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Topic: The Problem with Atheism (Read 205330 times)

Re: The Problem with Atheism

Reply #250 –
Quote from: Josh on
Atheist is not the same as non-believer.

I agree, albeit whether nonbeliever means atheist depends a bit on who uses it. I'd say the term you're really looking for is nonreligious.

The more globalized poll asked whether people were "religious," "not religious" or "convinced atheist." I find the wording odd, but that aside. The Estionian census actually seems to mention that back in 2000, 34.1 % were nonreligious and 6.1% were atheist. However, the 2011 update seems to have conflated nonreligious and atheist in order to reduce clarity.

Edit: also, it shouldn't ask whether one is atheist, but whether one believes in the existence of any deities. If the question is put forward incorrectly, then lumping nonreligious and atheist together is actually the best way to proceed.

Re: The Problem with Atheism

Reply #252 –
I didn't write those words. I think it's a horrible question. You should simply ask some questions about what people believe and do, including some opposites to make sure they're actually paying attention. You don't ask people to reflect on things.* That's your job as a questionnaire maker.

Here's an example of how big a difference the question makes. That's why you should ask whether or not one believes in any deities, not whether someone's an atheist. Regardless if the response is higher or lower, it'll be more accurate.

* Okay, that depends on the type of questionnaire.

Re: The Problem with Atheism

Reply #253 –
The wording matters a lot, as does the cultural context. I assume most convinced atheists would consider themselves non-religious, probably most unconvinced atheists would consider themselves non-religious as well, but there would probably be a good number of non-religious who wouldn't consider themselves atheist. Is a Buddhist non-religious? What about a Taoist?

Among Muslims there is a bit of resistance against declaring yourself as an atheist, as that is apostasy, something that hasn't been encouraged within Islam.

Whatever the wording it seems to have hit jackpot with the Chinese and Japanese (and the Czechs, but they are as atheist as you get in Europe).

Re: The Problem with Atheism

Reply #255 –
Quote from: jax on
Is a Buddhist non-religious? What about a Taoist?

ersi and I conversed about that in the past. I referenced Huston Smith's The World's Religions, specifically the subchapter named The Rebel Saint (in my 1991 HarperCollins copy pp. 92-99) to explore how one might define religion and how the Buddha tried to subvert these traditional religious aspects. The six aspects of religion defined there are authority, ritual, speculation, tradition, grace, and mystery. A summary of the discussion in the book can be found here. Incidentally, I'd also recommend Siddhartha, a novel referenced on that page.

Re: The Problem with Atheism

Reply #256 –
Quote from: Frenzie on
Edit: also, it shouldn't ask whether one is atheist, but whether one believes in the existence of any deities. If the question is put forward incorrectly, then lumping nonreligious and atheist together is actually the best way to proceed.
Agreed, but I'm sure you understand that the same way as poll-makers have a hard time trying to reveal relevant distinctions, the general population has no idea of the distinction of non-religious and atheist. Most people just don't care and the rest argue about how it should go. It's possible to quibble about the little differences to no end. For example:

Quote from: jax on
The wording matters a lot, as does the cultural context. I assume most convinced atheists would consider themselves non-religious, probably most unconvinced atheists would consider themselves non-religious as well, but there would probably be a good number of non-religious who wouldn't consider themselves atheist. Is a Buddhist non-religious? What about a Taoist?

People in some places would not readily identify themselves as "unconvinced" anything. People who are indifferent to religion (which would be roughly half of any population, regardless of church membership, because church membership tends to come with birth) should be termed as non-religious, but true internal leanings are near-impossible to map with questionnaires. It's easier to be "true to form", i.e. religious people belong (and go) to church, non-religious don't. So, Buddhists and Taoists are unambiguously religious.

In the Estonian poll it was most interesting how religiousness was sharply demarcating ethnicity. Russians were found massively religious, Estonians hardly at all. Also, in most traditionally religious countries you would find educated people more critical of religion, but in Estonia this is nearly the other way around - the educated are slightly more tolerant of and leaning towards religion than the rest of population. The obvious reason being of course the Soviet era which made atheism the official tradition. So you can say that educated people are critical of tradition, whatever it be.

Re: The Problem with Atheism

Reply #257 –
Quote from: ersi on

Russians were found massively religious, Estonians hardly at all.
The obvious reason being of course the Soviet era which made atheism the official tradition.

:rolleyes:

Re: The Problem with Atheism

Reply #258 –
The sentence between those sentences is important.

Re: The Problem with Atheism

Reply #259 –
Not really, except you will tell us that Estonians compared to Russians were the more assiduous Soviets :)

Re: The Problem with Atheism

Reply #262 –
Any problem with atheism is overwhelmed by problems with religion...sort of.
Each and every head in this photo has its own packet of stone.

Re: The Problem with Atheism

Reply #265 –
Quote from: ersi on

Estonians have been described as cold to religion all along, ever since Germans began documenting them in the XIIIth century. So either it's inherent or it's the fault of Germans.

IIRC the baltic countries were the ones that resisted christianization the longest, and at that time the germans in question would be the teutonic order and similar organizations still in the middle of trying to impose christianity.
 

Re: The Problem with Atheism

Reply #266 –
Yes, but past performance is not a good predictor of future fervour. The Czechs were early adopters to anything Christian, Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Protestantism, sects. You name it, they did it. If you didn't name it they probably did it anyway.

Many Poles were by comparison late bloomers to the blood of the Christ. Scandinavians made a name for themselves as heathen marauders, but by the time the Vikings had established a well-known international brand, they were actually already a franchise of Rome. Not so the Poles, they were quite enthusiastically staying unsaved.

