| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Pro-Humanist FREELOVER" |
| Date: |
29 Jan 2005 01:37:14 PM |
| Object: |
-Top 10- Insurmountable Defenses of Disbelief |
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1) No one has proven (or provided testable and
verifiable evidence) that any God exists
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2) No one has proven (or provided testable and
verifiable evidence) that any God has ever
created anything, or has ever existed
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3) No one has proven (or provided testable and
verifiable evidence) that any God wants anything
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4) No one has proven (or provided testable and
verifiable evidence) that any document or group
of documents conveys what any God wants
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5) No one has proven (or provided testable and
verifiable evidence) that any God wants to be
worshipped
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6) No one has proven (or provided testable and
verifiable evidence) that any God wants money
to be given to any religious entities
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7) No one has proven (or provided convincing
evidence) that any God answers any prayer
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8) It's easy to prove (and provide convincing
evidence) that no God answers specific prayers
with testable criteria (i.e., criteria by which a
specific God is asked to answer a prayer, and
a desired result transpires which is attributable
*only* to a specific God as *the* causal agent
rather than to the laws of nature/physics)
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9) No one has proven (or provided convincing
evidence) that there is any afterlife (or any rein-
carnation)
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10) No one has proven (or provided convincing
evidence) that acts or lack of acts or belief or
lack of belief in any God has any impact what-
soever on any afterlife (or any reincarnation)
- - -
¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤
~~~
Pro-Humanist FREELOVER
http://fire.prohosting.com/prohuman
(Freethinking Realist Exploring
Expressive Liberty, Openness,
Verity, Enlightenment, & Rationality)
~~~
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| User: "David V." |
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| Title: Re: -Top 10- Insurmountable Defenses of Disbelief |
01 Feb 2005 12:26:59 PM |
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Ron Peterson wrote:
I think that the question is why do religions exist. Are you
claiming that people need to have a belief in some superior
being? Or is it more likely, that some priesthood wants to
control the hearts and minds of its followers?
It's not any one thing. It's a mix what you mentioned and a need
to be part of the herd. Except for the last thousand years or so
if you were not a believer in the religion of the society you
were living in - you couldn't live there. You were banned,
shunned, and exiled - which often was a death sentence. There is
also the god of the gaps; it helped explain the unknown and made
it less scary.
Those things make religion attractive for those with little or
no faith. One only has to look at what happened to church
attendance after the 9-11 disaster to see that hardship and
anxiety cause people to seek out religion.
Grief shared with the flock. The amount of "faith" in a religion
is probably on a bell curve with some fundamentalists on one end
and barely believers on the other.
Most of Europe is already breaking with religion with a small
number of exceptions. What is different about the US?
Lack of proper science education.
--
Dave
.....If you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an
ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish
the useful ideas from the worthless ones - Carl Sagan, 1987.
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| User: "Ron Peterson" |
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| Title: Re: -Top 10- Insurmountable Defenses of Disbelief |
02 Feb 2005 09:32:02 AM |
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David V. wrote:
Ron Peterson wrote:
Most of Europe is already breaking with religion with a small
number of exceptions. What is different about the US?
Lack of proper science education.
Are scientists and engineers less religious than those in other fields
of study?
--
Ron
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| User: "Pro-Humanist FREELOVER" |
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| Title: Re: -Top 10- Insurmountable Defenses of Disbelief |
02 Feb 2005 10:24:39 AM |
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"Ron Peterson" <ron@shell.core.com> wrote in message
news:1107358322.737003.185680@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
David V. wrote:
Ron Peterson wrote:
Most of Europe is already breaking with religion with a small
number of exceptions. What is different about the US?
Lack of proper science education.
Are scientists and engineers less religious than those
in other fields of study?
Depends on what other fields of study you're referring
to. Oft-times cited, about 90% of Americans 'believe in
God', whatever that means.
The following excerpt includes information of interest
on the rejection of "the transcendent" by members of
the US National Academy of Sciences (1998) ...
---
http://scienceweek.com/2004/sb040102-1.htm
---
Excerpt:
US NATL. ACAD. OF SCIENCES:
OVERWHELMING REJECTION OF RELIGION
The following points are made by Edward J. Larson
and Larry Witham (Nature 1998 394:313):
1) Although the current popular US media are fond
of informing the public that science and religion are
moving closer on a common ground, the evidence
is apparently the opposite, according to the results
of a recent survey of scientists who are members
of the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS).
