duplicate post
Why Do Atheists Return to Theism?
by B_Deserter 145 Replies latest jw friends
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quietlyleaving
a couple of interesting articles from wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_atheism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias
Cog
Also I was fascinated to discover that even the most respected scholarly articles are not free of some form of bias - at least 20%.
Books that are produced for the mass market have even more biases. So approach with caution. But they are still enjoyable and informative for discussion I guess especially if one can bring in other viewpoints.
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FlyingHighNow
Cog, your defense of using one biased resource, which gave a link, by the way, to pie chart I posted above, has gotten to the point of silly circular reasoning. The point is that you've made no point using the man as a source, except of course with a fellow atheist or two. Your use of his "statistics" is like asking Billy Graham or Pat Roberson about the rate of atheism in the world, the answer would not be credible to you or any one other than a fundamentalist christian, because of their bias against atheism. I don't care if you want to go around using a source I showed you was not reliable. It isn't going to be credible with anyone but you and perhaps a handful of people who do not see that they need unbiased sources to prove this point.
Humans are set apart from the animal kingdom in their inherent need for spirituality. Exept of course for those atheists who remain athiests throughout their lives.
I reacted to the second part, because it isn't clear what you meant by "need for spirituality... except for atheists....". It seems you are limiting the definition of spirituality here to "contact with the spirit world". To me spirituality is an important dimension of humans where they go beyond being satisfied by mere material things. Humans have hopes, dreams, emotions, higher aspirations, brainpower, connections to other people, etc. (Just using the definition I gave earlier of spiritual - equated to non-material things.) Atheists have and appreciate these things as much as believers do.
Gopher, when I said spirituality, I certainly did not mean the kind of "spirituality" you mention. You had to go pull your seldom used definition out of the dictionary. You knew I meant belief in a higher power and spirit world. How silly to imply that I would think you didn't have hopes, dreams, emotions, higher aspirations and an appreciation for them. You have amused me greatly with your arguing for the sake of arguing.
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hamilcarr
Humans are set apart from the animal kingdom in their inherent need for spirituality. Exept of course for those atheists who remain athiests throughout their lives.
Humans are set apart from the animal kingdom in their thinking beyond the here and now, as Gopher tried to point out (I think).
We know of many tribes that believe in a higher power and spiritual beings, but haven't reached the level of civilization we would call 'human'. Limiting the label 'humanity' to spiritually minded people seems a very subjective take on anthropology.
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FlyingHighNow
We know of many tribes that believe in a higher power and spiritual beings, but haven't reached the level of civilization we would call 'human'. Limiting the label 'humanity' to spiritually minded people seems a very subjective take on anthropology.
Who is we? I consider them equally as human as me or you. You sound like the slave traders who thought it was fine to makes slaves of Africans because they deemed them savages. I am not saying you believe in slavery, but you use the same line of reasonin they did. And the USA Native American population was nearly wiped out by men who deemed them savages or less than human. Do people have to live in so called "civilized" societies to be deemed human by you? I'm shaking my head in disbelief. And this doesn't help the argument about atheism, it only shows that its the human tendancy to worship higher powers.
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hamilcarr
Who is we?
Me, Hamilcarr, the nasty slave trader, a member of the animal kingdom.
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MsMcDucket
FHN you use circular reasoning too! "I have known of God since I was a baby." What kind of crazy statement is that? We are supposed to believe that? Just cause you said it?
You obviously care what we believe because you keep coming up with these bull malarkey statements. Pure bull!
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cognizant dissident
Cog, your defense of using one biased resource, which gave a link, by the way, to pie chart I posted above, has gotten to the point of silly circular reasoning. The point is that you've made no point using the man as a source, except of course with a fellow atheist or two. Your use of his "statistics" is like asking Billy Graham or Pat Roberson about the rate of atheism in the world, the answer would not be credible to you or any one other than a fundamentalist christian, because of their bias against atheism. I don't care if you want to go around using a source I showed you was not reliable. It isn't going to be credible with anyone but you and perhaps a handful of people who do not see that they need unbiased sources to prove this point.
The only silly circular reasoning being used here is yours, FHN. According to your reasoning, the only acceptable source of statistics on the rate of atheism would be from a couple of Christian researchers. All other statistics would be suspect.
Statistics are only that, just statistics. They cannot be biased in themselves. The method of collecting statistics can be biased and the conclusions drawn from them can be biased. It is true that every single person on the planet, including professors from the most prestigious university and every single person on JWD have a particular bias according to their own belief. I'm not and never was disputing that fact. That does not automatically render them incapable of collecting unbiased statistics or writing an unbiased article as you suggest that it does.
You have still yet to address one of the actual points of my argument. You have simply dismissed them all (no doubt because I'm an atheist.) The only bias you have aptly demonstrated is your own.
Cog
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MsMcDucket
You're changing the topic when you talk about slavery. The slaves started to believe in Christianity when the White man taught him about it, as did the Mexicans. Many of the Afro-Cubans mixed their religion with Catholisim and came up with Santeria and Voodoo.
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MsMcDucket
Voodoo and its fight to survive.
Despite Voodoo's noble status as one of the worlds oldest religions, it has been typically characterized as barbaric, primitive, sexually licentious practice based on superstition and spectacle. Much of this image however, is due to a concerted effort by Europeans, who have a massive fear of anything African, to suppress and distort a legitimate and unique religion that flourished among their enslaved Africans. When slavers brought these peoples across the ocean to the Americas, the African's brought their religion with them. However, since slavery included stripping the slaves of their language, culture, and heritage, this religion had to take some different forms. It had to be practiced in secret, since in some places it was punishable by death, and it had to adapt to the loss of their African languages. In order to survive, Voodoo also adopted many elements of Christianity. When the French who were the colonizers of Haiti, realized that the religion of the Africans was a threat to the colonial system, they prohibited all African religion practices and severely punished the practitioners of Voodoo with imprisonment, lashings and hangings. This religious struggle continued for three centuries, but none of the punishments could extinguished the faith of the Africans. This process of acculturation helped Voodoo to grow under harsh cultural conditions in many areas of the Americas.