Chasing the Wind

5 responses to “Atheism in Decline Worldwide”

1. 

   vjack

   March 13, 2005 at 12:25 pm

   I am not sure I buy the claim that atheism is in decline, and I certainly question the statement that it is losing its scientific basis. Religious belief has no scientific evidence to support it and a long and bloody history of violence, cruelty, and intolerance.

   http://www.atheistrevolution.blogspot.com/

   LikeLike

   Reply
2. 

   A.M.M.

   March 13, 2005 at 8:45 pm

   However great you may think the history of violence religion has, it has a greater track record for peace and compassion. Like modern media, history writers like to talk about the worst points. Ever wonder why the chapters on various wars are so long?

   I’m not saying there’s a lack of violence in religion, but I am saying that the nuts get all the attention. For every suicidal fanatic there’s always at least a hundred peaceful followers, and that applies to more than just religion.

   LikeLike

   Reply
3. 

   Michael

   March 14, 2005 at 10:42 am

   I’ll post my followup and rebuttal to vjack here.

   LikeLike

   Reply
4. 

   Plum

   April 14, 2005 at 5:29 pm

   The original post was being a little, shall we say, flexible with the facts. The much-lauded prayer study — which incidentally was carried out at Columbia, not Harvard or Duke — has been thoroughly debunked — in short, the study sampled far too few cases to be statistically meaningful and was run by a charlatan who now is serving jail time for fraud. Columbia University now has distanced itself from the study.

   As for the myth that the famous British atheist Antony Flew (not Andrew Flew) converted to “Intelligent Design” — again, utter balderdash. Bless his non-God fearing socks, Flew is a wee bit old to keep pace with the Internet, so it took him a while to cotton on to stories of his abandonment of atheism. Eventually, in 2004, he wrote this:

   As for the contention that there are as many rascally atheists as rabid Christians, two points must be made.

   First, how do you know?

   Second, so what? One might just as well say there are as many morally upright atheists as staunch Christians.

   Finally, paganism may well be very interesting (if a little cold, what with all that naked dancing on hills by the light of the moon) but it’s still delusional.

   LikeLike

   Reply
5. 

   Michael

   April 15, 2005 at 9:37 am

   I don’t follow. I didn’t talk about any “prayer study.” The Columbia Study you reference discusses the effect of prayer on infertility, which has nothing to do with my post.

   I agree with your Antony Flew to a point – Flew says that recent developments in physics tend to support the viewpoint of religious philopshy, but he himself still view himself as an atheist.

   I suspect you cut-n-pasted some pre-defined viewpoint before reading what you were replying to.

   LikeLike

   Reply