Society After Religion

There won't ever be a world without religion.

Otacon wrote: »

You may prefer it but its still not accurate.

Theism/Atheism refers to a belief in a god or gods. Gnosticism/Agnosticism refers to knowledge.

I am an agnostic atheist. I don't believe in a god but I do not know for certain that one does not exist.

like i said "I dont know/cant say if there is or is not a god" for agnosticism


American Nones: The Profile of the No Religion Population
http://commons.trincoll.edu/aris/publications/american-nones-the-profile-of-the-no-religion-population/

figure 1.13 page 11
If you have any better or comparable quantitative data for the US i would very much like to see it.

koth wrote: »

In the linked pdf, France is 33% atheist (don't believe in any sort of spirit, god or life-force,

france comes out on top in terms of this yes. still isnt majority atheist. and the lower scandanavian atheism figures are supported by other research. the french figure isnt. But Im prepared to accept it for what it is worth and it shows France isnt majority atheist either.

I would imagine would satisfy most people as falling in the atheist definition) and I count about 8 other countries that are >20%. And those percentages are without adding any other grouping into the mix.

Yes ; they include agnostics and Nones I would say. If you look at other research such as the nones survey.

Zukermann is usually the source atheists quote but again they select out his highest percentages -as you just did with the eurostat figures.
Here is a Cambridge university source
http://www.investigatingatheism.info/demographics.html
it explains how such research is fraught with errors
Zukerman on this is about 7%
they also quote this book
http://books.google.ie/books/about/Sacred_and_Secular.html?id=dto-P2YfWJIC&redir_esc=y
Norris, Pippa, and Ronald Inglehart. Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

I have seen nothing yet to show atheism is growing or will be a majority anywhere.
Oh except vietnam.
even in china religion is growing faster than atheism.

Jernal wrote: »

ISAW just entered the thread!! Dear God abort! Abort!!!

ok if you are going to be like that Ill get me coat.
bye

koth wrote: »

I never said it was majority atheist, but you said that no country ever breaks the 20% mark for atheism. yet 9 countries clearly do.

I was wrong according to that survey. But as I stated ther are problems with this type of research . Ill accept nine stated in the twenties but the other two thirds of countries twice as many were lower six mor in the high teens five low teens and a dozen or so in single digits. i cant accept it indicated the growth of atheism and ill stand by that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_atheism
actually you can sort the columns. Try the lleft hand side on believ in a god. Far from the low teens or single digits you find only three countries wherre belief in god drops to less than 30% France is seventh from bottom in this. eight in the thirties. eight in the forties and all the rest over fifty per cent. Now if atheism had those percentages then I would agree this indicated society was becoming atheist.

well of course I'd select the countries with the highest atheist populations as it was addressing your claim that no country ever exceeds 20% atheist population.

AFAIK the nones grew in the 1990 but fell back. but that was US. Il accept 9 of 32 showed 20 or 30s but when iot comes to believing ALL except were twenties and above
and one of the two was 19% the other was 16%

And that is limited to the sample; By the way the confidence is 2.5 points for the 20% figures so that could reduce you nine to six.

SPECIAL EUROBAROMETER N°225
« Social values, science and technology »
TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS
Page 107
http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_225_report_en.pdf

But to be fair it cold pull four others up.

Well there was a 34% growth in the no-religion group in the 2006, so it would seem there is growth.

in what no religion group where?
Was it growth in atheism i.e people who say there is no God or supernatural or in agnosticism i.e people who say they dont know for sure or cant say ther is a God ?

a 34% growth could be from 3 to 4 people.

GarIT wrote: »

I feel the number of people that have no religion is growing, just from school there seems to be a higher number of people than any research suggests that have no religion. This probably isn't showing because most of them would let their parents fill out any form.

Things are changing, to quote my Catholic religion teacher "people used to believe that the stuff in the bible was true". Change is happening, it's just not showing itself yet.

So what is the difference between "no evidence for dragons" and just "no dragons" i.e you just happen to believe atheism is growing but you dont have any evidence. That isnt a very strong position is it?

