…and this is a 
A professor of religion has decided that atheism is in decline and the "New Atheists" are over. Why? Because sales of books by the "New Atheists" have declined since their release several years ago, Karen Armstrong has published her silly book, and surveys show that atheists are still a minority. And the reason they flopped is because atheists are such mean poopieheads.
In other words, more bleary-eyed wishful thinking from a mind squicked by religion. Gosh, yes, older books sell at a much lower volume than fresh, new releases. And if you want to claim a trend, you can't just cite data from one time point — you need at least two. He also thinks atheism needs to be "kinder, gentler and (most of all) wiser". Sorry, guy. I gave all my "kinder, gentler" to my mom, and all I've got left is kick-ass for you…and it's a funny definition of "wiser" that means "believe in angels".
Besides, Mr Religion Professor ought to be reading the Christian Science Monitor, which reports that atheism is growing. Unlike Mr RP, they at least know that you need to report prior numbers compared to current numbers if you want to talk about a trend. He tut-tuts over a mere 15% of the population reporting a lack of religion. The CSM says,
Some 15 percent of Americans claim no religious affiliation, up from 8.2 percent in 1990, according to Trinity College's American Religious Identification Survey, released in March. Also, the American Humanist Association claims 20,000 financial supporters. That marks a doubling from five years ago, says spokeswoman Karen Frantz.
It's got much more evidence, too. My subjective feeling from visiting many freethought groups over the years has been one of remarkable growth and booming enthusiasm; the article confirms that with reports of enrollment numbers and donation figures.
Mr Religion Professor needs to stick to his day job. At least there, making stuff up and imaginary figures are considered normal.
Humanities & Social Science
Comments
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | July 23, 2009 8:07 AM
I prefer assholish shithead myself.
Well PZ, the Bible is the "best selling book of all time" therefore atheism is dead.
Posted by: Newfie | July 23, 2009 8:12 AM
There you have it. A newspaper in South Carolina is saying that 98 percent of the religious don't need no stinkin' thinkin'.
Posted by: XD | July 23, 2009 8:12 AM
Surely "no religious affiliation" doesn't exclude god-belief? The fact that it is rising is still a good sign, though.
Posted by: Sammywol | July 23, 2009 8:15 AM
Glorious! If they have to resort to such blatant wishful thinking then we must be on the right track.
Posted by: Fred The Hun | July 23, 2009 8:15 AM
Yeah, right! Go fuck yourself and the horse you rode in on.
Posted by: NewEnglandBob
|
July 23, 2009 8:19 AM
"Professor of Religion"
Isn't that equivalent to snake oil salesman?
or "homeopathic doctors"
or "compassionate conservative"
or "gentle executioner"
Posted by: Reginald Selkirk | July 23, 2009 8:19 AM
Strangest thing. I just perused the New York Times bestseller list, and I can't find Armstrong's book on it.Posted by: Ben Cox | July 23, 2009 8:23 AM
Hey now, PZ, that's really terribly unfair to the discipline of religious studies. For every faithful person in the field, we have another staunchly godless professor who is willing to stand up in front of a class and tell them to their faces that their religion is nothing but smoke and mirrors. In fact, I credit my own atheism to the efforts of professors like these (and NOT my biology teachers) who showed me precisely how my own ex-religious-traditions evolved as purely human phenomena.
So you can see where I take offense at your suggestion that "Mr Religion Professor needs to stick to his day job. At least there, making stuff up and imaginary figures are considered normal." Perhaps you ought to take a stroll down to Morris' religion department and see what kind of godlessness is on display there -- I hope you will be pleasantly surprised.
Posted by: JefFlyingV | July 23, 2009 8:24 AM
Atheism may be growing, but how many new age and supernaturalist believers are lumped in as atheists?
Posted by: Gilian | July 23, 2009 8:24 AM
I am a very kind and gentle Atheïst, I treat most religious/woo folk with respect and kindness, same with little children and/or the mentally disabled. Only if they prostalize in my general direction will I lack the smack-down of logic, sarcasm and reason on 'm, otherwise I just let them be.
