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Religious Affiliation Shrinking In the US
gollum123 notes new U.S. demographic data from the Pew Research Center which show that the percentage of Americans declaring affiliation with a particular religion has declined sharply since 2007. Americans identifying as Christian dropped from 78.4% in 2007 to 70.6% in 2014. Those describing themselves as atheist, agnostic, or simple having no affiliation took up most of the slack, rising from 16.1% to 22.8%. Members of non-Christian faiths collectively rose from 4.7% to 5.9%. Despite the overall decline, the demographics within the Christian group are getting much more racially and ethnically diverse. The willingness of respondents to marry outside their religious affiliation is also on the rise. The median age of unaffiliated adults is dropping, while the median ages of mainline Protestants and Catholics are rising. The study estimates that 85% of adults age 70 and over are Christian, while only 56% of adults ages 18-24 are Christian. They also say that each individual generation has shown a slight decrease in religious affiliation compared to their statistics in 2007.
Subject says it all.
This is very important, because religious wackos tend to be the ones against modern science and technology.
We live in a world of empiricism, where the concepts of faith and religion are - if not outright mocked and denigrated - are under constant pressure.
The benefits that faith brings to individuals and societies are trivialized. The engines of media are actively working to tear religion* down: few films in the last 40 years (aside from those specifically built for sale to the isolated Christian demographic) have identified-Christian characters that don't prove to be motivated to evil thereby.
*hypocritically, the attack is usually on the most benign and banal faiths. The most regressive, reactionary, anti-modern faiths are accorded a curiously protected status.
Finally, the acts of radicals have further poisoned the view of the general public toward religion generally.
This should surprise nobody.
I believe people need faith in proportion to their misery. As long as humanity continues to generally be better off, religious affiliation will decline. But of course, I personally don't expect that will be a ceaseless climb, and people will turn back to religion again.
-Styopa
Ironically, echoing what was happening in the Gospel accounts, the modern religious establishments have to a large degree lost touch with the purpose of the law of Moses and the teachings of Jesus (and so on). People need to move away from blind tradition, look at all major religions that have survived more than a few centuries, and ask exactly why they have been successful in surviving. When it comes to the actual teachings, effort need to be applied to understand the meaning of those teachings in practical real world terms. That means not just explaining 'sin' in terms of 'disobedience' to 'God' without also fully explaining what 'sin', 'disobedience to God' and 'God' mean in real world practical terms, and why, say, 'sin' in then a problem. Too many people leave these words as poorly defined abstract jargon, and end up doing the eight-year-old English lesson thing of just formally rearranging the words according to rules of grammar.
For a mundane example:
There is a cat called Gerald, who has pink fur.
What colour is the fur of the cat?
The colour of the cat's fur is pink.
What is the name of the cat with pink fur?
The name of the cat with pink fur is Gerald.
Now look at some Biblish:
Sin is the result of our disobedience to God. We need Jesus because he died for our sins.
What did Jesus die for?
Jesus died for our sins.
What are our sins?
Our sins are the result of our disobedience to God.
Why are our sins a problem?
Because... because... erm... because they are the result of our disobedience to God, and that's clearly a bad thing.
And that's kind of where such discussions go downhill. The above discussion is an illustration of what happens when genuine understanding is absent, and this is all too often the case, especially amongst members of the religious establishments we have today. On the other hand, just doing the atheist thing often falls into the same traps, but beginning from a different set of basic sentences (there is probably no God; science can explain everything; what is the scientific evidence for the efficacy of prayer). Without fully exploring what meaning can be recovered from ancient teachings given suitable interpretation (and this ultimately must be done by first exhibiting real world practical scenarios where the meaning can be seen at work) we can neither hold them up as truth, nor dismiss them as backward fairytales. Unfortunately the masses are generally doing one or the other.
John_Chalisque
I'm not sure how many years ago it was, but I thought Christianity was rising in the USA (I even think it was a news in /.).
Either way it's good news. I prefer my superpowers secular.
Elok
These scary views of global warming and evolution are causing people to burn for eternity in hell for not believing in GOD!!
We need a pro God president to change the culture of this country so people stop thinking for themselves! It is only a matter of time before we anger him by voting for things Jesus did like providing healthcare and support for the poor and sick and our nation will fear his wrath.
http://saveie6.com/
I'd say it is because of Christian inconsistencies. On the one hand they state that God's love is unconditional, on the other they say if you don't love God and follow His laws you will go to hell. There is no logic to religion.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
US is the only developed (or "more or less developed") country where religious nuts are still a majority.
no, I don't have a sig
Religion is essentially "I believe in a sky daddy because I'm ignorant of science."