Zombrex wrote: »

In pretty much every variable you can measure thinks have improve significantly as we have found and nurtured better ways to learn and discover the natural world around us.

I don't see this as being caused by atheism, but it certainly causes atheism, as the old religious notions of how the world is simply cannot stand up to proper scrutiny.

Atheism will increase but simply because our knowledge and education will increase. The latter causes the former.

this is bordering on elitism. where is your evidence that knowledge and education increase atheism? didnt seem to work for Isaac Newton did it? Mind you he was a heretic.

robindch wrote: »

The most violent civil war in human history is a relatively unknown (in the West at least) war of 19th century China, fomented by a christian fundamentalist named Hong Xiuquan:

Chinese communists are right to be concerned that this could be a credible political threat.

wrote about it some time ago in Christianity forum in relation to atheistic atrocities. He was not christian. In my view it was a war between atheists and a non christian with a twisted personal interpretation of Christianity. If I am thinking of the same guy. Rummel has some stats on, him i think. But atheistic china has a history of these even before that.
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP2.HTM
Even close to our time people have been murdered in the millions, as in the Teiping Rebellion in China in the mid-18th century. Of all pre-twentieth century killing--massacres, infanticide, executions, genocides, sacrifices, burnings, deaths by mistreatment, and the like--that for which corpses have been counted or estimated, surely but a fraction, add up to a range of near 89,000,000 to slightly over 260,000,000 million men, women, and children dead. An appropriate mid-democide estimate might be around 133,000,000 killed.

recedite wrote: »

That's a very obvious flaw in the poll then, seeing as the majority of atheists would also think there was no proof one way or another of the existence of god/s. Yet they apparently could only pick one of these two labels, atheist or hard agnostic.

to be accurate it isnt a flaw at all.
the poll is valid; You differe as to what it measures because you differ as to what atheism is defined as.
But it validly measures the people who say "there is no such thing as god" and those who say "i dont know or cant say of there is a god"

i would ten do agree with them that agnostics dont know and atheists disbelieve in God.

Anyway that is what they measure

"Hard" and "soft" agnostics are not proper definitions. Agnostic means you don't know definitively the answer to a question. Either you know, or you don't. Anything else is an opinion or a belief.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_Flew

British philosopher belonging to the analytic and evidentialist schools of thought, he was notable for his works on the philosophy of religion.
first to use "positive" and "negative" in 1976

http://www.positiveatheism.org/writ/flew01.htm
"In this interpretation an atheist becomes: not someone who positively asserts the non-existence of God; but someone who is simply not a theist. Let us, for future ready reference, introduce the labels 'positive atheist' for the former and 'negative atheist' for the latter."

thus there is no god -is a positive atheist and
i am not a theist- becomes a negative atheist

http://www.religioustolerance.org/atheist4.htm
Strong atheism and hard atheism are alternates for the term positive atheism, whereas weak atheism and soft atheism are alternates for negative atheism

Nones were individuals who responded to the question: What is your religion, if any? with “none,” “atheist,” “agnostic,” “secular,” or “humanist.”

They were asked sampling error is +/- 2.38%.

Regarding the existence of God, do you think…?%nones

There is no such thing Atheist 7
There is no way to know Hard Agnostic 19
I’m not sure Soft Agnostic 16
There is a higher power but no personal God Deist 24
There is definitely a personal God Theist 27
Percentage US Adults
(N= 1,015)
% US Adults
2
4
6
12
70
Don’t Know/Refused N/A 7 6

from the above using the flew terminology 7%of nones or 2% odf US adults are positivre or hard atheists and 35% of nones or 10% of Us adults are negative or soft atheists.

we also find the Us total of adult nones had doubled from 8 to 15 between 1990 and 2008
page 17

but in opposition to Zombrex claim of atheists being more educated and this being a causal factor the college education level had increased not by 100 but by about 50% from 10 to 16% and the other education levels show similar . this negative correlation of population increase versus educational attainment actually contradicts Zombrex suggestion.