Right so id guess they dont fail the OP. Saying atheism fails between generations based on the US is questionable. Atheists are a tiny hated group in a deeply religious country who only lost out in the most hated group contest to Muslims recently. If you are an out atheist kid its not surprising at all many join the majority crowds.

Bet for the same reason there is an under reporting of atheists in America. For sure with our politicians.

It seems pretty obvious to me,
Religion pedals a bunch of easy answers to some of the most difficult questions to ask....it's easy to break things down in the most simplistic of ways to: it's like that because God made it so.
By suspending any notion of religion and chosing the absence of belief, you have to be willing to leave certain things unknown. We have to accept for example that not only do we not know, but that we can never know how the universe was created.
To the majority of lay people this not knowing and the acceptance of having to answer certain questions with 'i don't know' is really unsatisfactory. Humans have a deep routed quest for knowledge, it's one of the main reasons we have 'evolved' from neanderthals to our current state at such a rapid rate.
Atheists will never be able to answer the big philosophical questions: why are we here, how was life created, what is life, etc....and will never be able to postulate an answer, leaving us in quite an empty 'what is the point of anything' type of attitude. Religion is the Antithesis of this and pedals easy to digest self fulfilling answers to these questions.
On our hierarchy of needs safety is the most fundamental need we have, Religion provides a cosy blanket that allows to feel safe, blaming our own misgivings on an all seeing deity that is ultimately responsible, atheists are left our in the cold to fend for themselves. There is no divine intervention, no praying to God in the hope things will get better, just the acceptance that we are totally in control of our own actions and the consequences of those actions are a direct relation to how we acted rather than what God chose for us.
In summary, Religion is easy, it affords simple answers to difficult questions, meets our inherent needs to feel safe in a scarey big wide world. It allows us to attribute blame for our own failings and absolved us fron responsibility of how the world works.
Atheism provides none of this, it just tells us that you are finding for yourself in a big wide world, that what ever happens it's on you, no safety net, no second chances, you get one life and it's best not to f*** it up. It's not a test to get to a better world, and there is no hope of salvation from our sh**y existence. This is your lot so f***ing deal with it.....
It's a misconception that being an atheist is easy, it's much easier to have a God, it's just not logical or rational. Which leaves the age old question that always exists in my house, my partner is driven by love and hope, compassion and a her decisions reflect this, or do we stick with cold hard logic which is were my life is routed.... I know which one provides more happiness and joy, I also know which one is correct.....

F*** you I'm all out of instinct.

Why is a negative view of life "correct"?

What you focus on is a choice to some extent, it is not something that can be correct or not. Take two approaches to a day on Earth for the same person

"I'm grateful for another beautiful day on Earth"
"It sucks that I have to live a mediocre life and die; it's unfair and a downer that this is all there is"

These are both choices; neither is more correct than the other. In fact I'd argue that the latter is a product of a more dysfunctional, less rational, less intelligent mind. Someone who understand the problems of philosophy through deep thinking comes to the first. If anything the second is commonly a delusion of negativity and incomplete thinking and lack of philosophical breadth.

Perhaps it's your partner who's crushing you at cold hard logic, and thus is happier?

Logic is logic no matter how you dress it up, input and output, you input a certain set of circumstances, you get out a determinate answer... A simplistic example:
We are saving for a holiday, and decide to put our loose change in a money tin above the fishtank....
My partner full of joy and happiness: I hope we save up enough money to go to the Bahamas....
Me... Well we are putting in about £10 a week and have been for 20 weeks, so with £200 it looks like a trip to bognor Regis...

Only one of these view points is hopeful happy and joyful....
One of these views is correct.....

Fwiw I'm perfectly happy with the logical outcome, I love bognor Regis.

This is false. God is an unknowable, a mystery, in every religion I have encountered.

The Bible, or other religious texts, are pathways to access Godliness, but they never seek to explain or offer a total understanding of God.