In my family this is considered wisdom.
I somewhat doubt that the dear Professor had his in mind when he meant kind & gentle though :)
Posted by: Celtic_Evolution | July 23, 2009 8:25 AM
Shorter Mr. Religion Professor:
"Tis but a flesh wound".
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | July 23, 2009 8:30 AM
Do you really need someone to answer that question?
Posted by: llewelly | July 23, 2009 8:31 AM
But surely, it's bad to be so mean, so surely, the New Atheists must be failing?
What's that you say? Do what a scientist does when results contradict theory? B-b-b-but ...
Posted by: JefFlyingV | July 23, 2009 8:33 AM
Enlighten me Rev. Chimp. To me supernaturalism is part and parcel religion.
Posted by: Wowbagger, OM | July 23, 2009 8:37 AM
It's typical of the religious. They accept what their church leaders and religion-spouting politicians say without needing to know if it's backed up with any evidence; eventually they're going to start trying it for themselves.
The New Militant Accommodationists, of course, won't hesitate to cite rubbish like this as 'evidence'.
Posted by: Celtic_Evolution | July 23, 2009 8:37 AM
Here's another consideration that really should give the good Mr. Religion Professor pause:
Many, many people I know and have known over my life are religious by association only... that is, they were born into a religion, and continue to identify themselves as religious, but don't actively practice and in an honest moment would tell you they aren't sure... they're just not interested enough to really cast aside the religious association, and would rather not be labeled as an "atheist".
I would love to figure out a way to calculate the number of "Pascal's Wager" religious folks out there, who claim religion "just in case" but are for all intents and purposes non-religious. I'd bet there are many of these people included in some of these surveys. A respondent may be filled with doubt, but why risk it by denying religion for some stupid poll? But it's impossible to measure this effect, and therefor just as impossible to give a proper portrayal of the measure of religion in this country. Yes, it's still high... TOO high as compared to the rest of the industrialized world, but I'd bet not nearly as high as sheer "yes or no" poll numbers would indicate.
Posted by: Hans
|
July 23, 2009 8:44 AM
Those cunning atheists are hiding their decline by increasing their numbers!
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | July 23, 2009 8:46 AM
None. Atheists are not supernaturalists (as you note below). In the article PZ linked to at the Christian Science Monitor it seems pretty clear they are talking about actual atheists, not just the sometimes used incorrect version of atheist as "not christian".
Thats what I mean.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | July 23, 2009 8:50 AM
JefFlyingV
And sorry if it seemed like I was jumping down your throat. I was, just unwarrantedly. Not enough coffee yet.
Posted by: damnedyankee | July 23, 2009 9:04 AM
This is so my new sig line (properly attributed, of course).
Posted by: JefFlyingV | July 23, 2009 9:04 AM
Rev. Chimp, no need for apologies. During my 50 plus years and having lived in 5 different states, I've only met 26 non-supernaturalist atheists face to face. I find it encouraging that there is an increase in atheist social groups, but I have only encountered them on the web.
Posted by: Alyson Miers | July 23, 2009 9:04 AM
When the religious folk of this Good Christian Nation can stop defining their own "religious freedom" as "forcing everyone to believe the same malarkey," then we nasty bullying New Atheists can be "kinder and gentler." Yeah, you heard me; get your faith out of my country's laws, our science and history classrooms, our health clinics, our laboratories, our marriage statutes, our foreign policy, and keep your nose out of my bedroom, and THEN we godless heathens may stop being so "strident" and "aggressive." I mean, you'll still be mistaken, but at least you won't be dragging the nation's IQ into the basement.
Posted by: Beige | July 23, 2009 9:08 AM
Celtic> I'd be intrigued to see just how many people do actually fall into that "pascals wager" category too.
Lots of people really don't seem to care very much that they are giving lunatics a power base. I suppose it's fair that for some people there are just more important things to worry about, and examining their religious association isn't high on their list of priorities.
Posted by: Doug
|
July 23, 2009 9:09 AM
I declare $cientology over due to lackluster ticket sales to Battlefield Earth.
