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.
🙂
perhaps contraception is a method to have more viable genetic progeny. Quality verses quantity an all that.
Regardless
Are you saying that evolution is not a sufficient explanation for why humans would invent contraception? That is interesting
What other causal factors are involved and how do you explain their origin from your perspective?
peace
That does not surprise me. I am speaking as an outsider after all.
I think the value of a site like is it allows folks who would not normally talk understand each other’s worldview.
If your worldview is not like one I describe please point out where I’m mistaken.
A good place to start is with explaining why having justified beliefs is a good thing in your worldview.
peace
It’s certainly not a hidden assumption.
peace
No I’m talking about how we arrive at our values. I’m talking about what is the ultimate source for values in our various worldviews.
I might have picked up my preference for justified beliefs from my parents or TV but that does not mean that TV or my parents are the reason that having justified beliefs are a good thing.
do you understand?
peace
No that is not it at all. How did you ever get that idea? My questions have absolutely zero to do with the relationship between truth and justification.
I want to know why having justified beliefs is good thing given your worldview.
OK
Now why is that a good thing from your perspective?
peace
Not at all. I’m not claiming that God is the only possible source of purpose and meaning.
I simply want to know what the source of meaning and purpose is in your worldview.
why is revealing that information so difficult?
peace
You just can’t stop assuming that must also be the case when it comes to someone else’s worldview. How do you manage to miss the point each and every time? let me guess: revelation!
That’s not what you asked before. But to answer your question, my love for family and friends, equality, justice, well being for everyone, peace and all that stuff that has value to me
Why wouldn’t I that make that assumption. I asked a simple question several days ago here. It could be answered in one sentence like this .
“Having justified beliefs is a good thing in my worldview because of X.”
With X being the source of ultimate good in your worldview.
Yet it’s been days and no one has bothered to answer the question. I’m beginning to think I’m “justified” in believing that you don’t have an answer.
peace
OK
Why are those things valuable in your worldview?
hint: I’m looking for ultimate rather than derivative or subsidiary values.
peace
See? You just can’t help yourself, can you? You live in this weird psychological state that makes you impossible to reason with.
Those things I mentioned have value in an of themselves. Period. No need for any external magic goo goo or sky daddy. Deal with it
fifth:
keiths:
KN:
No, and in fact he leaves truth out of it entirely. Here is his attempt at a summary of your position:
I’m trying to get the focus back on truth, where it belongs.
I value justified beliefs because justified beliefs are more likely to be true, and “reality-based” is generally better than “fantasy-based”.
It’s frikkin’ obvious, and fifth is bad at obvious truths.
Right. Some things are simply intrinsically valuable. Mentioning God or Darwin adds nothing.
If I were an atheist, I’d never waste my time on blogs like this…Think about it!
What would you gain by convincing other people to join your ranks of no hope?
“There is PROBABLY no God. So enjoy life: (drugs, alcohol, sex with every animal, transgender oportunities, and every other idea that people can come up with in order to prove it to you that life can have meaning when it actually doesn’t.”
“If there is no resurrection, let us eat and drink, because tomorrow we are going to die.”
I could definitely “love” a PROBE-ABLE god. Care to share a contact?
Gotta love the fact that J-Mac brings up bestiality. Again.
What makes you think anybody wants to convince you of anything? Pointing out certain arguments are garbage is just that. Believe whatever fantasy you enjoy. No one will care.
You just need to stop spouting silliness with the expectation that no one will call bullshit on it. That’s it.
fifthmonarchyman
What do you mean by “ultimately good”?
Then it is a good thing for us that you aren’t an atheist. That doesn’t mean that anyone else believes or should believe what you would believe if you were an atheist.
Why is that the case? What makes you value them?
I would answer that question in one of two corresponding ways.
1) I am made in God’s image
2) Those things are attributes of God
Neither of those answers are available to you in your worldview so I would expect you to answer differently than me but you should have an answer.