2) The authors report "near universal rejection" of
the transcendent by NAS natural scientists. Overall,
93 percent of NAS scientists do not profess a belief
in God (72.2 percent disbelief, 20.8 agnostic), and
92.1 percent do not profess a belief in immortality
(76.7 percent disbelief, 23.3 percent agnostic). Dis-
belief in God and immortality among NAS biological
scientists was 65.2 percent and 69.0 percent respec-
tively, and among NAS physical scientists it was 79
percent and 76.3 percent respectively.
3) As indicated, most of the rest define themselves
as agnostics, with only few believers. The highest
percentage of belief was found among NAS mathe-
maticians: 14.3 percent belief in God, 15 percent
belief in immortality. Biological scientists had the low-
est rate of belief (5.5 percent in God, 7.1 percent in
immortality), with physicists and astronomers slightly
higher (7.5 percent in God, 7.5 percent in immortality).
4) The authors suggest that despite recent declara-
tions by NAS president Bruce Albert that many out-
standing members of the academy are very religious
people, the present survey indicates otherwise.
- - -
¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤
~~~
Pro-Humanist FREELOVER
http://fire.prohosting.com/prohuman
(Freethinking Realist Exploring
Expressive Liberty, Openness,
Verity, Enlightenment, & Rationality)
~~~
.
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| User: "Pro-Humanist FREELOVER" |
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| Title: Re: -Top 10- Insurmountable Defenses of Disbelief |
02 Feb 2005 10:38:18 AM |
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Follow-up, an interesting report comparing US religiosity
to that of some other countries ...
"Pro-Humanist FREELOVER" <prohumanist@gr8mail.com>
wrote in message news:36cd97F50vdjiU1@individual.net...
"Ron Peterson" <ron@shell.core.com> wrote in message
news:1107358322.737003.185680@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
David V. wrote:
Ron Peterson wrote:
Most of Europe is already breaking with religion with a small
number of exceptions. What is different about the US?
Lack of proper science education.
Are scientists and engineers less religious than those
in other fields of study?
Depends on what other fields of study you're referring
to. Oft-times cited, about 90% of Americans 'believe in
God', whatever that means.
The following excerpt includes information of interest
on the rejection of "the transcendent" by members of
the US National Academy of Sciences (1998) ...
---
http://scienceweek.com/2004/sb040102-1.htm
---
Excerpt:
US NATL. ACAD. OF SCIENCES:
OVERWHELMING REJECTION OF RELIGION
The following points are made by Edward J. Larson
and Larry Witham (Nature 1998 394:313):
1) Although the current popular US media are fond
of informing the public that science and religion are
moving closer on a common ground, the evidence
is apparently the opposite, according to the results
of a recent survey of scientists who are members
of the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS).
2) The authors report "near universal rejection" of
the transcendent by NAS natural scientists. Overall,
93 percent of NAS scientists do not profess a belief
in God (72.2 percent disbelief, 20.8 agnostic), and
92.1 percent do not profess a belief in immortality
(76.7 percent disbelief, 23.3 percent agnostic). Dis-
belief in God and immortality among NAS biological
scientists was 65.2 percent and 69.0 percent respec-
tively, and among NAS physical scientists it was 79
percent and 76.3 percent respectively.
3) As indicated, most of the rest define themselves
as agnostics, with only few believers. The highest
percentage of belief was found among NAS mathe-
maticians: 14.3 percent belief in God, 15 percent
belief in immortality. Biological scientists had the low-
est rate of belief (5.5 percent in God, 7.1 percent in
immortality), with physicists and astronomers slightly
higher (7.5 percent in God, 7.5 percent in immortality).
4) The authors suggest that despite recent declara-
tions by NAS president Bruce Albert that many out-
standing members of the academy are very religious
people, the present survey indicates otherwise.
University of Michigan News Service
Nov. 17, 2003
U-M study: U.S. among the most religious nations in the world
http://ipumich.temppublish.com/cgi-bin/print.cgi?Releases/2003/Nov03/r111703
Complete article:
ANN ARBOR, Mich.—The United States remains among
the most religious nations in the world, according to a
worldwide study by the University of Michigan.