I declare Christianity over because of a drop in sales of the Left Behind series of books.
You see, religion has historically risen and fallen with the sales of media. It's all so simple.
How long until I am declared a new, new Atheist?
Posted by: MadScientist | July 23, 2009 9:16 AM
Only 15% are godless? Jeebus! What the hell are they teaching in school - religion?
Posted by: Peter McKellar | July 23, 2009 9:42 AM
Not OT, bear with me:
I had a nasty incident the other day on kiddiebook. It was really my fault. Like many here, I try not to actively pick fights with friends and family. I made the mistake of pointing out the bullshit pseudo-medical woo being promoted by a friend (actually someone I hadn't seen for 10 years but reconnected with through the site).
She spewed immediately and 4 of her toothless attack chihuahuas tickled my ankles with their gums. I was terrified. She even had her vacuous airhead mother berate me through her account. This was a woman I thought brain-dead or zonked out on anti-depressants when I knew her then. She tried to convince me that golden rod was more effective than pethadine for pain. Another then tried pushing a book on "spiritual" medicine. The woo was getting knee deep and rapidly rising. I thought they would start throwing crystals at me next!!!
This is where it took a bizarre turn. Unwilling to engage with them further I bowed out (she is friends with my daughter so I didn't feel like burning her). The parting jab from the "spiritual" healing chick was "Hooray, the rationalists won" - WTF????
And this is my point. These people actually think they are critical (and sceptical) thinkers. I don't know if any of them call themselves atheists, but suspect they might. They could be of the pagan bent I guess. I wonder how many in these surveys could really pass as atheists if questioned closely. I've seen surveys over the last year (Pew maybe?) where some "atheists" claimed to believe in dog, and a number of "xians" that didn't (social xians I guess). Like the kiddies mentioned above, to me they just seem confused and pathetic. Our numbers may be growing but the quality varies a great deal. Give me a bunch of honest arseholes over faitheists anyday (and proud to be in the ranks of the former).
Good morning over the pond. :)
Posted by: Ryan Egesdahl
|
July 23, 2009 9:53 AM
Say what you will about the religious attitudes of the CSM, but at least they declare their biases and strive for ethical reporting and journalism - unlike the blatantly unfair and unbalanced Faux News.
Yeah, that's right; I have more respect for an overtly religious organization than one that is ostensibly neutral but hides its biases. Imagine that.
Posted by: Rey Fox | July 23, 2009 10:04 AM
"Sorry, guy. I gave all my "kinder, gentler" to my mom, and all I've got left is kick-ass for you"
Ha, yes! And I bet you're all out of bubble gum too.
And yet we're the ones who are perceived as arrogant. Good fucking grief. We need T-shirts that say "Atheism: It's Not Just A Phase Anymore".
Posted by: Erp | July 23, 2009 10:07 AM
Armstrong's book can't appear on the NY Times bestseller list yet since it won't be released until September in the US. It has been released in the UK.
Posted by: Doug Little
|
July 23, 2009 10:07 AM
Celtic Evolution
I think a fairly good measure would be to look at the numbers of people actually attending church.
Posted by: Gruesome Rob | July 23, 2009 10:10 AM
And the most shoplifted. Yay Christian morality, you go!
Posted by: RHBourdeau | July 23, 2009 10:14 AM
Clearly the percentage of the human population not purchasing a copy of the bible, the quran, or any other official religious text has increased dramatically over the past. Therefore atheism is dramatically on the rise.
Clearly religion is splintering over time as the number of different variations on any one religion, and the number of new spiritual belief systems are published in book form and purchased.
Posted by: Shygetz | July 23, 2009 10:14 AM
I'm with Ben Cox@#8--PZ (and various commenters) is being unfair to Religious Studies faculty everywhere. Even if you think religion is a load of hooey (which I do), you have to admit that it is, both now and historically, a devastatingly powerful social force that is surely worthy of study. One of my fondest memories of my undergraduate education is from a religious studies class on the origins of the New Testament, where the professor walked up in front of a class of mainly religious die-hards and calmly explained how the New Testament was canonized by committee, with many disagreements and political considerations. These guys, usually even the religious ones, aren't there to peddle their beliefs to the students, they are there to teach the facts about their religion as a psychological, sociological, and historical phenomenon. They deserve more respect than they have been given here today.