It is the absence of total understanding that underpins the existence of a "God" for most.

this chart indicates that the "unaffiliated" group has, by far, the largest net population increase

so the OP is just wrong

This is it. The answer to "is there a god?" Is "I don't know, but I have found no evidence to convince me that there is."

I could never quite grasp this seemingly unshakeable certainty with which most people speak about religion.
Discredit one side or the other with the wave of one's hand, while simultaneously not having your facts right about basic evolutionary history.

Lol at your perception of how atheists think. I find a profound sense of satisfaction knowing that I get to decide what the purpose and meaning in my life is. The word atheist has such a negative connotation attached to it. It has been morphed by religion into meaning a person with no purpose in life and no morals, which is just flat wrong.

Not all believers believe in an afterlife either....

Many atheists are irrationally negative, narrow thinking young males, imo. Certainly there are some enlightened atheists, but how happy are they overall?
So I think statistically, the view you ascribe to me (which I wasn't putting forward), is nonetheless correct.

In the bit you quoted I wasn't talking about atheism, just approaches to life in which logic played no part and choice and emotion and perspective and philosophy choice played all parts. Yet people think the more negative view is the rational one. I disagree.

I know you're just giving an example, but as described, they both seem equally logically correct. If I express a joyful hope to bang Taylor Swift, I'm not necessarily less correct than the "friend" who points out that's unlikely. Hopes and expressions of fanciful wishful whim aren't things of logic and they can't be logically refuted. As long as she's not making actual decisions that impact her life based on these hopes, how is your downer view more logical? I'm not seeing it.

P.S. if this was a real conversation, you have an angel there. For more reasons than one.

To the comment earlier about my understanding of evolution, based on a simplistic version of the evolution of Man. I'm sorry I did not fully discuss the evolutionary path ways from a sub-set species detailing the exact mechanism of our evolution to our current form.... The original point still stands, knowledge is what caused such a rapid evolutionary jump forward opposed to any physical feature.
It seems that it is thought just because I Base decisions on logical process's that makes me unhappy. I'm very happy, I just don't need a hope or belief something different will happen to make things better.

Ok so atheists may be unhappier and less likely to volunteer on average than deeply religious people. Cool.

Let's look at some other things atheists are less likely to do:

- Commit acts of terrorism
- **** little boys under the guise of a respected member of the community
- Promote bigotry and hatred of women, homosexuals, and people of color
- Kill their children in a bathtub under the delusion that it is God's plan
- Promote genocidal ideologies
- Actually ****ing try and follow through on their genocidal ideology

Should I continue or do you get the point? Excuse us for not volunteering as much on average.

That is just the extremes of religion you'll say. That is, of course, the problem. That it is possible for deeply religious people to be so lacking of basic critical thinking skills that they are way more susceptible to the faulty thinking it requires to commit these extremely heinous acts.

Stalin, Hitler,Mao and I think that hobob in the Philippines . The Brits sold slaves to the Brits in the south ; the aristocrat at work.

Your brush is too wide and the contentiousness is not necessary from the other side. Both sides are seeking the good and the true but their "flags",often enough, militate against the proper approach.

I can clearly say that deeply religious people can have the best of thinking skills , you don't own thoughts and thinking;a process to which most have no conception as to this power of Man.

The most vile people in history, collectively responsible for hundreds of millions dead and tens of million tortured and billions of lives ruined, were atheists. This is extraordinary considering how little of the population is atheist.

http://listverse.com/2010/06/05/10-p...sm-a-bad-name/

If you take out Muslims - a particularly vile religion based around terrorism - there is little religious terrorism.
Again with the exception of Islam, pederasty has been more common in atheist societies.
Women have had better lives and freedoms in Christian communities than in all others; it is Christians who emancipated women and gave them equal standing.
Do you think this is a meaningful problem?
Most of the genocidal and oppressive monsters of the 20th century are/were atheist. Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mussolini, etc.
Yeah, you're just wrong on this one. Like 180 degrees wrong.

I'll excuse atheists anything if they weren't responsible for most of the hell of the 20th century, deaths of hundreds of millions, the suffering of billions.