Theology is even worse, take Islam:
"Hi, I'm Muhammad, I can't write, read or preform simple math. I'm totally illiterate, have epilepsy, like to wear diapers on my head and ride unicorns. Let me tell you about Islam where women are objects, female children, much like Christianity, are rape objects and science must be outlawed at all costs, oh and don't think about drawing a picture of me, or someone could kill you"
Christianity:
"Hi, I'm God, I'm a piss poor engineer who has anger issue and love S&M. I put two or one person in a garden, they had children who killed each other, I allowed incest, rape, murder and slavery. I got really pissed off twice, once I wiped out humanity using a fable which no ration human could believe. I then sent my son to die in the greatest sadomasochist grandstanding in history for being mad at my self, oh and remember to give all your money to the church, because I can't and won't ever show myself or preform miracles."
Mormonism is to stupid to even comment on and the same can be done for ALL religions.
So it's a good thing religious belief is falling, it made no sense back in the day and less sense now. You can't call yourself a logical adult human and believe that your sky daddy created the universe and left no evidence, that isn't rational.
And how far can you "tell", exactly? If you care about technology and science and rationalism so much maybe you should learn the difference between evidence and anecdotes.
maybe the relig-a-phobes will calm down now.
Turn on the evening news tonight. Tell me how many stories you hear that at their core is some form of religious fighting or tribal bigotry. Israel/Palestine. Shiite/Sunni. Most acts of terrorism. Gay bashing. Anti-abortion protests. So called religious restoration acts (actually bigotry in disguise). Child abuse by priests. Oppression of women. It goes on and on. Tribal warfare, bigotry, hatred. While you don't need religion for these things, there can be no argument that religion frequently exaggerates these conflicts.
Would you be comfortable around a group of people who greatly outnumber you and who base a big part of their world view on something so fundamentally irrational and tribal and many of whom have a demonstrated propensity for violence?
-1 Troll
These scary views of global warming and evolution are causing people to burn for eternity in hell for not believing in GOD!!
We need a pro God president to change the culture of this country so people stop thinking for themselves! It is only a matter of time before we anger him by voting for things Jesus did like providing healthcare and support for the poor and sick and our nation will fear his wrath.
Not sure if serious or just bad troll...
I find the GP's post to be a wonderful sarcastic post that encapsulates the ignorance and hypocrisy of the Evangelical Christians in the US - and the Republican base.
It's only a "Troll" to you because you don't like what is being said. But that's usually the case on the Net these days. If one doesn't like what's being said, just call them a "Troll" and be done with it. It's just as bad as exclaiming, "I'm offended!" It's just a cheap way to shut people up that you disagree with.
We live in a world of empiricism, where the concepts of faith and religion are - if not outright mocked and denigrated - are under constant pressure.
Not in the USA we don't. Go to certain parts of this country and openly mock religion and let me know how that works out for you. There are several states where it is technically illegal for me to hold public office if I am an atheist. There mere fact that close to 3/4 of people openly are affiliated (at least loosely) with some form of organized religion proves that your thesis is nonsense.
The benefits that faith brings to individuals and societies are trivialized.
Because in most cases they are trivial in comparison to the problems organized religion brings. There is no benefit that religion brings that necessitates belonging to an organized religion. We're supposed to forgive and forget all the misery, bigotry, tribalism and wars caused by religion just because they open some hospitals and food banks which are really just thinly disguised efforts to convert others to their tribe? I'm supposed to ignore the idiots trying to push their prayers in public schools or theology in the science classroom? I'm supposed to be ok with priests fondling children and never going to jail for it? I'm supposed to overlook the continual and ongoing wars between various religious groups across the world?
I believe people need faith in proportion to their misery.
And I disagree with you on this. People do not have a biological need to believe in fancy mythologies even in times of stress. It demonstrably is not required. Some find comfort in doing so (which is fine) but then some inevitably feel the compulsion to try to force their bizarre ideas on the rest of the world. If believing in something irrational helps you get through the day I have no problem with that as long as you keep it to yourself.
Thoughtful people would, of course, never use a phrase like 'religious wacko', idiot, etc, so, alas, this thread will see little deep inquiry.
It must be very convenient to be able to ignore the opinions of people who disagree with you just because they used a word you don't like.
If there are a few of you, here, you may be interested in this: lack of religion in the us is strongly correlated with poverty; economic mobility (escaping poverty, "climbing the economic ladder", achieving the "American dream") strongly correlates with religious affiliation.
I'm curious, do you have any source for your strong correlation? My own anecdotal evidence is that the poorest areas such as slums and ghettos usually have very high religious participation, while wealthy, highly educated people are more likely to be nonreligious. And everybody knows that the prison population is overwhelmingly religious.
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
Belief in religion is belief in magic, hence anti-science. That's causation right there.
Evidence, anecdotes and Congressional appointments.
"Lies from the Pit of Hell", you know.
I would be far more likely to be swayed by your argument if you were to show / link / discuss any actual "double-blind tests now showing liberals as more racist than conservatives", Please show me how average liberals are racist against white people, especially 'over and over'. There are kooks everywhere, I know, but claiming massive one-sidedness doesn't work with some sort of evidence by a researcher.
