Declining Atheism v Disproportionate influence

mindlight said:

Aside from doping troublemakers up or packing them into asylums, it is hard to see the benefits of secular psychotherapy.

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That’s not what psychotherapists do. You are confusing us with psychiatrists. Which shows your ignorance on the subject.

Please educate yourself.

This was a pretty awful post. I found it quite nasty. Let's proceed with the response.

mindlight said:

Mental illness has many roots and many of these are a consequence of the effects of atheistic society.

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1. We don't have an "atheistic society".
2. Mental illness is a personal issue, not society.

mindlight said:

The atomization of society into individuals without a sense of community or belonging is one of these.

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Not a consequence of atheism. Sure come people find community in their church, I never did. Suburbanization, air conditioning, and the internet have a much bigger role than modest number of people who became atheists.

mindlight said:

When Christianity works, as with the early church, then we do not live in a world without friends.

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I don't either. This is a complete mischaracterization of non-Christians. I don't know many Christians who characterize their friends as being "from church" anyway.

mindlight said:

This may also be a major reason why atheists do not breed and Muslims overbreed.

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Breed? Really? Do you think we are cattle? What does community have to do with high birth rate in Muslim-majority countries?

mindlight said:

Liberal atheists have no communal reason to bring children into this world and it often contradicts the basic selfishness of their position.

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What "communal reason" to have children? People have children because they want children. There shouldn't be any other reasons for it. This is just another slur against atheists (selfish) where you have added "liberals" to your attack. (Do you think conservative atheists are any less "selfish".

mindlight said:

Muslims are compelled by the community to breed and their women are maltreated as baby machines in practice.

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Oh, so this was your slur against Muslims. Is misogyny and poverty a problem in Muslim-majority nations, yeah, but when I look at the abortion debate in this country I see the same thing. The parallel (or follow-on) movement to end birth control also seems like an effort to force women into "breeding". Not a good look.

mindlight said:

Also, the loss of God has implications for those who are made in His image, their dignity and transcendence of petty troubles.

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My dignity went up when there wasn't a god around.

mindlight said:

People's hope and trust through struggles are all lost in such a world. Restoring love, life and light occurs on a communal level as much as on the individual one.

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Light is an electromagnetic wave of photons with a few eV of energy. The other things (love and life) exist for us non-Christians just as much as you Christians. (I assume you have those things.)

mindlight said:

The stress of atheistic assumptions/structures on individuals leaves them alone to fight against impossible odds so it is a small wonder that so many break under the strain.

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This is the worst pop psychology I've seen and bigoted to boot. Perhaps you shouldn't talk about things you don't understand. (A good way to start would be to get an atheist friend. (In the real world, I'm not interested.)

mindlight said:

Christians can also perform exorcisms where warranted. The secular profession of psychotherapy can do little in these cases anyway so why not?

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In what cases? The people that think they are possessed by demons?

mindlight said:

A properly exercised exorcism never hurt anyone. But even the most prolific exorcists like Father Gabriel Amorth recognized the value of Christian counseling in 98% of the cases. Also even he would recognize that most exorcisms are not to do with full-on demonic occupation but rather just with demonic influence. A Christian service, communal prayers, worship and bible readings are milder ways to address demonic influence as is penance for sins.

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Do you want me to take demons seriously? I'm sorry, I can't. I never could. I put the exhorcists in the same box as the faith healers.

mindlight said:

Interestingly, the fastest-growing Christian branch is that of the Pentecostals/charismatics who asserted the value of exorcism and spiritual gifts in general against the modernizing efforts of Vatican II and the secularization of many mainstream churches.

Pentecostalism: Massive Global Growth Under the Radar

(In November 2014, The Atlas of Pentecostalism project was exhibited at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam's DocLab show, an exhibition focused on trans-media storytelling. During this...

pulitzercenter.org

Who Was the Real Pope's Exorcist?