Again you have it backward. Using your own logic with the actual facts (The worst monsters alive have almost all been atheists even without considering per capita), we come to the below:

And in fact this is true.

Has not read about any of those tribal societies where women had more freedom and power i guess.

You didn't provide a "simplistic" account for the evolution of man. You are factually wrong. We didn't evolve from neanderthals just like we didn't evolve from chimps. We share the same ancestors which make them our cousins (now that's a simplistic account).

And as far as your original point re: "knowledge is what caused a rapid evolutionary jump". That just strikes me as counter intuitive wrt to theory of evolution. Survival and sexual selection are superior explanations.
(Also we didn't use science or rationality until very very very recently.)

Sorry for the derail but there's just so much wrong with your post wrt to your theological musings that I referred to pointing out a factual error instead of your projection that people still believe in the God of the gaps.
You are not even scratching the surface.

Well done.

So what's your backstory on Islam? I'm just curious.

Let's just not consider the 2nd most practiced religion in the world? Seems legit.

Again just ignore the 2nd most practiced religion in the world... and the Catholic church I guess.

My inclusion of women was with regards to Islam, but Christians have a very long history of using their religious beliefs to justify discrimination against homosexuals and people of color.

Yes it is. The "god made me do it" rationale has been the cause of countless atrocities throughout history. The drowning kids in the bathtub is just one of the more famous examples.

Ok I guess I'll concede that some atheists have done ****ed up things too. These people were brainwashed by other ideologies, just not religious ones.

And therein lays the real problem. It is not religion or lack thereof, but the general lack of scientific literacy of humankind. Failing to understand what science is and how and why it works leads to all kinds of logical disconnects that can lead to all kinds of tragedies and ****ed up ideologies, whether a person is religious or not.

To be deeply religious, however, requires basing everything you know about the world on zero evidence. This is a recipe for disaster for humankind.

It seems like we agree on the dangers of Islam, but you have a particularly rosy view of Christianity. While I agree it is less dangerous than Islam in the world today, I have to ask what religion do you think the following people claim:

Without wishing for this to get into a stack swinging contest about evolution....I'm sorry your understanding of such a complex subject is left firmly rooted in secondary science classes....
Weather or not there is a direct lineage between neanderthals and humans is kind of missing the point, but I will address it anyway. It is relatively common knowledge that chimps and humans evolved from a subset species at similar times, but that wasn't a 'magic' leap in evolutionary processing, at some historical point humans would have had the same characteristics as a neanderthal, in the same way alligators and crocodiles are very similar, or even African and Asian elephants, even though there is no direct link between the two. Weather or not humans evolved from neanderthals, or that our sub species just evolved beyond them is unknown, and will possibly be never known, but to keep from any further confusion or labouring of a benign point I will refer fron now on to prehistoric man....weather than be the neanderthal or not is irrelevant, the characteristics would be very similar.

To Base evolution completely on the introductory idea of survival of the fittest, passing of the strongest jeans is just far to simplistic a model to explain the evolution of such complex organisms... It is also easily questioned when considering alligators, beetles, sharks or huge numbers of other species that have survived for millions and millions of years with almost no meaningful evolutionary changes, yet in the last 100,000 yes humans have evolved from a prehistoric man barely a step above a chimp, to the modern day man capable of not only building the world as we choose, but with the ability to comprehend our existence and begin to understand the universe well beyond our own Base need for survival and passing on our jeans.
The only possible reason for this is knowledge and the passing on of said knowledge.
A shark is an almost perfect predator in its environment, but no one would suggest it is more evolved than a human. It's simply because the shark does not have the thirst for knowledge, sharks arnt wondering what is beyond the sea, or why it gets dark at night, they just know it gets dark and that's a good time to hunt...
Our questions of why, why did rubbing two sticks together cause fire.... Without the question of why we woukd simply know two sticks=fire, but the why, leads us to simplistic ideas about friction and heat generated, maybe a high friction surface may be able to generate heat quicker.....easier to make fire, that knowledge is the. Passed down to our offspring and suddenly they don't have to worry about how to make fire and can look to solving the next problem....
The why that only humans can ask is what has drove our evolution at such a rapid pace.....