Here are Gallup's historical trends up to 2013. Some things to note:
1. The % of those who say religion is a "very important" part of their life has remained roughly constant.
2. The % of those who says religion is only a "fairly important" part of their life has showed more consistent decline.
3. The % of "nones" seems to be mostly cannibalizing from the "fairly important" group, who are essentially nominal believers. The % of people who are "devout" seems to be more-or-less holding its own.
4. The % of people who claim to have attended church or synagogue in the last 7 days has remained roughly constant.
5. The % of people who self-identify as "evangelical or born-again Christians" has remained roughly constant (except for an elevated plateau from 1998 to 2002).
6. The % who self-identify as "evangelical or born-again" is actually higher (40%) in 2013 than it was in 1992 (36%).
While it'd be fun to take out the atheist triumphalism drum, it's worth noting that the thing being measured is religious affiliation not 'theological position' or 'amount of magical thinking done per day', or 'even the vaguest knowledge of how empiricism works'.
Religious affiliation is quite significant, of course, it's obviously notable that substantially more people both can't be bothered to get their ass out of bed on Sunday morning and are willing to admit that they have no formal affiliation(historically, at least in the US, you might not actually attend all that often, or pay that much attention; but denying association was somewhat transgressive). It's also significant for the hopes of various religious groups to exercise political power through organized bloc voting (the 'moral majority', not that it was ever either, sure isn't going to be done any good by the evangelical protestant numbers, nor is the ability of bishops to bluster during election season going to improve with those catholic numbers.
However, it's by no means the case that religious non-affiliation is necessarily anything other than pure disinterest, or vague belief in supernatural entities(probably shaped by a layman-level understanding of whatever your parents nominally believed, with any overtly objectionable parts left on the cutting room floor). There may also be a story about atheism here; but that isn't really the poll result.
In that sense, the results aren't really too surprising: the liberal protestant and 'cafeteria catholic' congregations have been working their way toward being increasingly irrelevant social activities for years to decades now; some nice people and all that; but pretty light on religion, which meant that they drifted into direct competition with any and all other activities you do with other people, without being obviously more entertaining, conveniently scheduled, or otherwise competitive.
The more conservative groups tended to retain the religiosity a bit more intensely; but they really got burned by their flirtation with state power(let's say roughly Reagan through Bush II in round numbers). They did get some of what they wanted, though not enough to prevent disappointment; but they burned a lot of religious legitimacy in the process. Remember that jewish radical who said that his kingdom was not of this world? Well, it'd be hard to argue that the evangelical power-brokers hanging out at the 'National Prayer Breakfast' and trying to get Washington to do something about homos and abortionists do. Even if your beliefs are fairly strong, and largely 'Christian' in outline, it's hard to avoid seeing the liberal wing of Christianity as increasingly wishy-washy and irrelevant, certainly not worth going to church with; and the conservative wing as dangerously unfocused on the kingdom of god in favor of trying to achieve local political gains.
finally we will be left with only true Beatlemania!
The Fabulous Four be praised.
If you take the view that a predisposition to religious belief is an evolutionarily adaptive trait in the human species then it's highly unlikely it will "die out" any time soon. Become less prevalent? Sure. But if (some) people are hard-wired to believe then it's doubtful we'll see the "end of religion" any time soon.
Note: I'm intentionally not making a "religious" argument for the persistence of religion.
I have seen bad and anti-science dribble spread across equally from Religious and Atheist alike. If the science is against their worldview or political viewpoint then they will choose to disagree with it. You don't see too many Evangelical Religious folks touting the dangers of GMO food, or stating the dangers of vaccines (The religious folks may refuse to take vaccines, but not because of the risks or rewards, but due to other reasons).
Also jumping onto the latest diet trend, (Remember the low fat, high carbs movement back in the 1990's)
Religion and Science are not in conflict nor are they one in the same. The "Proofs" against the existence of God, are just as faulty as the "Proofs" for God.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Are you claiming nothing bad has ever been done in the name of science?
I'm not aware of any wars or acts of genocide that have been conducted in the name of science. Of course I didn't bring science up at all so that's kind of irrelevant.
If you tried, could you find good things done in the name of religion?
Sure but almost always with disingenuous motivations usually related to marketing. Incredible amounts of charity work has been done by religious organizations. But this work is done at the end of the day as a marketing effort. Offering a hot meal to someone who is hungry is wonderful. Offering a hot meal and a bible is no longer charity - it is marketing. Doing a work of art celebrating something you personally believe in is fine. Putting it in a church to impress the public is marketing.
So yes I can find good works done in the name of religion but I have a much harder time finding good works done in the name of religion that lack ulterior motives. Good works done under false pretenses loses some of their luster.
There are a lot of different beliefs requiring magical thinking. You can believe in any of them, even many of them, without believing in the others. Some of them are even self-contradictory. There are some atheists that believe in ghosts; but oddly, many Christians and Muslims also believe in ghosts, though they already have a whole theology about what happens after death that does not include hanging around on the Earth, causing mischief and pestering Hamlet.
