Talk:Atheism/Archive 26

message: Under the Ignosticism article critical atheism is defined as a type of positive atheism. This seems blatantly wrong to me, and it is (correctly, in my opinion) identified earlier as merely a form of explicit atheism. However, the author felt ignosticism falls under positive atheism due to erroneously identify critical atheism as positive, and classifying ignosticism as a type of critical atheism. It is then said that some ignosticist, through some pointless semantic battle I see as being worthy as label "meaningless" or "nonsense", prefer to think of ignosticism as instead weak atheism. I reccomend completely removing this section or simply stating that it is an example of weak atheism. Apologies in advance for mistakes I probably made posting this, first time editing.
C0h3n 21:24, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Inconsitency?

message: The section "Atheism leads to poor morals and ethics" needs some citations to research literature showing that crime rates et al for atheists are no higher (and in some cases lower) than those for theists. The whole "atheists are immoral and commit more crimes" line is not only misleading, it is patently untrue. --Cyde Weys [u]  [t]  [c] 21:52, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, but keep in mind that Christians proselytize in prisons, which distorts the issue by increasing the proportion of prisoners who are Christians. Alienus 13:49, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Is there any evidence as to how successful this proselytism really is? --Dannyno 20:46, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, actually. Christians are overrepresented in the prison population. Either it's because of the success of this proselytization or perhaps Christians are simply more likely to become convincted criminals. I suspect the former. Alienus 23:31, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I suspect the actual reason is partially that atheists are less likely to commit crimes slightly due to their worldview (after all, they've only one life to live, and no afterlife to look forward to, so they'd want it to be as good as can be), partially because they have one less type of crime to commit (killing infidels), and partially because they are wealthier, more intelligent, and better educated whites (all factors which make them less likely to be criminals - typically, it is poor, uneducated (and thus less intelligent - see some of the articles about intelligence for that) minorities which commit crimes (in the US, but I'm going to guess that is probably true worldwide) when you're looking at how many crimes they -should- have committed given what proportion of the population they make up). Titanium Dragon 09:50, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Here's a page with divorce statistics for various religions (atheists 21%; born-again Christians 27%). - 68.33.120.32 21:57, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Atheism leads to poor morals and ethics

message: We just had an anonymous user edit the article to change "%" to "percent". I can't say I understand the justification. "%" is a lot more succinct and goes better with numerals. I suppose "percent" would go better with written out numbers, i.e. "And sales increased one hundred and fifty-seven percent." But who would ever want to write that way. --Cyde Weys talkcontribs 19:22, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: See Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style %28dates and numbers%29/archive17#Per cent .28.25.29 for a discussion of this issue. Looks like the best practice is to spell percent when the number is also spelled out, but to use a % sign when the number is a number. For example: "seven percent" and "25%" --Quasipalm 19:27, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: % or percent?

message: This article uses the religioustolerance.org website as either a reference or a link. Please see the discussion on Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/Religioustolerance.org and Wikipedia:Verifiability/Religioustolerance.org as to whether Wikipedia should cite the religioustolerance.org website, jguk 14:09, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Religioustolerance.org

message: The article is now 80kB long (was 84 until I removed the "Three Famous Atheists" essay, which I found did not contribute enough to the article to justify keeping it - assuming for the sake of argument that it wasn't original research). I'm thinking that's a bit large and it's time to start being more concise with what we say here and forking topics into more separate articles, with only stubs here for those topics (as we did a while back with antitheism). The Literate Engineer 00:06, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: We need to shorten the article.

message: :copied from user talkpage --JimWae 14:53, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: "includes, as atheists,"

message: "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so."
"... I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews. I am doing the Lord's work."
"And the founder of Christianity made no secret indeed of his estimation of the Jewish people. When He found it necessary, He drove those enemies of the human race out of the Temple of God. "
"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. And when I look on my people I see them work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages wretchedness and misery. When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exposed. " 
All words of Adolf Hitler, and you're trying to tell me he wasn't a Christian? Hitler may not have been moral, Hitler may not have adhered to biblical law, but he certainly thought of himself as a christian and not "Just a theist." 
If you're trying to tell me that Hitler wasn't a christian because he was a catholic, keep in mind that catholicism was the first branch of organized christianity.
http://atheism.about.com/library/quotes/bl_q_AHitler.htm 
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/john_murphy/religionofhitler.html
:I cannot find any references to Hitler in the article. Perhaps it has been removed since your post. Of course, you are right - Hitler was a deeply spiritial and theistic man. He was also certainly a Christian based on documentary evidence. --Oldak Quill 20:31, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Hitler not a christian????

