Atheism is A Growing Movement

[graybear13]

I believe in the possibility.

DAR
As for life after death, I'm for it.

But if decide to go with the best evidence, as opposed what would be nice, it doesn't look good. Consider:

The Case Against Immortality.

I Have.

I'm an optimist. Maybe that makes me a fool but
I'll try to be a happy fool.
I know it doesn't really matter what I or anyone else does
because we may not even exist. "It's just an Illusion." Einstein

Might as well go for the long shot.

What's the down side?

Graybear

[kwlyon]

What's the down side?

There is no down side...not so long as everyone is respectfully aware that their beliefs are just that...wishful thinking. The danger comes from our understandable tendency to become too dependent on our delusions. In time we become willing to treat our fellow man unjustly in defense of said delusions. It does not take long before Linus is willing to kill someone for fear of loosing his blanket.

[Doug]

Atheist Groups Flowering
On U.S. College Campuses

As the stigma of atheism has diminished, campus atheists and agnostics are coming out of the closet, fueling a sharp rise in the number of clubs like the 10-yearold group at Iowa State. Campus affiliates of the Secular Student Alliance, a sort of Godless Campus Crusade for Christ, have multiplied from 80 in 2007 to 100 in 2008 and 174 this fall, providing the atheist movement new training grounds for future leaders. In another sign of growing acceptance, at least three universities, ncluding Harvard, now have humanist chaplains meeting the needs of the not-so-spiritual.

pdf. file. See pg. 11.

[tmiller51]

I just discovered that Susan Jacoby (author of "Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism" and "The Age of American Unreason") has a new column in The Washington Post: Her latest column is here. I haven't had time to read the comments, but there sure is a lot.

Tim

[Doug]

See here.

By some key measures, Americans ages 18 to 29 are considerably less religious than older Americans. Fewer young adults belong to any particular faith than older people do today. They also are less likely to be affiliated than their parents' and grandparents' generations were when they were young. Fully one-in-four members of the Millennial generation - so called because they were born after 1980 and began to come of age around the year 2000 - are unaffiliated with any particular faith. Indeed, Millennials are significantly more unaffiliated than members of Generation X were at a comparable point in their life cycle (20% in the late 1990s) and twice as unaffiliated as Baby Boomers were as young adults (13% in the late 1970s). Young adults also attend religious services less often than older Americans today. And compared with their elders today, fewer young people say that religion is very important in their lives.

...Fully one-in-four adults under age 30 (25%) are unaffiliated, describing their religion as "atheist," "agnostic" or "nothing in particular."

[Doug]

From Psychology Today:

Why atheism will replace religion
Why atheism grows faster than religion
by Nigel Barber, Ph.d.

Atheists are heavily concentrated in economically developed countries, particularly the social democracies of Europe. In underdeveloped countries, there are virtually no atheists. Atheism is thus a peculiarly modern phenomenon. Why do modern conditions produce atheism?

First, as to the distribution of atheism in the world, a clear pattern can be discerned. In sub-Saharan Africa there is almost no atheism (Zuckerman, 2007). Belief in God declines in more developed countries and is concentrated in Europe in countries such as Sweden (64% nonbelievers), Denmark (48%), France (44%) and Germany (42%). In contrast, the incidence of atheism in most sub-Saharan countries is below 1%.

The question of why economically developed countries turn to atheism has been batted around by anthropologists for about eighty years. Anthropologist James Fraser proposed that scientific prediction and control of nature supplants religion as a means of controlling uncertainty in our lives. This hunch is supported by data showing that the more educated countries have higher levels of non belief and there are strong correlations between atheism and intelligence (see my earlier post on this).

...The reasons that churches lose ground in developed countries can be summarized in market terms. First, with better science, and with government safety nets, and smaller families, there is less fear and uncertainty in people's daily lives and hence less of a market for religion. At the same time many alternative products are being offered, such as psychotropic medicines and electronic entertainment that have fewer strings attached and that do not require slavish conformity to unscientific beliefs.

(Read the full article (short) at the link above.)

[Dardedar]

Wow, that's a great article. It could use it's own thread.

[Doug]

DOUG
An interesting YouTube piece:

"Imagine if All Atheists Left America"

It has a few errors about who lives in America, but it is thought-provoking.

See here.

[Doug]

See here.
Apologist Josh McDowell: Internet the Greatest Threat to Christians
Sat, Jul. 16, 2011


Atheists and skeptics now have equal access to our children as we have, which is why the number of Christian youth who believe in the fundamentals of Christianity is decreasing and sexual immorality is growing, apologist Josh McDowell said.

“What has changed everything?” asked the apologist from Campus Crusade for Christ International as he spoke on “Unshakable Truth, Relevant Faith” at the Billy Graham Center in Asheville, N.C., Friday evening. His answer was, the Internet.

“The Internet has given atheists, agnostics, skeptics, the people who like to destroy everything that you and I believe, the almost equal access to your kids as your youth pastor and you have... whether you like it or not,” said McDowell, who is author of two books on Christian apologetics, More than a Carpenter and New Evidence that Demands Verdict.

The belief or worldview, McDowell said, forms values, which in turn drive one’s behavior. The worldview “is where we are falling down the most anywhere in the world.”

...McDowell, who lives in southern California with his wife Dottie and four children, said atheists, agnostics and skeptics didn’t have access to kids earlier. “If they wrote books, not many people read it. If they gave a talk, not many people went. They would normally get to kids maybe in the last couple of years of the university.” But that has changed now.

Around 15 years ago, the apologist added, when Christian youth ministries were raising money for youth projects, the big phrase was, “If you don’t reach your child by their 18th birthday, you probably won’t reach them.” What is it now? “If you do not reach your child by their 12th birthday, you probably won’t reach them.” The Internet is weakening Christian witness and “we better wake up to it because it’s just beginning.”

Read the rest at the link.

[Doug]

[Doug]

Another article on atheism by Gregory Paul. Here.


(Note: These are predominantly ISSP results. Solid lines indicate atheists from absolutist to marginal, empty spaces to the right are theists from marginal to absolutist, and results for western and eastern Germany are combined proportional to their populations. Differences between the 1998 and 2008 ISSP results are indicated by dashed segments.)

Also:
"Of the 27 nations measured on belief in an afterlife, 22 showed a decrease, including all but one First World country, with the added proviso that the eastern part of Germany did not. In 20 of 28 countries, the number of those who never pray went up, including 13 of the 16 most prosperous countries. Atheism of at least some degree was a majority in nine developed countries prior to the turn of the century; a decade later, this was true in 12. In 1998, disbelief in theoimmortality was the majority opinion in one First World nation; in 2008, it was so in five. Never praying remains the majority practice in one.

The preponderance of these trends, separately and collectively, indicates that they are real—in which case, religiosity is losing popularity at large."