I don't have polling data, but it does pass the sniff test to assume that one form of magical thinking, inculcated from birth, would tend to make the personality more at-risk of accepting other magical-thinking proposals.
The "Proofs" against the existence of God, are just as faulty as the "Proofs" for God.
That's an important point, wrt not making claims about what we don't know. I realise Richard Dawkins is critical of people who say, "science doesn't understand x therefore I believe in dragons etc." BUT/AND there is the other side where, scientism claims that life after death is impossible, and that's a step too far because, going back to the "we don't understand x", we don't have the faintest idea what sentience is, and nobody has come up with a good answer for how to even define it, or for how sentience arises out of matter, so Occam's razor doesn't help, because we don't know what the simplest answer would even be.
Why if you are a biological machine, are you also sentient? What's the point of sentience? It is irrelevant to life. Ants and birds might not be sentient, they are just machines running, like plants or trees, so why is there also this odd and unnecessary and frankly, annoying sentience? Yet if your body was here, living, yet without you being sentient, it would seem like... being dead? Why are we so identified with sentience, and why have we no idea how sentience works?
Not that I'm saying people should believe in sentience continuing after bodily death, I'm saying people overstep the mark when they claim that it must end and that's that and anyone who wonders otherwise is a religious nut. That's just where a scientific view becomes a scientism view, a belief in itself. So, remain open minded.
I'm not saying there is a god, and frankly my best speculative guess is that there is a cosmos of many kinds of beings, humans, ants, why not other stuff we don't know about, but there is NO evidence for ANY of the Abrahamic Gods, none of the Pagan Gods, whatever, these are all just old stories, and have no evidence at all for any of it. Those guys were not the first to have hallucinations nor the first to start a social movement.
And most of the main religions REQUIRE you to believe in a God, there is no way round that, and that belief or story is a sort of metaphor of then what you believe yourself to be, that comes to define what you believe you are, a sinner; in submission; etc., and all of those stories are simply bad psychology.
So yes, people should quite rightly be becoming atheist as they catch up with the modern world, like, if you are not atheist, then you haven't actually really quite noticed modernity. But that also means dropping the idea that we are "human animals" because, that's actually just another myth. We don't know what we are because we don't know what the real nature of sentience is. And as we discover more actual knowledge, maybe we'll start to discover something about that.
The hardest thing isn't just to drop the religious beliefs, the hard thing is to not go replacing them with pseudo-modern versions, like "we are a clever ape".
Modernity can retain the mystery because like all things we know we don't know, we simply leave it as an open question. And if atheists start getting too dogmatic then maybe we start a new thing called, "remaining being open minded".
Sentience is just what brains do. It is hard to describe the shape of a waterfall as it changes moment to moment but it isn't magic.
So, I see you carefully draw boundaries around the amount of good done to support your point.
Not drawing any boundaries around the amount of good. Their actions stand alone and speak for themselves. I'm merely pointing out that in many cases their charitable acts come with strings attached. Feeding the hungry is not the same act as feeding the hungry while proselytizing to them.
Take religion out of it altogether. Would you trust a for-profit company to be charitable without any ulterior motivations? I wouldn't. Nor would I trust a religious organization for the same reasons. Doesn't mean their actions are bad but they aren't entirely trustworthy either.
But you are assuming that wars 'in the name of religion' would not have happened regardless of religion, while history shows that wars are not a religious based phenomena of society.
"Wars are not a religious based phenomena"? Bullshit. There are countless wars that have been started in whole or in part based on religious dogma and tribalism. They are so numerous it's basically pointless to enumerate them. Religion is not the only reason wars are started but it's one of the most common ones. Religious conflicts are basically tribal wars with the tribes being the followers.
I also see you conveniently dismiss the good that religious people do, while not dismissing the bad. Its nice to rationalize that away despite the facts.
I don't dismiss it, I just recognize that the motives are not always pure. A good work done for marketing is still a good work (usually). But it would be a better work if it were done simply because it was a good work without any ulterior motives. The same would apply if it were done by a secular organization. A company that does charity for marketing purposes still is doing charity but it's not wholesome in the same way it would be if they didn't try to benefit themselves in the process.
Maybe if people didn't assume religion is a root cause, but rather a symptom or tool, we'd deal with it better.
Oh religion is a symptom of a problem. It's a symptom of human insecurity, tribalism, and gullibility among other things. Organized religion is a means for some people to control and gain power over others. Thought I had made that clear but if I hadn't, my bad. Religion is a definitely a symptom of deeper problems in the human psyche but that doesn't mean it isn't a problem itself.
Not necessarily, that sort of behavior can be driven to other inherently irrational devotions. Sports fandom pushes many of the same buttons in terms of ritual, doctrine, and affiliation. And you tend to support teams favored either by your family or locality.