About 46 percent of American adults attend church at least
once a week, not counting weddings, funerals and christen-
ings, compared with 14 percent of adults in Great Britain,
8 percent in France, 7 percent in Sweden and 4 percent in
Japan.
Moreover, 58 percent of Americans say that they often think
about the meaning and purpose of life, compared with 25
percent of the British, 26 percent of the Japanese, and 31
percent of West Germans, the study says.
“While traditional religious belief and participation in organ-
ized religion have steadily declined in most advanced indus-
trial nations, especially in Western Europe, this is not the
case in the United States,” said Ronald F. Inglehart, a re-
searcher at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR),
and director of the ISR World Values Surveys, which were
conducted in more than 80 nations between 1981 and 2001.
Some possible reasons cited for the results: Religious refu-
gees set the tone long ago in America; religious people tend
to have more children than non-religious groups; and the U.S.
has a less comprehensive social welfare system, prompting
people to look to religion for help.
Funded by a variety of public and private sources, including
the National Science Foundation, the series of representative
national surveys now contains data from nearly 250,000 re-
spondents around the world. The latest U.S. findings are
based on a sample of 1200, reported in “Sacred and Secu-
lar,” forthcoming in 2004 from Cambridge University Press.
In the book, Inglehart and co-author Pippa Norris put religion
and spirituality in the U.S. in a global context by showing that
while virtually all post-industrial societies have been moving
toward more secular orientations for many decades, the
world as a whole now has more people with traditional reli-
gious views than ever before.
“Though these two propositions may seem contradictory,
they’re not,” Inglehart said. “Secularization has a powerful
negative impact on human fertility rates, so the least reli-
gious countries have fertility rates far below the replace-
ment level, while societies with traditional religious views
have fertility rates two or three times the replacement level.”
As a result, those with traditional religious views now con-
stitute a growing proportion of the world’s population.
Inglehart and Norris, a political scientist at Harvard Univer-
sity, also examined the reasons that the U.S. remains an
“outlier” in religiosity among postindustrial nations. “The
U.S. was founded by religious refugees who attached so
much importance to religion that they were willing to risk
their lives in a dangerous new environment in order to
practice their religion, and to some extent this outlook
has been successfully transmitted to succeeding waves
of immigrants,” they wrote.
Another possibility for the high degree of religiosity in
the U.S. is that the nation has a less comprehensive
social welfare safety net than most other economically
developed countries, leading many Americans to exper-
ience the kind of existential insecurity and economic un-
certainty characteristic of highly religious populations.
For more details, see the following tables and figures:
Trends in religious participation, 1981-2001 (table 3.6);
growth in spiritual values, 1981-2001 (table 3.7); religious
participation in 76 societies (figure 3.3) at:
http://www.umich.edu/news/index.html?Releases/2003/Nov03/rel_graphs
- - -
¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤
~~~
Pro-Humanist FREELOVER
http://fire.prohosting.com/prohuman
(Freethinking Realist Exploring
Expressive Liberty, Openness,
Verity, Enlightenment, & Rationality)
~~~
.
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| User: "Ron Peterson" |
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| Title: Re: -Top 10- Insurmountable Defenses of Disbelief |
02 Feb 2005 11:43:46 PM |
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Pro-Humanist FREELOVER wrote:
"Ron Peterson" <ron@shell.core.com> wrote in message
news:1107358322.737003.185680@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
David V. wrote:
Lack of proper science education.
Are scientists and engineers less religious than those
in other fields of study?
Depends on what other fields of study you're referring
to. Oft-times cited, about 90% of Americans 'believe in
God', whatever that means.
I was thinking of fields like history, languages, music, and art.
I was thinking that the level of education is more important to
religious belief than knowledge of science in particular.
--
Ron
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| User: "Dubh Ghall" |
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| Title: Re: -Top 10- Insurmountable Defenses of Disbelief |
02 Feb 2005 02:13:09 PM |
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On 2 Feb 2005 07:32:02 -0800, "Ron Peterson" <ron@shell.core.com> wrote:
David V. wrote:
Ron Peterson wrote:
Most of Europe is already breaking with religion with a small
number of exceptions. What is different about the US?
Lack of proper science education.
