Agnostics/Atheists are a fast growing demographic - this is good

I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion... thus building a wall of separation between Church & State."

Thomas Jefferson
Jan. 1, 1802.

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A MUST READ:
The Number of Americans with No Religious Affiliation Is Rising
https://www.scientificamerican.com/...cans-with-no-religious-affiliation-is-rising/

 

The VAST majority never practice any religion.

 

What's good about it? Envious of Stalin and Mao? Killing off 50 million Americans would be good to combat climate change maybe?

 

Communism <> Atheism

 

I don't think God cares.

Christianity is a personal bond, not a national one.

 

Indeed, tis very good. There is yet hope.

 

One cannot be an atheist without being a Communist?

 

FIFY

 

Wow, you think you can speak for the creator of the universe.

 

Of course not.

I do know that God cares about each person, He doesn't care about a certain nation.

God doesn't need a Flag.

 

Sorry, I'm a coder so <> means not equal.

 

Name any successful atheist country in world history?

Anthropologists who study the most ancient of all known cities and onward increasingly agree what converted the human social structure for small bands of hunter-gathers of no permanent structures and virtual no technical, educational or social complexity has ONE common denominator. At the heart of every ancient culture is what? Their religious center - which was intermixed with government. It was the advent of religion that ultimately took the human race to the moon.

Religion establishes a common set of rules and a common authority greater than any individual and THIS allowed ever larger scale social cohesion leading to cities and the division or tasks, which is more efficient. In this efficiency of ever larger and more efficient societies allowed the free time to think beyond how to get the next days meal and beyond temporary movable structures.

Atheism has no universal rule nor universal authority. As such it comes down to the individual power of each individual. There is no unifying ideology.

We see the collapse of social cohesion in Europe and the USA as the universal morality and a rule maker greater than the humans who have power at the time as atheism grows in which each person is their own god. The question is not "what is right" by a universal standard, but what the individual decides is right. Atheism, of course, tries to replace God with government, declaring laws define morality. But as you see, increasingly people do not believe law is morality at all - unless the individual agrees with the law. If a person thinks the law is wrong, they feel free to break it unless fearing punishment and even openly defying it individually or in mob resistance if they can find enough to join in. As such, there is NO cohesive morality, NO cohesive social goal, and no universal authority other than those who at the moment are in power - opposed by those not in power of a different set of morality, social goals and in their own quest for power to be the new god-government law-maker.

Only a "god" can give universal rights and duties applicable to everyone. Atheism inherently is a perpetual power struggle between individuals and factions of opposing groups and individuals.

 

The five most religious nations:
Ethiopia, Malawi, Niger, Sri Lanka and Yemen

Is that who the domestic taliban wants to turn the U.S. into?

(Japan, Sweden, and Norway are 3 of the top 5 LEAST religious)

LINK: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/maps-and-graphics/most-religious-countries-in-the-world/

 

Why not? All of those theists seem to think that they do.

 

successful atheist countries-Norway, Netherlands, France, China to name four...

hunter gatherers don't have government nor structured religion, they practiced no religion that you would recognize...the heart of their h&g social structure was the "family"...

religious law came from social morality, we are social animals that behaviour is hardwired into us....

 

in 20-30 years the majority of Canadians will be atheist...this will be true as well in many countries

 

Yes, living in a echo chamber of like minded, insulated from the sghetti monsters is always good thing.

Look, I am a non believer and have said this before. I also go to several churches at certain times of the year to get in on the community feeling, the singing and the potlucks.The hugs, handshakes and smiles.

It is truly a good feeling that no other event offers at the neighborhood level. No one hassles me, no one points a finger at me. I find contacts to donate my time and help those in my backyard be it a fence mending, feeding a cat or leaving something on a senior citizens doorstep on her birthday.

Your hard on for people of Faith regardless of your growth will not stop people from believing and it will not stop churches, temples or synagogues from being on any street corner.

You act as if you won something?

 

Nah, this just means more and more people are choosing not to think for themselves. It is much easier to dismiss spirituality than actually trying to figure it out.

 

It is the natural destiny of religion and supernatural explanations to fade as natural explanations are discovered. No one believes Thor makes lightening anymore or withes cause disease because we now know the realities.....Most of the "God" attributes have met the same fate and thinking people see it.

 

And just why is fast-growing atheism a "GOOD"? What makes atheism any different than religious 'believers'?

 

True.

That is the main issue, but what exactly it is he thinks he's "won" is a mystery that not even he can explain.

 

Yes hope that god didn't given man rights, which cannot be destroyed, except by god, but easily taken away by man. This was the principle used by our founders when they referenced god given rights. As recorded in our constitution.

It was just their way of trying to enshrine these rights that don't come easily if just left up to the changing nature of man. Something that might last and be impervious from the fickle nature of humanity, and those that don't want others to have rights that might interfere in your own self interests.

For we have seen the rights given to humanity under atheistic gov'ts, and then we have seen those that were granted in america. Not comparable at all.

I don't see much positive from coming from a move into atheism. Speaking as an agnostic, that sees that this question of theism or atheism is a mere assumption and that if some god or force existed outside of this universe, there is no actual way of knowing if it or if it does not exist.

