Atheists officially outnumber Christians for the 1st time

Atheists officially outnumber Christians for the 1st time

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Esseesse

8,969 posts

207 months

Tuesday 24th May 2016
quotequote all
daddy cool said:
Jockman said:
daddy cool said:
Jockman said:
daddy cool said:
Esseesse said:
sadly I think the decline in Christianity will not play out well for us.
How can the belief in things that dont exist being reduced be anything other than a good thing?
It creates a vacuum.
And is that good or bad?
Depends who fills it.
Is there anyone worse to fill it than the current religious institutions who hold billions of people as slaves, mutilate them, abuse them, and take their money, while offering false hopes to them and ask them to commit acts of terror in their name?

If there is, then lets keep religion as the lesser or two evils. But otherwise lets let humanity progress in this vacuum.
Even if we were able to continue in the growing vacuum without it being filled, I'm not sure if that is preferable than living in a Christian society. Christianity in the UK has/had required/achieved a great deal of willingness for individual self control and restraint. Without that will we require the state to be ever more heavy handed (hate speech laws etc)?

otolith

55,899 posts

203 months

Tuesday 24th May 2016
quotequote all
XJ40 said:
otolith said:
Some people do accept what they are told because they are told it by an authority figure. Whether that's a priest, a doctor, a scientist or a policeman. That kind of faith in authority is the same mechanism, but it doesn't mean that the function is the same. Science may have pushed the church out of explaining some of the things we couldn't understand about the world, in the same way that the law or the welfare state have usurped other functions that the church used to provide, but none of them are directly replacing it, they're just making parts of it redundant.
I'd say a major function of both religion and science is to understand the world/existence and our place in it.
It's not the same kind of understanding being offered. Religion attempts to satisfy the human desire to find meaning in our existence when there is no evidence that there is any. It does that by making stuff up. The point of creationism is not the mechanism invented by a particular religion, it's the belief in the existence of intent. Humans don't cope well with nihilism.

otolith

55,899 posts

203 months

Tuesday 24th May 2016
quotequote all
Esseesse said:
Even if we were able to continue in the growing vacuum without it being filled, I'm not sure if that is preferable than living in a Christian society. Christianity in the UK has/had required/achieved a great deal of willingness for individual self control and restraint. Without that will we require the state to be ever more heavy handed (hate speech laws etc)?
You would prefer to be ruled by priests than by democracy?

Eric Mc

121,783 posts

264 months

Tuesday 24th May 2016
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Einion Yrth said:
Eric Mc said:
These threads always take off like a rocket.

People may not be religious anymore but it seems many people are still fascinated by the concept.
As an anthropological study? Undoubtedly fascinating. Theology? Not so much.
I'm not commenting about why people are fascinated - just the fact that they are.

anonymous-user

Original Poster:

53 months

Tuesday 24th May 2016
quotequote all
Eric Mc said:
Einion Yrth said:
Eric Mc said:
These threads always take off like a rocket.

People may not be religious anymore but it seems many people are still fascinated by the concept.
As an anthropological study? Undoubtedly fascinating. Theology? Not so much.
I'm not commenting about why people are fascinated - just the fact that they are.
I wouldn't say religion fascinates me. I would say it irritates me.

Without it there would be one less stressful thing for me to have to disagree with my family about.

When your mother is Church of England and has spent many years looking forward to you and your bother having 'big church weddings' only to be really upset when they both turn round and say you are atheists and are not getting married in churches, that kind of upsets an otherwise parents and causes arguments.

And my parents are only mildly/casually religious, I can't imagine how bad it is for those from staunchly religious families. It must literally be Hell, pardon the pun.

I suspect religion causes many people a lot of angst in their lives at one point or another, and that it why it's such a hot topic for many.

Eric Mc

121,783 posts

264 months

Tuesday 24th May 2016
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Still want to discuss it though.

It just shows that it is an area people hold strong opinions on - no matter what side of the equation they are coming from.

vanordinaire

3,701 posts

161 months

Tuesday 24th May 2016
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Eric Mc said:
Still want to discuss it though.

It just shows that it is an area people hold strong opinions on - no matter what side of the equation they are coming from.
As my Dad always told me, " people always shout loudest and argue more fiercely when they don't really know the answer"

rodericb

6,660 posts

125 months

Tuesday 24th May 2016
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Seems odd that one minute it's great that (probably) Christians are weaning themselves off religion and the other great thing that has happened recently going by news headlines is that London has its first ever Muslim mayor?

Esseesse

8,969 posts

207 months

Tuesday 24th May 2016
quotequote all
otolith said:
Esseesse said:
Even if we were able to continue in the growing vacuum without it being filled, I'm not sure if that is preferable than living in a Christian society. Christianity in the UK has/had required/achieved a great deal of willingness for individual self control and restraint. Without that will we require the state to be ever more heavy handed (hate speech laws etc)?
You would prefer to be ruled by priests than by democracy?
I would like to be ruled by a democracy, but I would rather people who otherwise would-be thieves were god fearing.

otolith

55,899 posts

203 months

Tuesday 24th May 2016
quotequote all
That's what we have a criminal justice system for, accountable to Parliament, accountable to the people. In any case, we used to have thieves when people were more religious.