Are scientists and engineers less religious than those in other fields
of study?
What other fields?
Or are you calling art, and philosophy, serious fields of study?
--
Puck Greenman
The spelling Like any opinion stated here
purely my own
#162 BAAWA Knight.
Plonked by Rob Duncan
January 27th
Na bister 500,000
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| User: "Ron Peterson" |
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| Title: Re: -Top 10- Insurmountable Defenses of Disbelief |
02 Feb 2005 11:50:28 PM |
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Dubh Ghall wrote:
On 2 Feb 2005 07:32:02 -0800, "Ron Peterson" <ron@shell.core.com>
wrote:
David V. wrote:
Ron Peterson wrote:
Lack of proper science education.
Are scientists and engineers less religious than those in other
fields
of study?
What other fields?
History, languages, art, music, etc.
Or are you calling art, and philosophy, serious fields of study?
Do you think it makes a difference if a field of study is serious?
--
Ron
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| User: "David V." |
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| Title: Re: -Top 10- Insurmountable Defenses of Disbelief |
02 Feb 2005 11:50:27 AM |
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Ron Peterson wrote:
Are scientists and engineers less religious than those in
other fields of study?
Larson and Witham present the results of a replication of 1913
and 1933 surveys by James H. Leuba. In those surveys, Leuba
mailed a questionnaire to leading scientists asking about their
belief in "a God in intellectual and affective communication with
humankind" and in "personal immortality". Larson and Witham used
the same wording [as in the Leuba studies], and sent their
questionnaire to 517 members of the [U.S.] National Academy of
Sciences from the biological and physical sciences (the latter
including mathematicians, physicists and astronomers). The return
rate was slightly over 50%.
The results were as follows (figures in %):
BELIEF IN PERSONAL GOD 1914 1933 1998
Personal belief 27.7
15 7.0
Personal disbelief 52.7 68
72.2
Doubt or agnosticism 20.9 17 20.8
BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY 1914 1933 1998
Personal belief 35.2 18
7.9
Personal disbelief 25.4 53
76.7
Doubt or agnosticism 43.7 29 23.3
So the answer to your question is yes.
--
Dave
.....If you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an
ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish
the useful ideas from the worthless ones - Carl Sagan, 1987.
.
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| User: "Ron Peterson" |
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| Title: Re: -Top 10- Insurmountable Defenses of Disbelief |
02 Feb 2005 11:46:16 PM |
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David V. wrote:
Ron Peterson wrote:
Are scientists and engineers less religious than those in
other fields of study?
So the answer to your question is yes.
Are their studies that show the religous beliefs of academics in the
non-scientific fields of study?
--
Ron
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| User: "wcb" |
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| Title: Re: -Top 10- Insurmountable Defenses of Disbelief |
03 Feb 2005 08:29:44 AM |
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Ron Peterson wrote:
David V. wrote:
Ron Peterson wrote:
Are scientists and engineers less religious than those in
other fields of study?
So the answer to your question is yes.
Are their studies that show the religous beliefs of academics in the
non-scientific fields of study?
The Leuba studies mentioned in earlier posts here actually also
polled historians alos, who also had a high percentage of disbelief.
--
Cheerful Charlie
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| User: "Ron Peterson" |
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| Title: Re: -Top 10- Insurmountable Defenses of Disbelief |
04 Feb 2005 12:07:32 AM |
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wcb wrote:
Ron Peterson wrote:
Are their studies that show the religous beliefs of academics in
the
non-scientific fields of study?
The Leuba studies mentioned in earlier posts here actually also
polled historians alos, who also had a high percentage of disbelief.
Then it looks like the ability to reason objectively rather than
specific scientific knowledge is more critical for rejecting religion.
--
Ron
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| User: "David V." |
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| Title: Re: -Top 10- Insurmountable Defenses of Disbelief |
03 Feb 2005 12:14:42 AM |
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Ron Peterson wrote:
David V. wrote:
Ron Peterson wrote:
Are scientists and engineers less religious than those in
other fields of study?
So the answer to your question is yes.
Are their studies that show the religous beliefs of academics
in the non-scientific fields of study?
Yes. I posted one and someone else referenced the same study.
--
Dave
.....If you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an
ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish
the useful ideas from the worthless ones - Carl Sagan, 1987.
.
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