There is no Dad

Joshua260 said:

I'm not convinced that atheism is actually on the rise (at least in the US). I've seen several polls that suggest that the ratio of atheist to theists has actually stayed close to the same level since the 1940s. I was quite surprised to see these results myself, but it has been suggested that rather than growing in numbers, the few atheists that exist in the US are just more vocal than they used to be.

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Tree of Life said:

Douglas Wilson suggests that the rise in atheism and irreligion is, in part, connected with the rise of fatherlessness. "There is no God" starts with "there is no dad". There is a certain biblical logic to this. According to Scripture, the father is a child's first image of God. Fathers are (to a child) all powerful, all knowing, authoritative, present, loving, etc... The God that Christians worship is called "Father". Our daddies are our first teachers.

There certainly has been a rise in fatherlessness in the recent centuries in the west. Correlation, of course, is not causation. I had an absent father (literally) and I turned out to be a Christian.

For atheists and Christians alike out there - is there anything to this? For atheists, did you have a good relationship with your father?

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Cearbhall said:

All polls show a steady rise in the percentage of "Nones." Gallup says 1-2% from 1948-1967, 5% in 1972, 10% by 2002, and 16% in 2014. Pew Research Center says that the Nones as a whole have reached 20% but that only 6% are atheist/agnostic.

Apathy is more common than staunch atheism, it seems, but the two are pretty much the same in practice.

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Joshua260 said:

I got a whole book of polls that show that the "death of God" in America is premature.

[...]

God is alive and well in the US.

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Cearbhall said:

...ok. None of that contradicts or disproves any of the stats that I posted (allowing for the margin of error). Nor did I have the agenda of proving that "God is dead!!1" I was just presenting findings.

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Joshua260 said:

In any case, the more important fact, which usually gets lost in conversations like these (and that's why I mentioned it before), is that it is a well known genetic fallacy: trying to invalidate a position, by showing how a person came to believe it. In other words, whether polls swing one way or the other, has absolutely no bearing on the truth of Christianity. It doesn't prove a thing...but rather says more about the individual (whether or not they are willing to deny that God exists) than accept the reality that he does.

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Joshua260 said:

I got a whole book of polls that show that the "death of God" in America is premature. In his book, What Americans Really Believe, Rodney Stark collected data from numerous sources.
"Percent of Those Who Do Not Believe in God by Year":
1944: 4% (Gallup)
!947: 6% (Gallup)
1964: 3% (American Piety)
1994: 3% (GSS)
2005: 4% (Baylor Survey)
2007: 4% (Baylor Survey)

A 2005 Gallup survey asked for more detail
"Which one statement comes closest to your personal beliefs about God":
I have no doubts that God exists: 68%
I believe in God, but with some doubts: 11%
I sometimes believe in God: 2%
I believe in a higher power or cosmic force: 15%
I don't believe in anything beyond the physical world: 5%

God is alive and well in the US.

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Joshua260 said:

It, and many other polls I could cite, go to show exactly what I said earlier...that instead of a growing atheist ratio (in the US), they are mostly just more outspoken than before.

In any case, the more important fact, which usually gets lost in conversations like these (and that's why I mentioned it before), is that it is a well known genetic fallacy: trying to invalidate a position, by showing how a person came to believe it. In other words, whether polls swing one way or the other, has absolutely no bearing on the truth of Christianity. It doesn't prove a thing...but rather says more about the individual (whether or not they are willing to deny that God exists) than accept the reality that he does.

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Archaeopteryx said:

Who in this thread has committed this fallacy?

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Joshua260 said:

Would you agree that how you were raised, where you were born, and changing ratios of atheists to theists has no bearing on whether or not God exists?

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