A natonwide survey was conducted last year about religion. It shows the differences in religious views from 1990 to 2008. People appear to be leaving religion now more than ever.
Click on the images to see their full size, I don't know why Blogspot shrinks them down. Here's the interactive flash thingy these screenshots came from, with more categories. Cool stuff.
Am I alone in thinking that it's mostly our generation who are responsible for this? From what I've seen, our age group tends to look pretty liberally at religion. It's really only the baby boomers and older who grasp it so tightly. Our coming of age and their dying off probably has something to do with this.
Another observation. Actually, it's a cheap shot. It's no secret that the Bible Belt's general population has historically been a bunch of fucking morons - their resistance to African American rights in the 1950s and 1960s; seceding from the Union; viewing the kidnapping and enslavement of human beings as some sort of "tradition" or "institution"; the strong loyalty to Britain among the population during the Revolutionary War; almost unanimous support for John McCain in 2008. Does their lack of drastic change concerning religion say something about religious belief?
There's something that made me laugh when this made its rounds through the atheist blogosphere. A lot of the atheist blogs I saw - at least the ones written by dumb people - assumed that "Nonreligious" is made up almost entirely of atheists and agnostics. There's no doubt that they contributed a lot to this, but I mean, you can still believe in a god and not be an official member of a church. I never identified myself with Methodism growing up like my parents, since we never went to church. I just went by "Christian" and kept to myself.
I usually attack organized religion in this blog, but I have a serious problem with modern atheism too. I'm not talking about the atheists who actually think before they speak. I'm talking about the angry neckbeards on the internet who love it when pissing contests replace civil discussions. I'm talking about the atheists from which Christians develop their negative view of atheism, the guys that ruin it for the rest of the atheists. The ones Christians would describe as "the militants." The Dawkins fans.
First of all, they always confuse "god" with "religion." Richard Dawkins should rename his book to The Religion Delusion, because that is all he fucking talked about. I was really let down, because I was hoping he might have offered something actually worth discussing like, gee I don't know, maybe some philosophy? Instead, the book focused entirely on how Christians and Muslims ARE SUCH DUM DUMS AND I LIKE SCIENCE LOL. These guys think that if you believe in any sort of god, you have to blindly follow an invisible Zeus-lookalike who grants wishes if you shut your eyes and click your heels three times. They completely ignore philosophies like Deism and (sometimes) Humanism. I take this personally because I was a Deist for like three years, and these morons always pissed me off.
It's simply because they don't look at atheism as the philosophy that it is. While they certainly agree with all of its philosophical arguments, it is their unbridled aggressiveness towards religion that expresses louder than anything what their actual priorities are - being edgy and rebelling just for the sake of rebelling. They develop this angry group mentality and unite under a banner to make fun of every person who doesn't think like they do. It's no different from the tribal structure of organized religion they worked so hard to break apart from in the first place.
And you know what busts my balls the most? Some of them even hate agnostics. Stephen Colbert jokingly calls agnostics "atheists without balls", but these arrogant pricks actually take that definition seriously. Their generalizations of agnostics are just as misinformed as their generalizations of Christians. They just think agnostics are too dumb and insecure to make a decision, or they're simply confused and don't realize they're atheists. It's actually the other way around, atheists don't realize they're agnostics. Hear me out.
Atheism has highjacked agnosticism's definition. Most atheists will tell you that atheism is simply the lack of belief in a deity. When Christians claim that you can't prove there is no god, atheists will correctly respond by saying that it's impossible to prove the nonexistence of something, and it's foolish to try to. So they are admitting that you can't be certain there is no god. That is agnosticism. My computer's dictionary defines atheism as "the theory or belief that God does not exist." This is what atheism originally was - the claim that it's outright impossible for god to exist. It's only in the modern era where atheists redefined it as "a lack of belief," which cannot be correct because that definition would mean agnostics are atheists too.
Going by the original definition, all atheists should be willing to admit with 100% certainty that there is no god, and yet this is contradictory to what most of them claim. To prove there is no god, one would have to find evidence for his nonexistence, which is impossible. They simply notice the complete lack of evidence for a god, so they assume one does not exist - as they should, because it's only logical. But an assumption is not proof. Agnosticism is the best philosophy to live by, precisely because god's nonexistence cannot be proven.
Atheists justifiably say that the burden of proof falls on the theists, but if this original definition of atheism is the true one, then that means they should have to put something forward too if they're going to claim it's impossible for a universal creator to exist. All I'm saying is that our flawed minds are extremely limited, and we do not have the capacity to know this shit.
Am I wrong? Did I define these right? Doesn't anyone notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
Hey, I just wanted to make a point that you may or may not be aware of: The word "atheist" was traditionally a label applied by one group onto another, when the other group had a different set of beliefs. It was a way of differentiating themselves and the "other."
ReplyDeleteMuch like Wiccans who call themselves "witches" and the way that the Black community took the label "Black" and actually made it much more socially acceptable than the previously used "Negro," many Atheists choose to label themselves as such as a reaction to the omnipresent religious messages we are bombarded with in our culture. If one takes a negative label and makes it one's own, it tends to lose its negative meaning and thus its power. "Atheist" is still a dirty word and horrible insult to many Americans. Just a thought.
"To call someone an Atheist is an insult" is what I meant. I'm one of those Atheist-types myself. Articulation is hard.
ReplyDeleteRight. I clarify a bit more in the post after this one, of why I don't go by the word atheist when that's what I practically am. I have no belief in a god currently, but I'm just not sure if I'm right about it. Many would call that atheism, but I think it's agnosticism. It's just a difference of how you'd define the words, ultimately
ReplyDeleteAlso, I find it pretty laughable that people are still using the word "atheist" as an attack in the 21st century
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5AsdYWtKLY