(December 24, 2015 at 7:27 pm)Delicate Wrote:

(December 24, 2015 at 6:00 pm)Sal Wrote: From the article:

What this wanker fails to account for is apostates. Sure the non-religious have a 1.7 birthrate, but what about the apostates? That's why non-theism (unaffiliated/non-religious/atheists/et. al) is growing. But as Dennet and Harris have noted, this isn't due to some atheistic cause or whatever, but merely the free flow of information and education.

If you want the real numbers, just google "religious affiliation worldwide".

This is stupid criticism and fitting that an atheist should make it.

1) Apostates go both ways. Account for people who apostatize from atheism and come back to faith, and the rate of growth of apostate atheism overall shrinks significantly.
2) Even accounting for apostates to atheism, if they take on the replacement rates of the unaffiliated, they end up shrinking relative to apostate theists if the theists take on the replacement rates of theists.
3) Unaffiliated =/= atheist. Many unaffiliateds are theists.
4) The rise of atheism is not due to the flow of information and education, but predominantly to the rise of online echo chambers, outrage generators, and snake-oil salesmen like Ham Harris and Daniel Dennett.

It's a smart enough criticism to get under your skin and get you to post 4 points of nonsense. Let's both face it, you and yours are a dying breed.

Delicate, you're a damn bore. Instead of riding your favorite hobby horse in yet another thread, how about you substantiate the following, written in response to Catholic Lady's question, "What religion are you?" in your Yes, Atheism is a Religion thread:

[Delicate]: Some form of Christianity [that] has the most compelling historical evidence for it.

Then we can get a good measure of your "rationality".

Right. There is no link between vague, entirely abstract philosophical waffling and the existence of the specific cartoon characters in various story books.

If by some insane cosmic coincidence the stuff that was written actually happened in some form, it's quite clearly all done with now. God, if he was ever there, has lost the interest or the potency to involve himself in our matters.

Hi God! Yes, I'm calling you out again. You used to burn people's eyeballs for less.

(December 24, 2015 at 5:15 pm)Delicate Wrote: (http://theweek.com/articles/552685/new-a...-than-ever)

In this engaging article, the author sets out to point out the mistakes Daniel Dennett makes in an editorial. Daniel predictably spins the facts to make it sound like the data supports atheism, and it called out, point by point, on his errors. But along the way was this interesting description of why atheistic criticisms of theism fail:

Quote:The faith that the New Atheists set out to mock, refute, and dispel was invariably the least impressive, least informed, least sophisticated, most easily dismissed form of the world's great religious traditions. If faith for you is believing in the most scripturally literalistic, doctrinally fundamentalist, ahistorical, credulous, theologically illiterate variant of devotion, well, then Harris-Dawkins-Hitchens probably rocked your world. But as any reader with even a cursory religious education discovered by about page 3 of any of their books, the not-great God of the New Atheists was nothing more than a big old Straw Man in the Sky.

Is atheism built on one big strawman? If so, that would make atheism irrational.

Hey in some cases that is exactly the kind of religion people escaped.  But before you hurt yourself reaching back to pat yourself for your more enlightened faith, maybe you'd like to say exactly what sets yours apart.

"The rise of atheism is not due to the flow of information and education, but predominantly to the rise of online echo chambers, outrage generators, and snake-oil salesmen like Ham Harris and Daniel Dennett." - he told himself, and meant it. He was wrong of course.

(December 25, 2015 at 3:24 am)Whateverist the White Wrote:

(December 24, 2015 at 5:15 pm)Delicate Wrote: (http://theweek.com/articles/552685/new-a...-than-ever)

In this engaging article, the author sets out to point out the mistakes Daniel Dennett makes in an editorial. Daniel predictably spins the facts to make it sound like the data supports atheism, and it called out, point by point, on his errors. But along the way was this interesting description of why atheistic criticisms of theism fail:


Is atheism built on one big strawman? If so, that would make atheism irrational.

Hey in some cases that is exactly the kind of religion people escaped.  But before you hurt yourself reaching back to pat yourself for you more enlightened faith, maybe you'd like to say exactly what sets yours apart.

That's actually a fair observation. Maybe that is the kind of religion some people escaped.

But that doesn't make religion wrong. Just weird fundamentalism wrong.

Resorting to atheism is like going from one extreme to another

Delicate, are you a Catholic? Just wondering.

(December 25, 2015 at 3:36 am)Thena323 Wrote: Delicate, are you a Catholic? Just wondering.

You've become awfully calm after a hysterical few posts towards me.

So basically, in your eyes, if we don't want to be extremists, we need to subscribe to one of the popular fairy tale stories.
So that'll make you happy? Only when everyone's thinks like you. Nah, you're not a narcissist.

Not all of us suffered that kind of trauma.  But I assume you would defend to your last breath every denomination's right to inculcate their kids into their cult.  I'm sure you are fine with snake kissers, faith heelers, young earthers, end-dayers along with Mormons, JW's and Scientologists twisting their fucked up beliefs into their kids.  So if some of them become angry atheists, that's just the birds you were fine with coming home to roost.

But atheism isn't the opposite extreme to fundamentalism.  Rather it is simply disbelief or lack of belief in any system of god belief - be it vintage neanderthal or something you find more respectable.