I can imagine. I'd also imagine that the way into loosely defined theism / deism is a short one and easy to justify to oneself, a belief where the most direct tenets of religion is happily ignored but you don't have to go through the "I don't believe in God" motions.

Coming from a country where not believing in God wouldn't really raise an eyebrow at any work lunch table it's hard to imagine what it's like in the US. I mean, I've had conservative Christians as friends, in student groups, work colleagues and whatnot... and the only prevailing result has mostly been lively and fun theological debates, not ill feelings.

To be fair it does go both ways here depending where you are. Think in bigger cities and liberal areas you can be an out atheist without the gasps. Though its not like i live in the deep south and ive heard them....kind of depends on the circles you are around with work and with family and stuff.

My 6 yo daughter started asking me questions about god, heaven, jesus, praying etc because now she is exposed to other kids in kindergarten. She has been invited to Christian camps and prayer groups, etc.

My wife and I are atheists. She was raised Buddhist, I was raised nonpracticing Jew/Christian. There is a different set of standards when teaching/indoctrinating your kids into a religion or atheism. There is zero, and I mean zero hesitation for Christians to absolutely tell their kids what to have "faith" in (lol that it comes to them independently) while my "belief" is based on thinking for my ****ing self in the first place and depends on giving my kid the same respect. Even at 6. What this means is she is forced into interactions with peers telling her that their Auntie is heaven now as a matter of fact, and yet she is not telling them that there is no heaven because I don't have long discussions about things that don't exist with her as a matter of practice. When she asks me about it because she hears it from others I am treading lightly on the topic where the other parents are stomping and smashing and hammering. "Yes, there is a heaven and all good people who believe in Jesus go there" as opposed to "some people believe that, some people believe in reincarnation, some people believe there is nothing, and some accept that we just have no idea". Always followed by her question of "what do you believe?" leading to me explaining and leaving the door open for her to know she is welcome to make up her own mind and talk to ME and her mom about it any time, but probably should not talk to her friends about it because it might upset them. Her trusting my position in this case as a starting place and deciding heaven is make-believe, like monsters and ghosts and all the other things I say are not real that her friends and TV and imagination expose her to, but.....unlike those things we have to pretend it makes sense for the people who believe it when they talk about it which they do frequently...forever...because it is "rude" not to. Even though they have, again, zero qualms about wondering if their assertions are overstepping. "Why isn't it rude for them to tell me about heaven then?" Great question, kiddo.

So now my 6-year-old is looking at the idea of heaven and god critically, and guess what? It makes no ****ing sense to a 6-year-old who has not had it planted and nurtured and fed and watered and cultivated and rewarded. Because it is ****ing ridic. But she is not allowed to say that. But she thinks it is. On her own. So now she is charged with taking care of other people's mass delusions and has become a real--no, not American atheist--American non-Christian. Because here is the ****ing thing, the Christians are no more concerned about their kids telling Hindu kids, or Muslim kids, or Buddhist kids that their Auntie is in heaven now than they are in them telling atheist kids. As some comedian said, religious people are no different than atheists--they don't believe in any of the other hundreds of gods that have been invented and worshiped aside from their own and atheist just don't believe in one more. But we do act differently about that, don't we?

It is pretty incredible to watch a 6-year-old come to terms with the idea that people will say outlandish, unbelievable things to her as if they are accepted truths and she has to nod and ignore it, keep her own thoughts on the matter to herself, and try to not let it indict the other things they say as suspect or else she just can't be friends with them. It is a big pressure that those same friends are not being subjected to by her while they ARE facing even more pressure inside the church, from their families, etc.

So yeah. Not as big a mystery as what happens after we die, is it OP?

Please see post #66 ITT for some perspective.

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...1&postcount=66