Atheism is not for intellectuals.

Westvelern

Originally Posted by Metacrock

ahahaha that' crap! that's not research that's the bogus play "study" by Zuerman.

don't' be a sucker man!

http://www.doxa.ws/social/Zuckerman.html

and

http://www.doxa.ws/social/Sweden.html

I have reference to over 400 studies that disprove it (not the religious experience studies)

http://www.doxa.ws/experience/empirical_studies.html

Westvleteren

Again nobody cares about books Meta so either you have peer reviewed research or it is irrelevant. And I have never heard of Zuerman so no that is not what I was talking about.

so fater saying he eosn't care bbout books, he links to books then talks about books in his signature.



http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html
Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies

A First Look

Gregory S. Paul
Baltimore, Maryland

Introduction
[1] Two centuries ago there was relatively little dispute over the existence of God, or the societally beneficial effect of popular belief in a creator. In the twentieth century extensive secularization occurred in western nations, the United States being the only significant exception (Bishop; Bruce; Gill et al.; Sommerville). If religion has receded in some western nations, what is the impact of this unprecedented transformation upon their populations? Theists often assert that popular belief in a creator is instrumental towards providing the moral, ethical and other foundations necessary for a healthy, cohesive society. Many also contend that widespread acceptance of evolution, and/or denial of a creator, is contrary to these goals. But a cross-national study verifying these claims has yet to be published. That radically differing worldviews can have measurable impact upon societal conditions is plausible according to a number of mainstream researchers (Bainbridge; Barro; Barro and McCleary; Beeghley; Groeneman and Tobin; Huntington; Inglehart and Baker; Putman; Stark and Bainbridge). Agreement with the hypothesis that belief in a creator is beneficial to societies is largely based on assumption, anecdotal accounts, and on studies of limited scope and quality restricted to one population (Benson et al.; Hummer et al.; Idler and Kasl; Stark and Bainbridge). A partial exception is given by Barro and McCleary, who correlated economic growth with rates of belief in the afterlife and church attendance in numerous nations (while Kasman and Reid [2004] commented that Europe does not appear to be suffering unduly from its secularization). It is surprising that a more systematic examination of the question has not been previously executed since the factors required to do so are in place. The twentieth century acted, for the first time in human history, as a vast Darwinian global societal experiment in which a wide variety of dramatically differing social-religious-political-economic systems competed with one another, with varying degrees of success. A quantitative cross-national analysis is feasible because a large body of survey and census data on rates of religiosity, secularization, and societal indicators has become available in the prosperous developed democracies including the United States.
[2] This study is a first, brief look at an important subject that has been almost entirely neglected by social scientists. The primary intent is to present basic correlations of the elemental data. Some conclusions that can be gleaned from the plots are outlined. This is not an attempt to present a definitive study that establishes cause versus effect between religiosity, secularism and societal health. It is hoped that these original correlations and results will spark future research and debate on the issue.

this guy claims to have a ph.D.! he doesn't' care about books. Intellectuals believe that books are gate way to understanding. According to this guy they are not anything. Then he says:

BTW that statement is form teh bogus study by the artist who pretends to do social scienence research, Gregory S.Paul. For a critique of the pretend study go here.


Westveleteren

Debates are worthless Meta. either you have the evidence or you don't debates don't change that fact and validity is not determined by debate.

So he's not interested in books, debate is worthless, he refuses to deal with specifics of argument, he assumes that all my schoalrs are televangelists (meaning he's never heard of Crosson) he asserts they are all in un-peer-reviewed sources, as though Crosson has never been published in a journal. He does the whole the thread like this, noting in the post except little quips and remarks the way they always do.


West:

Oh BS, there is nothing at all scientific about the way anyone looks at the Bible. If they do the Bible has to be thrown out immediately from a literal standpoint because it conflicts with reality.

He's never heard of textual criticism.