A new film dramatizes the story of Father Gabriele Amorth, the chief exorcist of the Diocese of Rome

www.smithsonianmag.com

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I don't know that making Christianity more extreme disconnected from the modern world makes it overall very attractive. Sure those factions of the religion might grow, but the rest are going to shrink faster. (I'm OK with that.)

mindlight said:

You are right there is a difference between psychotherapists that talk to no effect and psychiatrists that dope to no effect.

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Ever stopped anyone committing suicide?

No?

Well I have. Plenty of times.

mindlight said:

The church has repeatedly restored meaning and hope to people's lives and has seen people saved from a variety of desperate situations. Great that you stop someone from killing themselves but the larger question is how they got to their jump point in the first place. The people that I know who committed suicide made a lot of stupid decisions on their way to the jump, not least a failure to get to know a God who loves them. It is that godless background narrative that is turning people mad and suicidal.

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So none. Just a screed of victim blaming. Your armchair takes are both wrong and self serving.

mindlight said:

I disagreed with just about everything you said, but key points worth raising by way of response:

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As I continue to disagree with virtually every bit of your post.

mindlight said:

1) The world is becoming more, not less religious, because atheism is not that attractive an option and because atheists do not reproduce.

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The "fact" you claim is a dubious one, but then you follow it with two plain unsupported reasons. I don't think we can properly measure the religiosity of the world and Pew is probably foolish to try. (For example, why should I trust the reported percentage of believers in repressive Islamic states.) It is tricky even when talking about a single, free country like yours or mine, but the data in religiously oppressive regimes is not quite as forthcoming or, frankly, reliable. What does the religiosity of the world even mean and should it even matter? You and I do live in parts of the world where such things are semi-reliably measured and the data is clear, irreligion continues to rise and Christianity continues to fall where we are.

As for the breeding notion, birth rates are higher among poorer people both within countries (like ours) and in poorer countries. That accounts for a lot of the differential you see, both with the higher religiosity in today's poorer countries and to the immigrants. Don't put too much stock in the religious extremists that treat women as chattel and broodmares with very high birth rates. They are small in number in wealthy countries.

mindlight said:

2) There is a link between godlessness and mental health because a godless position is a hopeless one that cannot survive the rigorous testing of the pains and struggles of this life and because it tends towards a higher degree of selfishness that breaks communal bonds, a sense of belonging and identity.

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The irreligious who are not isolated from the rest of the community by its religiosity are just fine. Those in that grouping that do have more problems are the ones living in places where the overt religiosity of the rest of the community isolate them and shun them. As I have said before (and will likely say again in various places), there is nothing inherently community about the people who go to the same building to praise the same deity for an hour each week.

mindlight said:

3) Ignorance of the supernatural does not mean it is not there and represents a reduction of perception and understanding of the real world.

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We are well aware of many supernatural claims and most are easily dismissed or demonstrably false. There really isn't a mechanism for most of them to function. I don't consider the "supernatural" to be the "real world" as it involves claims that violate natural laws.

mindlight said:

4) Pentecostals (More conservative Christian groups) are growing the fastest, AND overall Christianity is growing faster than the world population. There is no overall shrinkage to the church, despite your preference for that, though the more liberal/godless-oriented churches do have a shrinking influence.

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The Christian missionaries found some new people to convince. Cool story. I'm not sure why that is relevant. It's not like most of those people didn't have religious beliefs before (or are you dismissing their folk religions, etc.) I don't care what 'flavor' of Christianity people are either. It's all the same to me.

Love365 said:

Children are the next generation of Christians.

To get children back in church,
you need young women to bring their children to church.

To get young women back in church,
you need women priests.

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?

mindlight said:

As previously clarified causation is multifaceted, and I accept that. But the fact is that it is easier to become and remain an atheist in certain kinds of societies rather than others - the West is an example of where it is easy and Europe especially.

Not sure why you think that the central premise of the OP, that atheism is in decline, is not supported by the Pew Research link. Maybe you could clarify that.