Whatever happened to "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof"? There is no reason to believe in the existence of any god, so until there is proof otherwise, forget it. That's not being close-minded, it's being rational. Also, we ARE human animals. Sentience isn't limited to just humans, either. First definition of sentience when I googled for it:
Sentience is the ability to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively. Eighteenth-century philosophers used the concept to distinguish the ability to think (reason) from the ability to feel (sentience).
Animals are capable of both reasoning (solving puzzles, etc) and feelings. Not only that, they are also capable of picking up on the feelings of other species - ask any dog owner if their dog knows when they're depressed or frightened, or if they can tell when their dog is happy.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
"Bush: No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."
The language of the GP was inflamatory.... But keep in mind we were deep throated during the last decades with scores of politician calling us second class citizen, or worst. See also scalia's 2014 speech in university of colorado's christian university.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Not that I'm saying people should believe in sentience continuing after bodily death, I'm saying people overstep the mark when they claim that it must end and that's that and anyone who wonders otherwise is a religious nut. That's just where a scientific view becomes a scientism view, a belief in itself. So, remain open minded.
I wish I had mod points, because this is an insightful post. There is a line of thought that says that if something can't be observed, measured or defined scientifically then it doesn't exist. I think that way of thinking closes the mind. There is a lot we don't know or understand, so foreclosing the possibility of other states of being or consciousness is a mistake. We simply don't know, as you say.
Science and the scientific method have enabled us to understand a lot of the world around us. Its value is self-evident. But we shouldn't make the mistake of thinking that it is the only tool we have for gathering knowledge. It can't answer every question, and that's okay.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Belief systems and the practice of science are as unrelated as music and athletics. There are plenty of excellent scientists that are devout believers in various religions. There are more who follow personal spiritual paths that are separate from any organized religion.
There is the unfortunate phenomenon of belief in Science, but that is not science. That is just another belief system, where pseudo-scientists believe that things science once discovered are somehow imbued with an eternal truth. The true practitioner of science knows that: firstly, every single scientific "law" might be overturned at any time by some new discovery that displays reality from a new and different point of view; and secondly, that Science as Religion is totally useless when it comes to guidance with any of the important decisions every one of us must make.
That second part is of direct concern to me, and to many other people. These decisions include whether to tell the truth or lie, whether to work for the common good or grab whatever you can get, whether honor and honesty are more important to the person than status and finding an easy way toward personal goals. Persons who believe in science have substituted Newton's laws and the periodic table for religious/spiritual principles, which just doesn't work. It seemingly gives them a framework that allows them freedom from the encumbrances of morals or ethics. But those encumbrances are part of being human, and without them these persons are just shits.
Will
Insightful? It's completely incoherent!
Belief in religion is belief in magic
I'll accept this premise just for fun. There's far too much ambiguity to consider it further.
hence anti-science
Science has nothing to say on the subject of magic. It is simply not within the scope of scientific inquiry. You'll also find that many practicing scientists are also religious. A recent survey found more than a third claim to "have no doubt about God’s existence", a surprisingly extreme position. Another found that, among AAAS members, more than half believe in "God or a higher power".
All the same, let's pretend we accept this as well and lament that our scientific institutions have not only been infiltrated, but completely overwhelmed by anti-science agents.
That's causation right there.
How on earth do you get "causation" out of the preceding? I can't even begin to guess what you conclude causes ... some other unknown! Even if we accept the previous absurdities, without reservation, this bizarre conclusion simply does not follow.
Required reading for internet skeptics
your post is a little tl;dr for me, so forgive me if I'm focusing on the wrong details here.
But:
"scientism claims that life after death is impossible"
Science makes no such claims. "Science" would say that there's no credible evidence of life after death therefore it probably doesn't exist. Should credible evidence arise, "science" will re-evaluate.
I'm not a nerd. Nerds are smart.
I am atheist and while I am pro-nuclear power, pro-vaccine,and believe in global warming I am very much against GMO foods. I against them though because if the transfer of power they represent, not about the food itself. No study has ever shown GMO corn is any less or more healthy than natural corn. GMO foods shift power from the people and the farmer to the chemical company. GMO crops encourage the indiscriminate use of herbicides that put other crops and the soil itself at risk. If you don't believe this, try to grow a non-"Roundup Ready" (TM) crop in a field that has been sprayed with massive quantities of glyphosate for years.
This is a classic power play.
1. Sell seed that make it easier to grow a crop
2. Sell a chemical that removes the competition in turn raising yields
3. Said chemical poisons the soil making it impossible to grow anything but said seed
4. Profit...lots of it, for now and the future
Actual scientific studies seem to indicate that poorer people are much more likely to be religious than well-off people. For examples, look at this Gallup page that says Religiosity Highest in World's Poorest Nations. Or check out the Wikipedia page on Wealth and Religion which says "The GDP of countries generally correlates negatively with their religiosity, i.e. the wealthier a population is the less religious it is". There are several studies cited on that page that seem to support that conclusion. You claim to have a source for your assertion that "lack of religion in the us is strongly correlated with poverty", can you please provide it?