Posted by: RHBourdeau | July 23, 2009 10:27 AM
@Shygetz #33
I don't know about unfair. I think that MOST religious studies faculty are proponents of their religions, not just disinterested scholars. But your point is well made by the example of Dr. Bart Ehrman (Ehrman's Website, or Wikipedia) author of one of my recent favorite books Misquoting Jesus. He's essentially an atheist (surprising when you look at his biography) and says as much in the above mentioned book.
Posted by: Ancient Greek Lady | July 23, 2009 10:31 AM
I hope Ben Cox's point is taken into consideration with respect to the field of Religious Studies. I'd like to add to his point, reminding folks that Dan Dennett's policy position in "Enlightenment 2.0" in which he advocates thorough education on all religious traditions requires qualified educators with expertise in Religious Studies. It is *not* at all a matter of having instructors indoctrinating any particular brand of woo in the classroom, but a matter of having qualified instructors educate--teach *about* a wide variety religious traditions. At the college level, a RS instructor would also incorporate different disciplinary approaches to religion, for example, functionalist, structuralist, psychological and neuroscientific ones.
It is really disheartening to see any academic argue as badly as this certain "Mr. Religion Professor" does. It's rather hard for me to imagine that there will not be critical responses to his view from those working in Religious Studies. It isn't as though people in the field haven't been investigating matters of religious belief and finding interesting problems. Steven Prothero, for example, finds that in spite of the USA being a "nation of believers," people are, in fact, profoundly ignorant of their own religion (and other religions). I, myself, am interested in "opt-out" patterns that seem to be in evidence in data regarding the rejection of evolution and religious belief (more people seem to reject or question evolution than those that self-ascribe strong religious beliefs.) Basically, what I'm interested in studying is the extent to which there may be an appealing aspect to opting out of the hard sciences with a religious excuse. In any case, people who work in Religious Studies are not necessarily the enemy.
Here's the Dan Dennett link for anyone interested:
http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/beyond-belief-enlightenment-2-0/daniel-dennett
Posted by: daveau
|
July 23, 2009 10:34 AM
Ryan Egesdahl@27 said:
I've noticed that too. Very reasonable and rational reporting; even on religious issues. Weird.
Posted by: raven | July 23, 2009 10:45 AM
It seems like a lot of people who are areligious or nonreligious won't check the atheist box. To get an accurate count of areligious it is better to combine the atheists with the agnostics, apathetics, deists," nothing much" and so on.
Doing that and the areligious run around 20% of the US population. That makes them close to the largest denomination in the USA, the RCC clocks in at 23%.
Of course, the converse is true too. How many people check the xian box because they went to church as a kid but haven't been in one in decades? How many Catholics really believe everything the Vatican says? Especially the part about how the church authorities are always right and you have to follow all the arbitrary, senseless, and downright antihuman rules made up by very old celibate men. Very few in the USA.
Self indentified xians in the USA are falling by 0.5% a year. Down to 76% by the polls. In 50 years, they will be at half the population with present trends.
Posted by: Pascalle
|
July 23, 2009 10:49 AM
"atheïst book sales declining?"
In the last year, i bought 7 books of Hawking (3 different ones for myself, 4 to of "a brief history of time" to give away, 3 books of Dawkings, 1 book about dawkings and 1 book about hawking, and the origin of the species.
For me.. they've gone up.
Besides that.. i'm strolling in the second hand book shops and will buy any book of Sagan i can get my dirty militant atheïst hands on.
Posted by: Pascalle
|
July 23, 2009 10:52 AM
Oops.. sometimes i type too fast.
Apologies for the typos Professor Dawkins.
Posted by: Ryan | July 23, 2009 10:58 AM
I'm sick of these claims that atheists are intolerant, or even worse, fundamentalists. Trying to convince someone of a philosophical position by argument and reason does NOT constitute intolerance or incivility.