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Your article focuses on trends projected into the future, not on a count of how many people here and now are making a decision for or against belief. So, the article isn't really saying that "Christianity is growing" in the present. Just look at one of the points in the middle of the article you cited for the OP where it states:


Moreover, I'd point out that quantity of believers doesn't necessarily indicate the epistemic quality or durability of those theistic beliefs, so I think it's best be more modest about the "decline of atheism," especially if the overarching politics and outlooks within various nations begin to change or move toward the disfavoring and hard criticism of religion of whatever form, but especially of Christianity.

mindlight said:

Even factoring in the declines in Europe reading the article as a whole the described pattern was of growth for Islam and the church that exceeded world population growth.

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mindlight said:

I do agree that quality and quantity have different kinds of power to them. European believers for example can be among the toughest and deepest Christians on the planet because of the hostility and critique they experience daily, coupled with better education and literacy in theological matters. Also as books like "A Wind in the House of Islam" reveal Muslim numbers in their Middle eastern heartlands are often exaggerated because of the oppressive nature of the religious culture and may well conceal more Christians and indeed nonreligious adherents. In the same way under Communism, 'no one' was a Christian in Russia and then suddenly 60% of the population were.

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But I don't think Islam should be categorized and included with Christianity on the stats. They are two different religions; one means hope for the world. The other isn't exactly all it's reported to be.

The real question isn't "how many Christians?," but "who runs the show?".

mindlight said:

Globally the world is becoming more and more religious with Christianity and Islam together representing a majority of the world's population and with growth rates that exceed global population growth.

In the Western world, the narrative is of a church in decline and of the inevitable advance of atheism. However, the facts are very clear:

1) The largest religion in the world is Christianity which has been growing nonstop for two millennia.
2) Global birth rates of Christians average 2.7 per woman so above the replacement rate(This is true in every continent except Europe). The fastest growth is with Evangelicals and Pentecostals worldwide. So the Christian population is becoming more conservative overall.
3) Global birth rates of Non-religious average 1.6 and their share of the world population is in decline.
4) Conversion is mainly statistically irrelevant compared to natural growth but most atheists convert from Christian backgrounds in countries where it is less dangerous to declare oneself godless.

Why has the church so easily fallen for this clear atheist delusion when we are obviously on the winning side?
How did atheists come to control the political narrative despite the realities on the ground?

The Changing Global Religious Landscape

More babies were born to Christian mothers than to members of any other religion in recent years. Less than 20 years from now, however, the number of babies born to Muslims is expected to modestly exceed births to Christians.

www.pewresearch.org

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Ha. The religious is always wailing about decline in
membership, surging paganism etc. For obvious reasons.

The rest of us don't concern ourselves unless some religious group blows up buildings or tries to force their agenda into public policy.

mindlight said:

Think you did not read the OP as the evidence suggests the world is becoming more religious not less. Since atheists e.g. Stalin and Mao were responsible for the vast majority of violent deaths in the last century your views on religious terrorism also seem misinformed.

That said Islam is the biggest source of violent terrorism today. Just 4 Islamic groups were responsible for 75% of the terrorist-related deaths in the last decade. So a certain brand of religion is terrorist friendly. Christianity is not a terrorist religion compared to atheist and Islamic groups

Although the numbers killed there pale compared to policies backed by most atheists on abortion for example: Countries like China, Russia and in Europe lead the world in those genocide stats. But since many of these babies would grow up to be atheists maybe the Sovereignty of God is at work here.

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So unrelated to what I wrote.

Your last bit there is somewhere off the chart

Or on re reading, so the rest.

Howabout we don't talk at all.

I don't understand the obsession some people have with numbers. Is the growth or decline supposed to somehow be significant to its proclamation? Is this all about the bottom line? Winning some stupid culture war? Being strong according to worldly measures? What?

mindlight said:

The world is becoming more, not less religious, because atheism is not that attractive an option and because atheists do not reproduce

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How silly!

How religious the world is is incalculable. All the sums I have seen depend on huge assumptions, such as the one that counts the children of practising Christians as Christians; it is just daft to refer to christian, Muslim or Hindu countries and include entire populations in the calculation.

Then again, so many Christians are prone to denying the Christianity of their co-religionists on doctrinal grounds.

I understand the religious optimism behind the contention. I don't think the optimism is warranted.

But I agree that atheism is 'not an attractive option'. Nobody says it is.