Enigma
That second part is of direct concern to me, and to many other people. These decisions include whether to tell the truth or lie, whether to work for the common good or grab whatever you can get, whether honor and honesty are more important to the person than status and finding an easy way toward personal goals. Persons who believe in science have substituted Newton's laws and the periodic table for religious/spiritual principles, which just doesn't work. It seemingly gives them a framework that allows them freedom from the encumbrances of morals or ethics. But those encumbrances are part of being human, and without them these persons are just shits.
What's most interesting is that it's usually the most religious people who buy into the Republican Party's ideology, which includes "grabbing whatever you can get" and espousing Ayn Rand-style objectivist philosophy.
By contrast, the irreligious people are much more liable to vote for politicians who push social welfare programs ("working for the common good").
So the idea of religion giving people any kind of decent morals or ethics is blatantly false.
It's "drivel". Not "dribble". It has never been "dribble".
"But seriously? Trying to equate especially nuc power with religion is pretty silly."
No I am equating the anti-technology views of those that are not atheists with those that are.
"Don't like seeing anything you don't like, eh? Life can be tough."
I don't like the direction that Slashdot has taken. It is like NPR has been taken over by FOX News or MSNBC.
" Chernobyl and Fukushima and come up with a rational reason to be wary of nuclear power."
Actually being worried about Nuclear energy because of Chernobyl is as bad as fearing flying because of Hindenburg. Fukushima should actually make people feel good. The absolutely worst case situation happened it was not the massive disaster of everyone's fears.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
This agrees with military research that shows religious believers tend to make better officers. Atheists and humanists have a more difficult time ordering others to their deaths, or directing the killing of other humans. Religious believers handle these tasks better because they have coping mechanisms they can use to justify these actions in the name of a higher power. 'Communist' societies (they were all usually dictatorships and not communist) substituted a belief in the party or the state instead of appealing to 'olde tyme' religion, but the result was the same: You are carrying out [God|The State|The Party]'s will, and so your actions are morally justified.
When this life is all you have and all you believe in, it becomes very precious and harder to justify destroying life. If, on the other hand, you are convinced that there is paradise waiting for you beyond this life there are all sorts of nasty actions you can justify.
I really suggest reading Victor Frankl's 'Man's Search for Meaning'. I don't agree with Frankl's later philosophies, but this is a meaningful look into the depths of atrocities that humans can inflict on other humans. Frankl's work helped explain how attitude and belief helped him and others survive Auschwitz. It doesn't directly deal in this subject, but is an amazing account that highlights both the good and the bad outcome of strong beliefs.
The problem I have with GMO is that its safety is based on the assumption that ecosystems are built according to the taxonomy of biology: species, genus, family, and so on. We now know that this is a very simplistic way of looking at the dynamic system of relationships that is an ecosystem. A forest ecosystem is defined more by the interrelationships between the great trees, the soil microbes, the fish in its rivers, and the fisher birds that deliver nutrients to the hillsides than by which particular species is filling this niche on this hillside. Ecosystems involving farmland may look simple by comparison, but they are actually more complex, and much more brittle. It becomes difficult to even establish their boundaries since run-off may be influencing more than one watershed.
GMO research needs to demonstrate that the change in the genes in the ecosystem are not going to damage the ecosystem. So far there is no serious attempt to do that: the most that is being done is to assure that genetic drift, the movement of modified genes between species, is not too bad. But the GMO was done to significantly alter some attribute of the crop, so how does that affect the ecosystem as a whole? If this new sugar beet is more drought tolerant, then the subsoil becomes less moist toward the end of the hot season, and what affect will that have on the soil microbes, and available nutrients?
That kind of research is not getting much attention. Mostly because it is so damned obvious that if you start talking about ecosystems, then the problems with monoculture become glaringly obvious, and without monoculture there is no profit in GMO development. And profit is what drives Monsanto. Without obvious profit, there would be no great push to get GMO adopted. Its development would be slow, conducted by agricultural colleges like University of Oregon, under more appropriate systems of checks and crosschecks than Monsanto's profit driven approach.
Will
You raise some valid points, but they have more to do with the shortcomings of organized religion than the differences between religious beliefs, the practice of science, and the shortcomings of persons who get it all mixed up, and believe in Science as if it were a Religion.
Will
What's most interesting is that it's usually the most religious people who buy into the Republican Party's ideology, which includes "grabbing whatever you can get" and espousing Ayn Rand-style objectivist philosophy.
Check out this story on npr: http://www.npr.org/2015/03/30/...
Basically it would appear religion is in politics for the same reason anything else is, fat cats want more money. Whoda thought?
Belief systems and the practice of science are as unrelated as music and athletics. There are plenty of excellent scientists that are devout believers in various religions.
While your second statement is obviously true, that does not help validate your first statement. Every limitation can be overcome, even being a religious scientist. I equate it as being similar to a professional basketball player who is under 6' tall. It is absolutely possible but it does impact your play.
