 |
| Source |
And remember we are not among those who claim a moral superiority, nor go door to door threatening eternal damnation for those who do not accept our point of view.
Just saying.
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Statistics and Atheism.
And remember we are not among those who claim a moral superiority, nor go door to door threatening eternal damnation for those who do not accept our point of view.
Just saying.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
It's not that atheists are better people. It's that better people (educated, wealthier people) are more likely (for now) to be atheists. As atheism becomes more popular among the general public, you'll see the statistics move back toward the averages.
ReplyDeleteJohn, of course, the stats will drift more to the center! As the numbers of non-believers increases, those numbers must come form the general population and as the numbers increase the general stats MUST come down.
DeleteHowever, I am not so sure the numbers will fall to the current averages. Many of us believe that a good chunk of the types of problems listed above are actually CAUSED - or at least, exacerbated - by organized religion. And there have been studies making a strong correlation toward that statement, one of which Gryphen posted here the other day.
In other words, the problems listed above will be reduced as the numbers of atheists increase.
PROVE it? Sorry, no. Just the studies for now.
Thank god for atheists!
ReplyDeleteA photo of writing on a blackboard is hardly persuasive. I could post links to studies indicating positive effects of spiritual and religious practices on physical and mental and health, but I'll keep it brief. Here's a quote from Kenneth Pargament, Ph.D., a researcher with the American Psychological Association, from an article about statistical findings on the affects religion has on those who practice it.
ReplyDelete"It is hard to keep up with the explosion of research in the field. Research on religion and spirituality is producing knowledge that is touching every subdiscipline of psychology and other fields as well. Take a sample of the things we are learning: From their earliest years, children demonstrate a strong spiritual capacity; marital partners who pray for each other are less likely to engage in infidelity; people who attend religious services once a week or more live on the average seven years longer (for African-Americans the benefit is 14 years)."
Hardly a week goes by without a post on HP and Patheos about the demonstrable benefits of religion and spirituality on practitioners. Neuroscientist Andrew Newberg, MD, has made it a focus of his research as well. He has written several books accessible to lay persons. Among his findings: the brains of meditating Buddhist monks and praying Franciscan nuns show intense activity in the same part of the brain. (I think it's the anterior cingulate, but it's been a while since I read it so I could be wrong.)
Not only does spiritual practice stimulate particular parts of the brain, but those areas actually grow and form new synaptic connections, so the more one reads and meditates on religious topics, the better one's brain becomes at understanding spiritual concepts. This may explain why so many atheists just can't seem to grasp sophisticated concepts about the existence of a supreme being. Their outlook is often limited to a fundamentalist interpretation of a punitive, angry God. If they've read the Bible, they've done so without benefit of the scholarly help necessary to understand it. How many atheists know that in the New American Bible, the preface to Genesis states that it's based in part on flood/creation myths from Mesopotamia and other ancient sources? Some atheists, just like some Christian groups, try to understand the Bible literally. That simply doesn't work, so they dismiss all the books of the Bible as bunk.
You see this in their use of language (e.g., sky fairy) and in the lack of logic of some high-visibility atheists. Penn Jillette, in "This I Believe," said that without God, he has more room for love, sex, and Jello in his life. That's paraphrased, but it's an essentially accurate summary of his atheist logic.
Looking at Bart Centre's writing, he seems to reject the idea of a God who expects people to embrace high standards, as set out by Christ. Reading Centre, it seems implicit that he might believe in a God who was more laid-back.
There are reasonable arguments to be made for atheism or at least agnosticism, but the little graphics that show up here with depressing regularity don't even scratch the surface.
I like it!
ReplyDeleteThe Cute little graphic is eye catching. Perhaps next time, you may want to add an article or something to back up the bullet points. You know, statistics and words and things like that which take up a lot of room.
Perhaps put a clickable link with the word "Source".
Here's a good one to use:
http://www.pitzer.edu/academics/faculty/zuckerman/Zuckerman_on_Atheism.pdf
Oh wait, nevermind!
Zuckerman is a sort "professional atheist" as well as a sociologist, writing frequent blog posts on HuffPo and elsewhere, giving atheists pointers on defending their life stance and so on. He's much more reasonable than most, but even so, he still approaches his work with a measure of confirmation bias. You won't find him, for example, citing studies on depression which show that atheists are more prone to that disorder than religious people. Linked to this finding is the fact that MRIs reveal that religious people tend to have a thicker cortex than non-believers. Fascinating stuff. Andrew Newberg, the neuroscientist I mentioned earlier, is an agnostic, incidentally, so he has no personal ax to grind either way.
DeleteMy objection to the graphics is that they contribute to the dumbing down of important discussions. I doubt many readers clicked on the link and took the time to read Pitzer's paper. Look how few comments the post generated. Sarah Palin, as usual, is the hot topic here. Go figure.
ReplyDeleteI totally understand, and didn't mean to start an argument. The thing that gets me, and it happens to me a lot in regard to religion, is how things get distorted and lost in context, especially when the context is more important to the person's words than what's recalled.
Penn Gillette's exact quote was:
‘I believe that there is no God. Having taken that step, it informs every moment of my life. I’m not greedy. I have love, blue skies, rainbows and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more… Believing there’s no God means I can’t really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That’s good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around… Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-o and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best life I will ever have.’
The ONLY reason I remembered this was because it happens to be one of my favorite quotes.
Michael Neugent (no relation to Ted) has a blog with quotes from famous atheists. Yeah, some may offend some people, but most of them show our shared humanity.
Source: http://www.michaelnugent.com/best/famous-atheists/