and schools of fish?
So there is A reality? So you disagree with Einstein?
Umm…hate to burst your bubble there, FMM, but it has been researched. Quite extensively in fact. And, sadly, “Christianity”, whatever you wish to lump into that category, still remains a rather minor spontaneous eruption in the overall conglomeration of spiritual systems. To take but one example, Egyptian religion, which was polytheistic in basis, was around for well over 3000 years. Christianity is just surpassing the 2000 mark. Mix in all the other “BC” religious structures, and I dare say, “Christianity”, whatever you wish to encompass within that umbrella, doesn’t even come close.
It’s hardly possible, because the world’s only about 30% Christian now, according to colewd (and it sounds close to what I’ve read previously).
Not that it matters to truth, but I’m not sure why anyone has been using the 50% figure, which was basically for Abrahamic religions. Colewd returns again and again to the fallacy of argumentum ad populum, never seeming to learn better thinking at all.
Glen Davidson
Egyptian religion is—– wait for it—Associated with Egypt. Christianity is by nature a worldwide phenomena. I’m sure there are more Christians alive right now than all the followers of Egyptian Religion that have ever existed
The difference is that world population is not static over time. Christianity is growing at precisely the time that overall world population is growing and Christian growth is outpacing overall population growth.
Put those two things together and it’s only a matter of time till Christianity is the majority faith of all humanity that ever existed.
peace
Lets say the 30% figure is correct I have no reason to doubt it. It’s only a snap shot in time. The growth rate of Christianity is exponential because of conversion. At some point in the future unless something radically changes Christianity will be the majority worldview
Here are some tidbits from wikipedia
According to the World Christian Encyclopedia, approximately 2.7 million people convert to Christianity annually from another religion, with Christianity ranking first in net gains through religious conversion.
Studies estimate significantly more people have converted from Islam to Christianity in the 21st century than at any other point in Islamic history.Conversion to Christianity has also been well documented, and reports estimate that hundreds of thousands of Muslims convert to Christianity annually. Significant numbers of Muslims converts to Christianity can be found in Afghanistan, Albania,Azerbaijan, Algeria, Belgium,Bulgaria,France,Germany,Indonesia,Iran,Kazakhstan,Kyrgyzstan,Malaysia,Morocco,Netherlands,Russia,Saudi Arabia, Tunisia,Turkey, Kosovo,The United States and Central Asia etc. Many of the Muslims who convert to Christianity faces social rejection or imprisonment and sometimes murder or penalty, for becoming Christians.
Data from the Pew Research Center show that, as of 2013, about 1.6 million adult American Jews identify themselves as Christians; most are Protestant. According to the same data, most of this group were raised as Jews or are Jews by ancestry. Data from 2013, show that 64,000 Argentine Jews identify themselves as Christians. According to 2012 study 17% of Jews in Russia identify themselves as Christians.
Conversion into Christianity has significantly increased among Korean,Chinese, and Japanese in the United States. In 2012, the percentage of Christians in these communities were 71%, more than 30% and 37% respectively.
Due to conversion, the number of Chinese Christians has increased significantly; from 4 million before 1949 to 67 million in 2010.
Due to conversion, Christianity has grown in South Korea, from 2.0% in 1945 to 29.3% in 2010.
I think you get the idea
peace
Again I don’t think it is obvious that an adequate representation is remotely the same thing as justification. A glaringly false representation can at times be sufficient for success.
There is no reason why it could not be. I could easily modify my behavior slightly and randomly and select anything that increased my success. No conceptions required.
So like I said, What is important from your perspective is not that our beliefs are justified it’s that we are successful. It only so happens that often justified beliefs lead to success.
You haven’t defined success.
until you do I can only assume that being an atheist your idea of what is successful is ultimately determined by evolution. To be evolutionary successful is by definition to have lots of offspring. Correct?
peace
KN,
Since your actual starting point is more about success and not justification or empirical verification.
I think behooves you to forget about justification for now and to step back and define success from your perspective.
For you what exactly does it mean to be successful?
Is it something like being rich or happy or is it more about crushing your enemies, seeing them driven before you and hearing the lamentations of their women.?
peace
Why is respect better than contempt? really?
I don’t see why you need to act all surprised. If atheists value certain things similar to the way you do, than chances are that they do so for the same reasons, wouldn’t you think?
Are you from a different planet? What kind of a question is this?
KN is a human being, just like you, you know.
Yes, I get the idea, you cherry-pick the data. It’s well-known that Islam is growing faster than Christianity, while you ignore the actual facts in preference to your selective facts. Birth rate is the main reason for the difference, I believe.
It’s not my desire for Islam to be growing faster, the point is just that it does have a significantly higher growth rate. It is projected to become the religion with the most adherents in the world within the next half century, or so.
Glen Davidson
fifth, to KN,
Corneel:
Fifth is from Planet Bible, where questions like that are normal. *shudder*
fifth, to KN:
Maybe there is a God. No one could say something that stupid without Divine Assistance.
“God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
By divine command so is your’s.
What part of “to take but one example” did you not understand? Further, the Egyptian religion was not as isolated as you seem to think. Egypt was a dominant empire at one point and it’s culture (and religion) spread quite far.
But the real point is that like the Egyptian religion, there have been many cultures that practiced religious activities long before Christianity came on the scene and many that are still practiced today. Christianity may well be a global practice now, but this is only a recent phenomenon and thus Christianity is really dominant when looked at historically.
Not by much. Current projections show Islam outpacing Christianity:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_population_growth
The fact is, Christianity has been dominant for only a short time. That it happens to be the time you live in may well make it seem more significant, but from an historical perspective, it’s not so dominant.
You might want to actually check the facts on that sometime.
I don’t mind a little nod to “Conan the Barbarian”.
What’s odd about the question, though, is the assumption that atheists are going to be any more (or less) enamored of wealth and power than people of faith. Historically and in the present day, that does not seem to be the case.
In any event, I’m a democratic socialist with strong anarchist sympathies — I’m the kind of person who regards wealth and power as enemies of freedom and justice.
Today is the 341st anniversary of the death of Benedict Spinoza. I hesitate to call myself a Spinozist, and certainly not a Spinozist simpliciter (more like Spinoza + Marx + Nietzsche + cognitive science + pragmatism). But he is without doubt the most important philosopher to me — “the prince of philosophers” (Deleuze), “the purest sage” (Nietzsche). He understood, with total clarity, that to destroy Aristotelianism it would be necessary to destroy simultaneously the two pillars on which it rests: teleology and hierarchy.
To replace teleology with mechanism is the same as replacing imagination with explanation. To undermine teleology is to undermine the hierarchies by which people are divided against each other and kept in a state of enslavement because their imaginations tell them things are real when they are not, for our passions can be aroused by what is imagined just as much as by what is real — if not more so.
And the vast majority of people are ruled by their passions, and therefore enslaved without even realizing it by those who can manipulate the passions, rather than living lives of freedom based on causal explanation of the passions and how they function.