Now, we should know which country is the European lighthouse of atheism, and which one is still carrying the cross.

Re: The Problem with Atheism

Reply #267 –
Quote from: jax on

Many Poles were by comparison late bloomers to the blood of the Christ. Scandinavians made a name for themselves as heathen marauders, but by the time the Vikings had established a well-known international brand, they were actually already a franchise of Rome. Not so the Poles, they were quite enthusiastically staying unsaved.

Yeah, at that time the heathen marauders were mostly slavs from the southern baltic, so eventually the danes of all people started to beat them down.

Quote from: jax on

Now, we should know which country is the European lighthouse of atheism, and which one is still carrying the cross.

It's the :beer: :right:

Re: The Problem with Atheism

Reply #268 –
You mean the holy spirit. Possible. I am having a Czech beer now in a Stockholm bar. No Christianity in sight.

Re: The Problem with Atheism

Reply #269 –
Quote from: jax on

You mean the holy spirit. Possible. I am having a Czech beer now in a Stockholm bar. No Christianity in sight.

Reminds me, I have a bottle of Holy Spirit ( from Scotland ) in my closet which needs some more air inside :cheers:

Re: The Problem with Atheism

Reply #270 –
Ah-ha the closet!
"Quit you like men:be strong"

Re: The Problem with Atheism

Reply #271 –
Indeed, that's where I keep my skeletons and spirtits.

Re: The Problem with Atheism

Reply #272 –
As was predictable, Sam Harris did not convert at the best essay critical of his magnum opus. Not only did he not change his mind about any single point, but he also vehemently rejects the arguments presented to him.

So, what's been going on? A year ago Sam Harris issued a public challenge, a contest of essays to criticise his book The Moral Landscape. He issued the challenge because the reception of the book had been unanimously negative on the academic arena, particularly among philosophers, including fellow neoatheists such as Daniel Dennett, so Harris wanted to see wtf was up with that.

Now the essays have been autonomously evaluated by a judge (also critical of Harris' book) and the winner has been selected. The winner is Ryan Born, MA in philosophy from Georgia State University. His essay criticises all key claims of Harris' book on the fundamental level. By this I mean that, after analysis and scrutiny, Harris has been found to have said absolutely nothing of value.

Harris claims to promulgate "a scientific understanding of morality". To summarise really briefly, Ryan Born maintains that Harris has no understanding of morality, particularly no scientific understanding. Part of the reason is Harris' failure to make relevant distinctions on every issue he picks up, but the more fundamental reason is the fact that scientific understanding of morality cannot be had. There's only philosophical understanding of morality.

As expected, Sam Harris is not listening to the criticism and disputes every bit of it on his blog. His dispute is absolutely worthless philosophically. I quote two blatantly self-refuting points for demonstration. Any word from Harris is a bit too much, but the benefit is that you won't have to go to his blog and read everything longer.

Quote from: Sam Harris blog
Ryan wrote that my "proposed science of morality cannot offer scientific answers to questions of morality and value, because it cannot derive moral judgments solely from scientific descriptions of the world." But no branch of science can derive its judgments solely from scientific descriptions of the world.

In Ryan's context, Ryan is criticising the way Harris conflates the concepts of science and philosophy - and calls the conflated result "science". Harris in his response admits the conflation, yet insists on continuing with his error, including the label "science".

Thus, this point refutes that Harris' book is a scientific perspective. And it has also been confirmed that he refuses to change his mind about this.

The second quote should be most telling:

Quote from:  Sam Harris blog
Imagine that you could push a button that would make every person on earth a little more creative, compassionate, intelligent, and fulfilled—in such a way as to produce no negative effects, now or in the future. This would be "good" in the only moral sense of the word that I understand.


So, it's literally good to take people's free will away, to elevate someone (elevate whom? Harris of course, the moral authority and expert) as the puppet master of humanity, and call the result "scientific understanding of morality". Of course Harris never sees that to take people's free will away is to obviate moral agency. It means to dilute the meaning of reward and punishment, to do away with any sense of right and wrong. In brief, he advocates obliterating morality and he calls the result morality!

This second point demonstrates that Harris has not been talking about morality at all. And he refuses to correct this error too.

Re: The Problem with Atheism

Reply #273 –
Quote from: ersi on
So, it's literally good to take people's free will away

With physics (including a new understanding of quantum mechanics), one could now theoretically predict where any single particle in the universe would be at any given time in space since the big bang.  It would take a super duper computer and some reverse engineering to do it, but it would then be possible to know where every single particle will be at any given moment in time and space.  With this knowledge it is then easy to predict the future location of all particles and see into the future to accurately predict anything, including what anyone will (must) do next.  Therefore, free will is actually just an illusion. 

Everything today, including our wondrous thinking brain and consciousness work according to all the laws of nature and physics that govern this particular universe.  Nothing is immune to the laws of physics, we are all robotically following the laws of physics and nature whether we like it or not.  It certainly appears as though we have free will because we have nothing today (or likely ever), that can predict the future location of every particle in the universe, but the theory is still sound.  Moreover, being alive and conscious of ourselves does not exempt us from these laws, life is not magical or divine it is all the exact same physics.   :cheers:
James J

Re: The Problem with Atheism

Reply #274 –
JS, if you have no free will, then you are typing by someone else's will. Cool that you found a rationale to justify yourself, but as for me, it's perfectly right that I don't listen to people who are not talking out of their own best judgement, but out of some irrational will-lessness that they are powerless against.

And yes, I know this applies to Sam Harris too. He also believes that there's no free will. Therefore he has no power to change his mind. Therefore his essay contest was an utterly self-refuting joke.