The offense that we generate is not the sole determinant of politeness - if that were the case, civility would be reduced to an absurd relativism, where anything could be termed intolerant if a single person finds it offensive.
Posted by: Dr P | July 23, 2009 11:01 AM
Atheists are mean?Let's start by revisiting the Inquisition.That was certainly grumpy of them.
Posted by: Celtic_Evolution | July 23, 2009 11:13 AM
raven -
Even more telling is this 2006 survey that indicates that while around 80% of the population believes in god, less than 40% attend church services regularly (more than once a month), and that nearly 23% don't attend services at all.
Posted by: bunnycatch3r | July 23, 2009 11:52 AM
Ok, I give...what is "squicked"?
Posted by: PZ Myers | July 23, 2009 12:24 PM
Squick.
Posted by: Ancient Greek Lady | July 23, 2009 12:30 PM
Celtic_Evolution: The Baylor survey on ARDA is very interesting (and Baylor surveys are very good with respect to fine-grained information about respondents), although the sample size is relatively small (less than 2000 respondents). Yet, additional surveys, such as the Pew Forum survey, Changes in Religious Affiliation (2,867 respondents), also find a shift to "unaffiliated": http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=409 The American Religious Identification Survey (sample size 54,461): http://www.americanreligionsurvey-aris.org/ and Pew Forum Religious Landscape Survey (sample 35,000): http://religions.pewforum.org/ are also helpful and make for interesting reading.
Posted by: Fred The Hun | July 23, 2009 12:32 PM
Ray Fox @28,... In case no one has suggested it yet, get in the fucking sack!
Posted by: Joel Redman | July 23, 2009 12:52 PM
At the risk of inflaming the atheists, I have to say that Karen Armstrong is a decent writer. Her previous books have a lot to say about the human history of the montheistic religions and their place in human history. Religion, for me, isn't so important on the face of it, as it is for its importance on human thought and it's inhibition.
Maybe if the crazy fundies knew a little of the history of the Bible, they would realize that the King James Bible is NOT the received word of God, and that it's a fallible document just like everything else written by the hand of man. I mean, any document that has gone through at least 4 translations (Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, English) has to have picked up a lot of flaws along the way. Not to mention being passed along verbally for centuries before that. Even if it had been the received wisdom of god (not that such a thing is remotely likely), have they never played rumors?
I would hope that they would buy the Armstrong book in droves.
Posted by: teammarty | July 23, 2009 12:55 PM
Awwww, c'mon. The Inquisition wasn't THAT bad. They only killed a couple hundred thousand people and they would have been spared if they just prayed when ordered to.
Posted by: Siamang | July 23, 2009 1:03 PM
"Mr Religion Professor needs to stick to his day job. At least there, making stuff up and imaginary figures are considered normal."
Ooooh SNAP!
Posted by: BCWill | July 23, 2009 1:05 PM
Sadly, the original article does not surprise me. My education was at Clemson University in South Carolina, and The State would not, in my opinion, be a place where you would expect to see a rational, fair assessment of atheism, nor a criticism of religion and any inherent absurdities.
My general range of experience in my time in SC (although I loved, and still love, my alma mater dearly) is simply that the article in the State reflects the views of the majority of South Carolinians. You won't be likely to find a particularly large number of atheists in SC, at least not openly, because of the sheer number of people who are highly religious in the state, and because openly admitting to being atheist can, in some quarters, get you effectively ostracized.
My time in SC is where I personally started truly questioning my former believes and beginning a path down the road that led me towards atheism, but it had the side effect of being, admittedly, probably too tolerant of religion, simply because of the sheer numbers there who were highly religious - frequently highly intelligent people, also.
Time has changed that particular aspect of my views, but this is my personal experience with South Carolina, to give a personal view of the newspaper and why that article did not surprise me remotely.
Posted by: Frank Mitchell
|
July 23, 2009 1:06 PM
I've only read Karen Armstrong's "A History of God". In that, she sounds like the archetypal disillusioned Catholic looking for something else to believe in. The grass is always greener in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, I guess.