message: I'm fairly new so maybe I missed this discussion. Could someone fill me in on why these three get a whole section in the article? Alienus (belatedly signed)
:I agree with query above (by Alienus who forgot to sign)--this insertion seems out of place and out of focus with general treatment of atheism in article, I vote that it be removed entirely. Anyone else want to comment/vote to reach a concensus?--Fuhghettaboutit 23:53, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The section as currently written sucks, but Marx, Nietzsche and Freud are the philosophical fathers of modern atheism and deserve a short section. — goethean ॐ 00:03, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, I think this whole section belongs on the History of Atheism article, not here. MFNickster 00:24, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd second that. I know it doesn't belong here in atheism, but it might fit into History of Atheism. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Alienus (talk • contribs) .
Although the section (And much of the entire article) is quite large and messy and could do with some tidying up, I think a section titled as such is warranted within the article. Atheism is a modern philosophical concept and these three people are probably the three most cited modern philosophers around. Their writings on the subject of Atheism and how it fits into wider philosophical theory should therefore, in my opinion, be atleast stated in the article. Although like with many sections in this article it should probably be reduced in length. Canderra 16:31, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Atheism is ancient. There have been atheists with regard to each and every version of God from the first moment there were theists for it. Alienus 19:20, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Freud, Marx and Nietzsche

message: <Comment on the following sentence in Atheism as immorality--The first attempts to define or develop a typology of atheism were in religious apologetics. These attempts were expressed in terminologies and in contexts which, unsurprisingly, reflected the religious assumptions and prejudices of the writers.>
From Matthew Stewart's The Courtier and the Heretic 2006; 0393058980, p. 73:
:According to the seventeenth-century way of thinking, an atheist was by definition a decadent. If there is no God (or, at least, no providential, rewarding-and-punishing God of the sort worshipped in all the traditional religions), the reasoning went, then everything is permitted. So a non-believer would be expected to indulge in all manner of sensual stimulation, to fornicate regularly with the most inappropriate partners, to lie, cheat, and steal with abandon, and then to suffer an agonizing death once the Almighty caught up with him, but not before mawkishly recanting his heresies in the presence of a clucking man of the cloth.
I believe that the more important reason is that the atheist undermines the believer's Peace-of-Mind, i.e. the believer's Religion. Kindly see Mark Twain's Little Story.
Yesselman 17:52, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Judaeo-Christian]] Religion and Atheism

message: Why has someone deleted the discussion concerning the accuracy of the following statement: "There are more atheists in the U.S. than members of any religion other than Christianity." Not only is that irresponsible, it is unethical as well. Disagreements should be recorded rather than hidden and deleted.
:On that note, whoever deleted my comment also took the time to put up a source for that quote...which is good. After examining the source, it is even MORE apparent that the above statement is misleading. The source you provided shows that there are more self-identified nonreligious/secular people than any other religion other than Christianity. Notice that self-identified "atheist" are a distant #7 down the list below Christianity, Nonreligious/Secular, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Agnostic. The fact that "agnostic" appears on this list is evidence alone that "self-identification" is not the best way to count how many "atheists" exist in the US. At a minimum, you should qualify the statement in some way. Something like this: "there are more nonreligious/secular people (who qualify under the title 'weak atheist')...." 
:The point is that your statement is misleading in the sense that people reading it will automatically assume that you mean hard atheist (since that is how most of the population uses the word, as evidenced by your source). Since there is ambiguity on what we mean by atheist, you need to be perfectly clear and state what "atheist" means.
::This is ALSO discussed in the "Atheism studies and statistics" where is _should_ be discussed. This is crazy. I am removing that quote again. Let me be perfectly clear. That statement does not add ANYTHING to the substance of that section and it CAN be removed. Further, it is discussed in a later section where the proper details can be discussed.
-
Although I'd like there to be some comment about number of atheists in the US, I have to agree that the wording/link at the moment is rather dubious - we can't really say that when "Atheist" is way down the list!
Whilst it is true that the number of people who self-identify as atheist is less than the number who "don't believe in God", we also can't count all "Nonreligious/Secular" as being atheists, since you can certainly be a theist and non-religious. (Of course the converse is also true - Buddhists or Jews may also be atheists for example, not to mention that agnostic isn't mutually exclusive either, so this sort of poll isn't a good way of judging how many atheists there really are.)
A better approach I think would be to find one of those "Do you believe in God" polls, then compare that to the number of followers of other religions. Mdwh 23:36, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Rewriting History