You did not like it when I suggested that you valued those things because of evolution but there must be some reason. If the reason is invisible or irrelevant to evolution how did you come to value them?
I’m really just trying to understand the core of what makes you do the things you do.
peace
I mean your nonnegotiable prime directive. Your center. Your reason for living……Your purpose
peace
Why are they intrinsically valuable? Are they self-evidently valuable? I really need some elaboration.
Suppose I said that my values were pleasure and power and those things are intrinsically valuable.
Why would my answer be bad and yours good?
I’m really just trying to understand your perspective.
peace
LOL
??????
I get it that this is obvious for you but I don’t share your perspective.
Think of it as like trying to explain some thing uniquely American to someone from another culture.
peace
Suppose the reason you told us so was because God told you pleasure and power were good and that love, friendship and justice were bad .
Why would your answer be good and ours bad?
I would not ever do that because I don’t value love, friendship and justice because God told me to value them.
I value them because I am made in the image of God and those things are attributes of God
Do you see the difference?
saying something is valuable to me simply because someone told be that it was valuable does not make a lot of sense.
Now suppose I said that love friendship and justice were not in fact attributes of God but power and pleasure were and for that reason I valued pleasure and power rather than justice friendship and love.
Such a declaration would explain why I valued the things I did and It would make my answer “good” and yours “bad” according to my worldview.
“according to my worldview” is a big caveat.
Calling something good “according to my worldview” is not the same thing as claiming that it’s universally good and calling something universally good is not the same thing as demonstrating that it’s universally good.
Just understanding goodness from your individual perspective is proving to be incredibly difficult here so I would not want to tackle objective goodness right now
peace
perhaps an example will be helpful.
The Muslims I have talked to think that tawḥīd (absolute oneness) is supremely and intrinsically valuable because they think that it reflects god’s nature.
I disagree with them on the value of tawḥīd but I can understand why they think it’s valuable
Does that help?
peace
Some people think that, e.g., knowledge or friendship are valuable because they are conducive to pleasure and pleasure is intrinsically good. Those people are called hedonists. Others believe that such items are simply good in themselves, the way pleasure is on the hedonist’s view. Others say that to be good they must be conducive to some other intrinsic good, like the satisfaction of some individual’s life goals or the most desires.
Throwing God’s attributes into this issue is like throwing a large vat of cheese-covered pretzels into the Atlantic ocean to determine the surface temperature of Mars. It’s gibberish.
Are you saying that you have the same justification for valuing love and knowledge that a hedonist has for valuing pleasure?
peace
P.S. You might be interested to know that my view has been described as Christian hedonism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_hedonism
OK.
Would that be the same as a world-view?
What gives purpose and meaning to my life would be, because it is my life, slightly different from what gives purpose and meaning to the life of anyone else. Does that mean that we have different “worldviews”?
I suppose I thought that a worldview had more to do with the background assumptions in light of which various ideas are regarded as being “self-evident.” (Wittgenstein called them “hinge propositions,” since they are like the hinge on a door — you don’t usually notice the hinge because you’re using the door to go in and out.) As he put it, all grounded belief rests on belief that is ungrounded.
But it seems odd to confuse the epistemological function of ungrounded beliefs with the existential role of whatever commitments and ideals structure my basic lived orientation in the world.
Those really seem like different things to me.
Hmmm, I take it bird droppings fail for the same reason, correct? How about possum boogers? I think I’m getting closer here
I’m not sure if I would say it like that.
I would say that there must be a reason that we consider them to be good.
I’m interested in what that reason is from your perspective.
peace
I agree,
A worldview is simply the perspective from which you view the world.
Your purpose/reason for living is not the same thing as your worldview.
On the other hand your (purpose/reason for living) might explain why you have the worldview you do.
peace
Am *I* saying that? No. But objective-list theorists do, but they have varying lists.
No doubt. I’m thinking you’d say something wacky.
As indicated, not everybody happens to agree with you about that.
So you are saying that there is really no reason why you value these things?
That would make sense to me.