TwigtheWonderkid

43,248 posts

149 months

Tuesday 24th May 2016
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Esseesse said:
I would like to be ruled by a democracy, but I would rather people who otherwise would-be thieves were god fearing.
Gypsies are usually very god fearing. People who are god fearing tend to be up to the point where it might impinge on what they want to do, at which point they just do what the like anyway.

Paedo priests etc.

Eric Mc

121,783 posts

264 months

Tuesday 24th May 2016
quotequote all
otolith said:
That's what we have a criminal justice system for, accountable to Parliament, accountable to the people. In any case, we used to have thieves when people were more religious.
I bet they felt guilty though smile

Smollet

10,465 posts

189 months

Tuesday 24th May 2016
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XJ40 said:
Smollet said:
Spot on. Religion is about belief. Science is about knowledge and thus requires no need to believe in its findings.
I don't agree. There's a trust and an appeal to authourity involved with science that requires belief. For example, unless you have a large hadron collider in your back garden, you're going to have to trust and believe in the peer review process and it's output. And if a scientific view/theory is replaced with a new better one, you're going to have to perform a paradigm shift and modify the model of reality you believe in.
Fair enough. For me religion is emotional and irrational something science isn't. However is Budhism a religion in the accepted form or is it a belief system that doesn't ally itself to something that is irrational?

SteellFJ

793 posts

166 months

Tuesday 24th May 2016
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Esseesse said:
I'm not religious in the spiritual sense, however sadly I think the decline in Christianity will not play out well for us.
+1 - typed loads more and deleted for fear of upsetting others. I tolerate all peoples beliefs but others do not.

We are one race - we should not be fighting over fairies and other worldly beings we have NO proof of.


ATG

20,485 posts

271 months

Tuesday 24th May 2016
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Efbe's point about science bring treated as pseudo-religion is absolutely spot on. Of course "scientism" is a completely daft distortion of real scientific thought, but that doesn't stop loads of people indulging in it. It is indeed about people's craving for certainty, cause and meaning. Science doesn't offer these; indeed it precludes such certainty absolutely. Religions don't really try to offer them either, but that's for another thread.

TwigtheWonderkid

43,248 posts

149 months

Tuesday 24th May 2016
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ATG said:
It is indeed about people's craving for certainty, cause and meaning. Science doesn't offer these; indeed it precludes such certainty absolutely.
Does it? Are we not certain that the Earth isn't flat, and that we orbit the sun and not visa versa?

Robertj21a

16,475 posts

104 months

Tuesday 24th May 2016
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Efbe said:
generally speaking, for 99% of the population, people need to have a belief.

The move from christianity to atheism is not just a removal of this need for a belief, the belief has changed to science.
Most people that say religion is nonsense will put their faith in scientific laws and theories of which they have no concept, and are just as alien to them as the idea of a divine ruler.

Therefore science has just become another religion. people need to believe in something. The only problem is that science does not inherently come with a nice moral rulebook, of which the major religions did come with, no matter how badly they were interpreted/implemented.

The point being... I do not think for the vast majority of people you can remove religion. It needs to be replaced with something else. Another religion.
In attempting to remove it, you will bolster the arguement and push towards something else.
It's rare for me to say it but I couldn't agree with you less. Totally ridiculous comments.

ATG

20,485 posts

271 months

Tuesday 24th May 2016
quotequote all
TwigtheWonderkid said:
ATG said:
It is indeed about people's craving for certainty, cause and meaning. Science doesn't offer these; indeed it precludes such certainty absolutely.
Does it? Are we not certain that the Earth isn't flat, and that we orbit the sun and not visa versa?
In a strict sense, no. All scientific theory is provisional.

But even in the cases, such as the ones you give, where we'd be mighty bloody surprised if we woke up next Tuesday to find we had been "wrong", the kind of certainty in those statements is rather wishy washy, i.e. not really certainty at all. It's a sort of provisional certainty, if you'll excuse the oxymoron. To be able to say "x orbits y" when describing real physical objects, you aren't saying much unless you can explain what you mean by "orbit", and that step leads you onto a fascinating path into fundamental physics which leads to anything but fundamental, absolute certainty.

ATG

20,485 posts

271 months

Tuesday 24th May 2016
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Religious fanatics often claim there is nothing to discuss about their faiths. Not much of a faith if one doesn't have confidence that it'll withstand scrutiny.

Seems to me those who are flatly denying that they're is anything in what Efbe said are at risk of behaving the same way.

FredClogs

14,041 posts

160 months

Tuesday 24th May 2016
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Really there isn't a lot of difference between science, religion and a great deal of philosophy, they're different sides of the same coin, they're just expressions of the human condition and a need to explain and control both our perception of the universe around us and our immediate responses to it. The pursuit of knowledge is a primary human instinct as long as the knowledge fits (satisfies the question at the time) then it works, a lot of Abrahamic religious dogma no longer fits for a lot of people.