message: The article writes that, "nevertheless", some authors have chosen to "identify atheism with a naturalistic worldview". I think this fails to really understand their viewpoint. None of the professional academics deny that atheism is a much more specific idea than naturalism, yet broader in the sense that it is compatible with a variety of worldviews and philosophies, including the mystical traditions of Buddhism and Jainism which are anything but philosophical naturalism. It would be misleading to say that the authors "identify atheism with a naturalistic worldview" - as if they feel that atheism is in some way necessarily connected to naturalism. While the article does mention Martin's discussion of what atheism is committed to (1990), noting that atheism is not committed to philosophical naturalism, the point about "identification" implies a more necessary relationship than is the case, and I do not think the referenced authors would agree with the wording of the article. I think readers might potentially gain this misunderstanding from the entry, and so I hope people can agree that the sentence ought to be tweaked for accuracy (perhaps changing it to discuss a correlation between atheism and naturalism that exists *in the West*, but nothing more than this). No direct or necessary relationship between naturalism and atheism should be implied, even vaguely, in this article. It is a major confusion of the general public, and so we ought to strive to make clear that this just ain't so.
:I don't understand your point. The authors in question explicitly identify atheism and naturalism, and the section correctly quotes them doing so. The authors cited do in fact assert a direct relationship. Hence Thrower, who holds that the naturalistic world view is "atheistic per se" and Baggini, who holds that atheism can legitimately be "seen as a commitment to the view that there is only one world and this is the world of nature". The article I think accurately represents these writers and puts them in appropriate context. It is simply not possible to come up with a single definition of atheism that covers all the reasonable (let alone unreasonable) meanings it has been given); the article recognises this and one way it does so is by acknowledging that some writers construct it as a form of naturalism. In other words, while some atheists understand atheism in such a way that it is possible to be a supernaturalist and an atheist, others do not. Correctly, the article explains this situation. I would very much object to the changes you suggest unless they can be shown to more accurately reflect the intentions of the cited authors. --Dannyno 18:29, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Naturalism & Atheism

message: The article needs to be more careful and precise about prevalence. To begin, there is a mistake I am correcting at Atheism#Atheism_in_the_United_States in attributing to adherents.com that "There are more atheists in the U.S. than members of any religion other than Christianity". In fact, adherents.com says the following about the prevalence of atheism:
People who specify atheism as their religious preference actually make up less than one-half of one percent of the population in many countries where much large numbers claim no religious preference, such as the United States (13.2% nonreligious according to ARIS study of 2001) and Australia (15% nonreligious). Pitzer College sociologist Phil Zuckerman compiled country-by-country survey, polling and census numbers relating to atheism, agnosticism, disbelief in God and people who state they are non-religious or have no religious preference. These data were published in the chapter titled "Atheism: Contemporary Rates and Patterns" in The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, ed. by Michael Martin, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK (2005). Different type of data collection methodologies using different types of questions showed a consistent pattern: In most countries only a tiny number of people (zero to a fraction of 1 percent) will answer "atheism" or "atheist" when asked an open-ended question about what their religious preference. A slightly larger number of people will answer "yes" if asked pointedly if they are an atheist. A slightly larger number than that will answer "no" when asked if they believe in any type of God, deities, or Higher Power. A slightly larger number answer "no" when asked simply if they "believe in God" (omitting wording indicating more nebulous, less anthropomorphic conceptions of divinity). Finally, a larger number of people answer "none" or "non-religious" when asked asked an open-ended queston about what their religious preference is. Although figures vary for each country, average numbers indicate that roughly half of the people who self-identify as "nonreligious" also answer "yes" when asked if they believe in God or a Higher Power. 
The section at adherents.com continues at length without coming to any certain conclusion, but including some useful facts such as:
"In the Western world, Europe is by far the place with the most self-avowed nonreligious, atheists and agnostics, with the nonreligious proportion of the population particularly high in Scandinavia. The Encyclopedia Britannica reports approximately 41 million atheists in Europe. The self-described nonreligious segment of society in Australia and New Zealand is also high, at around 15%. In Australia less than a tenth of one percent described themselves as atheists in the latest national census (1996). In the U.S. about 13.2% of the population describe themselves as nonreligious, 0.5% describe themselves as agnostic, and a smaller number describe themselves as atheist (Kosmin, ARIS/American Religious Identification Survey, City University of New York, 2001). 
So,
# There are not more atheists in the U.S. than members of any religion other than Christianity
# There are somwhere between 6-30 million (0.1% to 0.5% that self-identified as atheist in USA and Australia) and 750 million (1/2 of the 1.5 billion world's "non-religious") atheists in the world.
Let's fix the article to reflect these facts unless somebody has better. Tom Haws 22:16, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Prevalence

message: A paragraph currently reads:
:For Smith, explicit atheism is subdivided further according to whether or not the rejection is on rational grounds. The term critical atheism is used to label the view that belief in god is irrational, and is itself subdivided into a) the view usually expressed by the statement "I do not believe in the existence of a god or supernatural being"; b) the view usually expressed by the statement, "god does not exist" or "the existence of god is impossible"; and c) the view which "refuses to discuss the existence or nonexistence of a god" because "the concept of a god is unintelligible" (p.17).
It seems to imply that critical atheism is a subdivision of explicit atheism, and that a) is a subdivision of critical atheism, which is a contradiction since a) is clearly an expression of implicit atheism.
--Kvaks 03:58, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Critical atheism subdivision of explicit atheism?