Neil Degrasse Tyson has a great lecture which goes over how religious thought has impacted some of the greatest minds in history. He also writes about the concept in an article titled "The Perimeter Of Ignorance." As I understood his point, there have been times when great scientific scholars have stopped their pursuit of knowledge because they were content with the "God did it" explanation.
Newton stopped investigating the movement of planets once his current mathematical knowledge was put to the task of understanding how planets affect each others' orbits. This was the man who invented Calculus and wrote the Principia, but even he was guilty of not pushing forward the boundaries of science because he was content with the "God did it" answer. If not for his religious beliefs, perhaps he would have added inventing perturbation theory to his list of accolades and could have introduced it a century before Laplace did.
I am not arrogant enough to think I could keep religious beliefs from impacting my ability to investigate the world rationally if even geniuses like Newton couldn't.
The most troubling causational link he highlights is how the Islamic world lost its place as a center of scientific progress when a radical version of Islam took hold in the 12th century. Over the centuries that followed, the Islamic world went from being the place Algebra was invented to having 0.6% of Nobel laureates in Physics/Chemistry/Medicine with 23% of the world's population.
My favorite concept from his lecture is the danger of Revelation Replacing Investigation. It is at the core of why scientific thought and religious thought are at opposing sides, even though they can both exist within the same human being.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Agreed. Once enough of our species evolves beyond faith based idealism, our eyes will finally be opened to the true wonders of the universe. Science is the vehicle that will get us there, not faith. If you want a good look at what faith will do for you, you need look no further than any Theocracy based government and where their citizens stand in the big picture of things. We can either kill each other off in the name of some man-made imaginary ideology, or we can flourish as a species and maybe finally start understanding the wonders of our universe. In the long term, nothing positive has ever come from faith. Why folks continue to cling to it is beyond my ability to understand or explain.
Elephants may not be used to plow cotton fields. While having sex, you must stay in the missionary position and have the shades pulled. If a man and a woman who aren’t married go to a hotel/motel and register themselves as married then, according to state law, they are legally married. Persons in possession of illegal substances must pay taxes on them. A three dollar tax must be paid on all white goods sold. Organizations may not hold their meetings while the members present are in costume. Bingo games may not last over 5 hours unless it is held at a fair. Serving alcohol at a bingo game is not allowed. All from North Carolina http://www.dumblaws.com/
Religious wackos delegate their ethical decision making to some scripture that cannot be questioned or examined critically.
Have gnu, will travel.
What's the point of sentience? It is irrelevant to life
Sentience is what you get if you make a realistic model of the world around you, and yourself in it, with the capability to run complicated what-if scenarios on it, like "if I throw a rock at that bear, it'll probably charge me, but I will be able to escape through that narrow cave entrance if I run fast enough". It helps survival, so it is crucial to life.
But we shouldn't make the mistake of thinking that it is the only tool we have for gathering knowledge. It can't answer every question, and that's okay.
Yes, it is the only tool. Other tools can provide answers, but not knowledge. Knowledge can be used to make predictions, and predictions are testable, and therefore fall in the realm of science. If your answers can't be used to make predictions, they are not useful, and they might as well not exist.
I oppose GMOs not because "chemicals" or "nature." I oppose GMO because I don't believe it is society's best interest to have a food supply controlled by corporations. I also worry about biodiversity, the sustainability of modern agriculture, and concern over the overuse of pesticides.
I don't have polling data, but it does pass the sniff test to assume that one form of magical thinking, inculcated from birth, would tend to make the personality more at-risk of accepting other magical-thinking proposals.
Well, there are some studies which suggest what you say is true, but there are other scientists and psychologists who have claimed that supernatural beliefs and superstitions are "hard-wired" into humanity. Many anthropologists have argued that some sort of supernatural beliefs were necessary for the foundation of complex societies, but there's disagreement about the exact role or types of beliefs and their effects.
On the other hand, regardless of upbringing, there seem to be specific psychological traits that are highly correlated with religiosity, such as lower intelligence or various personality traits. There have been literally hundreds of studies on this stuff, and your proposal that various superstitious thinking may be related to and/or substituting for religious thinking has been studied for close to 40 years.
There seem to be no clear answers and a lot of contradictory studies about whether paranormal/supernatural beliefs are basically innate or mostly affected by psychological traits or intelligence, or whether nurturing children affects those tendencies in significant ways.
The only thing I can say is that people have believed weird nonsense throughout history, and even if you expunge various myths and bogey men, people will find other weird nonsense to believe -- whether it's aliens or conspiracy theories or whatever. You can even look at demographic stats and polls for other countries -- participation in institutional religion is very low in Europe, and many countries have relatively high numbers there of people who are nominally atheists, but various other types of occult and superstitious elements are exceptionally popular.