It would also concern me because it would imply that you could just as easily have valued something else altogether.
It was just luck of the draw that you happened on love and knowledge as values rather than machiavellianism.
The problem is that a machiavellian might deem it to be a productive to tell me that he valued the same things I did.
peace
You know you are my favorite don’t you?
peace
*Me* again?? Objective-list theorists would say that.
O-L theorists would deny all of that. They’d say that, say, friendship is objectively good, while suggesting that, say, borscht is intrinsically valuable is just a mistake, like saying that pink is darker than black.
While I prefer to ignore you, knowing that the presuppositional bullshit is explicitly designed to shield the believer from even trying to understand when an answer is given, here it goes:
I think that a worldview is a bit more than just the perspective. From my perspective, it includes everything you come to learn about the world.
Here I agree.
This is false. It’s the other way around. You discover the world, and thus you may or may not have to refocus your values, and thus your purpose/reason for living. As you seem to fear, of course, discovering that gods are fantasies (if one started as a believer, in my case Christian), can be challenging since, before that, one wouldn’t realize how much our values have been shaped by being brought up as Christians, how much we really did’t realize that we were taught to align our values to that belief, all the time thinking that such valuing was obvious. That also explained to me why I didn’t feel that happy (meaning my most internal values didn’t really align with the Christian tales).
Anyway, what I’m trying to say, is that no matter how deeply you believe in the magical being, it’s still you who values being a creation of the magical being. It’s you who aligns his values and reason to live with the magical being.
I’m also letting you know. Whether it’s hard or easy to find meaning and reasons to live, this is not a matter of decision. I did not decide that the magical being didn’t exist. I did not choose such a thing. I just discovered the intrinsic fantasy nature of the Christian fables and tales. Whether that makes my life easier or harder doesn’t matter. That’s the way it is, and I have no say in the matter.
Do you understand that? I have no say in the matter. That your beliefs are mere fantasy is what it is. I cannot change it. Not one bit. It is what it is. So, questioning me about meaning, values, reason to live, etc., even your constant claiming that “reasoning” is only possible with your particular magical being (an absurdity you will remain unable to grasp), is inconsequential to this reality.
Not only that, I realize that even for you, it’s a matter of what you find valuable (aka as subjective as the next one). Whether you realize it or not.
Please read for comprehension and avoid tricks. I’m not very inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt as it is. I might not answer any more though.
Well, thanks. I’ve often said that I’m not interested in convincing anybody here of anything, but I have to admit that I make occasional exceptions for the dazzes and keiths and KNs and others here who are both really interested in philosophy and evidently smart. It sometimes disappoints me that some of them are so wedded to their positions that they simply will not consider criticisms of any aspect of their positions at all. You are like that at all times. That stance just strikes me as extremely fearful.
Entropy,
Interesting that I simultaneously wrote a post regarding FMM’s evident fearfulness. He’ll deny this, of course, but I like that I’m not the only one who recognizes it.
I’ll admit that I’m sometimes more wedded to my views that I should be.
I sometimes worry that main motivation for my nominalism is just the fact that my brain doesn’t do mathematics well. I find computations and proofs extremely difficult, and I often wonder if my philosophical position that there are no real universal abstracta is just a rationalization of a cognitive deficit.
Me too. But we at least (sometimes) try not to be antagonistic to contrary ideas, I think.
For phoodoo, who thinks atheists won’t contemplate the existence of God, but just accept gravity:
http://bigthink.com/videos/gravity-doesnt-exist?utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#link_time=1519402306
That of course would refute your entire thesis. If that was the case evolutionary naturalism would lead the the arts, education, love, things that promoted human prosperity.
No actually I am saying that your thesis is wrong. Evolution does not care if we leave genetic progeny or whether we are successful
So we are moving on?
Control and manipulation of the world we are in. Those that are successful survive longer. The same reason humans would invent a god even if one did not exist.
peace
Me, yet again.
That’s what you get for being his favorite — he attributes to you every view that you mention as a plausible view that someone might hold.