Posted by: raven | July 23, 2009 1:08 PM
What created the Militant Atheists is IMO, the Death Cult fundie xians. They want to overthrow the US government, set up a theocracy, and head on back to the Dark Ages. This isn't a strawperson, they say so often. Actions speak louder than words. They think the disastrous Bush administration was a good start.
It is also plausible. Whole societies have been held back by toxic religion or destroyed. Look at Somalia, Afghanistan, the Dark Ages, Iraq and so on. Iraq had its problems but mass internecine slaughter by religious fanatics wasn't one of them. Until we took the lid off.
As long as the fundies continue their nihilistic goals, people will oppose them. The two principles.
1. Many or most people like living in a peaceful, progressive Hi Tech democracy.
2. When xian became synonymous with Liar, Moron, Ignorant, Hater, and Killer, who wanted to be one? More than you expect, but a lot less than they hoped for.
Oddly enough, while they are opposed by the areligious, a lot of those "Fake" other xians don't like them either.
Posted by: CJO | July 23, 2009 2:04 PM
any document that has gone through at least 4 translations (Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, English) has to have picked up a lot of flaws along the way.
This is a common misconception, that English translations of the Bible are based on a chain of translations like this. Even the King James (while admittedly not a particularly good translation by modern standards) was translated primarily from the (Hebrew) Masoretic text for the OT, and from the best available Greek text of the day (Beza's) for the NT, Greek being the language in which the NT was written.
Now it's true that the KJV translators did make use of the (Greek) Septaguint and the (Latin) Vulgate translations of the OT for alternate readings, especially where passages in them had come to take on more Christian flavor than is warranted by a conservative reading of the Hebrew text or where the ancient Hebrew was particularly obscure to the 17th century translators. And, of course, it's true that even the best and oldest ancient manuscripts of these texts are the result of innumerable copyings in antiquity: we'll never know exactly what the autographs said. But all modern translations start with the best reconstruction available, in the languages in which the texts were composed.
Posted by: Holbach
|
July 23, 2009 2:19 PM
There they go again, running scared from the onslaught of reason and coming up with all manner of statistics to prove that insane religion is not in decline and atheism is not rising. Good examples of two organizations, the"Pew" Forum and the Simpleton Foundation making surveys and opinions that prove religious insanity is definitely not on the wane as is insanity itself, but proving that insanity is increasing as religion should be rightly labeled.
And "spiritual seekers"? What do these morons hope to find if it is not there? Even trying to find Bigfoot is a healthy outing in the woods as compared to finding nothing in a religious search. "Spiritual Marketplace"? You mean like shopping for the turnip with the stain of jeebus or the virgin imprinted on it by divine action to make the idiots swoon with glossolalia?
"Intolerant of religion"? and "Respected"? I'll get a lobotomy, renounce all reason and join the ranks of the religious insane before I give up the first and kowtow to the second.
Posted by: cyan
|
July 23, 2009 3:12 PM
The one philosophy class that I took at university: required readings of the philosophers from Plato on who are considered important. I remember and benefit from those readings.
What I took away from the course in terms of the instructor: he saturated the lectures with his own view of his god, a force he considered as is like an idealized human father, who wants good for his children and therefore enables & helps them to learn from each life experience, so that they will continually become more fulfilled.
Obviously, he had a wonderful father and assumed that everyone else did. This assumption and the resultant presentations alienated all who did not from any other content of his lectures.
Present the information, not one's own personal digestion of the information as if it will then apply to everyone else, or if it doesn't, well, it should. The impression he left from his course was one that he probably did not intend: smug, smiling, blinkered self-satisfaction rather than helping others to see if any & how much of the philosophers' thinking could be used to help each student to understand his/her own life.
Indulging himself disseminating his own views useful to his life but not to ours during the time we paid in money & time to learn something else.
He is remembered as an oblivious jerk
Posted by: keri | July 23, 2009 4:06 PM
@47, 51
Perhaps ironically, it was one of Karen Armstrong's books (A Brief History of Myth, I think it was) that had me making the final step to atheism. Strictly speaking, I wasn't a theist for a long time before then, but after reading that book, I realized my atheism. (also a strong interest in mythology & folklore)
Posted by: TheVirginian | July 23, 2009 5:13 PM
So much nonsense, so little time.