There have been many other atheist who say "your education is useless it was for nothing." Atheists don't respect learning,t hey don't respect books, as they did when I was an atheist. It was for intellectuals in that day but is no more. They still need to think they are smarter so they have all kinds of little tricks for that like the lies about the IQ studies. But what they don't have is respect for learning.

Athiest Propaganda on Deafault Assumption

Austin Cline

On Metacrock's Blog I have demonstrated certain studies show that religion is innate. The evdience is pretty strong for an innate religious sense. This blows away the use of the "default" that atheists try to employ,the mistaken notion that we "are all born atheists." Let's look at some illogical to uses atheists make of this assumption.


Austin Cline on Atheist Default

Do infants and very young children qualify as atheists? Most atheists will say so, working from the definition of atheism as “lacking belief in gods.” Theists tend to reject this definition, even if they don’t use the narrow definition of atheism as “denial of gods.” Why? If infants lack belief in the existence of gods, they can’t be theists - so why not atheists?

The evidence is huge that religious instinct is innate. Religion is not something that has to be trained into a child. The particular tradition and doctrines do but not the basic concept.

He goes on to quote:

In Atheism: The Case Against God, George Smith writes:

Upon close examination, it is likely that the objections to calling the uninformed child an atheist will stem from the assumption that atheism entails some degree of moral degeneracy. How dare I call innocent children atheists! Surely it is unfair to degrade them in this manner.

If the religionist is bothered by the moral implications of calling the uninformed child an atheist, the fault lies with these moral implications, not with the definition of atheism. Recognizing this child as an atheist is a major step in removing the moral stigma attached to atheism, because it forces the theist to either abandon his stereotypes of atheism or to extend them where they are patently absurd.

This is sheer lunacy. Not only are kids bron with innate senes of God or some "higher power" but they are not cognitively developed to the extent that they can actually doubt anything. They are no fits judges of God' existence either way. Calling them atheist is calling them communists. Can you say a baby is born a communist? That woudl be unethical if one labeled an infant with some tag phrase an opposition political group, or even his own. This is such obviously totalitarian thinking.

Yes here we have the dirty little secret guys like Cline want to keep under wraps, their movement is totalitarian.


several erroneous ideas on yahoo answers

These things are so silly because they just get anyone to answer. You ask "is chicken skin good for a dog" half the people who never owned a dog and know nothing about nutrition will say 'yes it's great."

Invisible talker says:

Atheism is a lack of belief in gods. As such it is the default position since when faced with a truth-claim the logical default is not to believe it.

Some atheists might go farther and believe there are no gods, but that is in excess of not believing in them. Thus the most inclusive definition of atheism, not believing in any gods, is the best IMHO.

Confronted with a truth claim "the logical appraoch" is the default to not believe, why is that logical? I confront you with the truth claim "It is wrong to kill" Is that something you feel is only logical to doubt as an automatic position? why?

Acid Zebra

Lack of belief in godS. godSSSSSSSSSSS.

What is it with religious people and ignoring the ~3700 other god-notions in these type of arguments? "God". Seriously.

It is what happens when someone tells you about all these gods and you think "what nonsense, are these warm fuzzy feelings and this old book of myth all you got?". You've considered the claim, and rejected it. It isn't a belief in itself as much as your lack of belief in leprechauns or schnnztlypops isn't a belief.

This statement makes no sense at all. He's talking about "You've considered the claim, and rejected it" that's not a default. He thinks plurality of God concepts cancel each other out which also makes no sense. It's much more logical to assume that people can mistaken in their ideas of God but still be right about the thing in general.


Derek

Delusions have to be instilled. The default assumption with no cultural indoctrination or peer pressure would be reality: atheism. Or, to phrase it more as you did, neither a "belief that X" nor a "lack of belief that X," but simply the absence of fantastical notions of deities.

Of course this guys' statement is ignorant hateful stupidity. It's disproved by teh innate religous instinct argumetn. Since it's not intellied it can't be called "delusion" The use of that term is just a point of Orwellian atheism where they change the meaning of the word to fit their propaganda. Whatever disagrees with my propaganda is insanity. That's about as Totalitarian as you can get. The KGB would be proud of them.