message: The claim that Christians see Jews as atheists seem pretty radical to me. The editor cited a source, but this source is not listed in the references section. Even if it was, the claim should be worded as a claim, not as an accepted fact. --Allen 04:49, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The claim was that Jews were seen as atheists. While I don't know of a reference, I wouldn't be surprised if this was the case, if only because the term (and the terms that preceded it) were meant as nothing more than insults and was not based on any serious thought into whether or not Jews believed in a god. I think we need to emphasize that it was the case, but is not any more. Within Christianity, there are differing views as to how correct Judaism is with, but I suppose that's not relevant. Aaron McDaid (talk - contribs) 12:24, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: explaining my partial revert

message: I remember some time ago seeing some statistics about the supposed immorality of atheists and how they actually had a lower crime rate, divorce rate, ect. It seems to me to be an appropriate inclusion in that section, because I have heard a number of atheists (myself included) make that particular rebuttal. Titanium Dragon 09:41, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This fact is a major argument of many Atheism advocates and so definatly warrants inclusion. It is already touched upon in the article but if someone can find a good reference it could definatly be improved. The couple of sources I have read on this fact however specify that the increased morality of atheists could be partly due to most atheists coming from more stable families and backgrounds, and from more developed countries. A point which should be noted if appropriate. Canderra 16:19, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Atheism & Immorality

message: Shouldn't there be something about Atheists having, on average, a higher IQ than religious folk? Maybe something about Atheism being a non-prophet organization... ok bad joke... but seriously. :)
:No, there shouldn't, unless you have something reliable to back that up with. Do you? --Calamari 01:22, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have seen statistics to that effect, but I don't have them right now, nor do I remember where to find them. However, I'd recommend not mentioning this fact (and I'm an atheist myself). First of all, the statistics I saw were disputed. Second, even if the statistics turn out to be true, I think mentioning them would give the appearance of arrogance more than it would help the article's encyclopedic nature. Teflon Don 19:41, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Intelligence

message: The second paragraph ends with the following sentence: Additionally, there are atheists who are religious or spiritual, though many of these would not describe themselves as atheists. I think this puts the cart before the horse. The immediately preceding introductory sentences gives a precis of the categorized uses to which the word atheist is put. The structure of the quoted sentence, however, implies that some types of religious and spiritual beliefs are atheist, rather than something to the effect that they "may be sometimes categorized as atheist." The point of the opening is to introduce what atheism can entail in broad strokes. It is out of place to shift gears and single out and define these groups as atheist rather than as possibly falling under that penumbra. Accordingly, here's the change I have made: Additionally, there are certain individuals whose religious or spiritual beliefs some might describe as atheistic, though those holding such beliefs do not normally describe themselves as atheists.--Fuhghettaboutit 22:40, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Rationale for introductory paragraph change

message: (Request has been deleted by its author. Problem has been mostly resolved.) Rohirok 01:00, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Request for help with Humanism articles

message: User:Democracylover proposed the following addition:
:Atheophobia is a term defined by David Warden of the Dorset branch of the British Humanist Association. Warden uses the term to describe a number of characteristic features of discrimination against atheists. Atheophobia includes the irrational hatred or fear of atheists and atheism; discrimination against such people and the belief that atheists cannot be moral or good people; punitive or murderous impulses towards unbelievers, apostates, freethinkers, heretics and blasphemers; the belief that all such people will be consigned to hell or eternal punishment in an afterlife.
The word is a neologism, it's not wide-spread, and I have some real doubts that it's an actual "phobia" so much as a polemic tool. However, the word was proposed on its own article, nominated for deletion, and the merge proposed (see the AFD. I don't think the AfD is the best place to discuss the addition on its own merits.
I'll be honest--I don't think the addition is really notable. But I wanted to give the community here as a whole the chance to voice their opinions. Justin Eiler 17:01, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It doesn't seem notable enough to mention. --Yath 18:53, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Atheophobia

message: I've just added a sub-section on the Talk:Major_world_religions#Speculative_.22Secular.2FNonreligious.2Fetc.22_categorization
adherants.com like to point that that atheists are a minority (less than 1%), whereas the same figures are used by atheists and interpreted quite differently. My own view is that, regardless of what your interpretation is, our governments should be forced to allow accurate recirding of such data via the census, and then forced to provide the nonreligious amongst us with statistics showing how mant people have our particular nonrelgious affiliation (eg. atheism, agnosticism, rationalism, Humanism (belief system) etc). --Couttsie 23:37, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Interpretation of statistics