For I think both great evil and good has come from theism. That is obvious. What is also obvious to date is the importance of the person has greater value with those gov't created by theists, and with that more freedoms and rights. And I think more good has come from theism, than from atheism, pragmatically speaking.

While many americans are not a member of any organized religion, practicing it, many of those who left are still spiritual people with beliefs along those lines. A belief in a higher principle, a greater good, than man is able to express and hold. Something much greater than just ourselves, that can actually be in in embodiment of goodness. That gives purpose to the universe and to ourselves, our own existence. For many people there is a part of humans that is not served by science, and science is unable to serve this, and that part is served by religion or spirituality. I have little doubt that this need is why religions were created in the first place.

I also see little contradiction between science and religion, given that science is limited to what can be measured, and any such god that might exist is immeasurable. Outside of the bounds of science. Now whether such an immeasurable exists is something that I cannot know, using my senses and mind. I would rather have purpose involved, but that doesn't mean I will mentally create an image that would give me this. It is just a preference.

Pragmatically speaking, I think there are more benefits from being a theist than an atheist, just as long as the theism does not involve doing evil, bad things for others in the name of the god they imagine exists. So I see no GOOD coming from becoming an atheist, and more negatives than positives. IMO.

Being agnostic, in the true sense of the word does not negate the possible existence of a higher force, and it is a mentality which is of an open mind. An atheist denies even the possibility, therefore creating a tightly closed mind, that is based upon an assumption, not fact. And being based upon an assumption for certainty just looks like a lack of basic, fundamental intelligence for myself. They seem to not be able to discern the assumptions involved in their belief. They seem to exhibit such certainty when such a thing is just impossible. And so, like the theist, there are emotions involved here, desires, and that tends to close off a mind. I don't think having a closed mind based upon an assumption is a positive thing. And yet they will argue you all day long that they know, what indeed they do not and at this point, cannot know. ha ha

 

and which god or gods are you referring?....religious types always dismiss any god or gods are not theirs, now that's closed minded...

atheism is based on fact, there is no god or gods and there is zero evidence for god/gods....that's how fact based science works...atheists are the exact opposite of closed minds, open to anything if you had even a shred of evidence to back up your fairy tales....

 

One thing you seem to acknowledge here is that "God" lives in the gaps, i.e. where science does not have firm enough answers to discount people's imaginary friends with almighty powers. It is what it is, no matter whether people benefit somehow from maintaining a belief in such imaginary friends or not. That is something that I, too, recognize - the benefits to the human psyche of religious belief. I think this alone is why religion survives in the modern age, in fact - it isn't that religion and theism provide factually compelling answers to the big questions, but that people find emotional satisfaction, both at a deep personal level and at a social level, in such beliefs and (shared) practices. I kind of miss the fun and social aspects of going to church, I will freely admit. It would be nice to have something like it outside of religion, but that can be hard to come by. I guess some kind of social hobby or political organization could provide something similar.

As to the "god" of the framers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, I'm pretty sure that was not meant to be the god of the Bible or any other specific deity like that, but rather a vague notion of a higher power. Atheism and theism are not the only options, of course, and agnosticism is not the only alternative. It is my understanding that the people of the Enlightenment embraced deism or something like it, placing "god" in a far more passive role. I suppose it could be called the atheism of its time, a time before the kind of well-developed scientific theories of cosmology that we have now to account for various aspects of the universe. That they chose to use "God" when speaking of rights is understandable, since they were seeking to establish universal rights that no one, according to these documents, had the power to take away. This, too, is a kind of belief system, but not one that pretends that a diety has actively spoken or otherwise given commandments to people. It is a shared belief in certain rights that we are expected to maintain and hold dear as Americans. There is no authority higher than ourselves in determining our rights, of course, but that doesn't stop us from creating a kind of placeholder authority called "God" to represent one where it is needed, and that is apparently what was done here. It might as well be called something other than "God" and still fulfill the same purpose. We were endowed with certain inalienable rights by our creator, whatever this "creator" actually is. It need not be an anthropomorphic superbeing with a fixation on faith and on sin and punishment in order to serve the purpose of such a secular text! Nor should it be! Indeed, these documents expressly separate church from state, so how even could they refer to such a being?

So... Are you worried about atheism striking down the "God" of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights? I would say fear not, because that is the kind of "God" that atheists are generally concerned with. It is the gods of theists, not Enlightenment deists, that are typically at issue. The gods of fundamentalist religious establishments that attempt to impose religious rules on all Americans through various facets of the secular government are what atheists are typically concerned with, for it is the believers in those gods that cause problems for atheists (and other theists alike). The "God" or "Creator" to whom our basic and universal rights are attributed is not, as far as I have seen, under any threat from atheists. In fact, it is more imperative, I feel, that it be protected from the theists! Do not allow them to tell us that their hateful, vengeful, oppressive textbook (biblical and quranic) gods are one and the same with the God and Creator of our nation's foundational documents, because they are not! And if we allow them to do this, then we actually place the Republic at risk of slipping into theocracy and dominionism.

 

Purportedly religious folks have been slaughtering one another in the hundreds of millions, and often in the name of religion.

Wearing a label doesn't seem to make much difference.