Fire

Mankind is over two MILLION years old and Christianity just two thousand years old so it is definitely the default!

That's typical of them to assume Christianity is the really only religion. They are really just reactionaries against Christianity. They don't care about Rege or Janism or Shinto they are not out to stop Kamies in Shinto. Humanity has had some from of religious instinct all along. The Neanderthals had it (see link to Metacrock's blog at the top).

An Example of the Maturity of the Dawkies (Atheist fundies)

Recently I had a little tiff with an athist on CARM. Back several months ago he got into a tizzy because I pointed out how little he knew about the things he was pontificating upon. He tried to get even with me by finding a page I wrote on another site, takings it out of context and putting it on carm to "show how stupid I am." That's totally against the board rules. So the dumb ass expects me to just offer myself as an exaple of what he thinks si stupid and not do anything about being slandered. What kind f idiot would think that way?Since that time he takes every opportunity to say "you bot me banned." He had nothing to do with it. I just, being the old meanie am emailed Di and said "ban this guy" for no reason. Like he played no role in his choice to slander me. "You got me banned." He has a four year old's understanding of personal responsibility. He pulled this whining ruitine again yesterday and I said pretty much what I just said. By mid day there was a post on my other blog:

The Birmingham Free Press said...

You are a morbidly obese man-boy. And you are genuinely stupid. Why don't you wash your hair?

You are obviously mentally ill. Why do you have to keep bragging about your shitty education from a Christian school? You know that's not normal, right? They obviously didn't teach you how to do research. Did our mother not love you? Why do you have to keep propping yourself up? That is an obvious sign of insecurity.

What you need is to finally know the company of a woman. I'm sure if you find a nice prostitute you can finally lose your virginity. It might clear your skin up. Then maybe you can think about moving out of your parents basement.

I find this displace of childish name calling rather amusing, and I had a good idea of who did it. There was another incident of his making comments on the blog in which he made it clear who he was. I don't know for sure so I wont name the individual but I find it interesting. I went to carm and refered to this guy as "Bringham." then the second comment appeared.

12:57 PM

The Birmingham Free Press said...

Ha ha morbidly obese man boy is confused. Your research skills are horrible.

But I already knew that.

Maybe I'm from Satan.

Did you ever think of that?

Better watch you back.

Regardless of who did it, connected to this guy with the childish sense of his own responsibility or not, it's a priceless example of atheist group atheism at work. The big irnoy is it's all in the middle of a flap on CARM where Mat Hunt got wind of my quoting him below so they are trying to argue that because I referred to him as "pretender" then I'm slandering him (saying he doesn't have a degree). I have stated on this blog and on the other blog that I don't doubt his degree.

I do find it telling that the atheists on CARM work up a huge pile of acrimony over my implying that their resident scientist doesn't have a degree, while the past several years (2007 on) they have continually slandered me calling me a liar for saying I went to graduate school. Hunt put up his Masters thesis and said "here it is." He also put up some other document. I don't doubt that he has it, I just doubt that he's conducting himself as a man of letter becasue he wont discuss issues with me.

Yet I have done must as much to prove my doctoral work. I put up the phone number of the department secretary. I implored John Lofuts (punished atheist author) to call her and learn the truth, which he did. I made his email available to them. They will not contact either person to see that I really am a graduate student. they continue their slander and their lies that I'm not.

The old double standard. They do it to you the are perfectly justified and no amount of evidence can disprove their lies. You do it to them you are evil, and the worst scum of the earth and there's no justification for your treachery. In the middle of all of this we have this extremely childish and exaggerated hate mail where this guy is revealing his extreme immaturity. A perfect example of a hate group member in action.

BTW not that give a you know what about thta mental cripple's opinions but my Ph.D. work was in a secular program at a branch of the University of Texas (hook em horns) and SMU, where I got my MASTERS DEGREE, is a fine school.