I could mention lots of problems with religion that deserve criticism, notably its long association with bigotry, intolerance and violence.
I could mention its nasty effects on children: Those who die of treatable/curable disease because their parents have been brainwashed to believe prayer alone is sufficient to cure them; those burned alive as "witches"; those murdered because their parents are the "wrong religion"; and those girls beaten, doused with acid or murdered because they're not wearing the "right" clothes or covering their heads or faces sufficiently. Religion in some form or another is behind all of these horrors.
My biggest beef with this jerk is that he fails to acknowledge that Christians historically defined atheism as denying the divinity of Jesus, and also declared that all non-Christians (all atheists, that is) chose to serve Satan if they did not serve the Christian god. On this basis, Christians slaughtered millions of non-Christians from the 4th to the 20th centuries, and routinely demonized all atheists, both the religious ones and the nontheists. A professor of religion certainly knows what Christians have said historically about atheists, and what many today still say in church pulpits, about our purported immorality and lack of patriotism.
But of course, it's intolerant for us even to defend ourselves and explain why we reject religion, much less to explain why we think the world will be a better place without religion. He's simply another Liar for God who's spewing out bigotry because he's afraid that, if people wake up to the murderous bigotry and lies that constitute superstition, he'll be out of a job and will have to find honest work, perhaps for the first time in his bigotry-filled life. Jerk!
Posted by: Black Jack Shellac | July 23, 2009 5:31 PM
Squicked! Holy jumpin jeebus cripes, I haven't heard that one for a while. For those who were wondering, the term squick means "the sound of a good skull fucking" as per alt.tasteless newsgroup back in the middle ages of teh internets(tm). I also saw it used to good effect on alt.peeves at around the same time, possibly by the same good-for-nothings.
Posted by: GAZZA | July 23, 2009 10:23 PM
All you people quoting sales of the Bible figures... seriously? I thought that the generally accepted mechanism to acquire a Bible was to nick it from your hotel room? :)
Posted by: articulett | July 24, 2009 3:47 AM
I think new age type superstition are often a segue as people begin to let go of god. This was True for Julia Sweeney, and I think it may eventually be true for Bill Maher and his health related woo. For myself, I remember not being able to determine which, if any religion was true, and I realized they COULD all be false, but I still had this notion that you could have "feeling" or "inner knowingness" about higher truths. I had "faith in faith", I guess. I trusted those promoting "natural health" and "holistic stuff". It took me a while to understand that I could test claims and that I could extrapolate what the world would be like if a claim was true versus if it were an illusion (similar to other known delusions like astrology, rain dances, etc.) I also had to decide that I would rather not have an answer then to believe a lie. Eventually I got tired of trying to have "faith" because it felt the same as "trying to fool myself" and I couldn't tell the difference and blamed myself when things didn't work as advertised.
I think that a lot of people are de facto atheists. They don't really know what they believe, but they are not ready to commit to the idea that the emperor is truly naked for fear that claiming such reveals something bad about themselves.
In the fairytale, only the "purest of heart" were said to be able to see the clothes... and we all know that bad things happen to those who doubt god's word or "bite from the tree of knowledge"(see: Adam/Eve and all their descendants ... not to mention Pandora's box.)
So don't bet too hard on the unreligious woo too much... they have more hope than their more religiously indoctrinated peers who feel "saved", "moral" and "special" for "believing in" the right unbelievable story. I consider new agers, atheists in training. They just need to hone their critical thinking skills, and it's a lot easier to hone the skills of someone who doesn't imagine themselves damned for doubting. When people have come to believe in this immortal soul that can suffer or prosper based on what you believe on earth, then they are victims for all kinds of woo-- not just religious woo.
But faith is not a means of knowledge, and I am quite certain that believe in gods and souls is just as delusiona as believing in demons and sprites. In any case, I know that the empirical evidence for all invisible entities and all supernatural "secrets" is zero.