Bottom line: decreasing religious indoctrination of youth may have some impact on overall belief in "magical thinking," but many people will still find various weird things to buy into as adults. Aside from natural cognitive tendencies of humans to "ascribe meaning" to random or natural phenomena and such, religion is historically about defining social groups as well as beliefs, and there's a lot of evidence that people will buy into all kinds of weird crap if it seems like the stuff that most of the people around them are into.
Here's a start for you
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
http://old.richarddawkins.net/...
You might also be interested to know that atheists commit LESS crime than their religious counterparts
http://www.salon.com/2013/06/1...
And their divorce rate is lower
http://www.alternet.org/belief...
Meanwhile shall we look at all the wars, murder and mayhem conducted in the name of religion/god? Not sure what the character limit is on /. posts, might exceed it...
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
People voting to rob other people at gun-point (which is how taxes are collected) to pay for something, they themselves consider worthwhile are not "charitable" and driven not by ethics, but by simple greed: "I want a better road, I can not pay for it — ergo, I'll vote for forcing others to pay it for instead." It is so blatant, whenever a poor person speaks out against such "spreading the wealth around", he is accosted as "an idiot" acting against "his own interests". These arguments and accusations are proof, that the accusers' own motivation is not ethical, but egoistic, greed and envy — and that they are stupefied to find somebody else not sharing them.
Whereas the "grabbing whatever you can get" Republicans are happy to limit the "grabbing", to what's rightfully theirs, Illiberals aren't satisfied with such restrictions...
Your generalized hand-waving in support of this conclusion hereby destroyed, do you have anything better to offer as evidence?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
They won't go quietly, that's for certain. They're going to try to put a stop to things they don't like. They may find more success in some places than others, but overall, scientific and technological progress doesn't stop. If one country tries to dig in its heels, someone else is going to keep forging ahead, and gain an advantage over that country. They're not going to win, not on their terms.
In the longer term, they largely face two choices - adapt, or withdraw from society. I think you'll see a lot of groups, especially smaller ones, picking the latter route, a la the Amish. Larger ones, such as the Catholic Church, or the LDS Church, will probably be the ones that adapt, even if in fits and starts, and will probably focus on the parts of the religion like "don't be complete shits to your fellow human beings."
I also think that, if we ever get to the point where colonization of space becomes a feasible thing, you'll see lots of religious groups heading out to settle, just like they did in times past.
I wouldn't be sure that the numbers are correct.
Here in the UK 59% of the population claimed to be Christian in the 2011 census. However attendance at churches of all varieties runs to about 6% of the population. So what happened to the other 53%, are they really Christian or merely putting themselves down as Christian because it sounds better?
One thing that has been reported in the past is that while 40% of the population of the States reports that they attend services each week. However when actual counts are taken the figure is only about 20%
Conclusion? The 77% might be overselling the number of people who are actually Christian compared to being cultural Christians.
So really you're against specific business practices and abuses of the legal system, not GMO foods.
There is no such thing as "natural" corn anymore. All corn that is grown and sold is GMO corn; some strains of it were simply manipulated (and capitalized upon) more recently than others.
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
You'll also find that many practicing scientists are also religious
That doesn't mean anything. You can be a practicing scientist and still be unable to think critically in certain aspects of your life because of your upbringing (like being brain washed by your religious parents).
Try it! Library of Babel
Or its possible that some people can't recognize personal ethics if they don't contain a book:chapter:verse reference.
Have gnu, will travel.
"Belief", aka "Faith" is based upon ideology, ie a set of rules imposed by those who determine who is in and who is out of the religion. Spirituality, however, is based upon one person's relationship with their existence, and a search for meaning and commonality.
Republican leadership = Idiocracy
I am atheist and while I am pro-nuclear power, pro-vaccine,and believe in global warming I am very much against GMO foods. I against them though because if the transfer of power they represent, not about the food itself. No study has ever shown GMO corn is any less or more healthy than natural corn. GMO foods shift power from the people and the farmer to the chemical company.
Unfortunately, you're conflating a few things that don't necessarily belong together.
Genetic modification to make plants herbicide resistant is only one form of genetic modification. And I can't disagree -- the way that Monsanto has gone after farmers, and pretty much "owns" agriculture is disgusting.
At the same time, there are a lot of other genetic modifications in food that have nothing to do with selling chemicals. You can't tell me that you're also against Golden Rice? They have a whole lot of studies which show that their rice is more healthy than the regular kind in areas that a) consume a lot of rice, and b) where there are various micronutrient deficiencies, such as Vitamin A (the deficiency of which can be a cause of blindness in children. More than 2 million people a year die from Vitamin A deficiency).
There is a lot of good that GMOs can do for this world, particularly in parts of the world with various dietary nutrient deficiencies. GMO doesn't necessarily imply "engineered to be herbicide resistant". As another poster said, your problem seems to be more with business practices and abuse of the legal system (and, I'd add, a political system hat allows these transgressions to occur) surrounding certain types of GMOs. But why lump in those that can actually help people in vulnerable populations lead healthy, productive lives?
Yaz